Have the ancient dialects of China been unified?

In ancient times, the nature of Mandarin was similar to that of Mandarin today.

The ancestors of the Han nationality were small at first, and the Chinese used was relatively simple. Later, due to the development of society, residents gradually expanded around, or moved to distant places collectively, or came into contact with foreigners, and Chinese gradually differentiated, resulting in dialects distributed in different regions. Chinese dialects are widely distributed, with a population of over 900 million.

Mandarin dialect

Generally known as northern dialect, that is, northern dialect in a broad sense, commonly known as "great north dialect". Among the main dialects of Chinese, Mandarin has a prominent position and influence. /kloc-In the past 0/000 years, many outstanding literary works in China, from Tang and Song vernacular to Yuan Qu, and then to novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties, have been created on the basis of northern dialects, and the northern dialects centered on Beijing have been the political, economic and cultural heart of China since the Yuan Dynasty. They have always used northern dialects in officialdom, hence the name "Mandarin". In fact, it is a communicative language used by people in various dialect areas of Chinese. Putonghua, which is now popularized all over the country, is a modern Chinese language developed on the basis of "Putonghua".

Dialects are used in all Han areas in the provinces north of the Yangtze River. The lower reaches of the Yangtze River along the Yangtze River above Zhenjiang and below Jiujiang; All areas of Hubei Province except the southeast corner; North of Guangxi province and northwest corner of Hunan province; Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces are all Han areas except ethnic minority areas. In addition, in unofficial dialect areas. There are also a few mandarin dialect islands formed due to historical reasons. For example, the "military dialect" in Yaxian County and Danxian County of Hainan Island, the "Tuguan dialect" in Chengguan of Nanping, Fujian Province, and the "Kyoto dialect" in Yangyu, Changle, etc. The population exceeds 700 million.

According to its linguistic features, regional Mandarin dialects can generally be divided into four branches, namely, four dialects (or four sub-dialects): North China Mandarin, Northwest Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin and Jianghuai Mandarin.

North China Mandarin is a narrow northern dialect, which is popular in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and parts of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Among them, the dialects of the three northeastern provinces and Hebei Province are closest to the national lingua franca-Mandarin. Shandong and Henan Mandarin have their own characteristics. Recently, some linguists believe that Jiaoliao Mandarin and Zhongyuan Mandarin can be established separately. Among them, the Central Plains Mandarin includes parts of Lu Yu, and areas north of the Yangtze River such as Xuzhou, Fuyang, Xi 'an and Yuncheng in Shanxi.

Northwest Mandarin is spoken in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and parts of Qinghai, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. The language used by the Han people in Xinjiang also belongs to the Northwest Mandarin. Shanxi, its neighboring northern Shaanxi and the area north of the Yellow River in Henan Province retain the ancient Rusheng characters, which are different from the general Northwest Mandarin and North China Mandarin. Recently, some scholars believe that a new "Jin dialect" can be established according to the characteristics of Rusheng, making it independent of Mandarin. At the same time, some scholars suggest that Northwest Mandarin, as a branch of Mandarin dialect, should be narrowed down to include only the dialects of Lanzhou, Gansu and Yinchuan, Ningxia, and renamed Lanyin Mandarin.

Southwest Mandarin is spoken in most parts of Hubei Province (except the southeast and east), Han areas in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, and northern marginal areas in Hunan and Guangxi provinces. Southwest Mandarin has a vast territory, but its interior is relatively consistent.

Jianghuai Mandarin, commonly known as Xiajiang Mandarin, is popular in areas along the Yangtze River in Anhui Province, most areas north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province (except Xuzhou), areas above Zhenjiang on the south bank of the Yangtze River and below Nanjing, and areas along the Yangtze River in Jiangxi Province. Jianghuai Mandarin is a branch of Mandarin dialect, with great internal differences and complicated language phenomena. Among them, Huizhou dialect in southern Anhui has many distinctive features, and many linguists have always thought that it can be separated from Mandarin and become Southern Anhui dialect or Huizhou dialect independently.

Main linguistic features

Phonetics: ① The consonants of affricates and affricates are divided into voiced and unvoiced sounds, but there is no opposition between voiced and unvoiced sounds, which embodies the characteristics of more voiced consonants and fewer voiced consonants. With a few exceptions, ancient voiced initials are pronounced as voiced initials in almost all branches of modern Mandarin dialects. Generally speaking, the ancient voiced pronunciation is aspirated to clear the initial consonant, while the ancient voiced pronunciation is not aspirated to clear the initial consonant.

② The most prominent feature of vowels is that there are few consonants ending.

③ The most prominent feature of tone is that the number of tone categories is relatively small. Except for Jianghuai Mandarin, the northern part of the Yellow River in Henan Province in North China Mandarin, the southern end of Shanxi Province in Northwest Mandarin, parts of northern Shaanxi Province and western Inner Mongolia, most of the mandarin in other places have no tone. There are 4-5 tones in the whole Mandarin dialect area, especially 4 tones, ranging from 4 to 5. Among these four ancient tones, the differentiation and development of Pingsheng, Shangshang and Qusheng in Putonghua are similar, that is, most Putonghua words with voiced initials are pronounced as Bao, Zhou, Ji, Fu, Gan, Zun, Dang, Jiang and Guang. Gu Ping's mandarin with voiced initials mostly reads Yangping, such as climbing, apprentice, hoe, strange, strip, forest, heavy, group, same, red and so on. In ancient times, the initial consonants of Qing consonants and consonants of sub-voiced consonants were mostly pronounced as initial consonants, such as complement, early, brave, pink, party, well, list, selection, warmth, dyeing and old. In ancient times, there were full-voiced initials, and in ancient times, there were many full-voiced initials in local mandarin, such as "Fu", "Dao", "Anger", "Dang" and the ancient full-voiced initials, as well as the words "Guo, Afraid, Bu, Dai, * *, Yao". The pronunciation of ancient Rusheng characters in Mandarin dialect is complicated. Except Jianghuai Mandarin in Northwest Mandarin and parts of Shanxi and Shaanxi, and parts of Henan north of the Yellow River in North China Mandarin, the attribution of ancient Rusheng characters is different in other Mandarin dialects where Rusheng tones have disappeared. Generally speaking, North China Mandarin, like Beijing dialect, is divided into flat, rising and falling tones after entering tone disappears, which is the so-called "three tones of entering tone": full voiced initial consonant entering tone, sub-voiced initial consonant entering tone and voiced initial consonant entering tone. A few places (such as Jinan and Dalian) are slightly different from Beijing: the initials are ancient voiced or all belong to Yin Ping (such as Jinan) or all belong to Shangsheng (such as Dalian). There are two distributions of ancient tone words in places where there is no entering tone in Northwest Mandarin: either the entering tone words of ancient voiced initials belong to Yangping, and the rest belong to Yin Ping, such as Xi 'an; Or the initials of ancient voiced consonants belong to rising tone, and the rest belong to falling tone, such as Lanzhou. The distribution of ancient Rusheng words in Southwest Mandarin is the most uniform: as long as they are ancient Rusheng words, no matter what the initial consonant is, they are all pronounced in the rising tone, with almost no exception.

In terms of vocabulary, the vocabulary of Mandarin dialect is similar to that of Mandarin, the same language of modern Han nationality. Most of the words widely used in Putonghua dialect have entered the same language as * * * *. As a basic vocabulary, most words in Mandarin dialects that are not absorbed by the same language are only popular in a certain Mandarin dialect or dialect film. The lexical differences between North and South Mandarin are smaller than those between Mandarin and other major dialects. However, the dialect of Putonghua is so vast that there are also distinctive dialects in some places. For example, "erhu" means "hesitation", "Zhahu" means "arrogance" and "rushing to the road" means "dare to do and speak" in Beijing dialect. In Tianjin dialect, "Guang" means "big", "Fu" means "crow" and "Gang" means "great". "Blind" means "abandoned" and "used" in Xi 'an dialect. In Liaocheng dialect, Shandong province, "extermination" means "beating"; "Lianlianer" in Luoyang dialect of Henan province means "hurry up". Xinxiang dialect uses "chaos" to mean "living" and "red" to mean "selling strength"; Chatting in Chengdu, Kunming and other places is said to be "putting on a long queue", unlucky in Wuhan and Chongqing is said to be "backward" and pitiful is said to be "guilty"; ..... and so on, each in its own way. The word "Sun" has different names in Mandarin dialect areas: Beijing and Baoding are called "Laoyeer" (Beijing is also called "Sun"), Shenyang and Xi 'an are called "Sun Head", Taiyuan and Hohhot are called "Yangpo", Hefei is called "Hot Head" and Chengdu, Wuhan and Kunming are called "Sun"; In Hebei alone, the names of "Sun" include "Grandfather, Grandfather, Grandfather, Grandfather, Grandfather, Sun Yinger, Yang Boer, Yang Boer, the day before yesterday, Buddha" and so on. It can be seen that the differences in vocabulary, even within the dialect of Putonghua, can not be ignored. Compared with other dialects, the vocabulary of Mandarin dialect also shows the following characteristics:

① Disyllabic words are particularly dominant. Disyllabic words account for the largest proportion in the whole Chinese vocabulary, especially in Putonghua dialects. For example, many words with Zi in Mandarin dialect are monosyllabic words without Zi in other dialects, such as Mi or Fan (Wu dialect and Min dialect) or He (Hakka dialect) in southern dialect and Su (ancient) (Wu dialect, Xiang dialect, Gan dialect and Hakka dialect) in southern dialect. The word "Zhao" is usually called "Zhao" or "Zhao" in Mandarin dialects, while in southern dialects, Wu dialect, Cantonese and Min dialect are monosyllabic words, or called "Zhao" (Suzhou dialect of Wu dialect) or "Xiang" (Guangdong dialect and Min dialect).

(2) The archaic words are less preserved. Although every Chinese dialect has inherited many ancient Chinese words, relatively speaking, few ancient Chinese words have been preserved in dialects in Mandarin dialect areas. For example, the word "eye" is widely used in Putonghua dialect, but it is still called "eye" in Fujian dialect and "eye" in Guangdong dialect, retaining the name of this human organ in ancient Chinese. Another example is the word "Li", which is called "Li" in Wu dialect, and "Qi" in Fujian, Guangdong, Hakka, Jiangxi and other dialects except Mandarin dialect area and Hunan dialect, all of which follow the old Chinese saying; In addition, there are some words that are very commonly used in life. Southern dialects retain ancient sayings, while Putonghua dialects use the same expressions as modern Putonghua. For example, the common "Kan" in Mandarin dialects; Guangdong dialect and Fujian dialect (in some areas) use the ancient word "Zi".

③ There are fewer loanwords. Compared with southern dialects, there are fewer loanwords in Mandarin dialects. Minnan, Guangdong and other places have always been the gateway to the sea, and they have more contacts with foreign countries. It is easier to borrow loanwords in dialects. For example, there are many Indonesian-Malay words in Fujian dialect and many English words in Guangdong dialect. Sometimes the same thing is expressed in different words in Mandarin dialect and southern dialect, which shows the difference between "imported" words and "native" words. For example, the word "cement" is called "Shi Min Map" in Guangdong dialect and "cement" in Wu dialect, all of which are transliteration of English cement. Fujian dialect is called "Jia Fanhui" and "Hong" with foreign colors, while Mandarin dialects mostly use "cement" (called "Yang Hui" in some places) as * * *, which is the same language as * * * and is an authentic Chinese word. Another example is the "film" for photography. Mandarin dialects are called "movies" everywhere, and Cantonese dialects, Min dialects and Hakka dialects all use the transliteration word "movies" in English movies.

④ There are few modal particles and their usage is more general. Compared with southern dialects, Mandarin dialects have fewer modal particles, more general usage and finer division of labor. For example, the common modal particles "you, mo, ah" and so on, the mandarin dialect is the same as * * *, while the modal particles in southern Wu dialect and Guangdong dialect are much richer.

The outstanding features of grammar are:

① In word formation, there are usually modifiers first. For example, except for the occasional expressions such as "cock" and "hen" in Southwest Mandarin, most local Mandarin expressions are "cock", "hen", "guest" and "slippers", unlike some southern dialects with decorative morphemes at the back. Such as "Chicken Gong", "Koman" and "Crab Clamp" (Min dialect).

② It is rare to express grammatical meaning with internal inflections. Except for a few places, there are few so-called "formation methods" in Mandarin dialects, that is, "narrow forms". Tone sandhi is rarely used in Cantonese and Min dialect to express some grammatical meaning.

③ The use of the structural auxiliary word "de, de, de". In many places in Putonghua dialect, there are structural auxiliary words "de, de, de" with different usages. These structural auxiliary words are the most commonly used in northern Mandarin, and have entered the grammatical system of homophones. It is very rare in southern dialects other than Putonghua. Even if there are similar structural auxiliary words, it is not as clear as the division of labor of "de, de and de" in Putonghua dialects, and the usage is not mixed.

(4) Overlapping type has a wide range of applications. The overlapping content of Mandarin dialects is quite rich, and the application scope is also quite extensive. For example, when addressing relatives, dialects in southern Fujian, Guangdong, Hakka and Wu generally do not use reduplication, and monosyllabic morphemes are often used to address relatives, such as "Abba", "Adi" and "Sister-in-law". In Mandarin dialects, people are usually addressed with overlapping syllables, such as "brother", "uncle", "father", "sister-in-law" and "uncle". For example, some commonly used nouns can't overlap in southern dialects, but they appear in overlapping forms in Putonghua dialects, such as the word "star". In Southwest Mandarin and Northwest Mandarin, overlapping means additional meaning. For example, in Chengdu dialect, "Pan Pan" means "Pan Er"