PROJECT NAME: 侬说啥？(What do you say?)
PROJECT STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
I was thinking about doing my final project about learning Chinese dialects and having these native speakers of the dialect be able to have a visual for the learners. I want to do this project as well to raise awareness about the dying population of local dialect speakers. Fewer and fewer children are learning their local dialect because schools are only teaching Mandarin. Many parents are also not teaching or talking to their children in the local dialect because they want to make sure their children have the best chance in school with no issues of getting confused with words. The Chinese section of the gaokao also only tests on the standard Mandarin, so it further promoting the killing of the local dialects. As I was brainstorming how to address this issue, with the help of the presentation, I decided to focus this project on children, therefore making specific design choices that would entice children to play with the project.
PROJECT PLAN
This project aims to intrigue children to learn the dialect of their families. To do this, I will create a puzzle of China with the different provinces being able to be taken out so the child user can hear the dialect of that region of China. However, instead of randomly them picking, I also want to use a joystick so when they move into the province on the screen, they will hear the dialect in whispers (a lower volume) and looped. When they lift the piece up, the volume will be louder and can clearly hear the dialect. To get the dialects for this project, I have enlisted the help of native speakers from NYU Shanghai’s Class of 2022 and 2023 to be recorded. Interestingly, while finding native speakers for the recordings, finding people who spoke the dialect was hard because of this issue of only learning Mandarin. At the time of submission of this essay, I have found native speakers from Sichuan, Chongqing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, and I am waiting on a reply from confirmed speakers from Beijing and Hebei. I am working on finding native speakers from other areas to try to get as many recordings as possible. In addition, I have finished designing the base of the puzzle and the puzzle pieces for the China puzzle.
CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Talking with people about the pressure they faced when preparing for gaokao for the Chinese section and where they’re from inspired my want to address this issue. It was very interesting when I was doing preparatory research for this project after submitting the original proposal because when I asked friends who came from certain regions if they spoke the native dialect of the region, it proved difficult because oftentimes, they did not speak their regional dialect. For me, I thought this was weird because I speak my American Northeast regional dialect which isn’t as different as Chinese dialects are, but when we were taught English in school, we were taught specifically to the region. I think it’s just a cultural difference, but it seems very different for me. I think this project achieves interaction because it forces the user to give input to the project and the project will give output in which the user then acts on. I think this project is significant because I think this is one of the topics swept underneath the rug when talking about the unification of the Chinese language. This project is intended for young children so I wanted to make the interface as easy as possible for them to interact with, hence the puzzle. This is of special value to Chinese children to give them an interest in learning about their native region’s dialect. After successful completion, I would like to find out how this has affected culture because culture is often tied to language. I think this will help to address the idea of culture wiping that China has been doing with its minorities and the strength that comes from keeping your culture.