What is the understanding of China's language and writing?

(1) Three Stages of Chinese Studies China scholars' Chinese studies can be divided into three stages: semantic study stage, phonetic study stage and all-round development stage. "China's language studies began in the Han Dynasty. Because the country has been unified for a long time, there is a strong academic atmosphere. At that time, the research work was mainly in semantics, because the Han Dynasty advocated Confucianism and advocated reading classics, and every Confucian scholar required the ability to read ancient books. The representative works of semantics in Han Dynasty are: (1) Erya; (2) Dialect; (3) Interpreting Chinese characters by speaking; (4) Interpreting the name. " P5 "The oldest dictionary in China is Erya. Erya is different from the dictionaries of later generations: the dictionaries of later generations are arranged by radicals, and the words with the same ideogram are arranged in one place; Erya's words are classified according to their meanings. The book is divided into 19 chapters, namely, release of funeral rites, release of words, release of training, release of relatives, release of palaces, release of apparatus, release of music, release of heaven, release of land, release of hills, release of mountains, release of water, release of grass, release of wood, release of insects, release of fish, release of birds, release of animals and release of livestock. The two chapters of Interpretation and Interpretation are basically adjectives, verbs and abstract nouns, and the interpretation is basically continuous words, so other classifications are easy to understand. The first three chapters account for one-third of the book, and its cooking is to put many synonyms together, and finally use a common word as an explanation. For example, the first article in the commentary is' beginning, zai, first, base, Zhao, ancestor, yuan, fetus, Nuo, fall, right and Yu, beginning also'. Other chapters are simple classifications of things' names, with definitions. According to legend, Erya is the work of Duke Zhou, which is obviously a false accusation. Erya was mainly written for the interpretation of Confucian classics. The book must have been completed after Emperor Wu advocated Confucian classics, and it was supplemented by many people. However, Er Ya is already in the Han Dynasty, so Er Ya's book must be written in the Western Han Dynasty (3rd-1st century BC). Jin Guo Pu's Er Ya Zhu is very profound. There are many books that imitate erya in later generations. The earliest one was Guang Ya by Zhang Yi of Wei (22-265), and the title of the book was' the expansion of Er Ya'. The dialect of Yangxiong (53 BC-18 AD) belongs to a special type in the dictionary, which is the first book in China to record dialects. ..... The first dictionary arranged by the radicals of words is Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi (AD 1). The book is divided into 54 parts with 9,353 words. This book decided the fate of Chinese dictionaries for nearly two thousand years ... Later in Xu Shen, there was Liu Xi (2nd century AD). Liu Xi wrote an explanation of the name. Interpretation of names is also a dictionary arranged according to meaning, which is very similar to Erya in arrangement (even following the classification of' interpretation' and' interpretation'), so some people in future generations call it elegant. However, in terms of the nature of the content, Shi Ming is very different from Er Ya. Liu Xi tried to find out the reason why every word was originally named, so his book was called the interpretation of names. He thinks that there are many names of things since ancient times, both elegant and vulgar, and they vary from dialect to dialect. Ordinary people talk every day and call things by their names, but everyone doesn't know why they should be given such a name. His book is to investigate this' why'. Liu Xi thinks that pronunciation and semantics are necessarily related, and the source of semantics can be traced from pronunciation. This is the first book of China's etymology. ..... Annotating ancient books can also be traced back to the Han Dynasty. Zheng Xuan, the most famous master of Confucian classics in the Han Dynasty, made comments on the Book of Songs, Rites, Rites and Records of Rites, all of which are very important works. " P5-7 "After the Northern and Southern Dynasties (42-589), the focus of language research shifted to phonetics. This is no accident. At that time, poetic rhythm was gradually developed. In order to study rhythm and rhythm, it is necessary to clearly analyze the structure of pronunciation and discover the characteristics of tone. Due to the translation of Buddhist scriptures, China Chinese scholars have learned about Indian phonetics. As far back as the second century (Eastern Han Dynasty), people in China have been able to divide each syllable into two parts, namely the so-called initials and finals in modern times. According to legend, Shen Yue (414-513) wrote a four-tone score. At that time, poets had noticed that there were four tones in Chinese, and they used this knowledge in the practice of poetic rhythm. There are rhyming books outside the dictionary. In fact, rhyming books are also one of the dictionaries, but they are just dictionaries arranged by sound. Lu Fayan's Qieyun (61) is the earliest rhyme book that can be seen now. ..... From the 13th century to the 17th century (Yuan and Ming Dynasties), China's language study was mainly in the living language of northern dialect. " P7-8 "The 17th and 19th centuries (from the early Qing Dynasty to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) were the most fruitful times for language studies in China. The Manchu dynasty had the most severe control over cultural thoughts, and most scholars were forced to leave reality and engage in the collation and textual research of ancient books. In this era, ancient meanings and ancient sounds of Chinese have been greatly discovered. This style is very similar to Han Confucianism, so it is called' Sinology'; Because this kind of learning is practical and realistic, it is also called' Pu Xue'. …… "P9 (2) Phonetic Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family (also known as Tibeto-Burman language family and Indo-Chinese language family). Sino-Tibetan language family includes Hantai language group and Tibeto-Burman language group. The Sino-Taiwanese language groups include Chinese, Siam's "『xianluo, formerly known as Thailand" Dong-Dai language group, Miao-Yao language group, Vietnamese language group and others. The Tibeto-Burman language group includes Tibetan, Yi, Burmese and others. P25 "The literary language of the Han nationality is based on the northern dialect from the beginning. The Analects of Confucius said:' The words spoken by Confucius, poems, books and ceremonies are all elegant'. ..... In fact,' Sylvia' is' Xia Yan'. The Xia people were originally in the Shaanxi-Gansu area, but later the so-called' Zhuxia' refers to the countries in the north and south of the Yellow River. Xia Yan' should be the northern dialect. ..... There are so-called "universal language" and "universal language" in Yangxiong dialect, which are roughly equal to the so-called Mandarin now. It can be seen that at the same time of dialect differences, there are also * * * homonyms. ..... When the China regime was unified, its capital was always in the north. This fact is very important ... Among them, Beijing should be singled out. Since Jin moved its capital to Yanjing (now Beijing) in 1153, it has been more than 8 years today. Except for Nanjing, the capital of Ming Taizu, and Nanjing, where the Kuomintang moved its capital for more than 5 years, Beijing is the capital. This 6-year-old political influence has determined the foundation of the national language. Literary works written in northern dialect have played a great role in the formation of national homonyms. ..... The literary revolution of the May 4th Movement has also played a very important role in the formation of the Chinese homonym. ..... After the May 4th Movement,' vernacular Chinese' gained legal status in written language, and gradually replaced' classical Chinese'. After the people gained political power,' classical Chinese' disappeared from the written language. On the other hand, in the past century, the society has developed rapidly, and new disyllabic words have emerged one after another, all of which are super-dialect, so it is beneficial to the formation of national homonyms. ..... Now the State Council has set up a central working committee for the promotion of Putonghua, which clearly stipulates that Putonghua should use Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect, and typical vernacular writings as the grammatical norm. In this way, our national homonym has a clear definition. " P36-37 "Characters are the representatives of language, so all written records in ancient China are of value as materials for the history of Chinese. However, it is particularly noteworthy that the works are close to spoken language. As far as the pre-Qin dynasty is concerned, the national style of the book of songs is the record of folk oral literature; The Analects of Confucius may also be the spoken language recorded by Confucius disciples at that time. Of course, there are many other works that are close to spoken language, such as the haiku and iconography of the Book of Changes, including many common sayings. Until the Han Dynasty, many works were still close to spoken language. There are many vivid descriptions in the Historical Records of Han Dynasty, and most of them are in spoken English. ..... Since the prevalence of parallel prose in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, written language and spoken language have separated. ..... From the situation after the Han Dynasty, poetry is often closer to spoken language than prose. Nineteen ancient poems are simple and popular. Folk songs in the Six Dynasties, while parallel prose prevailed, were the main basis of Chinese history. Compared with Tang poetry, Tang poetry is far from being close to spoken English. In the Song Dynasty, we should look for spoken English not in poems, but in words. In the Yuan Dynasty, when looking for spoken English, you should look not for words, but for songs. " P23-24 "Words are the representatives of language. ..... The ancients confused words with language. Therefore, they mistake the phonetic changes for the phonetic changes and the semantic changes for the semantic changes. This view has great shortcomings: assuming that the pronunciation or semantics have changed and a word has been changed to represent it, we can't see the process of language development simply from the text. " P39 (3) Characters "Generally speaking, there are only two major types of ancient and modern Chinese fonts: the first type is knife-and-pencil characters, whose strokes are as thick as one, and they cannot be left-handed; The second kind is writing with brush, whose strokes can be left and right, and the thickness is arbitrary. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jin Wen and Xiao Zhuan all belong to the first category, while official script, cursive script, running script and regular script all belong to the second category. ..... The change of writing tools has greatly affected the reform of fonts. According to legend, Meng Tian wrote pens, and Meng Tian was a person of the Qin Dynasty. Word-making, like pen-making, is the creation of the people and cannot be said to be Meng Tian's personal invention. However, it is close to the fact that there was a writing brush in the Qin Dynasty, and there was no word' pen' in the pre-Qin books. It may also be that there was a writing brush in the Warring States period, but it was not as widely used as in Qin and Han Dynasties. With the brush, the posture of the text has changed greatly. " P39-41 "Chinese characters, like other characters, changed from pictures to characters in ancient times. Not only are knots not words, but pictures are not words. When a picture only means one thing instead of a fixed word, it is not a word. By the time the' picture' can represent every word, not only the strokes are simple (only the main outline that can best represent the characteristics of things), but more importantly, the' picture' is connected with the audio language. Take Chinese characters for example, that is, every original word represents a certain sound. Some people think that hieroglyphics are directly related to concepts and not to sounds, which is completely wrong. " P41-42 "Words are just a hypothetical symbol system, and words are not equal to language. The reform of writing does not mean the reform of language. " P44 "Because Chinese characters are not pinyin characters, most of the forms thousands of years ago have been preserved to the present, so that we can see some facts of social development from now on. For example, there is a word "knife cow" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which shows that the Yin people have developed agriculture and already know how to plow the fields with cattle. ..... From Xiao Zhuan to subordinate, not only the font has changed, but also the word type has changed a lot. For simplicity, sometimes the principle of "six books" has to be sacrificed. Besides, writing is just a symbol, and people who use words do not need to know the etymology. Therefore, for some radicals of unknown origin from the point of view of ordinary people, there is nothing to cherish. ..... From official script to regular script, the word type rarely changes. Especially after the Tang dynasty, because the imperial examination system required orthography, the word form was basically stable for more than 1 years. ..... However, writing can't be immutable. At first, it was created by the people. Later, philologists had to follow suit. The creation of the masses has two directions: the first is the classification method, and the second is the simplification method. " P42-43 Advantages of China language and writing: Chinese is an ideographic writing, and now there is a trend of disyllabic Chinese. Because of its broad thinking and monosyllabic pronunciation in mathematics, it responds faster to numbers, but it is better in logical thinking. However, judging from the development trend of human civilization, Chinese, as an ideographic language, can accommodate the impact of information and knowledge explosion because it can freely combine new terms, new concepts and even new ideas, and will undoubtedly develop into the same language of human beings. China's physics experts can rely on his basic knowledge of chemistry in middle school to read through the papers of chemistry experts, and vice versa. However, experts from different industries in Britain and the United States are casting pearls before swine to exchange their academic achievements. With this advantage, Chinese is qualified to become an esperanto. Western languages waste twice as much paper as Chinese, and the number of people who use Western languages in the world is five times higher than that who use Chinese. According to simple factor-level multiplication, it will waste more than 1-2 times of wood. English is different from Mandarin. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, English has 2 vowels and 2 consonants, so the number of English sounds will not exceed 2× 2 = 4. Conversely, any sound that is not within these 4 sounds is not recognized by English, or is considered as an incorrect pronunciation; What is said here is not a "syllable". By comparison, we can see that the pronunciation of Chinese is three times that of English. Let's talk about why the more kinds of sounds, the faster the thinking speed. Suppose there is a person who can only pronounce two sounds, specifically, he can pronounce two sounds, A and B. According to the theory of computer, we know that he can still express the whole world with these two symbols. Suppose again that there are only 4 things to be expressed in the world, then an Englishman can express one of the 4 things with each pronunciation, while a person who can only pronounce two sounds sometimes has to express one of the 4 things with nine pronunciations, because nine times of two is only greater than 4. For example, English people use "I" to represent "I" and people who only know two voices may use abbababba to represent the concept of "I". It takes about a quarter of a second for the average person to make a sound. Comparing the two, we can see that people who only know two voices not only express slowly, but also make great efforts. When expressing the concept of "I", the British used a quarter of a second, while people with only two voices used two and a quarter seconds. If two people always live in this ratio all their lives, all the information they enjoy in their lives will be 9:1. In the actual situation, the most obvious is the contrast between Japanese and Chinese. As we know, Japanese uses 1 different sounds, while Chinese uses 12 sounds, so many Chinese characters have to be expressed in two or three sounds when Japanese people want to read them. We assume that all words in Japanese are expressed by two sounds. Isn't that to say that the information that Japanese people can enjoy in their lifetime is only half that of China people? I have wondered whether this is related to the fact that there has never been a great thinker in Japanese history. We know that thinking is actually a process of speaking from the heart. If you express it quickly when you speak, then the speed of thinking should also follow. A concrete example is that Zhao Yuanren once compared the speed of reciting multiplication formulas in English and Chinese. Chinese took 3 seconds, while English took 45 seconds. This point has been confirmed by many scholars at home and abroad. As for whether thinking fast means being smart, it is acknowledged by many scholars. The reason why Chinese is bound to beat English: the problem of knowledge explosion. As we know, the current English words including various biological names and new terms of patent inventions have exceeded millions. For example, the word pork stands for pork in English, which has nothing to do with pig and meat, but only represents a consortium of them. If pork pork pork, mutton Mutton, beef beef, lard lard lard, sheep oil suet and butter talon are compared together, it is found that all conjoined words in English are new symbols that have nothing to do with any of them, but they constitute the main body of English vocabulary. There is a cox report in the United States, which gives a lot of comparisons to illustrate that it is impossible for China people to obtain more than 1, nuclear tests with the United States through 3 or 4 times. The only explanation is that China stole American technology. Some people also call this incident the Li Wenhe incident. If they want to investigate the matter thoroughly, study it carefully.