Mongolian-language education suspended in Tongliao
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Tongliao 通辽市; Mongolian: 
Tüŋliyou qota, Mongolian Cyrillic.Түнляо хот) is a prefecture-level city in eastern Inner Mongolia, PRC. The news is not good.
It follows a familiar pattern: there's a similar story about suspending Tibetan-language education in a part of Sichuan following the covid-19 closure of schools.
It sounds plausible since notification was given verbally, typical of the way Chinese government does things it doesn't want to be caught out on.
References
- "Authorities Cancel Mongolian-Medium Classes in Inner Mongolia's Tongliao City" (6/24/20)
- "Thousands in Signature Campaign as China Plans End to Mongolian-medium Classes" (7/7/20)
- "Classroom Instruction Switch From Tibetan to Chinese in Ngaba Sparks Worry, Anger" (4/9/20)
Selected readings
- "The Last Lesson — in Mongolian" (1/11/18)
- "Let's learn some Mongolian language and history" (5/1/19)
- "Some Mongolian words for 'horse'" (11/7/19)
Brandon said,
July 18, 2020 @ 8:15 am
The Mongolian "хот" for "city" seems very close to Malay/Indonesian "kota", which Wiktionary says is a loanword from either Tamil or Sanskrit.
Philip Taylor said,
July 18, 2020 @ 8:37 am
What is the significance, Victor, of the seemingly throw-away words at the end of the article linked from your third reference (""Classroom Instruction Switch From Tibetan to Chinese in Ngaba Sparks Worry, Anger (4/9/20)". The words in question are "50 Cent Army. Taking a page out of Hans Frank's General Government. CCP is the new NSDAP" and I expected that there would be a hyperlink therefrom, but there was none, nor is that exact sequence of words seemingly attested elsewhere on the web. Who are what is/are the "50 Cent Army", and are the following words simply a "sound bite" or is there wider discussion thereof elsewhere ?
Philip Taylor said,
July 18, 2020 @ 9:14 am
And an unrelated question concerning the typography : when including fragments of a top-down language such as Mongolian in a wider stretch of a left-to-right language such as English, is it conventional to allow the Mongolian to rise from the baseline of the surrounding text (which might suggest to the less-informed reader that the embedded Mongolian is intended to be read bottom-to-top) or is it better to allow the Mongolian to descend from the surrounding text, forcing the next line thereof to be set on a far wider leading than would otherwise be the case ?
David said,
July 18, 2020 @ 12:18 pm
The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (十三五) comes to an end this year, and one of the supporting initiatives is one pushing for 80% of the Chinese population to be able to communicate in Putonghua [Mandarin] by the end of the year. It's official policy (and cited in the report cover shown in the Chinese version of the first article you referenced) that the inability to communicate in Putonghua by ethnic minorities is a hindrance to poverty alleviation, which is slated to be "achieved" by the end of year. So this is perhaps another effort to boost the metric in the months that remain.
It's surprising with the heavy-handed push of Putonghua in the last two decades that knowledge of it is still not as widespread as one would suspect, especially outside of the largest cities.
David said,
July 18, 2020 @ 1:09 pm
Philip, the words at the bottom of the RFA article are from an online commenter, they're not part of the story.
50 Cent Army is a reference to the "50-Cent Party" (五毛党/wǔmáo dǎng, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party), Internet commenters who are supposedly paid 0.5 RMB for each pro-Party/pro-government post they make online.
Philip Taylor said,
July 18, 2020 @ 2:23 pm
Thank you, David — all now clear.
Michael Watts said,
July 18, 2020 @ 2:33 pm
Setting the merits of the policy aside, we can be certain that this is true.
Bathrobe said,
July 19, 2020 @ 1:19 am
Mongolian-language schools in Inner Mongolia teach Chinese. It's not as though their graduates can't speak and write Chinese.
There are policies and policies, and they can be implemented in different ways. If they wanted to improve literacy in Mandarin, they could do it gradually, for instance by increasing class hours in Chinese. Suddenly taking advantage of covid to dump Mongolian-language education altogether (apart from the bare minimum needed to keep mother-language skills alive) against the wishes of parents, and doing so by fiat, almost clandestinely, is equally autocratic.
cliff arroyo said,
July 19, 2020 @ 11:51 pm
"Suddenly taking advantage … against the wishes of parents, and doing so by fiat, almost clandestinely, is equally autocratic"
For communists it's almost democratic….