Chinese characters have a long history, since the Oracle period has been used to the present, carrying the history of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, precipitating the most brilliant civilization of mankind. Nowadays, more and more countries have noticed the ingenuity of Chinese characters and appreciated the charm of Chinese, and more and more people have begun to learn Chinese and actively understand the mysterious oriental civilization.
However, the Chinese characters we are proud of have almost become strings of letters like English. In the process of Chinese character reform, some people once claimed that Chinese characters were sinful, "difficult to read, difficult to write, hindering the popularization of education and the dissemination of knowledge", so it was necessary to abolish Chinese characters, use pinyin instead, and turn Chinese characters into Latin.
Folk legend has it that when chinese characters were about to become pinyin, a linguist named Zhao Yuanren stood up and wrote a "History of Shi's Lion Eater", the full text of which is as follows:
"Shi Shi, the poet of the stone room, loves lions, and swears to eat ten lions." Shi Shi is always suitable for the city to see the lion. At ten o'clock, suitable for ten lions suitable for the city. It is time to adapt to the city of Shi Shi. Shi Shi regarded it as the Ten Lions, and the Ten Lions died. The clan is a corpse of ten lions, a suitable stone chamber. The stone chamber is wet, and the clan makes the stone chamber. Stone chamber swab, Shi Shi's first trial food is the corpse of ten lions. When eating, the first consciousness is the corpse of ten lions, and the corpse of ten stones of lions. Trial release is a thing. ”
The article has a total of 96 words, and all the pronunciations are "shi".
This story may be familiar to everyone, but it is nothing more than the "villain" Qu Qiubai wants to turn Chinese into Latin, and the righteous hero Zhao Yuanren strongly opposes it. But this is not the case, and it may even subvert everyone's cognition.
At that time, Zhao Yuanren's "History of Shi's Lion Eating" was published in newspapers, saying that he meant that pinyin was of limited use.
Later, Zhao Yuanren clarified that it may be that he did not make it clear during the interview, and the views published in the newspaper were exactly the opposite of his actual ideas.
Zhao Yuanren supported the reform of Chinese characters and also hoped to implement Chinese character pinyin. What he meant by writing this article was that only under certain circumstances would pinyin be inexpressible and could not replace Chinese characters. But this is rare, and only those who deliberately drill the tip of the bull's horn can give counterexamples.
He believes that Roman pinyin can be put into use first, in most cases it can replace the use of Chinese characters, only a few cases can not be replaced, such as when translating certain texts.
Romaji pinyin is used to replace the vernacular, although there are some limitations, and it is not too late to refine it later. Anxious to change the current situation of illiteracy in China, Zhao Yuanren hoped to implement The Pinyinization of Chinese characters as soon as possible and get Chinese out of illiteracy as soon as possible.
He felt that there would definitely be people who were stubborn and came up with some special examples to oppose pinyinization, saying that pinyin was not practical. He satirized these opponents by giving an example of how dysfunctional it was to be unable to pinyinize the article.
Contrary to expectations, the actual effect of the article is exactly the opposite of his original intention, and many people have misunderstood his meaning. Newspapers say he believes pinyin has limitations, that the public thinks he is opposing pinyinization, and that until now, some people believe that Zhao Yuanren is on the opposite side of Chinese character pinyin.
Mr. Qian Wenzhong commented: Zhao Yuanren may only care about fun, but forget that he is an advocate of Hanyu Pinyin. If this article is phoneticized, isn't the whole text all "shi"? This proves that Chinese characters themselves have certain particularities and are not suitable for pinyinization.
Qian Wenzhong
Allies argue on the sidelines, constantly looking for examples of how Hanyu Pinyin is feasible. Zhao Yuanren helped his opponents come up with such a good example! "He guessed that he was really having fun, and he couldn't stop, and four years later he actually wrote "YiYi Aunt Medical Epidemic" and "Remembering the Hungry Chicken Jiji Ridge" in this way..."
In addition, there are some things that subvert our cognition: the person who claims that "Chinese characters are evil" is one of the leaders of the May Fourth Movement, Qian Xuantong; it is lu Xun, who shouts that "Chinese characters do not perish, China will perish"; Qu Qiubai, who is made a "villain" by people, actually made a lot of contributions to the reform of Chinese characters.
All the reasons have to start from the Chinese characters themselves.
We all know how difficult it was to learn Chinese when we were young, and today's foreigners also experience this pain when learning Chinese, which is known as the most difficult language in the world to learn.
The hardest part of learning Chinese is Chinese characters, which, unlike other scripts, are among the few ideographs in the world. What is ideograph? It can be roughly understood as a glance at this word to understand its meaning. For example, "one" and "day", these two simple words, even people who do not know Chinese characters can probably guess what the meaning is.
Chinese characters originated from hieroglyphs that focused on ideographic functions, and the "character sounds" and "glyphs" were separated, and it was not unrelated that Chinese characters could be spread in a wide range of regions and passed on throughout a thousand years of history.
Other texts basically do not have this feature, take the more contact with English, we see "one" and can not see the meaning of "one", see "sun" do not know that it means the sun. English words do not directly indicate meaning and are therefore not ideographic.
People who are familiar with English can read a word they don't recognize, even if they don't know what it means. Because the pronunciation of English is in the word, this is called phonetic text.
All the writings in the world can be divided into these two categories, ideographs and epigraphic scripts. At present, there are few ideographs left in use, and Chinese characters are the most used ideographs in ideographs, and they are the most mature writing systems. We are proud to have such a good writing.
Of course, we are now living in an era of prosperity, China has established cultural self-confidence, and we have the courage to say this. More than 100 years ago, China in turbulent times was not so tough.
At that time, countless reformers and revolutionaries were helping China find a way out, all thinking of making China stronger. However, After all, China's literati are only a minority, most of the Chinese people are illiterate people who can't read a single character, and if they want to make the country rich and the people strong, they must let these people learn knowledge and culture.
The characteristics of Chinese characters are so exposed to people that everyone can speak, but for Chinese characters, speaking does not mean that they can write, and it is too difficult to teach them to read. So linguists found a way.
"Instead of making new letters that do not exist, it is better to use the world's common alphabet", some people want to quote the world's common Roman characters and integrate them into the Chinese system. They used the world's 26 letters and wanted to get rid of the Zhuyin alphabet scheme of Chinese characters and the shackles of Chinese character strokes.
They believe that as long as they know which letter reads what sound, people who can speak will basically write. This is true, and today's elementary school students best prove this view, when they encounter words that they cannot write, they use pinyin instead.
To this end, many literary scholars began to advocate the text revolution, Qian Xuantong believes that the text from the ideography to the pronunciation is an evolutionary process, the ancient Chinese characters are already out of date, can not be based on the new era, Chinese characters need to evolve, need to become phonetic characters.
The famous literary scholar Lu Xun once vigorously criticized the "square characters", believing that the square characters were "a sharp weapon of the policy of fooling the people". He said: "The square word itself is a fatal disease ' eat some ginseng' or think of some way 'although it may be able to delay it', but in the end it is irreparable.'"
Mr. Lu Xun's intentions were good, he just wanted to improve the old face of China.
He felt that only by Latinizing Chinese characters could this problem be fundamentally solved, and only then could he grasp the crucial point of the problem. Lu Xun strongly agreed with the Proposal for Latinization, arguing that the Chinese script urgently needed a reform, and that it was necessary to latinize Chinese characters.
In an interview shortly before Mr. Lu Xun's death, he even put forward the view that "Chinese characters do not perish, China must die". At that time, Mao Zedong, who was in the library of Peking University, was infected by the ideas of his benefactor Lu Xun, who wrote in "On New Democracy": "The writing must be reformed under certain conditions. ”
There are too many homophones in Chinese, and in the process of implementing The pinyinization of Chinese characters, there will still be many cases of unclear expression. Like what:
Non-zheng4 shi4 (formal? A regular room? Political affairs? What's the matter? ） Can zhi4 cancer (causing?) govern? ） wei4 What? (For?) feed? ）
Therefore, the literary world has been arguing endlessly about whether Chinese characters can be pinyinized.
Different from the pinyin we are familiar with now, pinyinization refers to the replacement of Chinese characters with pinyin, and only the use of pinyin in the future, no longer using Chinese characters; pinyin is to give Chinese characters Zhuyin, pinyin and Chinese characters coexist, which are two completely different concepts.
At that time, many scholars were advocating pinyin, wanting to abolish the difficult chinese characters that were difficult to learn and understand, so that the process of learning culture was easier for the people. Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun, Zhao Yuanren, Qu Qiubai and others all held this view, but for Chinese characters that have been circulating for thousands of years, the implementation of pinyin is too difficult, and they can only explore little by little.
In fact, Chinese pinyin script has been implemented for a period of time. When Qu Qiubai studied in the Soviet Union, he witnessed the latinization process of the Soviet script, and accordingly formulated the Latin script scheme of Chinese characters, and wrote "Chinese Latinized Alphabet". With this plan, he wrote textbooks for Chinese workers in the Soviet Union and tried to eliminate illiteracy among Chinese workers in the Far East.
The textbook inserts many spaces, corresponding to the following with pinyin, with the intention of replacing the existing Chinese characters with pinyin. The pinyin of that time was different from what it exists today.
For example:
After reading the new text, we should always use the new text to read the book and write letters. When I first started writing, no one could avoid errors. But don't be afraid, keep writing, keep using, and you'll slowly become proficient. Ba sin Wenz nianxui ixou, iao shchang yng sin Wenz kanshu siesin. Gang kaish siedi shxou, shui ie mianbuliao iou cowu. Dansh bu iao xaipa, iao buduandi sie, buduandi yng, iding manmandi xu shuliankilaidi
Although it will look awkward now, this attempt was a great success at the time, and the illiteracy rate of Chinese workers fell sharply. In the end, Pinyin did not replace Chinese characters, but Pinyin still laid the foundation for Hanyu Pinyin and established a successful template.
After the founding of New China, the issue of Chinese character reform has once again aroused people's heated discussion. At the beginning, Chairman Mao believed that the reform of the script will certainly be a long-term process, and that it cannot be carried out in stages in a hurry and can be carried out in stages. In the first stage, Chinese characters must be simplified to facilitate the use of characters in the current stage; in the second stage, a Hanyu Pinyin scheme for spelling Mandarin must be formulated to make the Zhuyin method more perfect.
With this idea at its core, there was a renewed debate, and some people reviewed the previous act of equating Chinese characters with feudal paintings, arguing that even if pinyinization was realized, Chinese characters should be retained. In the end, the character reform established three tasks, that is, to promote Mandarin, simplify Chinese characters, and formulate Hanyu Pinyin schemes that we are familiar with.
Premier Zhou Enlai put forward his own views on this:
As for the future of Chinese characters, 'Is it forever unchanged?' Or is it going to change? Is it a change towards the form of the Kanji itself? Or was it replaced by pinyin characters? Was it replaced by a Phonetic Script in the Latin Alphabet, or was it replaced by another form of Phonetic Script? We are not yet busy drawing conclusions on this issue.
Later, China formulated and implemented the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme, improved the pinyin system, and simplified Chinese characters. Interestingly, in the process of simplifying Chinese characters, the second batch of simplified Chinese characters destroyed the basis for the composition of Chinese characters themselves. Changing "meal" to "歺" and "wine" to "氿" was strongly resisted by the masses of the people and finally abolished.
After experiencing this incident, people are clearly aware of the shining point of the Chinese characters themselves. As a witness to Chinese civilization, the Chinese characters themselves are beautiful and exquisite, carrying the wisdom of their ancestors and cannot be replaced.
At the same time, people realize that ideographs and ideographs are two independent systems, each with its own characteristics, there is no one who is superior and who is inferior, they are juxtaposed, not evolutionary.
The world is beautiful, harmonious and different, and the world has become colorful because of these different cultures. Previously, the Western cannons opened the door of China, and the decadent and incompetent Qing government gradually retreated, giving up China's land and materials. Therefore, many advanced people began to reflect on China's system and Chinese culture, and vetoed chinese characters together. Today, china's national strength is strong, social stability, the people live and work in peace and contentment, standing in the east of the world, the sons and daughters of China no longer doubt the culture that has lasted for five thousand years, but are proud of it and proud of it.
bibliography:
Li Shuyu. The Chinese language does not die, and the Chinese characters do not die
Feng Shouzhong. Zhao Yuanren's "History of Shi's Lion Eating" and the problem of Hanyu Pinyin
Goldenrod. Zhao Yuanren and Qu Qiubai met in the reform of language and writing
Li Siming. The Unfinished Media Revolution: The Latinization movement of Chinese characters in the Republican period
Zhao Xiande. One Lane Three Jie with Hanyu Pinyin Scheme