『一』

Depending on the length and depth of its culture, a nation’s language always has many idiomatic expressions, generally referred to as idioms. Among them, those that are popular among the public can be called slang, idioms, proverbs, and common sayings; those that have records can be called famous sayings; those that are shocking to everyone can be called aphorisms; those that have reasons to say can be called aphorisms, and those that are said in a moral and scholarly manner can be called aphorisms. Also called Proverbs.

In order to facilitate classification, I would like to arbitrarily divide these names into idioms and maxims, and believe that idioms are shorter and can be short sentences or phrases, while maxims should be complete sentences. He also believes that most idioms express the state of affairs, while most proverbs express truth. For example, "Zhang San Li Si" is just an idiom, but "Contribution does not go unnoticed" is a motto. In an era where the depreciation rate is getting higher and higher, the most expensive things are antiques, and the most popular words are idioms. Although antiques are expensive, high prices may not necessarily lead to a market. Idioms, that is, the words of the ancients, come from many mouths and enter many ears. It is simply "you cannot live without this king for a day." The most popular words of our time are not from Jin Yong or Yi Shu, Kundera or Haruki Murakami, but from the words of the ancients. For example, "It's hard to say a word" or "It's hard to say a word", both of which came from ancient times and are exactly idioms.

The words of the ancients may be concise and concise, or profound and simple, or loud in tone, or well-proportioned in structure, or vivid in image. They have endured for thousands of years and have become more fluent in speaking (and written more and more smoothly). become an idiom. At present, many of the idioms we speak every day have long been separated from their context and become independent words and phrases. Even if the origin is unknown, there is no problem. Many people have not read "The Analects of Confucius", but they can still say "hearsay", "words fail to live up to the meaning", "return kindness with kindness", "make friends with literature", "be courteous", "be careful to pursue your goals", "see the wisdom of others", "do what is right", "have a teacher but not a teacher" "kind", "How can one use a bull's knife to cut a chicken", "a small impatience will mess up a big plan", "people who have no long-term worries must have short-term worries". The same people who have not read "Laozi" will still say the following four words: "Heaven and Earth last forever", "The house is full of gold and jade", "I am born and die", "I am a late bloomer", "I am flattered", "I am in harmony with the light", "Mysterious and mysterious", "Small country and few people" etc. Word idioms. In fact, there are many idioms that were not originally four-character sentences as smoothly as they are now. For example, "harmony with light and dust" originally meant "harmony with its light, harmony with its dust", and "道hearshuo" originally meant "道hearrushuo". "But time is like a river, grammar is like sand, and the hard work has worn away the edges and corners of everything, leaving only the smooth and smooth four-character grammar, so smooth and natural, like a beach full of water." pebble.

Many people think that after vernacular replaced classical Chinese, classical Chinese was completely abolished. In fact, classical Chinese has not been abolished, but has remained as an idiom. Its conciseness and neatness can make up for the shortcomings of the vernacular, and the syntax or rhythm can be tightened in a timely manner based on the tone of the vernacular. In this way, one tightens and the other loosens, parallel sentences and loose sentences complement each other. Only articles can change and make waves.

『二』

Since idioms are the crystallization of national wisdom, people share the same mentality and principles. Therefore, idioms and maxims from various countries in the world often coincide with each other, or even resemble each other. What a pleasant surprise. Let’s look at the English example:

Constant dripping wears away the stone.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

More haste, less speed. (Haste makes waste)

Practice makes perfect. (Practice makes perfect)

Speak of the devil and he is sure to appear. (Speak of Cao Cao, Cao Cao will be there)

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Strike while the iron is hot. (Strike while the iron is hot)

He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount. (It is difficult to dismount from a tiger)

The last case is unavoidable and suspicious. , because there are no tigers in the UK. Maybe this motto came from China. Aristotle's famous saying: "One swallow does not count as summer; nor does one sunny day count." After being passed down many times, it became a motto of the four countries; only English and Spanish still retain the phrase "one swallow does not make summer". The original meaning in French and Italian has become "One swallow does not make a spring". The following are the original texts in English, Spanish, French and Italian:

One swallow does not make a summer.

Una golondrina no hace verano.

Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps.

Una rondine non fa primavera.

Although some people’s ideas are different from ours, we can still smile knowingly when reading their idioms. Feel new and interesting. For example:

A guest can see more in an hour than a host can see in a year. (Polish proverb)

The best love comes from mother; the second comes from dog; the third comes from lover.

(Polish proverb)

Thieves come in pairs, but liars come alone. (American proverb)

The proverbs of the ancient Persian country are full of wisdom and are especially humorous. The most touching sentence is: "I kept complaining about not having shoes until I saw someone without feet." During the recent war in Iraq, many children were missing hands and feet. If this sentence was used to explain the photos, it would be even more pitiable. Other ancient Persian proverbs include the following:

The big drum can only be heard from a distance.

Old Snake was bullied by Frog.

Once bitten by a snake, you will never see the rope again.

The bigger a person’s head is, the more severe the headache will be.

In an ant's house, a drop of dew can cause flooding.

Let him see death, and he will become content with fever.

Death is a camel that lies down at the door of the house.

Trust the gods, but tie up your camel.

He stole eggs when he was a child, but he stole camels when he grew up.

『三』

Idioms and maxims are like the genie in the bottle in "Arabian Nights". The short sentences make people feel endless. Generally speaking, the aesthetics of idioms have three conditions: simplicity, symmetry, and melodiousness.

There is a British proverb that says: "Brevity is the soul of wit." (Brevity is the soul of wit.) Wonderful ideas should be like lightning, ready to go off at a moment's notice. No hesitation or modification is allowed before they are confirmed. Powerful, word for word. If you hesitate and turn over and over again, it will appear that you are just thinking without reaching a conclusion. All mottos must be integers and cannot be followed by a decimal point. What's more, if the sentence is long, it will be difficult to remember and no one will quote it. How can it be passed down for a long time? For example, "It's hard to explain in one sentence", if it is dragged to "It can't be explained clearly in one sentence", it will be scattered into a pile of sand.

The second condition is symmetry. It is ideal for Chinese square characters to create the beauty of symmetry. Confrontation is a major feature of Chinese style. As big as a parallel prose, as small as a rhymed poem or a pair of couplets, they can all be perfect in their antithesis. Idioms are the most exquisite examples of this kind of symmetrical aesthetics. Written orally, we can use them freely every day. They are really the most precious heritage of the Chinese language and the most versatile cash. For example, in the sentence "a good match", nouns to nouns, verbs to verbs, squares to squares, squares to squares, throws and catches, calls and responses, no matter in meaning, grammar, vision or hearing. Fully satisfy our sense of beauty. For another example, when ancient people discussed painting, they often said, "Cao's clothes come out of the water, and Wu's belt is in the wind." It is really beautiful. Regarding Western paintings, whether it is Giorgio Vasari's famous book "Biographies of Famous Italian Architects, Paintings, and Sculptures" or Delacroix's "Diary", are there such vivid and elegant articles? Of course, Western languages ??can also pursue the beauty of symmetry, but the pinyin characters are of different lengths, and the grammar has many ending changes, and there are interspersed with empty characters. Even if it is barely symmetrical, it is not as flexible as Chinese. For example, the word "Zhang San Li Si" is close to the English Tom, Dick and Harry, but the English names are long and short, and there is a connecting word in it, which is not suitable at all. Just like "spring, summer, autumn and winter" in Chinese are four equally matched real characters, but in English there is an extra "and". In English idioms, some symmetrical sentences that are barely close to Chinese can also be cited, for example, Like father, like son. (Like father, like son)/Easy come, easy go. (Easy come, easy go.) /Two is company, three is none. (Two are company, three is chaos - refers to the relationship between husband and wife) / Spare the rod and spoil the child. (Spare the rod, spoil the child). In fact, these sentences are still not as "matchy" as Chinese idioms.

The third condition is that it is pleasing to the ear, which means it is easy to pronounce, so the words must be simple and the tone must be loud. In order to speak smoothly, the tone should not only be loud but also echo back and forth. For example, Little strokes fell great oaks. echoes the all-rhyming strokes, oaks. Another example is, A stitch in time saves nine. (A stitch in time saves nine.) The echo is in the semi-homonym (assonance) of time, nine. For another example, Neither rhyme nor reason. (Unreasonable) uses alliteration to answer each other.

『四』

The so-called "four-letter word" in English refers to curse words. The curse word in Chinese is "Three Character Classic". Most Chinese idioms are based on four characters. The so-called "four-character idioms" can be divided into two types in terms of structure:

One type uses a single line syntax to say one thing, and grammatically it is a complete sentence; the other type uses parallel line syntax to say a state , grammatically just a phrase.

"The world is for the common good", "Government by inaction", "not a child's play", "late bloomer", are all inconsistent and belong to the former category; "three longs and two shorts", "no stone is left unturned", "naturally justified", "flowers in front of the moon", the first two The first two characters are in opposition to each other in terms of meaning, grammar, and tone, so they belong to the latter category.

In terms of structure, the four-character idioms in parallel lines often separate two groups of synonyms or antonyms and interlace them. For example, the original meaning of "thousands of troops and horses" is just "thousands of troops and horses", which is a lot to say. However, after being broken down and reorganized, it becomes a pair of words, which are smooth and smooth, and the aesthetic structure is completed. If it is taken apart and dubbed as "Thousands of Horses and Tens of Thousands of Armies", it will become flat, not read smoothly, and not aesthetically pleasing. Similarly, there is no difference in meaning when "Qianshanwanshui" is changed to "Qianshuiwanshan", but the ordinary aesthetics is out of the ordinary. So the following four-character idioms are all formed using this principle:

"Every effort is made", "Thousands of efforts", "Thousands of words", "A critical moment", "Thousands of generations", "Thousands of strange things", "Thousands of heads" "Ten thousand threads", "Ten thousand hardships", "Thousands of households", "Thousands of truths", "Thousands of obedience", "Thousands of rocks and valleys", "Innumerable threads", "Thousands of calls", " "Beautiful purples and reds", "Eternal and everlasting", "Justice and justice", "The sky is dark and the earth is dark", "The sky is dark and the earth is dark", "A man is married and a woman is married", "A man is talented and a woman is beautiful", "Three obediences and four virtues", "Two minds", "Mountains are long and rivers are far away", " "Oath of eternal love"...

Such a combination should be more than a thousand or even ten thousand sentences. This contrasting sentence pattern of intertwined sounds and meanings reminds people of the "counterpoint" of Western composition. However, the structure of Chinese four-character idioms sometimes does not take into account both pronunciation and meaning, and the pronunciation is emphasized rather than the meaning. For example, in the sentence "the mountains are bright and the water is beautiful", water can of course be bright or beautiful, but how can mountains be bright? It can be seen that in order to speak smoothly, logic is sometimes let go. The same goes for "Guys and Dolls." Usually red is associated with women, so there are words such as "red face", "red pink", "red sleeves", "red makeup", "red mansion", "scandal", and "peach color". Here, however, the word "红" is assigned to men, for no reason other than that "红" and "男" both have flat tones. There is another sentence that is an anomaly of the four-character idiom, which is "a mess". Regardless of the level of the word, even if the word category belongs to it, it should originally be "messed up" or "messed up"; but it is said to be "messed up", which is really a mess.

Although four-character sentences are the norm in Chinese idioms, there are also longer syntaxes. For example, the five-character "no coincidence makes a book" and "things are valuable when they are rare". Another example is the six-character "doing everything to the best of your ability" and "gods don't know, ghosts don't know". Seven-character sentences are the most common, because famous lines from poems can be used, and even the poem signed by the cup is also seven-character: there are many sayings such as "True gold is not afraid of fire" and "The heart will not die until it reaches the Yellow River". As for the eight-character sentences, such as "Insufficient in success, there is more than enough in failure" or "Success is also Xiaohe, failure is Xiaohe", in fact, they are still based on four-character sentences.

『五』

New literature switched to vernacular and no longer wrote in classical Chinese, but the intelligence and grammar of classical Chinese were preserved through thousands of idioms, like a rich stroke The inheritance does not need to be paid, nor does it need to be cashed. It is always inexhaustible cash, spoken or written.

Idioms are used in vernacular writing to smooth the rhythm, adjust the syntax, and change the style. It is difficult for us to imagine that an article can be completely free of idioms, because such an article will be cumbersome and lengthy; it is also difficult to imagine that an article can only use idioms to cope with critical moments, because such a writer can only rely on the ancients to think. Pick up the wisdom of the ancients. People who speak idioms seem to be glib, while people who don't use idioms at all seem to have a lot of words. Most qualified writers will use idioms with discretion.

"Only do what is said" is the opinion of Han Yu, a master of prose. If an agile writer wants to make full use of idioms instead of sticking to them, he should understand how to take advantage of the situation, use his strength, and use his four ounces to overcome the other's. Utilizing idioms is like borrowing capital from tradition and adding some ingenuity to earn interest on creation. The essence is just like using allusions, which must turn the past into the present and bring forth the new. With such transference, readers feel as if they have seen each other before, just like meeting the child of an acquaintance and recognizing that he is very similar to his father, but there is something joyful about him.

This kind of parody is called parody in English, and Wilde was the master of it. I once quoted an English idiom, saying that in the days after marriage, "Two is company, three is none" (Two is company, three is none). Oscar Wilde joked about the beauty of the triangle relationship, saying "Three is company, and two is none" (Three is company, and two is none). He satirized marriage and said, "Divorces are made in heaven" and couples flirting in public is "Wash one's clean linen in public." Someone once added the word "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to Shakespeare's famous play "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It is really naughty, but it cannot be translated into English.

American poet Joyce Kilmer's famous line about trees, "Poems are? made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree," was slightly twisted by the comic genius Ogden Nash, and it became a joke. : "Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a trio. "Tree" was twisted into "trio", which turned out to be an allusion to the Holy Trinity (The Trinity), which is very funny.

I was translating Oscar Wilde's comedy "No Child's Play" and came across this passage: You should get married. A misanthrope I can understand—a woman thrope, never! This is the passage Miss Lao persuaded Pastor Cai to get married. Unfortunately, she was very literal. Misogynist (misogynist) is mistaken for woman thrope, but the beauty is that it has the same format as misanthrope in the previous article. If I don't ask for flexibility, I will just translate it literally into "I can understand a misanthrope - a misogynist, never." ! "The audience must be confused. As a result, I resorted to the four-character Chinese idioms and changed the English nouns into Chinese short sentences: "I can understand a person who hates human beings and wants to be alone - a person who hates women and wants to be alone. The body is inexplicable! "To be alone" is originally an idiom, but "to be alone" is derived from injecting the meaning of "to be alone" into the grammar of "to be alone". There is another place in "No Child's Play" where two friends talk about the countryside Life; Jack asked Jack, who came from the country, what kind of people he made happy in the country. Jack replied lightly: O neighbors, neighbors. My Chinese translation still relies on natural and easy-to-understand four-character idioms. So. I translated it as: "Oh, there are so many neighbors. "It would be too strange if it was literally translated as "Oh, neighbor, neighbor".

There is another point in the play where Mrs. Ba cross-examines the boy who is pursuing her daughter: "I have always believed that men who intend to get married should either have no marriage. Either you know nothing, or you should know nothing. Which category are you? Jack hesitated and said, "I don't know anything." "The original text of the first sentence is...should know either everything or nothing, and the latter sentence is I know nothing. If it is translated as "should know either everything or nothing", it would be too verbose and immature. This shows how to deal with English or Other Western nouns, especially abstract nouns, must use Chinese short sentences, especially concise and powerful four-character idioms.

"Lu"

I have a recent book, The title of the book "Han Ying Tu Hua" comments on how English works should be translated into Chinese, but its four-character syntax is based on the idiom "Han Ying Tu Hua". I only changed one word, "Ying, Hua" in the original sentence. "It becomes English and Chinese: what is imported is English, and what is exported is Chinese. Therefore, idioms are of great use. Not only can they be copied intact, but they can also be used for organ transplantation, relying on the past to change the present, keeping pace with the times, and becoming more It makes the Chinese language more lively and enriched.

I have another book called "In Order", which collects prefaces written for others. These four-character idioms remain unchanged, but "Preface". "The meaning of the word has expanded. The sentence "the sun never sets on the country" in the title of my collection of essays "The Sun Never Sets on the Home" is not a Chinese idiom, but an English sentence, saying that Britain is an empire with colonies all over the world. Everywhere in the world where the sun shines, there must be British territory. In 1997, my four daughters lived in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Belgium, and my husband and I lived in Taiwan, so our Yu family can also be called the "Yu family." "The sun never sets at home".

In addition, the titles of my books are in the form of four-character idioms, including "Wuling Boy", "White Jade Bitter Melon", "Green Edge of Sorrow", "On the Watershed" ", "Spring Comes to the Peninsula", "Avalokitesvara Across the Water", "Walking across the Water", "Five Elements Unobstructed", "High Building Facing the Sea" and many other works. It can be said that this four-character sentence pattern has become a common format for my book titles.

In order to write this article, I once reviewed my own style of poetry and found that these four-character syntax, whether single line or parallel, has contributed a lot to my language style. The language of "Bai takes things as normal, and literature adapts to changes", which means using vernacular as the tone, and using classical Chinese to adjust the tone, to adjust the flexibility, speed, tone and scene. The so-called classical Chinese does not need to be ancient and profound, but should be stable and concise. There is no need for eloquent words, but the words must be true and not wasted.

For example, the last few lines of "White Jade Bitter Melon":

...a fairy fruit

Not born in the fairy mountains, but born in the human world

Your predecessor has been decayed for a long time, alas, it has been decayed for a long time

The hand that changed your tire, that skillful wrist

Thousands of eyes and eyes will skillfully extradite you

Smile to the soul flowing in the white jade

A song that praises the fact that life was once melon and bitter

"Thousands of eyes and ten thousand eyes" is a new coinage of the four-character idiom, which describes the jade craftsman's repeated comparison between the real bitter gourd and the jade carved bitter gourd in order to bring out the soul of the bitter gourd. Infused with white jade.

The last two lines of "it is a melon but bitter" and "the fruit is sweet" must use the syntax that cannot be simplified in classical Chinese to force out the belief that "life depends on art for sublimation". And the belief in this life and death relies more on the echoes and double voices of the four words "melon, bitter, fruit, and sweet" to persist and reach the conclusion. If we follow the immature syntax of ordinary new poetry and write the last two lines as: "A song that sings that life was once a bitter melon/transferred by eternity and turned into a sweet fruit", it would be considered good, but compared with the four-character syntax of classical Chinese , it seems too loose and too shallow.

The syntax of Chinese poetry begins with the dignified four-character sentence, then goes through the odd and even interweaving of five-character and seven-character sentences, which are opposite and complementary to each other, and finally ends with the expansion and contraction of long and short sentences. However, the four-character "source" has always been a typical example. It not only becomes the sentence head that stabilizes the overall situation in seven-character poems, but also ranks first in the couplets of four- and six-parallel prose, and even often becomes the dominant grammar in single-line ancient prose.

Whether a modern writer wants to utilize it, innovate it, or avoid it, he cannot understand its important position in Chinese grammar. In my own prose, it is also an important form and syntax.

In the early days, my prose was compatible with English syntax, with more single lines than parallel lines, and fewer four-character idioms or four-character sentence patterns. In the later period, there was an intention to "de-English culture", and the sentences were not only shorter, but also parallel and scattered, so the four-character font increased. Among the scholars who comment on my prose, many people affirm my later period but question my early period. I am afraid this is also a big reason.

In the early days, I was like Sun Wukong causing trouble in heaven; in the later days, I had become Tang Monk’s apprentice. In the early days, he was domineering and did not know who he was for. In the later period, it seemed to be more "tame", but it was also too "tame".

The following is a paragraph from each of my earlier and later articles for comparison:

The modernization of topics is one of the issues that Chinese writers today should have paid attention to. A truly sensitive writer should extend his slender tentacles to every corner of art. We can't imagine that a work full of modern spirit would be willing to wear a moldy hat.

——Excerpted from "On the Modernization of the Topic", 1963

Xing Hui read my poems many times and developed a theory. After three years of success, he is about to publish a book. Preface to me...Xing Hui's selection of poems is not just "just in name", but often "Hui has a unique eye", and he will pick out some "cold works" that critics rarely pay attention to or new works that have not received enough attention, which makes I was pleasantly surprised.

——Excerpted from "The Joyful Reading of Chen Xinghui", 2002

"淒"

A four-character idiom or four-character sentence pattern that has become a staple in Chinese For a long time, not only writing is easy to write, but also speaking smoothly has become a major keynote of grammar. Moreover, many of them have been carriers of national wisdom or folk sophistication, some of which have great origins, and some of which have unknown origins. Therefore, not only scholars are good at Drive, even the people in the world will quote a few words.

As a writer, if you are not good at using idioms, or the idioms you know how to use are very limited, how can you make the right choice when writing? But on the other hand, if he does not know how to invent new words and phrases, and when faced with a critical moment, he can only rely on a few clichés that are steady and consistent, and cannot extricate himself, he will never be able to get close to creation.

A real master should use idioms on the cutting edge, introducing new meanings from old sentences, or grafting flowers and trees into old frames and inserting new characters into them to create new interest. Only in this way can the vitality of the national language be stimulated and keep it lively and vivid.

As for the relationship between idioms and various genres, it is also worth discussing. Generally speaking, poetry requires originality, and you can use the four-character grammar to seek changes and innovations, but it is not appropriate to copy it exactly. The dialogue in the novel may use idioms or slang according to the identity of the characters, but the narrative part should be distinguished. If the lines of a drama are to be smooth and easy to understand, you may wish to use some concise and loud idioms; abstract and blunt nouns are best solved with short idioms. Prose speaks directly to the reader, just like the leisurely conversation of a gentleman. Of course, you can use some idioms. But if the conversation of a gentleman is full of wit or humor, you might as well change the idioms into a new accent. The essay is a scholar's speech, so it is advisable to carefully consider the words and sentences, and the idioms used should be elegant and dignified. Even if you quote scriptures and use parallel lines occasionally, it is okay. Essays should be short and concise, avoid nonsense and use idioms. Sophistication is the most taboo in fairy tales, and idioms should be avoided. If the translation uses too many idioms, it will lose the flavor of the original text; idioms derived from allusions such as "Chao Qin Mu Chu" and "Secretly Du Chen Cang" are especially unusable.

January 6, 2004

Yu Guangzhong’s handwriting

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