Language Unification Reason vs. Power

Since no one has ever discussed about real reason, not even the so called rationalism, so, in the European history, now Europe encountered the dilemma of choosing language reason vs. power. In the history of Europe, the only change of language is from military power, either independent or imperialism. The European people don’t even think about that there could be other motivation of change language. Under this principle, the European think that if we wish stop the military intervention, then the best way is multilingualism.

But in China, there was at least three times that the aggressor adopted the language of their invasion subject.  Because it was the reason stronger than power.

The first time is happened in North Dynasty北魏（386-534）, at beginning they were a minority people and had their own language, but after they took over the north part of China, from the year 493 they took Chinese as their only public language. Then their 30,000,000 people added into the existed 24,000,000 speaking population at that time. The population of Chinese speaker turned to 54,000,000 at that time.

The second time is after Genghis Khan aggressed China, (1271) His grandson Kublai started to spread Chinese by the government power, but it was a short dynasty only survived 80 years. Before the members of the aristocracy became good in this language, they were driven out of the centre of politic. This time around 10 million population added to the already existed 100 million Chinese speaker. Yet the Mongolia people kept their life style very well besides speaking Chinese. For instance, the tradition of Chinese lived in big house, while the Mongolia lived in tent. So the emperor build big tents in the Chinese palace.

The third time is after Ming Dynasty, there came the Qing Dynasty (1644), it was a minority came from the north-east of China. Their name is Manchu, the original word of Mandarin, after they took over this country, they force the Chinese to accept their cultural. Their slogan for adulthood male was ‘Keep head, don’t keep hair. Keep hair, don’t keep head.’

From Confucius the Chinese keep a hair style like:

The Qing government force everybody changed as:

Otherwise, behead. But in the language issue, they adopt the Chinese. This time 2 million Manchu speaker added to the already existed 120 million Chinese speaker. After three hundred year of rule, they don’t even know their original language.

Furthermore, in the history, the Vietnam, Korean and Japan had learnt the Chinese Characters for their language that no one push them to do it.