Did ancient people use classical Chinese when communicating at ordinary times?

After nine years of compulsory education, everyone should understand the hardships of learning classical Chinese. An "example" is the sorrow of many Sandy students on their way to school.

Let's take a look at China's four classic novels, and even all the ancient books we can see today are basically in classical Chinese. If you don't know enough about classical Chinese, even if (Fan) You (Zi) Xiu (Dian) reads like me, it's hard to understand its meaning.

I can't help admiring the ancients from time to time. After all, everyday communication needs more than general understanding.

However, is classical Chinese really the normal way of speaking of the ancients? Everybody say hello to each other and leave? What is this? Really? No ~ no ~ If a normal person had nothing to do in ancient times, he would be laughed at.

How did the ancients generally speak?

Remember Kong Yiji, the soul figure in Lu Xun's works? In the novel Kong Yiji, what people talk about most is that he always talks to people? What is this? I don't understand.

But Kong Yiji lived in a transitional period from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese. Why can people understand and even laugh at him?

This is because, in daily life, normal people don't talk like this. When the ancients spoke, they actually said the vernacular.

The best example of this is that the imperial edict is written in the vernacular.

During the period of Zhu Yuanzhang, an island was occupied by Japanese invaders, and local officials were scared to death. At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang came down with an imperial decree:

Fengtian took the imperial edict: tell the people to prepare knives. When these people come, kill them. I admire that. ?

Except for the familiar first fixed format, the content in the middle is really familiar and friendly, just like modern languages.

With the precedent of Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperors behind the Ming Dynasty also liked to announce the imperial edict in vernacular. For example, Zhu Yuanzhang's son Judy also has an imperial edict:

Every year, military commanders open stores and do business in the market, and the government wants something. Why doesn't he want to be a comprador? Your department should know that in the future, if there is a comprador, it will open a shop, regardless of military and civilian families. If you dare to violate it, take it. I admire that.

If the imperial edict of Ming Chengzu is popular enough, the imperial edict of Zhang, the founder of Daxi regime, is completely grounded:

Fengtian took the imperial edict:? My father told you not to go to Hanzhong, but you insisted on going to Hanzhong, and now you have lost a lot of military forces. Donkey ball, put it in your mother's hair! Qin zai ? (Introduction to the South of Ming Dynasty)

Another celebrity Yong Zhengdi, who obviously likes to use vernacular and our online, commented on the throne of the minister:

I am such a person, such a temperament, such an emperor. If your minister does not fail me, I will fail you again.

When Nian Gengyao went to the northwest, Shang Passbook talked about the tense war in Xining. He hasn't put his head next to the pillow for eleven days. Yongzheng replied in the throne:

Love, love, love!

That's not enough. In the second year of Yongzheng (1724), after Nian Gengyao led his troops to quell the rebellion in Qinghai, Yongzheng replied in the memorial:

I really don't know how to love you to face the god of heaven and earth. ? Compilation of Chinese Word Order in Yongzheng Period

In addition to the Ming and Qing emperors whose dynasties were closer, even Su Shi, a famous poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, exposed his vernacular habits in his works:

Even the emperor and famous gifted scholars speak vernacular, not to mention ordinary people. Then the question is, since everyone speaks vernacular, why are the languages in ancient books all classical Chinese?

This is because, in ancient times, there were actually two sets of languages, speaking vernacular and writing classical Chinese. In technical terms, this phenomenon is called? Language and literature are separated? .

Why do you write in classical Chinese?

Speaking and writing in two languages? Isn't this too much trouble? Why not use vernacular Chinese directly or use classical Chinese uniformly? In fact, this is also elegant.

First of all, why did classical Chinese appear in ancient times?

In fact, classical Chinese is a concise language of vernacular Chinese, in order to save writing cost. Think about it, there was no paper in the pre-Qin period, and the tool for recording words was bamboo slips. In the earlier Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were also carving knives on bamboo slips, and textiles, stone tablets and bronzes were used to record words ... In this way, the recording cost was too high. In order to express the most meaning with the simplest words, classical Chinese appeared. This is somewhat similar to earlier telegrams. )

Liu Zhiji said in Shi Tong that there are two streams in the province of narrative: one is to save sentences, and the other is to save words.

It is said that in the pre-Qin period, writing and writing were still integrated, and people also spoke classical Chinese at that time. But with the passage of time, in order to facilitate communication, people gradually simplified the words in communication. In the Han dynasty, ordinary people generally read classical Chinese through annotations to understand it. At this time, it is only one hundred years away from the Qin Dynasty.

Then why not directly change the writing of classical Chinese into vernacular Chinese at this time? This reflects the wisdom of the ancients!

The reason why the ancients used classical Chinese writing was because they found that the spoken Chinese changed so quickly! And the spoken language in different regions is too different! Can describe? Three miles with different sounds, ten miles with different winds, and a hundred miles with different customs? . If you had written the article in vernacular at that time, you might not understand it decades later, or even read it in another place.

Is there any way to avoid the generation gap between regions and cultures and realize the cross-time communication of human beings?

Of course, it is to set a fixed, universal language, which is specially used for writing! In this way, future generations only need to learn, they can read the articles of their ancestors, understand their meanings, and realize the communication across the Millennium!

This language is classical Chinese.

Therefore, even after 2000, we can still read historical records and appreciate the glorious history of Chinese civilization!

Imagine if Sima Qian wrote Historical Records in the dialect at that time, and if the ancients recorded precious literary ancient books and masterpieces in the vernacular that they can't understand now, it would be an immeasurable loss to China's historical civilization.

In fact, many people will find that ancient times? Language and literature are separated? This practice is also very common in modern times.

We use standard Chinese when writing, but we still keep the local dialect in our daily communication. Although the differences in time and region have created different dialects. But no matter when, where, what color and nationality, as long as you use Chinese characters and switch to standard Mandarin, you can achieve barrier-free communication, which is the crystallization of ancient and modern human civilization and wisdom.

The more we know about history, the more proud we are of the wisdom of our ancestors, and the more we love my motherland!