Interview: Gerald Roche on the Erasure of Tibet’s Minority Languages

As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic minority groups in recent decades, language has been a key part of that effort. Standard Tibetan is recognized as the official language of the Tibetans, who live throughout the Tibet Autonomous Region as well as in Tibetan areas in current Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Yet