Debate between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese

1. Hu Shi is arguing with his students about which is simpler, classical Chinese or vernacular Chinese. Hu Shi was one of the earliest advocates and practitioners of the New Culture Movement. Because the vernacular Chinese advocated by the New Culture Movement was a new thing, the opposition in the society was extremely fierce at that time. Great scholars who opposed the vernacular movement included Wu Mi, Huang Kan, Lin Shu, Mei Guangdi, Zhang and others, especially Huang Kan.

Huang Kan, a great disciple of Zhang Taiyan, a master of Chinese studies, is famous for his arrogance and meanness. On one occasion, Huang Kan said to Hu Shi, "You advocate vernacular Chinese, which is not sincere!" Hu Shi asked him why he said this, and Huang Kan replied seriously: "If you really advocate vernacular Chinese, you should not call it Hu Shi, but what to do." This remark made him hit three times, and Hu Shize turned pale with anger.

Huang Kan once again praised the wisdom of classical Chinese in his lectures, for example, "If Hu Shi's wife dies, his family will send a telegram saying,' Your wife is dead! "Come back!" It only needs 1 1 words, while classical Chinese only needs four words, which can save two-thirds of the telegram fee. "

This time, Hu Shi hit back, brilliant to amazing. Also in class, when Hu Shi talked about the benefits of vernacular Chinese, a classmate asked unconvinced: Mr. Hu, does it mean that vernacular Chinese has no shortcomings at all? Hu Shi said with a smile, No, the students remembered Huang Kan's argument of saving money by telegraphing in classical Chinese, and retorted, Why not? If the vernacular is not concise, telegrams use more words and spend more money. Hu Shi said: Not necessarily. Why don't we do an experiment? A friend of the Executive Yuan wrote to me the other day and invited me to be the secretary of the Executive Yuan. I didn't want to go into politics, so I sent a telegram and refused. The reply is written in vernacular, which is very economical. If students are interested, you can help me write a message in classical Chinese to see whether to save money in vernacular Chinese or classical Chinese.

As expected, the students drafted drafts one after another. Finally, Hu Shi picked out the one with the least words and the most complete expression from the telegram, and its content was "I'm afraid I'm not competent, so I'm afraid I won't do it." Hu Shi said humorously after reading it: "This telegram is only 12, which is concise, but it is still too long. I only need five words in the vernacular: I can't do it, thank you. " Later, Hu Shi explained: "I can't do it" means that I am ignorant and afraid of being competent. "Thank you" means both thanking my friends for their painstaking introduction and declining. It can be seen that the conciseness of language does not lie in using vernacular or classical Chinese. As long as the words are used properly, vernacular Chinese can be more concise than classical Chinese.

Hu Shi's incisive exposition is a counterattack against Huang Kan's argument of "saving money by telegrams in classical Chinese". Hearing this, the students could not help nodding their heads in agreement. With the unremitting efforts of Hu Shi and others, vernacular Chinese finally replaced classical Chinese.

2. Why did vernacular Chinese completely replace classical Chinese in the May 4th New Culture Movement, and vernacular Chinese replaced classical Chinese? The private school education system has been abolished, and students don't have to read four books and five classics. Since then, most schools and middle schools have written in vernacular Chinese, and only a few are ancient Chinese. Last year, an article in the college entrance examination: the death of red hare, classical Chinese imitation of [Romance of the Three Kingdoms] got full marks. Moreover, the society and theory praise it and belittle it. The detractors said: What age is it, and they still advocate classical Chinese. Wasn't the May 4th New Culture Movement wasted? Going back again.

Should classical Chinese really not exist now? Classical Chinese is only for scholars to learn. To answer this question, what role does vernacular Chinese play first? I think the role of the vernacular is only to promote the written language. There is little difference between simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters, but the strokes are simple. If you are a scholar, the effect of simplification is similar to that of complexity, and you won't forget it because of complexity. Vernacular writing is spoken language, and writing and language are consistent. Classical Chinese is a written language handed down from generation to generation, which is characterized by conciseness and vividness, unlike what we say.

So how did the gap between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese come about? The Analects of Confucius, which records Confucius' words and deeds, looks like vernacular, not difficult to understand, but the language is essential. If you look at the Zhuzi language in the Song Dynasty, it is similar to the vernacular, as if the language customs in the Song Dynasty are not much different from modern languages. Yuanqu and novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties are the basic vernacular Chinese, and no one can understand this book [Dream of Red Mansions], [Water Margin Fu] and [Journey to the West]. It can be seen that the daily colloquial vernacular has existed for a long time, not the May 4th Movement. Classical Chinese, however, only simplifies the text when remembering history; If you take the imperial examination, fill in the lyrics.

Since classical Chinese, as a written language form, has not disappeared in the historical inheritance, there are naturally other reasons. Judging from the history of human development. Language originated before Chinese characters. Words come first, and images come second. In the west, words are combined with language, each letter represents a syllable, and Pinyin is used as the words, so that the language and words are consistent. China, on the other hand, is different. Language changes language, and words are like words. Pinyin bytes began to exist after Sanskrit was introduced into China. It used to be spelled with words, and monosyllabic words were spelled with disyllabic words. It is precisely because of the gap between language and writing that China's writing will retain the two characteristics of classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese for a long time. Before the Qin dynasty, all countries had their own Chinese characters, and there were many ways to write a hieroglyph. However, all countries have the same pronunciation. At present, there is no historical record that all countries need to bring translators when they go to the embassy or meet the Emperor of Heaven. After Qin dynasty, the characters were unified, and the characters of Qin dynasty were used as the standard characters. In the future, the words were unified, but the meanings of words and spoken words were not unified. There are commonly used syllables in spoken English, but there are no symmetrical characters. There is also a word representing a phrase, and this custom continued until the early May 4th Movement. In the May 4th Movement, westernization was carried out in an all-round way, and the corresponding sounds and characters of westerners were imitated, and Chinese pinyin was made, and all the characters were spoken. There are only 3000 commonly used Chinese characters. The original word represents a thing, but now it is almost the same as the sound, so the number of words used is greatly reduced, making most Chinese characters become the original words. Later, some people argued that Chinese characters can no longer be simplified, and pinyin can be used instead for popularization and literacy. This is a bold move of total westernization after the May 4th Movement. In the history of China, no one has ever proposed to abolish Chinese characters. Today, everyone is bold, and everyone can be Cang Xie. In a few days, China Chinese characters will disappear.

Is the meaning of ancient Chinese still there? In ancient times, Liushu was a method of creating and using Chinese characters, which belonged to philology. It can be divided into six types: pictogram, image sound, image matter, image meaning, diversion and excuse. Now spoken English, as long as the consonants are combined, other words can be omitted. If you perform Chinese characters again, you can perform them as Japanese katakana, and finally there will be only Pinyin Festival. Is this an international trend? The words created by our ancients have profound cultural connotations, which will be difficult for experts to understand in the future. Words in ancient Chinese are all monosyllabic words. For example, after the May 4th Movement, vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese were not parallel, and most of the original meanings of monosyllabic words translated into vernacular Chinese phrases could not be explained. Such as "change", can be dialectically demonstrated. "Change" can be said to be qualitative change and mutation; "Change" can be said to be quantitative change or slow "change". Such as "learning", "learning" is more important than thinking, "learning" is more important than practice, and the unity of knowing and doing is learning. These are all good dialectical pairs, but philosophical translators don't pay attention to these existing pairs and create other phrases, which leads to unsatisfactory words. It is difficult to understand the dialectical spirit of the ancients. This is because the May 4th Movement only emphasized pronunciation, but not word meaning, which led to the traditional culture of China unable to adapt to western culture.

Who invented ancient Chinese into vernacular Chinese? Not one person, but the whole civilian class formed through hard work.

The style reform that began in the late Qing Dynasty can be divided into three stages: new style, vernacular and popular language. The "new style" in the late Qing Dynasty is colloquial "popular classical Chinese". The "vernacular Chinese" in the May 4th period is like a "record" with a little amplification. In 1930s, "popular language" advocated thorough colloquialism, and the style reform was mature.

As early as the Tang and Song Dynasties, some people came out to oppose sentence breaking and format constraints. In the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu (768-824) advocated prose and opposed parallel prose, which was called "the decline of eight generations of literature". Eight Dynasties: Eastern Han Dynasty, Wei and Jin Dynasty, Song Dynasty, Qi Dynasty, Liang Dynasty, Chen Dynasty and Sui Dynasty. Parallel prose originated in the Han and Wei Dynasties and matured in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It pays attention to antithesis and temperament, and the four characters and six characters alternate, which is called "Si Liu Wen". Han Yu opposed this style which attached importance to form and bound thoughts, and advocated classical Chinese which was close to spoken language and free expression, so that the style was restored to the era before it was bound by parallel prose, so it was called the "ancient prose movement". The names "ancient prose" and "innovation" are actually.

Temples in the Tang Dynasty promoted Buddhism and attracted people by telling stories. Show pictures and rap stories at the same time The picture is called "disguised form" and the rap script is called "variant". Prose and poetry appear alternately, all prose. Later generations developed into drums and tanci. This is early vernacular literature.

Quotations in Song Dynasty are another kind of early vernacular literature. At first, Zen wrote the master's speech in spoken language. Later, the disciples of Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, the Neo-Confucians of the Song Dynasty, also recorded the teacher's remarks orally. "Bibliography" is a kind of vernacular Chinese, which has a small foot and dare not put too much "half-foot" flavor.

There is also a "story book" between Song and Yuan Dynasties. This is the copy of the story told by the storyteller. Hua is a story, Ben is a basic book, which can be divided into two categories: novel and history telling. The former is mostly vernacular short stories, while the latter is classical short stories.

Zhang Hui's novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as Jin Ping Mei, A Dream of Red Mansions and Water Margin, were all written in the vernacular at that time, which made the vernacular widely circulated among the people. However, literary authenticity is classical Chinese.

During the Reform Movement in the late Qing Dynasty, vernacular Chinese was consciously advocated, and "popular classical Chinese" called "new style" rose. For example, Huang Zunxian quoted sayings into poetry and opposed the worship of the past. His new poem, written in 1868 (the seventh year of Tongzhi), is a pioneer of emancipating the literary style: "How can the ancients stop me from writing by hand?" In other words, if I publish a compendium, five thousand years later, I will be shocked by the old rotten spots.

Qiu put forward the idea of "advocating vernacular Chinese and abolishing classical Chinese" in the article "On vernacular Chinese as the foundation of political reform". He said: there are "eight benefits" in vernacular Chinese, among which "saving day power (time), avoiding unnecessary reading (misunderstanding), learning from childhood, exercising mind (thinking) and helping the poor" are advanced ideas. Chen Rongqi was the first person who advocated the newspaper to change the vernacular. Wang Zhao formulates the letters of the national language and spells "northerners' sayings" instead of classical Chinese. At this time, small newspapers and periodicals in various vernacular languages were published everywhere. Vernacular is a kind of folk literature, which is regarded as "not elegant", not a formal style, not authentic literature, and has no legal status.

Around the May 4th Movement, the trend of innovation surged and the slogan of "literary revolution" was put forward. Oppose old literature and advocate new literature. Old literature refers not to the literature of the old period, but to the literature of the old nature, which is characterized by classical Chinese style, stale content and feudal ideology. New literature does not refer to the literature in the new period, but refers to the literature of new nature characterized by vernacular style, novel content and ideological revolution.

As an advocate of the vernacular movement, Hu Shi knows well the relationship between ideological content and stylistic form. "I also know that vernacular Chinese is not new literature, and I also know that new literature must have new ideas and new spirits." However, due to the long history of traditional ideas and the complexity of objective conditions, he emphasized the opposition and division between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese, and spared no effort to advocate the instrumentality of vernacular Chinese. "The vernacular literature tool is a new invention that several young students have been looking for in the United States for more than a year." ⑿ Compared with Hu Shi's radical, paranoid and decisive attitude, Zhou Zuoren should calm down. While emphasizing the reform of writing, he paid more attention to the reform and transformation of ideas. Otherwise, despite the use of vernacular Chinese, "thoughts are still absurd and harmful" and "there is no strict boundary between ancient Chinese and vernacular Chinese, so life and death are also difficult to distinguish." Liu Bannong also thinks that classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese "have their own advantages and disadvantages". "From June 5438 to June 09201October 65438, according to the decree issued by the Ministry of Education at that time, all Chinese classes in schools across the country were taught in a unified manner."

This marks the initial victory of the "May 4th" vernacular movement, but "vernacular" also faces serious problems: lack of aesthetic significance; Separation of ideological content and written expression. Hu Shi has long realized this. "If future literati can't create a vernacular literature that can be passed down from generation to generation for the May 4th Movement ... there is no way to convince ancient writers." . In this respect, the vernacular novels A Madman's Diary, Poems, Zhou Zuoren's series of "beautiful essays" and "Bing Xin Ti" novels are of pioneering or foundation significance. In the first decade of new literature, the creation of vernacular Chinese was carried out in various genres and tested in practice. Among them, the most controversial is vernacular poetry (new poetry). Hu Shi's creation broke the rules of traditional poetry, but it brought a tendency of "non-poeticization"; Guo Moruo's Goddess can pay more attention to the laws of poetry itself (especially images); The emergence of Crescent School is the inversion of the former two, which makes poetry "standardized" and establishes the modern aesthetic principles of vernacular new poetry in the connection between "new" and "old".

The vernacular is simple and popular, lively, rough and bold, full of life breath and expressive language. Throughout the "May 4th" vernacular movement, we can see that it absorbed the western vocabulary resources and grammatical structure extensively, and developed at many levels such as language, writing and thought. This movement is not only a "self-sufficient change within the language", but also closely related to the innovation of the whole thinking concept and the national modernization movement. The contest between "vernacular Chinese" and "classical Chinese" is also a collision of two different value systems and social ideologies to a great extent.

4. In daily life, speaking in classical Chinese or vernacular Chinese was a very vague concept in ancient China.

For example, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are ancient, and the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty are also ancient to us. But the pre-Qin period in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period is also ancient for the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.

The spoken language in the pre-Qin era was actually the later classical Chinese. The wind in The Book of Songs is a folk custom and the most popular pop music at that time, but it is this "wind" that is not popular for us, even for people in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Because the dialects and popular languages in the pre-Qin period became classical Chinese in the later evolution, which is the so-called ancient Chinese.

In the middle Tang Dynasty, the ancient prose movement promoted by Liu Zongyuan and Han Yu actually advocated restoring the pre-Qin language system and using the pre-Qin vernacular as the writing language.

In the Tang dynasty, there was a great difference between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese. By the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the folk vernacular culture was not much different from the present vernacular. You can look at the divertimento of the Yuan Dynasty (Nanqu and Beiqu). The script of this kind of opera is actually written in folk vernacular, which is very colloquial. You can also look at Zhu's articles in the Song Dynasty. Although Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty is one of the most obscure parts of China's philosophy, Zhu's articles are very popular. The four classical novels A Dream of Red Mansions, The Water Margin and The Journey to the West's Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Ming and Qing Dynasties are all vernacular novels, among which the language of The Water Margin is closer to the vernacular. Therefore, Water Margin and Jin Ping Mei have become good materials for understanding life in Ming and Qing Dynasties through language.

A Dream of Red Mansions is the highest peak of vernacular novels, while Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is the highest peak of classical Chinese novels. The year when Pu Songling died happened to be the year when Cao Xueqin was born. The two books were almost in the same historical era, which just shows that both vernacular and classical Chinese existed in the language system of ancient China people.

It was not until the May 4th Movement and the New Literature Movement that Hu Shicai put forward "On the Improvement of Writing Style" and personally tried the first collection of vernacular poems and songs that advocated the use of vernacular Chinese. At this time, the status of vernacular Chinese is in full swing. With the pace of modernization and modernization, the existence of classical Chinese is almost eliminated. But the vernacular Chinese was not invented by Hu Shi, and it appeared as early as 1000 years ago.

5. Why to use vernacular instead of classical Chinese "vernacular" is closely related to popular spoken language. "Popular spoken language is not a special language other than vernacular Chinese.' Popularization' means that vernacular Chinese can be understood to the greatest extent." Lu Xun believes that "to advocate popular language is to be a' more plain vernacular'". Some commentators believe that the vernacular movement is a prelude to the mass movement; In fact, there are differences between the two concepts, and we can't blindly equate the "vernacular movement" with "popularization". In addition, the vernacular movement is also the theoretical starting point of "mass literature and art" in the leftist period in the 1930s and "literature and art serving the masses" in the liberated areas in the 40s. The latter is the extension and prominence of the former, and it is also accompanied by the narrowing of the concept connotation. After the establishment of "vernacular Chinese" as a category of modern literature, there are still some arguments and explanations, mainly focusing on the level of "reflection", such as Qian Gurong's reflection on vernacular Chinese and so on.

Vernacular writing is easier than classical writing, and you can clearly express the meaning of people when you speak. However, in classical Chinese, the literal meaning is difficult to understand, and we must use our brains and think repeatedly before we can know the meaning expressed. As for the vernacular, it is easy to express what we think and easy to understand.

Vernacular writing is the need of China's development. It is concise and easy to understand. The literary revolution, which began with the vernacular movement, played an important role in spreading new ideas, prospering literary creation and popularizing national education.

Modern written vernacular still has various levels. If a person wants to participate in academic discussions on philosophy, he must master a whole set of basic discourse systems of modern philosophy, and if he wants to participate in academic discussions on economics, he must master a whole set of discourse systems of modern economics, but this does not mean that everyone who participates in social written dialogue must master another set of independent discourse systems completely different from his real daily spoken language, just like classical Chinese. Because the modern discourse systems of different majors are gradually enriched and developed on the basis of real daily spoken language, these languages developed on the basis of real daily spoken language can also be used for real daily spoken communication.

6. The question of whether ancient people spoke classical Chinese or vernacular Chinese can be traced back to the development history of Chinese. I learned Chinese. This question can tell you something about the development history of Chinese. It tells us that the written language of pre-Qin literature is basically the same as the spoken language of its time. Therefore, although the Analects of Confucius is difficult for us to understand now, it was spoken at that time, because it is a quotation itself and it is impossible to use too many written languages. In fact, at that time, written language and spoken language were not really separated, and people had no awareness of written language. Why did the distinction between written language and spoken language appear later? The key lies in the worship of articles in the pre-Qin period by later generations. Because of this worship, people after Qin and Han dynasties imitated the pre-Qin language and style in words. However, in real life, great changes have taken place in spoken English, and many changes have taken place in vocabulary and grammar, but they have deliberately maintained familiarity. Not much has changed. Of course, the ancients did not imitate the China people in the pre-Qin period at home. They can only imitate some fixed idioms, such as "nothing", "what", "what" and "what", but they often give clues in some subtle vocabulary, which is the basis for us to study the differences of written Chinese in different times. For example, an article written by Yugong in Shangshu was written by Yu Xia on the surface, but the vocabulary was completely the language feature of the Warring States period, so we concluded that it was forged. On the other hand, the reason is that intellectuals are becoming the pillars of society, and the education in ancient China is not universal, so scholars prefer to write some rough and difficult articles in order to show their status. Gradually separated from the spoken language at that time, this phenomenon didn't stop until the New Culture Movement in the 20th century, but at the same time, it should be noted that the vernacular literature didn't stop because the ancient prose was difficult to understand, and it was manifested from the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Taking Zhang Hui's novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties as an example, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was conservative from the beginning, and it was written in plain classical Chinese, not in vernacular Chinese. These vernacular works reflect the spoken language at that time, so it can be said that Bai Juyi's poems are unique. Although the old woman can understand them, they are by no means simple vernacular, otherwise they cannot be called poems. Poetry needs the artistic processing of poets. Rich rhetoric and vivid images are essential elements of poetry. Bai Juyi's poetic language can be interpreted by the old woman, but it can't be completely vernacular. Huang Zunxian, a famous modern poet in China, pays attention to my calligraphy. Paying attention to the simplicity of form can be said to be Bai Juyi's second talk about vernacular literature. Please refer to Hu Shi's book History of Vernacular Literature, and now talk about the changes of spoken English. In fact, from the above discussion, you may have found that the change of spoken English is difficult to be controlled artificially, so theoretically, since spoken English is a popular language, it is impossible to be influenced too much by literati, so its change should be relatively great. In fact, the ancient prose of all ages was produced by the literati's deliberate pursuit of similarity with the pre-Qin vernacular, so Han Yu's language is very similar to that of the pre-Qin period (although we can find Han Yu's loopholes in subtle places). The biggest change in spoken English is pronunciation. Even if we can go back to the era of Confucius now, we will certainly not understand a word Confucius and his disciples said during their lectures. Because the pronunciation of ancient Chinese is so different from today's, the pronunciation of spoken Chinese in the Tang and Song Dynasties is very similar to that of Cantonese and Minnan now, so the pronunciation of Japanese and Cantonese will always fit in a little (of course, Japanese is also developing). There are changes in vocabulary and the emergence of new words, such as sitting in the middle of the night, sitting in the middle ages and sitting near the ancient times, but there is no minimal change in ancient grammar. Idioms retain some grammatical features of ancient Chinese, such as prepositional objects. What we are talking about now is that only one person follows the trend and only one person asks questions. The following is the relevant content in our notes of modern Chinese class: 2.2. 1. The concept and definition of modern Chinese (1) Different opinions on the stages of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese: May 4th Movement, Opium War, novels in the late Qing Dynasty.

(2) The meaning of modern Chinese: broadly speaking, it includes Putonghua and various dialects. Narrow sense: especially Putonghua.

(3) How did Putonghua come into being? There are two ways to form * * * homonyms: a. Natural formation, non-mandatory: the influence of Shanghai Chinese and Cantonese on Putonghua is non-mandatory and natural. B. Forced formation and manual standardization: promotion and standardization on the basis of natural formation.

(4) The expressions of * * * homonyms: A. Written language B. Their formation speed and process are different. Mandarin has written language and spoken language, which have their own different formation processes. 2.2.2. The formation of modern Chinese vernacular is also the written language of modern Hanzhong.

(1) Ancient Vernacular: Oracle Bone Inscriptions proved that more than 3,000 years ago was almost the same as now. In the Qin and Han Dynasties, there appeared a cross-regional language-Yayan, which was the language around Luoyang at that time, that is, Xia Yan.

Written language reflects different oral situations. The "wind" in The Book of Songs faithfully records spoken language, with the color of folk spoken language.

The Analects of Confucius recorded Confucius' spoken language, reflecting the spoken language at that time, but in fact, people in the pre-Qin period did say so, and it must be spoken language. (2) The vernacular Chinese in the process of separating literature from vernacular Chinese: After the Han and Wei Dynasties, the spoken language has changed. At that time, the literati deliberately imitated the expression of the pre-Qin dynasty and formed the classical Chinese, which made the written language divorced from the spoken language, and the classical Chinese also occupied the dominant position of the written language for thousands of years.

Compared with the written language of classical Chinese, it is the written language of vernacular Chinese. Shi Shuo Xin Yu in the Southern Dynasties left many traces of spoken language at that time, and there were also many spoken words and sentences.

During the translation of Buddhist scriptures in the Six Dynasties, it is necessary to speak vernacular to the common people. Bianwen appeared after the Tang and Five Dynasties and belongs to a kind of rap literature.

Ancient Buddhist Zen works, such as "Zen Quotations" and "Zutang Collection", are used to tell Buddhist stories in temples. Low level of education and heavy traces of vernacular Chinese. In Song Dynasty, Neo-Confucianism prevailed, and The Quotations of Zhu was very close to spoken language.

At the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the vernacular prevailed, and the scripts (storytelling scripts) at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty were mostly written in vernacular, while many spoken languages were preserved in miscellaneous songs. Novels in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty are not classical Chinese, but ancient vernacular. Although with local color, they are all written in northern dialects, and there is a trend of taking northern spoken language as written language. The written language of the same language is becoming more and more perfect, and the vernacular is basically formed.

(3) 。