"Xinjiang Oirat is still used on an everyday basis and is being transmitted to children. However, the positive attitude toward their native culture and language among the Oirat population is on the decline. Most children of 10 or less years old practically cannot speak the language, and their level of comprehension is very low. The dominant language among the younger generation is Chinese. As young Oirats tend to move away from their traditional lifestyle, they cease to practice many parts of their indigenous culture, and with the loss of traditions comes the loss of the language." (p.61)

"In order to create a unified educational system for all the Mongolian tribes in China, in 1982 the authorities launched a reform towards so-called "standardization" of the Mongolian language. Chakhar, one of the Mongolian languages spoken in Inner Mongolia, was chosen to be the "standard" Mongolian in China. As a result, in all the existing Mongolian schools the traditional Oirat writing system, "Clear Script" or Todo Bichig, was replaced with the Classical Mongolian writing system ("Original Script") that fails to reflect morpho-syntactic properties of Spoken Oirat." (p.56)