Did all ancient people speak classical Chinese?

1. Did all the ancients speak classical Chinese? The ancients spoke in a completely different way from us. If the ancients were resurrected, we would certainly not understand what they said. Now the southern dialect is closer to the ancient spoken language and retains a small number of ancient pronunciation methods, so the southern dialect is more difficult to understand, such as Wu dialect and Cantonese. Of course, there were dialects in ancient times.

There was also Mandarin in ancient times, which is the lingua franca equivalent to Mandarin now. It is a language that officials must learn in order to facilitate administrative communication, so it is called Putonghua. If ordinary people have a wide range of activities, they should also use Mandarin to facilitate communication. Of course, we don't understand Mandarin.

As far as written language is concerned, the classical Chinese you speak is a unified written language in ancient times and used by ancient literati. What you may say is that many folk people can't read and write, and literate people record according to their spoken meaning. Let me remind you that ancient historians do not collect history by the people, but only select materials from ancient books. The people you mentioned who are engaged in collecting folk languages may be poetry officials, that is, officials sent by the rulers to collect folk poems. The Book of Songs was written by these poets, and it was basically written in folk natural language, but the possibility of literary processing was not ruled out.

In short, to put it simply, written Mandarin is classical Chinese. In ancient times, there were also works written without Mandarin, such as Biography of Flowers on the Sea written in Wu language.

2. Did the ancients speak classical Chinese? The ancients spoke classical Chinese. Remember what Chen Sheng said in Historical Records? "Whew, does the swallow know the ambition of the swan?" Here's what Bobby Chen said when he was a civilian. The older it is, the harder it is for civilians to understand what they say. Mulan Ci is a folk song in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and Water Margin in the Three Kingdoms is the vernacular of the Ming Dynasty, which is similar to the current language.

In fact, the classical Chinese we are talking about now is spoken by ancient people. Of course, written language and spoken language are slightly different, but the difference should not be great. Later, it was used in the article, but the spoken language changed a lot. By the Tang and Song Dynasties, the difference between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese was quite great. Later, vernacular Chinese was used in some literary works. The widespread use of vernacular Chinese is in modern times.

In fact, this local dialect still has the shadow of ancient people's speech. Take Xiamen dialect as an example, "Have you eaten?" Xiamen dialect only says "Have you eaten?" . "Is there?" Just say, "Is there?" If you ask in detail, "Is it true or false?" Xiamen said, "Is there any suppression?"

3. Did ancient people speak in classical Chinese? There is not enough research on spoken Chinese in ancient China. In the pre-Qin period, classical Chinese and spoken Chinese were consistent, which was different from the tendency to use disyllabic words now. Monosyllabic words prevailed in Chinese at that time.

The Analects of Confucius and Mencius can be said to be the records of spoken English at that time. "Isn't it fun to study from time to time?" "Fish, what do I want; Bear's paw is also what I want. " That's the tone at that time.

However, due to the conservatism of written language itself, the establishment of the classic status of Confucian works with classical Chinese as the carrier, and the great influence of Chinese characters on Chinese, classical Chinese and spoken Chinese soon entered a long period of dual-track development. About the Han Dynasty, there was a certain distance between spoken and classical Chinese.

China's first dialect book, Xuan Shi Yang Xiong explains other dialects, not only explains dialects in popular language, but also pays attention to explaining ancient sayings in modern language. As soon as Dialect Volume was published, it recorded falsehood, arrogance, pregnancy, destruction, exhibition, hostility, corruption, and even ... are quaint words, and the same is true today.

[3] (The general idea is: fake, crazy, pregnant, ruined, Zhan's, violent, spoiled, these words all mean "want" ... Are different expressions differentiated from the old saying, which is very common in some places now. Although both classical Chinese and spoken Chinese are developing, the former lags far behind the latter and the distance is getting bigger and bigger.

Unfortunately, because the oral literature at that time was far less abundant than the classical Chinese literature, there was still a lot of room for the study of oral Chinese in the Middle Ages. 2. The vernacular Chinese in the Tang Dynasty is completely out of touch with the classical Chinese in the Song Dynasty. This situation changed in the Tang Dynasty, largely due to the great development of Buddhism.

Because most of the potential believers are ordinary people with low education level, for the purpose of spreading Buddhism and attracting believers, a large number of translated Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist stories mostly used spoken language at that time, which became an important source of early vernacular Chinese. In the Song Dynasty, classical Chinese and spoken English were completely out of touch.

Scholars at that time may not be able to express the meaning of ordinary spoken language in classical Chinese. The Song Dynasty's Xuan Qu Lu tells a story: Chen's aunt Chen lives in Yanzhou, but the Jinshi are all on official tour.

My nephew went to America. Aunt Chen ordered a letter to her son, because she dictated, "My son is not as good as yours. Go and buy a pair of scissors to cut the bones on your feet."

Buy a pair of scissors for your child and cut off the crusts and calluses on your feet. ) Da Cong hesitated to write.

Aunt smiled and said, "Yuan Lai can't read either!" [4] Scholars in Song Dynasty sometimes used vernacular Chinese. For example, Su Shi likes to use "hehe" best. When writing letters to his close friends and in-laws, colleagues and literary friends, and the hero of The Roar of Lions, he added a sentence at the end: "Hehe."

[5] When commenting on history books, Zhu University scholars also wrote in vernacular Chinese: "North-South history is just a funny novel except as a mirror." [6] Song People's Daily dialogue is so popular.

The emperor also loves to speak vernacular: the imperial edicts of Genghis Khan and Zhu Yuanzhang reached the Yuan Dynasty. Because Chinese is not the mother tongue of the rulers, many times even the imperial edicts recorded the spoken language at that time. Changchun Real Journey to the West records an imperial edict written by Genghis Khan to Qiu Chuji. The full text is as follows: The commander-in-chief of Xuanzang, Jia Changyuan Shuai, gave an imperial edict to Emperor Keith: Autumn is a fairy road, and spring outing should not come to summer. The road is hot and difficult. Do you have to ride along a road with a good berth? There is a lot of food on the road. Coming? Do officials expect you to come when you go to Xuande and other places? Boss, do people have to come? Were you okay when you got up? I often think of you here. I have never forgotten you. Don't forget me.

In fact, "Yao", a commonly used modal particle in modern and contemporary Chinese, appeared as early as the Tang Dynasty, and its source is "nothing". In Dunhuang manuscripts, "Mo" and "Mo", which are similar in pronunciation to "Wu", gradually evolved into "Yao" after the Song Dynasty.

As for "Yao" becoming a more commonly used "Yao" in modern times, that was in the Qing Dynasty. Vernacular novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as Water Margin, The Journey to the West's Dream of Red Mansions and Jin Ping Mei, are too numerous to mention.

It is not uncommon for the emperor to reply to the throne in vernacular. Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, heard that there was an attack from the coast. He was very angry and wrote a letter: "Tell the people to prepare knives. When these people come, kill them.

I admire that. "In contrast, Yongzheng's confession of Nian Gengyao is heartbreaking.

4. The May 4th vernacular Chinese replaced the dual-track development of the written and spoken classical Chinese, and the opposition between the written and spoken classical Chinese did not end until the May 4th New Culture Movement. Hu Shi's Literary Improvement advocates "not imitating the ancients" and "not avoiding common sayings", which blew the horn of the "vernacular movement" and finally made vernacular Chinese replace classical Chinese and become the written language of the Han nationality.

Here is a joke: Hu Shi and Huang Kan bet on who is more concise in classical Chinese or vernacular Chinese. Hu Shi told the students that a friend of the Executive Yuan wrote to me a few days ago 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 message 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.

The students racked their brains to draw up a telegram, and picked out the one with the least number of words, which said, "I'm afraid I can't do it." Hu Shi said humorously, "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." Second, the misunderstanding of the ancients stems from the emphasis on classical Chinese over vernacular Chinese, combing the development of written language, classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese from pre-Qin to May 4th period. It is not difficult to find that in the earliest Tang and Song dynasties, the spoken Chinese of the ancients was almost the same as that of us now.

Why do we always have the illusion that the ancients were so groggy when they spoke? Generally speaking, there are two reasons: First, vernacular Chinese appeared late and was regarded as an unattractive temple by traditional society. Although the "Thirteen Classics" used in pre-Qin oral language has become a difficult classical Chinese in later generations, even the annotations of Han people are very old to people in Tang and Song Dynasties.

However, Confucian classics are compulsory courses for scholars, and they have to be studied if they want to take the imperial examination. In addition to utilitarian needs, official history, formal articles and letters must also use classical Chinese.

In the genre, Zhu.

The ancients said that classical Chinese was difficult to understand. I hope you can adopt it. Welcome to continue asking questions.

How to learn classical Chinese well

Classical Chinese learning method

Although classical Chinese is not a real language, it is no longer used in our study and life today, but it is the source of modern Chinese and still affects the language we use now in various ways. Therefore, to learn modern Chinese well, we must have a solid foundation in classical Chinese.

1. Master the basic knowledge structure

Classical Chinese can be roughly divided into words and sentences. Words can be divided into content words and function words. Among them, notional words can be divided into five categories: ① monosyllabic words and disyllabic words. Classical Chinese is dominated by monosyllabic words, while modern Chinese is dominated by disyllabic words. For example, the word "wife" is a disyllabic word in modern Chinese, meaning wife, while it is two monosyllabic words in classical Chinese, meaning wife and children. ② The ancient and modern meanings are different. Including synonym enlargement, word meaning reduction, word meaning transfer, color change and name expression change. (3) The word is polysemous. For example, the original meaning of the word "yin" is to open the bow, and there are five kinds of extensions: extension and elongation; Procrastinate; Guide and lead; Take it and lead it; Stay back. Stay back. 4 leave. Including interchangeable words, borrowed words and ancient and modern words. Its basic law is "homophone substitution". ⑤ Flexible use of parts of speech. Including: nouns are used flexibly as adverbials; Nouns are used flexibly as verbs; Adjectives as nouns; Adjectives are used flexibly as verbs; Causative usage, dynamic usage, intentional usage and behavioral usage. Sentences can also be divided into five categories: judgmental sentences, passive sentences, inverted sentences, ellipsis sentences and fixed sentences. Among them, inversion can be divided into subject-predicate inversion, verb-object inversion, object postposition and adverbial postposition.

Break a sentence

The ancients wrote articles without punctuation marks, and how to break sentences directly affected the understanding of the contents of the articles. Pay attention to the following points correctly: first, accurately grasp the basic knowledge of classical Chinese, understand key words and judge the relationship between words. Secondly, we should know some common sense of ancient culture. Such as the expression of names, places and official positions, and the writing habits of euphemisms and taboos. Third, master some rules of dialogue, reporting and quoting in the text. For example, words such as "Yue", "Yun" and "Shu" are often used as signs before quoting and reporting the content. Fourth, judge according to the common words at the beginning and end of the sentence. As usual, the words used at the beginning of a sentence are beggar, Fu, Shi, Hou, Gong, Ran Ran, Ran, Gong, Thief and Widow. Usually used at the end of the sentence are modal auxiliary words such as you, evil, Hu, and existence, and disyllabic function words such as helpless, yi zai, yun er,. There are also relatively independent exclamations commonly used at the beginning of sentences, such as: fu, Hu, alas, etc. Fifth, you can also break sentences according to common idioms in sentences. For example, words indicating ordinal number and order, words indicating questions. In addition, sentences can be broken according to common sentence patterns, fixed sentence patterns or figures of speech.

3. Master the correct translation methods

People usually take "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" as the standard to measure the quality of translation, and so does the translation of classical Chinese. A good translation can truly and perfectly reproduce an article in another language environment. If an article with profound meaning and literary talent is translated stiffly or difficult to understand, it will not fully achieve the purpose of translation, and at the same time it will distort the original text. It can be seen that translation not only reflects the comprehensive level of classical Chinese, but also reflects the translator's expressive ability and writing level. "Faithfulness to the original text, the final version of each word, with literal translation as the main and free translation as the auxiliary" is the general principle to be followed when translating classical Chinese. Specifically, we should pay attention to the following points in translation: ① supplement the omitted parts. Omitted parts in the original text, such as predicate, subject, object, etc. , should be supplemented as appropriate. ② Adjust the word order. There are many inverted sentences in classical Chinese, such as predicate preposition, preposition object and attributive postposition. These word orders are different from those of modern Chinese and should be adjusted in translation. ③ Increase or decrease appropriately. Some sentences in classical Chinese are very concise and rich in meaning, which should be appropriately expanded in translation to fully express the meaning of the original text. On the contrary, some articles deliberately use a series of sentences with the same meaning but different opinions in order to increase the momentum and strengthen the effect. At this time, translation will be integrated and condensed. In addition, we should also pay attention to the tone of sentences, the relationship between sentences and rhetorical devices. , and fully and properly expressed in translation.

Read more

As the saying goes, "If you read a book a hundred times, its meaning will show itself." Read more, especially repeatedly. It is a magic weapon to learn classical Chinese well. It is difficult to achieve the effect by memorizing some grammar rules without the language environment. It is best to master the usage of words and important grammatical phenomena when reading. Reading more books can consolidate and deepen the knowledge learned in class and cultivate a sense of language, so as to achieve the purpose of reading other ancient works skillfully. Repeated reading is one of the basic skills in learning classical Chinese, which can make us have a rich perceptual knowledge of classical Chinese. Moreover, ancient works attach great importance to internal rhythm and rhythm. Repeated reading can fully appreciate the musical beauty of ancient Chinese and increase interest in learning.

Just get used to it. It was easy for the ancients to write classical Chinese.

Classical Chinese is a kind of written language in China, which mainly includes written language based on spoken language in the pre-Qin period. Commonly known as "yes." During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, no articles were invented to record characters, but bamboo slips, silks and other things were used to record characters, and silks were expensive, bamboo slips were huge and the number of words recorded was limited. In order to record more things on a roll of bamboo slips, unimportant words must be deleted. It can be said that "classical Chinese" is the earliest "compressed" format of written records in the world. Later, when "paper" was used on a large scale, the habit of using "official documents" among the ruling classes had been finalized, and the ability to use "classical Chinese" had evolved into a symbol of reading and literacy.