What is classical Chinese?

Classical Chinese is the written language of China, which is based on spoken language in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, and is a grammatical form written by imitating this written language. But by the middle of the Six Dynasties, great changes had taken place in the spoken Chinese in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and there were two written languages at this time. Written language is a written language that imitates ancient Chinese written documents, such as the prose of the writers of the Six Dynasties and the eight masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties, that is, "classical Chinese"; The other is the written language formed on the basis of spoken language at that time, which is called "ancient vernacular", such as Liu Yiqing's Shi Shuo Xin Yu in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Bianwen in the Tang Dynasty, and Huaben in the Song Dynasty. In the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the situation was similar to that in the Middle Ages, including imitating ancient written language, such as Tongcheng School's prose; There are also ancient vernacular languages formed on the basis of spoken language at that time, such as Water Margin and The Journey to the West. Because classical Chinese is not a language in one place at a time, there will be differences in grammar and vocabulary in different times or regions.

Before the 20th century, almost all official documents in China, Korean Peninsula, Japan and Viet Nam used classical Chinese written in Chinese characters. In the Korean peninsula, Japan and Vietnam, this written language is called "Chinese" (Chinese/? , Chinese, Chinese/かんぶん, Chinese and Chinese/Han V? Han Wan). After the 20th century, in China, the position of classical Chinese was gradually replaced by vernacular Chinese, while other countries began to adopt the written language of the local language.

trait

The characteristics of classical Chinese are: separation of speech and writing, concise writing.

Compared with the vernacular (including spoken and written language), the characteristics of classical Chinese are mainly manifested in grammar and vocabulary:

(The following functions are all examples and incomplete. )

Grammatical features

The grammatical features of classical Chinese are mainly manifested in parts of speech and word order. Generally speaking, classical Chinese uses parts of speech more flexibly than vernacular Chinese.

Nouns are used as verbs:

"The donkey is furious, but its hoofs are the same" (Liu Zongyuan's Three Commandments: The Donkey of Guizhou). Here, the noun "hoof" is used as the verb "kick with hoof".

The noun "Wang" is used here as the causative verb "Shi" ... Wang "(Sima Qian's Historical Records of Xiang Yu).

Nouns are used as adverbs, often with "ran" ...);

"When I was a child, a wolf left and there was a dog sitting in front." (Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio) The noun "dog" is used as an adverb "like a dog" before the verb "sit".

"The peak turns around, the pavilion wings spring up, and the pavilion is also drunk." (Ouyang Xiu's Preface to Drunk Pavilion, "Yi" is used as an adverb before the verb "Qin".

The special word order of classical Chinese is also one of the remarkable characteristics.

In interrogative sentences, interrogative pronouns "who", "who", "he" and "Xi" are placed before verbs;

"I am really incompetent. Who dares to complain?" (Zuo zhuan)

"Who cheated me? Bullying the sky! " (The Analects of Confucius)

Wes, who are we going home with? (Fan Zhongyan's "Yueyang Tower")

"Who is Xu Hongmei and me in the north of the city?" ("Warring States Policy Zou Ji satirizes Wang Qike to teach")

"The king said,' What binds you?' "(Spring and Autumn Annals)

In negative sentences, pronouns are usually placed before verbs when they are used as objects.

A gentleman is ill and incompetent, and does not care about patients (The Analects of Confucius)

Inverted sentences used with "one":

"The whole stone is the bottom, near the shore, and the bottom of the stone rolls out." (Liu Zongyuan's Eight Notes on Xiaoshitang in Yongzhou, "The whole stone is the bottom" means "the whole stone is the bottom", and "the bottom of the stone rolls" means "the bottom of the stone rolls".

Common interchangeable words in classical Chinese are all caused by the author's subjective reasons, such as forgetting words for a moment; There are also objective reasons, such as taboos.

"If you have questions and answers, you have to go home and put wine and kill chickens for dinner." (Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Garden, Yao, Invitation, Invitation.

"Confucius said:' It is better to learn from the times, isn't it? ..... "("The Analects of Confucius Learn ")," Shuowen ","Yue "and be happy.

"Sages are not interested in happiness, so I went to cure a disease." (Yan Zi Chun Qiu), "Xi" and "Xi", just kidding.

Lexical features

There are great differences in vocabulary between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese. This difference must usually be listed in the form of a dictionary or dictionary in order to fully express it. However, one feature can be observed in general: the vocabulary of classical Chinese is relatively simple, for example, compared with the vocabulary of vernacular Chinese, the vocabulary of classical Chinese is mainly monosyllabic.

Stylistic classification

China scholars have different classifications of literary styles.

Wei, Jin, southern and northern dynasties

The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties are the beginning of stylistic classification research, and the related works include Dian Lun Wen, Li Chong's Hanlin Lun, Zhiyu's Li Sao, Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long, Zhaoming Wenxuan led by Prince Zhaoming and so on. Among them, Dian Lun Wen divides the style into four categories:

Emperor/throne memorial

Book theory

Qi Ming

Poetry and Fu

Selected Works of Zhaoming is a very complicated anthology, which divides the selected articles into 37 categories.

[Editor] Ming Dynasty

In the Ming Dynasty, Wu Ne wrote Distinguishing the Style of Articles, Xu Shizeng wrote Distinguishing the Style of Articles, and Yao Nai in the Qing Dynasty compiled The Compilation of Ancient Vocabulary, all of which are important works to discuss the style. Among them, The Collection of Ancient Literary Words divides the style into 13 categories:

On discrimination

Preface and postscript

Emperor/throne memorial

Book theory

Gift order

An imperial decree/decree

Chuanxiang

A record of events carved on a stone tablet

Random notes

Zhenming

To sing/sing a hymn

Literary forms like Fu.

Mourning sacrifice

[Editor] Modern

According to the revised edition of Ancient Chinese edited by Guo Xiliang and others, there are three criteria for genre classification: by language form, by content and by scope of application. According to language forms, ancient Chinese first divided archaic styles into three categories:

essay

Rhyme: including poems, songs and ode.

Parallel prose: pay attention to parallel antithesis of parallel prose and blank verse, which can neither belong to prose nor rhyme, and form its own category.

Under this classification, classical prose can be divided into four categories:

Shi Wenchuan

Inferential text

Miscellaneous notes

Practical writing

[Editor] The Establishment of Ancient Chinese Grammar

[Edit] Starting point

Ancient Chinese scholars have long attached importance to the observation and thinking of grammatical phenomena, and left many valuable opinions to future generations in this regard. However, as an independent science, grammar should be said to be a modern thing. It was Ma Jianzhong in Qing Dynasty who established ancient Chinese grammar. His Ma Shi Wen Tong, written in 1898, first created a grammatical system. Ma Jianzhong (1845- 1900) was a predecessor of Dan in Jiangsu province. When I was a child, I studied in Shanghai. I had a certain understanding of classics and history, and I was proficient in French and Latin. 1875 was sent to the School of Political Science of Paris University, France. After graduation, he returned to China and assisted in Westernization in the shogunate of Li Hongzhang, governor of Zhili. 1900, died of overwork due to working all night.

[Editor] Research motivation

After the Opium War, a trend of saving the country through education and science was formed among people of insight in China. Ma Jianzhong devoted his life to the prosperity of the country. Therefore, in terms of language, he wants to give people an easy-to-understand and easy-to-learn rule, thus shortening the years of learning Chinese and freeing up more time to study natural science and social science. The history of horses is profound. On the one hand, he used Latin grammar for reference, on the other hand, he absorbed the achievements in China's traditional literature. After more than ten years of diligent exploration, he wrote Ma Shi Wen Tong. In the past hundred years, the progress in the study of ancient Chinese grammar is closely related to Ma Jianzhong's achievements.

[Editor] Ancient Chinese Grammar

Ma Shi Wen Tong is the first systematic grammar book in China. It is the first book in a generation, which breaks through the tradition of China literature research, reveals the internal structural rules of language, establishes the grammar of ancient Chinese in China, and marks a new stage in the study of ancient Chinese grammar in China. This book starts with the division of parts of speech and pays attention to syntactic analysis, which has laid a comprehensive foundation for ancient Chinese grammar. The whole book is divided into four parts: the first volume is the correct name, which defines various grammatical terms such as "word, sentence and reading", with a total of 23 terms, which can be said to be the outline of the whole book. Volumes two to six discuss content words, and volumes seven to nine discuss function words. Volume 10 is the theory of sentence reading.

See: Chinese grammar.

[edit] definition

When people use the term "ancient Chinese", it is given three different meanings in different contexts: ancient Chinese, ancient Chinese and classical Chinese. Ancient Chinese first refers to "ancient Chinese". In other words, all the languages used by the Han people before the Opium War can be collectively called ancient Chinese. We can't hear the spoken language of the ancients, but what we can see now is the written language materials recorded in writing. The earliest written language material we can see is Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which has a history of about 3,000 years from Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Just as everything is changing, so is language. Great changes have taken place in Chinese for more than 3,000 years. According to the changes of Chinese grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, scholars divide ancient Chinese into three development periods: ancient, medieval and modern. Ancient times refers to the Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han Dynasties before the 3rd century BC. The Middle Ages refers to the 4th century BC to12nd century BC, that is, the Six Dynasties, the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty in history. Modern times refers to 13 century to 19 century, that is, the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties in history.

Collection of research works

When we call the language used by the Han people before the Opium War ancient Chinese, it is a language with a long history of thousands of years. In this process, we can adopt several different research methods for Chinese corpus. If "chronological research" and "diachronic research" are taken into account, then the study of ancient Chinese corpus can be summarized into six types: "specialized book, dating and pan-chronological research"; A Diachronic Study of "Comparison, Infiltration and the History of China"

See: * * * Temporal Linguistics and Diachronic Linguistics for details.

[Editor] The Future of Research

Establishing a scientific grammar system of ancient Chinese will greatly save hundreds of millions of people, especially teenagers and others who want to learn ancient Chinese. A relatively perfect system that fully reflects the grammatical characteristics of ancient Chinese is also an important basic work to complete a Chinese history. Theoretically, this system will also help to enrich and enrich the world linguistic theory. On the one hand, the study of ancient Chinese should learn from the research ideas and achievements of modern Chinese and Chinese dialects, on the other hand, it is not appropriate to use the framework of modern grammar to trap ancient grammar. Therefore, we should start with the grammatical characteristics of ancient Chinese and establish the grammatical system of ancient Chinese. We should not only pay attention to the differences between ancient and modern times, but also pay attention to the differences between ancient and modern times, that is, similarities and differences. When we use the framework of modern Chinese to learn ancient Chinese, it is often easy to erase subtle differences in the same way, and it is easy to "learn from peers and learn from today's people." It is also ancient, and there are also differences in stages. There is also a relationship between learning and not attaching. In addition, we should learn from the research results of other languages in Sino-Tibetan family. On the basis of establishing grammar system, researchers still have a lot of work to do. They will absorb the achievements of exegetics, philology and phonology on the basis of a relatively perfect grammar system, and finally establish an "pan-era" "ancient Chinese grammar system". From ancient times to Qing Dynasty in China, a large number of ancient books were written in classical Chinese, so we should also study the grammar and development of classical Chinese. Ma Jianzhong's expectation of "applying what he has learned" will be realized at a higher level after the completion of a new "Wen Tong" which reflects the whole picture of grammar from ancient times to Qing Dynasty. The study of classical Chinese will also contribute to the development and restoration of traditional culture in China.

[Editor] Modern development

The disadvantage of classical Chinese is that it is difficult to understand and popularize. To understand classical Chinese, you need proper training to understand its meaning, and it is even more difficult to write classical Chinese. Therefore, after the vernacular movement in the eighth year of the Republic of China, China literary circles gradually replaced classical Chinese with the emphasis on "I write my mouth by hand" and "I can read if I can".

The so-called "classical Chinese is difficult to understand and popularize", "classical Chinese needs proper training to understand its meaning" and "classical Chinese is more difficult to write" are all based on the views of vernacular Chinese users. If you start learning classical Chinese at an early age, the learning difficulty is actually equivalent to learning vernacular Chinese.

Moreover, it is unfair to look at the "difficult" classical Chinese from the perspective of modern people. Classical Chinese is actually handed down from pre-Qin spoken language; The present vernacular Chinese was spread from the northern spoken language after the Tang and Song Dynasties. In fact, for non-northerners, vernacular Chinese can't be completely "written by me" now.

Although modern China society is dominated by vernacular Chinese, classical Chinese still receives considerable attention, and it still has a certain influence on vernacular Chinese. There are still many people who like to quote classical Chinese allusions, poems, words and couplets commonly used in China society when writing vernacular Chinese. For those who are interested in learning China literature, the training of classical Chinese is essential.

[Editor] Contemporary China Classical Renaissance

The revival of classical Chinese is one of the hot spots in the cultural revival movement in contemporary China. Its appearance, like the China Cultural Renaissance Movement, has a profound historical background and is an integral part of the Chinese National Renaissance Movement.

On the surface, the revival of classical Chinese is a denial of vernacular Chinese advocated by Hu Shi and others, but in essence it is an extension of vernacular Chinese movement. The implementation of vernacular Chinese has greatly increased the audience of generalized culture, but made the direct audience of China traditional culture less and less, thus threatening the inheritance of China culture as never before. It is precisely because of the need to inherit China culture completely and accurately that the revival of classical Chinese has become a historical necessity. The revival of classical Chinese can not deny the existence and value of vernacular Chinese.

Classical Chinese is relative to vernacular Chinese.

The first "article" refers to a written article. "Speech" means writing, expressing and recording. "Classical Chinese", that is, written language, is relative to "spoken language", which is also called "vernacular". The last word "Wen" refers to works, articles, etc. , which means genre.

"Classical Chinese" means "articles written in written language". And "vernacular" means: "articles written in plain spoken language".

In ancient China, it was different to express the same thing in spoken and written language. For example, if you want to ask someone if they have eaten, you can express it in spoken English as "Have you eaten?" And using books and language to express it is "rice?" . "Fanbu" is classical Chinese. In ancient China, all articles were written in written language. Therefore, now we generally refer to ancient Chinese as "classical Chinese"

Classical Chinese is a treasure of China culture, and the ancients left us a lot of classical Chinese. In China, the study of classical Chinese plays a very important role in the Chinese curriculum in middle schools.

What is classical Chinese?

1. Classical Chinese is wonderful. There is no doubt about it. Classical Chinese is an important part of China traditional culture. This shows that the history of modern civilization in China is still very short, and it is necessary to deconstruct or interpret the traditional culture, because the inheritance of traditional wisdom is based on the correct interpretation of classical Chinese.

2. Classical Chinese is knowledge. This is right, because classical Chinese is no longer a language, it is purely a kind of writing. But classical Chinese is knowledge, and so is Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Why not learn from Oracle Bone Inscriptions? By the way, it is precisely because Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a relatively primitive writing, so classical Chinese is the basis for further study of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and other traditional advanced writing (learning).

3. Classical Chinese is also a skill. The expression, description, combination, transformation, metaphor, comparison and deduction of Chinese fully bear the style of Chinese civilization in ideological expression. Mastering the physical structure of classical Chinese has a profound understanding of modern Chinese, and there are "laws" to follow in the construction of new Chinese.

4. "Classical Chinese" is the antonym of "vernacular Chinese". The structure of this word is as follows: classical Chinese-Chinese. The first "text" is "writing" and "speech" is language. "Classical Chinese" refers to "written language". It explains two meanings: first, it points out that classical Chinese is a language; Secondly, the language was written later. "Written" language also has two meanings: one is a culture that can have language without words, for example, most ethnic minorities only have language without words; Secondly, the function of language quits life and becomes history in the form of words.

The literal meaning of "classical Chinese" should be: the written language style. The latter's "text" refers to style.

So does classical Chinese have a "future" besides archaeological research? In other words, what life application value will it have? I think there is. When the traditional life style fades out of modern society, people just ignore the social life in some marginal fields, which leads to the suspicion or neglect of classical Chinese in modern application. For example, in religious buildings, some inscriptions will still be written in classical Chinese, or in calligraphy and engraved with tools. The application of seal script is also mostly the same.

The word "classical Chinese" can also include the relationship between language and writing in cultural history. In a certain form, once a language, including dialects, is "literate" and written, its language charm will be reduced and its writing function will be doubled. Because language is usually passed down orally and closely related to life, language has not yet entered the cultural state. It is the retention of life experience, without the expansion of words.

In the process of reading classical Chinese, we will inevitably have an illusion: did the ancients say so? I think this can be "felt" through the differences in the expression of written and spoken languages in the present tense, and there is not much difference in the structural rules between them. It can also be speculated that the ancient people's speech is just more casual, albino and popular than classical Chinese, and "three words and two beats" can also be used as a reference. As for reading classical Chinese now, of course, it does not mean repeating the words of the ancients, but reciting or silently reading a style.