Source: Contributed by the author
Date of origin: 2007- 10-29
Release time of this website: 2007- 10-29 9:56:28.
Reading volume: 648 times
China, an ancient civilization, is actively modernizing today. China's modernization should catch up with industrialization and informatization. In order to meet the needs of national modernization, the language should also develop accordingly. The people of the whole country should be able to communicate directly and avoid the obstacles of dialects. The article should be written clearly and read out so that everyone can understand it. Chinese characters should be standardized to reduce learning difficulties and inconvenience. Phonetic notation should use letters instead of counterclockwise to unify the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Ethnic minorities should improve or create writing according to specific conditions. Pinyin should be used to input Chinese characters on the computer, so that Chinese can enter the information Internet. All this is called the modernization of China language.
The evolution of society and language is closely related. Qin merged with the six countries, unified the world, and implemented the policy of "Wen Tong". "The official and prison posts were complicated, and there were official documents at the beginning, so the ancient prose was lost" (Xu Shen's Shuo Wen). This is the evolution of ancient society that caused the evolution of Chinese. After the Opium War (1840), imperialism invaded China, which also opened the door of the closed-door Qing Empire. The Chinese nation woke up from the shock and opened a new chapter in the history of China. At the same time, it has set off a new trend of thought in the language field of China. This is a social evolution since modern times, which has caused the evolution of Chinese.
After the Revolution of 1911 (19 1 1), a modernization movement in China moved from gestation to practice. This movement has different emphases and names at different stages: phonetic alphabet movement, Putonghua movement, vernacular movement, phonetic alphabet movement, Putonghua Roman alphabet movement, Latinized new characters movement, handwritten characters movement, new languages movement of ethnic minorities and so on. In the process of China's modernization, there are successes, failures, high tides, low tides, disputes between the old and the new, swinging from side to side, and constantly raising awareness and developing the situation through "trial and error". Looking at the requirements of a series of movements, it can be summarized as four aspects: the universality of language, the colloquialism of style, the simplification of writing and the alphabetization of phonetic notation.
First, a common language.
Confucius taught his disciples to read, not in the Shandong dialect of his hometown, but in the lingua franca of that time. Later, each generation had a lingua franca called "lingua franca" and "official language". The lingua franca in ancient times did not require strict standard pronunciation, and its users were few, mainly officials and businessmen. Modern common etymology comes from ancient times, but it is different from ancient times. It requires strict phonetic standards, and the popularization of common language is the condition for implementing compulsory education for all. This is the basic project of building a modern country.
In the early years of the Republic of China, it was stipulated that the pronunciation of Chinese characters commonly used in most provinces was the national pronunciation standard (old national pronunciation). At that time, the popular view was that lingua franca should only be able to "convey meaning through words" and there was no need to require standardization. Soon, through practice, I improved my understanding that the standard must be unified, learning can be gradual, and the standard pronunciation should not be artificially pronounced, but should be actually pronounced, so I changed it to the standard of intermediate Beijingers' pronunciation (New Mandarin pronunciation). 1955 the national character reform conference stipulated that Beijing pronunciation should be the standard pronunciation of putonghua, reconfirmed this standard and made more detailed provisions on the standardization of Chinese.
The names of common languages have also evolved. It was called "national language" (national lingua franca) in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. In the 1950s, it was called "Mandarin" (the common language of China people). 1982 the constitution stipulates that "the state promotes common putonghua" (the national common language). Chinese in Singapore and overseas are called "Chinese" (the common language of Chinese all over the world). Different names, the same substance.
The popularization of common language has stumbled along the vast land of China, with ups and downs, but in general, the waves are higher than the waves. The 1920s was a climax, and the 1950s was another climax. The climax varies from province to province. After the recovery of Taiwan, Putonghua was popularized, so that all schools used Putonghua as the campus language and all public activities used Putonghua as the communication medium. The "popularization" in mainland China focuses on schools and is being accelerated by using radio and television. However, the level varies from place to place, and there are many weak areas of "popularization", and arduous work will be carried out for a long time in the future.
In ancient times, being able to "write in the same language" was progress. Today, if you are satisfied with "writing in the same language", you will fall behind. Modern China needs both "the same book" and "the same language".
Second, the colloquialism of style.
There is a contradiction between written language (classical Chinese) and spoken language (vernacular Chinese) in ancient civilization. With the continuous progress of spoken language and the stagnation of written language, there are more and more living spoken languages, which hinder the development of language and the popularization of education. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, Buddhism used variations and quotations close to Japanese to spread its teachings, because spoken language could penetrate the masses. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the reformists put forward "I write in calligraphy", "Vernacular is the foundation of political reform" and "Vernacular is the foundation of political reform". 19 19, the May 4th Movement, with the vernacular movement as the pioneer, was called the "Renaissance" in China. Therefore, vernacular Chinese has replaced classical Chinese and become the formal style of real literary works and textbooks. Novels and essays are written in vernacular. The vernacular movement is not only the liberation of style, but also the liberation of thought.
However, before the Second World War, there were still many blank areas left by the vernacular movement. For example, the official document procedure still uses "for this reason", and it was not until the 1950s that the "official document reform" was implemented. At this time, the "news style" of the newspaper has also changed to plain spoken language. In addition, newspapers, magazines and various official publications have also changed from straight to horizontal to match scientific and technological terms and mathematical formulas. In the 1990s, in the upsurge of "promoting Chinese culture", many large-scale "modern translation series of ancient books" were published, which was an extension of the vernacular movement.
The style reform has aroused strong opposition from "people who are good at the past". Shortly after the May 4th Movement, a movement of "Reading Classics in Classical Chinese" was launched. They criticized the vernacular as "the words of those who lead cars to sell pulp", "stealing the name of elegant literature and beautiful art with vulgar pen", and even abused their power to force textbooks to restore classical Chinese.
In today's "information age", the style reform of "consistency of words and writing" has added new tasks of the times. "Multimedia" combines telecommunication technology (telex), voice technology (telephone) and audio-visual technology (television) to transmit letters, which puts forward new requirements for language and writing. Language requirements are standardized, and everyone can hear it clearly (stylistic language); The writing requires colloquialism so that everyone can understand it when reading it. Language and writing should be able to convert to each other immediately and automatically. Vocabulary needs commonness. The differences in vocabulary, translated names and terms between different regions are no longer "interesting" but "harmful". In order to make the vernacular Chinese with consistent characters become an applicable style in the information age, a lot of Chinese standardization work needs to be done.
Third, the simplification of words.
Chinese characters are characterized by complex strokes, many words, disordered pronunciation and difficult retrieval, which are collectively called "four difficulties". In view of the "four difficulties" of Chinese characters, the character reform movement put forward the "four fixed" countermeasures: form, quantity, sound and order.
The requirements put forward in the late Qing Dynasty are that the variant forms should be unified, the printed form should be close to the handwritten form, and the simplified characters that are clear, easy to recognize and write should become the norm. Pupils, literate students and people with low education generally want to simplify strokes.
1935, Shanghai launched the activity of "writing Chinese characters by hand". In 15 magazine, more than 300 simplified characters that are often written at hand were selected for public use. In the same year, Nanjing Ministry of Education published the First List of Simplified Chinese Characters, which included 324 "Simplified Chinese Characters Popular in Society" and will continue to be published in the future. However, in the face of opposition, it was withdrawn the next year.
1956, the simplified Chinese characters scheme was announced, and the simplified Chinese characters were officially implemented for the first time. This scheme stipulated 5 15 simplified words and 54 simplified word radicals, which were later compared to the Summary of Simplified Words (2235 words in total). Most of these simplified characters are "ancient" characters. At this time, "vulgar style" was only upgraded to "normal style", just like "vernacular" replaced "classical Chinese". Simplified characters are widely used in textbooks, newspapers and magazines in Chinese mainland. After Singapore adopted simplified characters, Chinese schools in Malaysia, Thailand and other places also adopted them one after another.
Calligraphy is not limited by simplification. In fact, ancient calligraphers often wrote simplified Chinese characters. One third of Wang Xizhi's Preface to the Lanting Pavilion is simplified, and one sixth of Ou Yangxun's Jiuchenggong is simplified. It can be seen that the ancients did not think that simplification and calligraphy art were contradictory, and some people worried that simplification would destroy traditional culture. The "official change" from seal script to official script greatly simplified Chinese characters; The popular cursive script and running script have greatly simplified Chinese characters. These simplifications have not destroyed traditional culture. How can the simplified characters inherited from them destroy traditional culture?
Too many quantitative words and no quantitative words are the main reasons why Chinese characters are difficult to learn and use. Nowadays, it is difficult to reduce the number of words, and the method of "layered use" can be adopted to reduce the inconvenience of learning and using. At present, Chinese characters have been divided into "commonly used Chinese characters" (3,500 words) and "general Chinese characters" (7,000 words). The former is used in primary education, the latter is used in general publications, and the other is "uncommon Chinese characters" used in ancient books and special publications. It can also be divided into "Beginner Chinese Characters" (1000 characters) as the beginning of learning Chinese characters, which is the tradition of "thousand-character writing". Experience tells us that it is better to learn more than to use it. The usage frequency of Chinese characters is unbalanced, with few commonly used numbers and more rarely used numbers, which is the "decreasing usage rate" of Chinese characters. Mastering this law and improving the method of using words can gradually reduce the use of words.
In the early years of the Republic of China, the work of "unified pronunciation" of Chinese characters began, and all dictionaries used letters to represent standard pronunciation, rather than reverse-cutting. In 1950s, the work of "Phonetic Examination of Putonghua" was started, and the pronunciation of "words with different pronunciations" was unified. Preliminary results have been achieved in tuning. However, only by popularizing Putonghua can we fully realize "unified pronunciation".
Sorting In the information age that requires fast retrieval, the problem of "sorting" of Chinese characters is more prominent. Neither "radical method" nor "stroke method" can meet the requirements of the era of automatic and rapid retrieval. 19 18 after the publication of Phonetic Alphabet, there began to be a "phonetic sequence method" with alphabetical order. After Modern Chinese Dictionary arranges the text with phonetic symbols, large publications such as Encyclopedia of China also arrange the text with phonetic symbols. This is a new development of "sequencing" method.
Fourthly, the alphabetization of phonetic symbols
Chinese characters have accumulated to a huge number of 60 thousand, but they lack a set of letters.
19 18, Phonetic Alphabet based on ancient Chinese characters was published, and "phonetic alphabet" began. Since then, letters have replaced "anti-tangent".
1928 published "Romance of Mandarin", using international common letters. 1958 promulgated the Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Pinyin for short), which inherited and updated the Romance of Mandarin. Taiwan Province Province uses "phonetic symbols" at home and "national Roman characters" abroad. 200 1, considering changing to pinyin. The mainland uses pinyin both internally and externally. 1982 The Chinese Pinyin Scheme has become an international standard (ISO7098). The alphabet of Chinese is from "national form" to "international form", from "domestic use" to "international use" and from "national standard" to "international standard". It has built a bridge for China language and China culture to go international.
"Faith" is not "words", which is the common policy of the mainland and Taiwan Province Province. Some people are afraid that Pinyin will split China into dozens of countries, which is groundless. Pinyin spelling Putonghua, promoting Putonghua can only strengthen unity, and will not form division.
After Pinyin became an international standard, its scope of use gradually expanded. In the information age, it is a necessary means to connect the international information network, and the importance of this role will gradually emerge. On the Chinese processor, pinyin can be automatically converted into Chinese characters in units of "words, phrases, idioms and paragraphs" without font coding, which is a new development of Chinese character input technology.
China's language modernization includes the language construction of ethnic minorities. More than 30 languages are spoken by 55 ethnic minorities in China. Since 1950s, inconvenient languages have been sorted out, revised or reformed according to specific conditions. Ethnic minorities have 17 Latin letters, including 4 original Latin letters and 13 newly created Latin letters. Among them, New Zhuang Language has been printed in RMB.
In the "cultural circle of Chinese characters", the Japanese first tried to modernize the language of China. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Putonghua was popularized, pseudonyms were standardized, Chinese characters were fully phonetic, and the Roman character movement was launched. After the war, the official documents were reformed, and the common 1945 Chinese characters were stipulated, and the legal Japanese Roman characters were published (compulsory). Japan attaches great importance to reducing the number of Chinese characters, which makes it easier to simplify strokes. Japanese changed from several pseudonyms in the middle of Chinese characters to several Chinese characters in the middle of pseudonyms. North Korea (North China) changed to proverbs with pinyin initials and abolished Chinese characters. South Korea (South China) continues to mix Chinese characters and proverbs. General publications use 1800 Chinese characters, and Chinese characters are not taught in primary schools. After Vietnam became independent, it adopted Latin phonetic symbols and abolished Chinese characters. China's modernization is a long-term cultural movement in the "Chinese character cultural circle". After World War II, more than one hundred emerging countries emerged. Some need to establish a national common language, some need to formulate characters, some need to update old characters, and some need to enrich vocabulary. Even in developed countries, when a new community is formed, there will be language problems. A new discipline "Language Planning" came into being to study the macroscopic problems of Chinese. "Text reform" includes language, and "language plan" includes text. This is a worldwide cultural movement. China should learn from the experience of other countries and implement a language policy conducive to national modernization according to its own specific conditions.
Revised in April, 200 1, at the age of 96.