Why Chinese people stopped using literary language and gradually became vernacular language

Ninety years ago, the May 4th New Culture Movement, "New Youth" with the slogan "advocate the vernacular language, against the literary language", set off a violent "literary revolution". This "revolution" directly "revolutionized" the "literary language" that had been rooted in the Chinese land for thousands of years, and the vernacular language washed away the "second house status" that had long been a part of culture. The "second room status" of the deflated, pink ink on the scene, so that the entire Chinese nation seems to have begun to immerse in a kind of free from the shackles of feudal culture in the pleasure.

Actually, the dispute between the vernacular language and the vernacular language has a long history, "New Youth" is only one of the rewriting of the situation of the battle, in the "New Youth" before, what is the situation, why the "New Youth" will be rewritten, and after that how to evolve ......

We may as well start from the beginning!

1, historical entanglements

Wenyan and vernacular language, both are written language, the difference is that "Wenyan, meaning only seen in the text and not oral language. Vernacular, white is said, words are said, the general meaning is the language spoken." [1] The difference between the two lies only in their proximity to the spoken language.

In fact, the foundation of both the literary and vernacular language is the spoken language, only the so-called standard of the spoken language is different, the literary language is built on the basis of the pre-Qin spoken language on the written language of the ancient Chinese language, the vernacular language is based on the basis of the Tang and Song dynasty since the northern language. The language we speak now was developed on the basis of the northern dialect of the Tang and Song dynasties, so it is no wonder that we find the vernacular language more comprehensible and easy to understand.

When the "literary language" was defeated ninety years ago, one of the major reasons was that "the separation of the language from the written word was an obstacle to social progress". Here we need to explore the emergence of this phenomenon from a historical perspective.

In the early stages of the development of the Chinese language, language and writing were united, and those ancient texts that are now considered to be profound and obscure were actually the vernacular writings of the time. For example, in the Book of Songs, we know that most of the "winds" are folk songs, which makes it certain that many of them were written orally. The Analects of Confucius, for example, is a collection of Confucius' words, and its relationship to the spoken word is self-evident.

Due to historical changes, the spoken language of daily communication changed, while the written word remained in place, so that from the Sixth Dynasty onwards, there were signs of a clear break with the spoken language with the emergence of the literary language. However, because Chinese characters belong to the ideographs, the difference of speech does not hinder people's reading comprehension, so the inconsistency of the language has not attracted enough attention. At the same time, also because of the pre-Qin and Han canonical books are written in the literary language, and this part of the work is the source of Han culture, so the later generations of writers consciously adhere to a kind of imitation of ancient writing, which artificially exacerbated the inconsistency of the speech, and eventually formed the Chinese language long-term inconsistency of speech and writing.

During this period, the vernacular language actually made its presence known everywhere. From the "Shishu Xinyao", "Yan's family training" to the Dunhuang text, the Tang and Song dynasties have produced a number of vernacular works all the way down the Song and Yuan, Ming and Qing novels, helplessly, it was not able to shake the dominance of the vernacular language, the vast majority of them can only be dispersed in the private sector, although indignant, but ultimately can not escape the "two rooms" of the fate of the "two rooms". The first is the "second house. [2]

All this was not reversed until the late Qing Dynasty. At that time, the country was not good, the people of the country first in the cultural self-confidence shaken, which is a prerequisite for the conditions, but also the root cause of the changes in Chinese culture later. It is this kind of mentality, make the people of the country unprecedentedly put the tradition on the defendant's seat, counting its sins, and the literary language as the main carrier of traditional culture is bound to bear the brunt of the impact [3]. So Huang Zunxian to "my hands write my mouth", Qiu Tingliang claimed that "respect for the vernacular and abolition of the literary language", thus opening the vernacular language movement.

In 1917, during the New Culture Movement, the vernacular language movement was pushed to the extreme. In January of that year, Hu Shi published "Ruminations on the Improvement of Literature" in New Youth, arguing that "vernacular literature is the authentic Chinese literature", advocating the abandonment of the literary language and the use of the vernacular language, and proposing that articles should be written in a fluent manner, with no allusions, no set phrases, no dialogue, no avoidance of colloquialisms, grammaticality, and no copying of the ancients, and that the words have something to say. Chen Duxiu also published Literary Revolution in February, echoing Hu Shi's "Eight Propositions" with "Three Majorisms". In September 1920, the Ministry of Education ordered all national schools to switch to the vernacular language from the fall of this year. At this point, the vernacular language gained official legitimacy.

After reviewing this history, I always feel that the situation of the millennium dispute between the vernacular language and the literary language has been reversed very suddenly. The authentic status of the vernacular language over the past thousand years seems to have been subverted overnight, and the vernacular language, which used to symbolize the status of the Chinese language, seems to have been branded as the remnants of the feudal culture and the main culprits hindering the progress of the nation overnight. After a thousand years of trials and tribulations of the vernacular language, finally got rid of the shadow of the "two houses", standing in the center of the Chinese cultural stage, although the pace of this center is a little hasty, not steady, but after all, the right result. What is the reason for the hasty rewriting of a millennium-old dispute?

2, the new cultural movement a battle

The new cultural movement, the literary language and vernacular language in the battle of defeat, the reasons for this, there are roughly the following:

(1) the national crisis

The reason why the literary language can continue its millennium of the supremacy of the status of the world, in one way or another, is due to the strength of the Chinese people in the world since the millennium. This strength has created the people's respect for and trust in traditional Chinese culture, which is carried by the literary language. And after the late Qing Dynasty, the country's decline, foreign powers abuse, so that once proud of the country's people's self-confidence was shaken, which, first and foremost, is the cultural self-confidence of the shaken. Suffering from the reason of "sudden weakness", so all the grievances on the tradition, driven by this mentality, the tradition is no longer regarded as a treasure, but has become the object of attack. As the main carrier of traditional culture, the literary language is bound to bear the brunt of the impact.

It can be said that the darkness of the society, the peril of the nation, the weakness of the country created the crisis consciousness of that generation, and the irrationality of this crisis consciousness formed a so-called concept, that is, "the backwardness of culture". The formation of this idea, inspired by Huang Zunxian to "my hands write my mouth", Qiu Tingliang claimed that "advocating the vernacular and abolition of the literary language", can be said to have opened the vernacular language movement of the precedent.

Originally, reflecting on history is a normal reaction in any era, and a necessary step in the development and progress of traditional culture. But if the responsibility for the country's downfall is shifted to the tradition, it creates an extremely irresponsible attitude toward history, and as for letting the vernacular language share the blame, it is even more incomprehensible. However, due to the possible danger of the death of the country, rational treatment of traditional culture has become the most difficult for the people of China to accept the behavior of any sober thinking will be denounced as reactionary ideas must not be manifested, while the representation of patriotic radicalism has gradually become the mainstream of the thinking of the Chinese society. [

(2) Aristocratization of the Written Language to Commonerization

When reviewing the historical entanglements between the literary language and the vernacular language in the previous article, we analyzed how the literary language went step by step towards "separation of language and writing". Since Chinese characters belong to ideographs, phonetic differences do not hinder people's reading comprehension, so the inconsistency between words and texts has not attracted enough attention from the very beginning. With the further change of history and the constant change of people's daily communication, this inconsistency became more and more serious, so that as a kind of written language, it became more and more distant from the people, and still detached from the daily life, and existed only as a kind of identity of the upper class in the official telegrams and notices. And this inevitably caused more and more strong dissatisfaction of the general civilian class. Lu Xun once said, "Our Chinese text, for the masses, in addition to the identity, economic restrictions, but also to add a high threshold: difficult, across, is the Shi Da Fu, and these Shi Da Fu, and make every effort to make the text even more difficult, because it can make him special dignity."

Before the new literature, the hierarchical conception of literature ( literary literature and vernacular literature) and the hierarchical conception of society (the scholarly, the intellectual and the common people) were y rooted. In literature, the literary language and literature were honored, and the vernacular literature was the literature of the common people, which was inferior. In contrast, there was a social hierarchy of scholars, intellectuals and commoners. Even reformers such as Liang Qichao, who advocated vernacular literature, insisted that "there are groups of things, and there are classes of people". This " unequal hierarchical conception" of literature and society is the reason why the vernacular language movement could not achieve significant success before the New Culture Movement.

In the new culture movement, "new youth" fighters profoundly criticized the feudal aristocratic nature of the vernacular language, advocating the establishment of a society and the whole nation *** through, *** enjoy and *** with the " national language of literature ". One of the revolutionary achievements of the " May 4th New Literature " is " to return the literary rights monopolized by the privileged class to the hands of the broadest social civilians ".

(3) Matching of content and form

One of the distinctive features of the new culture of the May Fourth is the fitting relationship between content and form. It was difficult for the traditional literary texts to reflect modern life and to accurately express the ideological content of democracy and science. While the content of the new culture was being formed, its formal aspects were also formed accordingly. The emergence of the vernacular symbol system was both a vehicle for the new culture and one of the signs of the division between the old and the new culture in this period.

One of the contents of the new culture was democracy, the core of which was individuality. Chen Duxiu, in his article "The Way of Confucius and Modern Life," attributed the Western democracy that he respected to a kind of "individualism"[5]. That is, advocating the liberation of individuality, advocating spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom first requires the freedom of its form of expression, because the freedom of thought depends on the freedom of language form, so the free content of the new culture objectively requires a free style to adapt to it. This is somewhat analogous to McLuhan's theory - the form of the medium determines the content of its communication. And in the direct sense of democracy, which is a socio-political form that appeals to the will of the majority, it inevitably requires a popularization of the form of language, tilted toward the people, and mastered by the people.

The vernacular language was the everyday language of the people as an oral language before it was written. It was active at the level of daily life of the society, which was distinctly different from the vernacular language, which was high above this level, and, moreover, the vernacular language was more lucid and clear than the vernacular language. The vernacular language is more selective than the vernacular language in the relationship between words and phrases, and it has more freedom than the vernacular language in terms of both grammatical rules and stylistic organization. For example, the new vernacular poems were freer than the strict metrical poems, the new diversified prose was more diffuse than the old prose with fixed forms, and the new novels of various genres were not as monolithic as the chapter book novels. The vernacular language as a form of new culture achieved extremely important cultural results. It ushered in a generation of new literature and laid the foundations of the modern novel, poetry and prose. Modern literary styles and modern scientific genres all trace their origins to it.

Whichever way you look at it, the new culture and the vernacular language complemented each other at that time.

From these perspectives, the New Youth did have a great role in promoting the vernacular language, but from the perspective of the development of history as a whole, the vernacular language can be said to be a kind of historical necessity at that time to replace the vernacular language.

The existence of these reasons makes the new cultural movement in a battle, the literary language lost, but does this mean that the literary language from now on so disappeared in the history of the old pile of paper? From Baidu Knowledge