The Modernization of Chinese Language and Literature

1. Confusion about how to write modern prose

Modern people writing prose encountered a headache, that is, not only people do not recognize the writing of the article, that is, they are left to look at the eye, the right does not look like prose.

The reason for this, I think there are about the following: First, the word is not ancient. Here there are two common cases: 1) for the common modernization of terms, such as "socialism", "modernization", etc., can not find the corresponding ancient terms to replace, the result can only be hard to quote in the literary language, making the written language appears to be incongruous, this This can be seen in many contemporary old scholars in the language, but also from Liao Chengzhi and Chiang Chingguo's open letter found; 2) even if it is not some of the nouns, predicates, but also accustomed to use some of the use of modern words used, which is especially obvious in the use of predicates, some of the modern language, but it has become a kind of four-word a break in the form of what seems to be some of the ancient flavor, but in fact, is not a literary language.

With regard to the first point, I think it is mainly because of the fact that the literary language has been deserted for nearly a hundred years (in fact, from the end of the Qing Dynasty onwards), and there has not been a larger writing force in the society, as a result of which a large number of modernized terms emerging in the society are not regulated by the simplified writing of 文言简写.

The so-called "standardization" was a uniform simplification of emerging terms according to the more ancient literary method, a process that was not *** ordered, of course, but developed by the majority of the people in the exchange of works, and the regular imperial examination system of propositions and compositions, zhangzuo, tangpai, and official documents also served this purpose. also played such a role. So, if writing literary texts could form a larger movement in the future, the problem could be solved, at least partially.

At the end of the Qing dynasty, Liang Qichao was an experimenter. Liang Qichao's literary texts (see his Drinking Ice Room Collections) contained a large number of new terms, and he tried to standardize the literary language for these terms, and because of his fame, his writing style was followed by many in the society, forming the so-called "Liang Qichao style", which was ridiculed by some old pedants. At that time, some old scholars ridiculed Liang's writing as a mixture of white and white, which I think is biased, unless these old scholars avoid sound, light, electricity, chemistry and other new terms when they write their articles, which they cannot do. With regard to the second point, the main reason is still the problem of our modern literary education, in a word, lack of practice.

It is not true that there are not any texts in secondary schools nowadays, although there are fewer of them, and what is more important is that the teachers never let the students do any writing in the language, not even making sentences.

Once the writing of the literary language, the word to the use of the party hate less, write to write, is now known to a few words, the result is, of course, by others or their own view is a simplification of the modern language, rather than the authentic literary language. The first is that it is not a good idea to use a single word to describe the language of the world.

In fact, the classical literary language is a lot of stylistic style. For example, the pre-Qin ancient text, it has been and after the two Han Dynasty, there is a big difference between the text, the style of the Zuozhuan is one of them, the Analects is another style.

The parallelism that emerged in the Wei and Jin dynasties, i.e., the four-sixths, is another style.

But the later literary language is not all ancient (narrow sense of ancient), some articles are actually a mixture of ancient and parallelism, which is in the diatribe, zhengzuo a lot of use. The modern generation basically imitates the writing of Han Yu's ancient texts, and more directly chases after the writing style of the Qing Tongcheng school, and does not practice much of other styles, such as ekphrasis, which results in the articles appearing to be insufficiently talented.

It is important to realize that, although the ekphrasis is rhetorical, and the form is light on the content, it has the advantage of making the article gorgeous. Completely imitating the writing style of the Tongcheng school, or unconsciously imitated, making the article appears to be very vulgar, and, to put it politely, some well-known old pedants of the literary text with this vulgarity.

The solution is still to read more ancient articles in various literary styles and practice more. Third, poeticization of the literary language.

Many people start practicing the language from the hobby of classical poetry, which has far more participants than practicing the language in modern China. While classical poetry is an important aspect of classical literature, it is by no means literary, even if its use in writing adds to the beauty of the text.

It is important to realize that the writing of poetry by the ancients, though a wide-ranging hobby, was not the dominant form of writing on a day-to-day basis, and that there is an obvious flaw in writing literary texts in the manner of classical poetry, and that is the lack of the use of necessary dummy words, such as "之,乎,者,也,耳,邪,耶,惟,夫,若", which are not used. The use of the word, so that the article is subdued, bonding fluent. To know, the ancients wrote the literary language is very careful to pay attention to the phonetics of the article, after writing an article, often have to repeat the recitation, these false words play a very important role.

Fourth, too few allusions. Allusions can not be more, but in some key places but plays a very important role, it makes the narrative concise, do not need to repeat, and concise is the basic spirit of the language.

The above four, which are the reasons I can think of, are certainly not enough. The basic reason why traditional Chinese culture has been maintained for thousands of years is the literary language and the square characters. Some scholars in the past ignored the function of the "convention" (Protocal) of the literary language and thought that the traditional culture could be maintained as long as the square characters were used, which was one-sided.

A simple example: Zhu Zi's Record of Words was written in the Fujian dialect of the Southern Song Dynasty, and not many people can read it now. Due to the complexity of China's terrain, the vastness of its territory, which is divided into many dialect areas, and the difficulty of spreading the official language to all parts of the country (that is, it is still not possible to do a complete promotion of Putonghua), if the writing is colloquial, i.e., vernacular, I believe that now there are few people who can understand the ancient canonical texts.

And if there is no standardization of writing in the vernacular, the square characters themselves.

2. Confusion about how to write a modern literary text

Modern writers encounter a headache, that is, not only people do not recognize the writing of the article, that is, they are left to look at the eye, the right does not look like the language.

The reason for this, I think there are about the following: First, the word is not ancient. Here there are two common cases: 1) for the common modernization of terms, such as "socialism", "modernization", etc., can not find the corresponding ancient terms to replace, the result can only be hard to quote in the literary language, making the written language appears to be incongruous, this This can be seen in many contemporary old scholars in the language, but also from Liao Chengzhi and Chiang Chingguo's open letter found; 2) even if it is not some of the nouns, predicates, but also accustomed to use some of the use of modern words used, which is especially obvious in the use of predicates, some of the modern language, but it has become a kind of four-word a break in the form of what seems to be some of the ancient flavor, but in fact, is not a literary language.

With regard to the first point, I think it is mainly because of the fact that the literary language has been deserted for nearly a hundred years (in fact, from the end of the Qing Dynasty onwards), and there has not been a larger writing force in society, as a result of which a large number of modernized terms that have emerged in the society have not been regulated by the simplified writing of 文言简写.

The so-called "standardization" was a uniform simplification of emerging terms according to the more ancient literary method, a process that was not *** ordered, of course, but developed by the majority of the people in the exchange of works, and the regular imperial examination system of propositions and compositions, zhangzuo, tangpai, and official documents also served this purpose. also played such a role. So, if writing literary texts could form a larger movement in the future, the problem could be solved, at least partially.

At the end of the Qing dynasty, Liang Qichao was an experimenter. Liang Qichao's literary texts (see his Drinking Ice Room Collections) contained a large number of new terms, and he tried to standardize the literary language for these terms, and because of his fame, his writing style was followed by many in the society, forming the so-called "Liang Qichao style", which was ridiculed by some old pedants. Some old pedants sneer at Liang Wen is a mixture of text and white, I think it is biased, unless these old pedants write articles to avoid sound, light, electricity e799bee5baa6e59b9ee7ad9431333332636362, chemical and other new terms, but they can not do. Regarding the second point, the main reason is still the problem of our modern literary education, in a word, lack of practice.

Now the secondary school text of the language is not no, although less, more importantly, the teacher never let the students to do the language writing, not even to make sentences.

Once the writing of the literary language, the word to the use of the party hate less, write to write, is now known to a few words, the result is, of course, by others or their own view is a simplification of the modern language, rather than the authentic literary language. The first is that it is not a good idea to use a single word to describe the language of the world.

In fact, the classical literary language is a lot of stylistic style. For example, the pre-Qin ancient text, it has been and after the two Han Dynasty, there is a big difference between the text, the style of the Zuozhuan is one of them, the Analects is another style.

The parallelism that emerged in the Wei and Jin dynasties, i.e., the four-sixths, is another style.

But the later literary language is not all ancient (narrow sense of ancient), some articles are actually a mixture of ancient and parallelism, which is in the diatribe, zhengzuo a lot of use. The modern generation basically imitates the writing of Han Yu's ancient texts, and more directly chases after the writing style of the Qing Tongcheng school, and does not practice much of other styles, such as ekphrasis, which results in the articles appearing to be insufficiently talented.

It is important to realize that, although the ekphrasis is rhetorical, and the form is light on the content, it has the advantage of making the article gorgeous. Completely imitating the writing style of the Tongcheng school, or unconsciously imitated, making the article appears to be very vulgar, and, to put it politely, some well-known old pedants of the literary text with this vulgarity.

The solution is still to read more ancient articles in various literary styles and practice more. Third, poeticization of the literary language.

Many people start practicing the language from the hobby of classical poetry, which has far more participants than practicing the language in modern China. While classical poetry is an important aspect of classical literature, it is by no means literary, even if its use in writing adds to the beauty of the text.

It is important to realize that the writing of poetry by the ancients, though a wide-ranging hobby, was not the dominant form of writing on a day-to-day basis, and that there is an obvious flaw in writing literary texts in the manner of classical poetry, which is the lack of the use of the necessary false words, such as the use of the words "之,乎,者,也,耳,邪,耶,惟,夫,若", which are used to make texts subdued. The use of the word, so that the article is subdued, bonding fluent. To know, the ancients wrote the literary language is very careful to pay attention to the phonetics of the article, after writing an article, often have to repeat the recitation, these false words play a very important role.

Fourth, too few allusions. Allusions can not be more, but in some key places but plays a very important role, it makes the narrative concise, do not need to repeat, and concise is the basic spirit of the language.

The above four reasons, which I can think of, are certainly not enough. The basic reason why traditional Chinese culture has been maintained for thousands of years is the literary language and the square characters. Some scholars in the past ignored the function of the "convention" (Protocal) of the literary language and thought that the traditional culture could be maintained as long as the square characters were used, which was one-sided.

A simple example: Zhu Zi's Record of Words was written in the Fujian dialect of the Southern Song Dynasty, and not many people can read it now. Because of the complexity of China's terrain, the vast territory is divided into many dialect areas, and it is difficult to do the official language was promoted to all parts of the country (that is, now can not do the complete promotion of Mandarin), if the writing of the spoken language, i.e., the vernacular, I believe that now there are not a few people who can understand the ancient.

The ancient language is written in ancient grammar, and the modern language is written in modern Chinese grammar and vocabulary. The ancient language is not necessarily written by the ancients, but the modern people can write the ancient language as long as they have the cultivation of the ancient language.

The study of ancient languages facilitates the cultivation of traditional Chinese language and literature, and is a good way to learn ancient history and culture.

The modern text is more straightforward and easy to understand. Who's better? Both are good! Both are the Chinese language, you can not throw away the things of the old ancestors ah!

A lot of people like the ancient language like those scholars and professors like it a lot, they are specializing in it!

Yes, the ancient language is more subtle, and there is one more thing: it saves words! Usually one word can mean a lot! It's not comparable to any other language, and English is just a lot of letters! But modern writing also has its advantages. 。。。。