China's 56 ethnic groups speak 130 languages, a considerable number of which have fallen out of use, or are on the verge of doing so, linguists say.

We must confess a certain sense of ambivalence upon learning this news, the fruit of decades of scanning and digging by generations of linguists, more than 100 of whom were directly involved in compiling the book "China's Languages".

On one hand, we feel elated that the language barriers between some groups of people, who otherwise have difficulty communicating with each other, have been broken down. In inter-personal contacts, language differences are a lot more difficult to overcome than the boundaries of nation-states.

In some cases, communicating with a fellow Chinese from another area or of a different ethnic background is no less frustrating than talking with someone from a totally unfamiliar country in some remote corner of the globe.

Our country's linguistic landscape becomes even more complex if the thousands of local dialects are taken into account. Frustrations surrounding the challenges of communication have nurtured a widely shared fantasy of a world free of strange foreign languages. And so Esperanto was invented.

At the same time, however, we feel a degree of sorrow over the seemingly unstoppable trend of linguistic loss in the face of globalization. A number of the 130 languages our linguists have discovered had already completely lost their communicatory functions when the data was published. If we are sorry for the extinction of a certain plant out of concern for biodiversity, should we not also be saddened by the loss of a human language?

The downside of having so many languages is that people cannot easily understand one other. But these languages are the outcomes, symbols and carriers of colorful cultural legacies of regions and ethnic communities. As we bend over backwards to catalogue the nation's intangible cultural heritage, we should give pause to consider what to do about the withering or disappearance of less-spoken languages.

As we struggle to preserve our biodiversity, what can be done for our linguistic diversity? Shall we work to accelerate the process, leave it to itself or do something to slow it down?

The issue should concern more than just linguists.

As the authorities work to spread the use of Mandarin, they must also get involved in the discussion about how best to balance convenience of communication and linguistic diversity.

(China Daily 01/25/2008 )