Are the words spoken in ancient life the same as those spoken in ancient Chinese?

Classical Chinese is written, but spoken Chinese is not. According to Gao Benhan's textual research, the spoken language of China people in the Tang Dynasty was close to today's Minnan dialect (Taiwanese), and the spoken language in the Song Dynasty was close to today's Cantonese.

Putonghua, which we use now, was gradually formed after the Ming Dynasty.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh were both popular in the north, and both were written in the northern mandarin system at that time. These two books were originally storytellers' story books, and many scholars participated in them in the process of gradually forming. The specific author is controversial, but it is still inconclusive whether it is Luo Guanzhong or Shi Naian.

Today's popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms was annotated by Mao Zonggang and Jin Shengtan. Water Margin has also been revised by Jin Shengtan. So it is different from the original author or other versions.

As for the style of writing, many people pass it around, and it's hard to say who made it.

Ps: Classical Chinese is written language, while vernacular Chinese is spoken language. Spoken English is not on the table, but it is used for general daily communication. Therefore, when Hu Shi advocated vernacular Chinese, Lin Shu said it was "driving to sell pulp".

Ancient classical Chinese is not far from vernacular Chinese.

Zhou (Professor, Institute of Historical Geography, Fudan University)

The prelude of the May 4th New Culture Movement is the literary revolution, and the important content of the literary revolution is to advocate vernacular Chinese, so it is generally believed that there is a huge gap between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, and it has always been like this. This view makes sense if we compare ancient historical documents with a few vernacular literary works that have survived. This can be clearly seen by referring to Hu Shi's History of Vernacular Literature and Zheng Zhenduo's History of China Vernacular Literature. In addition, today we can see that the Zhu Pi left by Emperor Guangxu has changed from vernacular to classical Chinese. When Guangxu was ten years old, he had begun to learn to read the paper. One of Zhu Pi's comments originally said, "How should you be a governor?" Later, it was written in fine print, "You are from Xinjiang ...", which is a typical material from so-called spoken life to elegant classical Chinese. Look at the vernacular tablet in Yuan Dynasty again. The monument erected by Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in Confucius' Mansion was ordered by the emperor's government, but it was completely in vernacular Chinese, which was completely different from the imperial edicts in classical Chinese contained in historical books. This really proves the great difference between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese. However, from the ancient Qin and Han dynasties, there may not be such a big difference between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese. In other words, most ancient people spoke elegantly, and there was little difference between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese.

Although the ancient vernacular materials are not easy for us to get today, we can get a glimpse of the ancient people's words from the dialects spoken today because the southern dialects retain the form of ancient Chinese. Take Xiamen dialect as an example. Many spoken languages in daily life are classical Chinese. For example, the most common greeting in China is "Have you eaten?" Xiamen dialect only says "Have you eaten?" . Ask people, "Is there?" Xiamen dialect only needs to say "is there?" If you ask in detail, "Is it true or false?" Xiamen said, "Is there any suppression?" The usage of the word "suppression" here can only be read in classical Chinese, such as "or", but it is used in Xiamen's out-and-out spoken language today. Therefore, I am afraid that the classical Chinese we studied hard in ancient literature was actually what we said at that time. If we think the above example is too simple, we can give some more complicated examples. Xiamen people criticize people who rush, and often say, "You must learn to fly before you learn to fly." In other words, before you learn to walk, you must learn to fly. The word "never" is a typical classical Chinese, but it is said in Xiamen. Then there is the popular pop song "What if you can't sell wine and coal gangue?" Almost all people in non-Fujian dialect areas don't know what this means, but Xiamen people understand it very well. Do you have any empty wine bottles? The meaning of. Putting the word "Wu" at the end of a sentence and using the word "if" are all expressions of classical Chinese, but they are still used in today's spoken dialects, which shows that classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese are not far apart in ancient times. Of course, Xiamen people themselves don't realize that what they are saying is actually ancient classical Chinese, because there are so few people who "hold back" now? Promise? Blocking? Hey, Bree? Times? Ing [ing], even the speaker himself doesn't know what these words are. Other dialects have similar phenomena, not to mention many.

During the May 4th Movement, the criticism of traditional culture was fierce. Prophets think that classical Chinese is something created by rulers to fool ordinary people, and even think that the difficulty of learning and recognizing Chinese characters is intentional, so some people advocate throwing Chinese characters into the toilet. In fact, to be fair, the difference between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese and the complexity of Chinese characters are originally a natural development process of language and writing. In other words, with the development of society, there are more and more things to describe, more and more feelings to express, and the language and characters have changed from simple to complex. In ancient times, most of them were monosyllabic words, that is, one word. In order to express more connotations, Chinese characters are first added, followed by disyllabic words and even more monosyllabic words; The same is true of spoken English. The simpler the text, the more confusing it is. Therefore, when using words, not only syllables are added, but also expressions are changed. These changes are not only due to the development of Chinese itself, but also related to external influences. After Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the introduction of oriental Buddhist culture, the number of disyllabic words increased significantly. The continuous migration of northern grassland nationalities to the south will inevitably have an impact on oral expression. People want to talk anytime and anywhere, but they don't have to write articles all the time. Obviously, spoken language changes quickly and written language changes slowly. So gradually, the distance between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese is getting bigger and bigger, so that later, classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese are obviously two roads.

In fact, the classical Chinese itself has not changed. We only need to look at the gap between the articles in Shangshu and Xinmin Sports in the late Qing Dynasty, but this change is nothing compared with the changes in the vernacular. After the distance between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese has gradually increased, there have been differences between literati and illiterate, upper class and ordinary people. People who can speak and write classical Chinese are naturally superior to those who can only speak vernacular Chinese but can't write classical Chinese, so artificial differences further widen the distance between dialects and vernacular Chinese. Vernacular writing did not come into being from the May 4th Movement. Many people wrote spoken English in the late Qing Dynasty. The great achievement of the New Culture Movement is that the classical Chinese quickly withdrew from the historical stage and became the unity of the vernacular Chinese in 20 or 30 years. Now the difference between written language and spoken language has almost disappeared, but there are no more people who can write elegant words. It is said that the revision of Qing history will be put on the agenda. I don't know whether to write in classical Chinese or prose.