Source of this article: Mandarin and Mandarin in the 21st Century: Zhou Youguang Elderly Literature
Transferred from: Pragmatics to plant grass
Original title: "Talking about Lanqing Official"
First, I heard LanQing's official words everywhere
In the 1980s, a teacher at the Beijing Language Institute told me that his foreign students had been able to talk freely when they learned Mandarin, and that they Chinese newspapers every day, but they traveled from Beijing to other places during the holidays, could not understand the dialects of Mandarin from other places, and asked to learn Mandarin in dialects. The teacher recorded my conversation as a listening textbook for "Mandarin Wu". I listened to my own recordings, the thick Changzhou earthen cavity, it is really ugly! My wife Zhang Yunhe is from Hefei, and her Mandarin is "Half Jing (Beijing) Half Fat (Hefei)", and my Mandarin is "Southern Dialect Toned to The North". We have been married for 67 years, each speaking Mandarin in our respective dialects.
"Dialect Mandarin" used to be called "Lanqing Mandarin". This is not a language, in fact, it is a plurality of languages, different from place to place, different from person to person, some difficult to understand, some easier to understand, "understandability" varies greatly.
In the early days of "reform and opening up," at a group meeting of the CppcC National Committee, Mr. Zhu Kezhen spoke in his Zhejiang Mandarin, which was so thick that everyone could not understand it, and asked me to be an interpreter. Mr. Zhu sighed and said, "I can walk all over the world when I speak English, I can't go out of my hometown when I speak Chinese, I didn't receive Chinese training when I was young, and the next generation of young people must learn Mandarin as well as I learn English!"
Mr. Yao Dehuai of Hong Kong said that Mr. Liang Qichao spoke a Cantonese dialect. The Guangxu Emperor summoned Liang Qichao, and Mr. Liang said "kao" as "good" and "high" as "ancient", and the Guangxu Emperor listened with his ears sideways, but he still couldn't understand. Later, Mr. Liang lived in Beijing for a long time, but the rural pronunciation was difficult to change; in his later years, when he was lecturing at Tsinghua University, Wang Tongling went to listen to the lectures, and whenever the class arrived, he always did not hear 20% or 30%.
Mr. Shen Congwen's Hunan Mandarin is also difficult to understand. He has lived in Beijing for a long time, but his hometown pronunciation has not changed. He went to the United States to give lectures, and his brother-in-law, Professor Hans Frankel, worked as a translator, but when he encountered a speech that could not understand Shen, he had to explain with his own understanding and replace the translation. Once, I said to Zhang Zhaohe, Shen Congwen's wife, "I can't understand 20% of the words from Wen"; Zhang Zhaohe said, "I only understand 10% of them!" ”
At the National Conference on Character Reform in 1955, Mr. Li Jinxi said to me, "I have advocated Chinese all my life, but I can't lose Hunan Tuyin!" In fact, Mr. Li Jinxi's Hunan Mandarin can be understood by everyone.
Mr. Ye Shengtao's dialect Mandarin has distinct Suzhou characteristics, but everyone can understand it; it can be seen that the square tone features do not necessarily hinder communication.
In 1956, the "Central Working Committee for the Promotion of Putonghua" was established, and the director was Vice Premier Chen Yi, who spoke Sichuan dialect, but everyone could understand it; most of the members of the committee did not change their rural pronunciation, and only a few old Beijingers could speak "Jingyin Mandarin". Some people sneered and said, "I can't say it well, but I still want to promote it!" The committee members said: It is precisely because our generation cannot speak Mandarin well that we advocate that the next generation should learn Mandarin well. Big cities have big dialect Mandarin, and small cities have small dialect Mandarin. "Blue-Green Official Dialect" is not the habit of a small number of people in a few localities, but a widespread existence in most cities and regions across the country.
Second, how the Blue-Green Mandarin was formed
The "Lanqing dialect" is a historical legacy of China. Its actual situation and its formation process need further investigation and study. Here is a little bit of my personal preliminary understanding.
There are three ways to learn a language: (1) from a mother; (2) from a teacher; (3) from a mass.
(1) The language learned in the arms of the mother is called "mother's language", which is the first language of people.
(2) The language learned from teachers can be called "teacher language", which is the second language of people. Auxiliary tools such as radio, audio recording, television, Zhuyin alphabet and pinyin alphabet, which can assist teachers in dictation, are extensions of dictation, are indirect dictation. The "teacher's language" is the "normative common language," which was only developed after the development of modern education in the West in history, and its popularity mainly depends on primary education.
In the 1950s, Mr. Chen Wenbin studied the historical experience of popularizing Chinese in Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868). He told me that in 20 years, the popularization of Chinese in Japan will realize that schools use Chinese as the campus language and public activities use Chinese as the communication medium. The main methods are: Entering primary school first learns oral Chinese, and all newspapers and periodicals and books throughout the country use kana letters. After World War II, the number of commonly used Kanji in Japan was reduced to 1945, and newspapers and books were changed to difficult characters.
In the 1980s, Mr. Liang Rongruo, who had made outstanding achievements in promoting the "Chinese" in Taiwan, came to Beijing. He told me that it took 13 years for Taiwan to basically popularize "Chinese", reaching the point where schools use "Chinese" as the campus language and "Chinese" as the medium of communication for public activities. The method is similar to that of Japan, mainly because primary schools attach importance to oral "Chinese", publish the "Chinese Daily" with all zhuyin and a variety of zhuyin readings, and make full use of radio and Zhuyin letters.
In the 1980s, I visited Singapore twice and learned that they had a bilingual policy of English and Mandarin. After ten years of hard work, they have achieved that "more Chinese and no dialects are spoken in schools, and more Chinese and fewer dialects are spoken in society." The method is to make full use of radio, telephone, television and pinyin alphabets outside of schools. The "Chinese Language Awareness Month" is held once a year, presided over by the Prime Minister.
The above is a successful experience in promoting the "teacher's language".
(3) The third way to learn a language is to learn from the "masses", and the language learned can be called the "language of the masses", which is also the second language of the people.
There are different environments for learning from the "masses". My dialect, Mandarin, was first learned in elementary school, but later moved to Beijing and was influenced by some of the Beijing. In the elementary school I entered 1989, teachers and students from several neighboring small dialect areas read and read and read in dialects. Teachers and students coexist, naturally forming a dialect of the school Mandarin, I unconsciously learned. In 1956, my family moved to Beijing, and there were several nannies from the countryside of Sichuan and Anhui; when they first came, they had difficulty listening to Beijing Mandarin; and soon, because they went to the street stall market every day to buy small vegetables, there were people from the four townships and other places, and my nanny learned the dialect of the vegetable market Mandarin in contact with them, and of course still brought the dialect of Sichuan and Anhui. This is my family's experience of learning mandarin in dialects from the "masses".
Learning mandarin in dialects from the "masses," "no teachers, no textbooks, no teaching plans," and "three noes" are all inadvertently obtained in the contact of daily life. "Dialect Mandarin" has local vague norms in various places, and they can be roughly understood by each other, which is the so-called "ordinary Mandarin."
In the Chinese tradition, the emphasis on writing and light language, the book is the same as the language and the pronunciation is different, there is writing education, there is no language education, and it is proud to be able to "talk in writing" and not ashamed to be unable to "talk orally." Chinese characters have "supra-dialectality" and are pronounced differently in different places, which also helps the formation of "Lanqing Dialect". "Supra-dialectality" is the disadvantage of writing, but we regard it as an advantage.
Since 2000, China's official and scholar-doctor classes, for the sake of administrative needs, have naturally formed a common language of the official office, called "official dialect". There are no strict standards for mandarin. There has always been no formal oral language teaching, and intellectuals have inadvertently learned the so-so "Blue QingGuan dialect" in different environments.
Dialect Mandarin was not taught in the "Foreign School" after the Xinhai Revolution. By the end, it had been extensively and naturally formed in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Perhaps Old Master Kong's "Yayan" is also the "dialect Mandarin" of Shandong.
Chinese early days of the movement, it was believed that the promotion of Chinese only required everyone to be able to understand each other's words, and as for setting a strict standard, it was not only inadmissible, but also practically unnecessary. This is the theory of "Blue Qing Official Dialect" that was popular in the early years of the Republic of China. Later, after practice, it was known that without a clear standard, it was impossible to pronounce Chinese characters in dictionaries.
Third, the work of pushing and promoting popularization must advance in spite of difficulties
It was seen on television that ordinary Chinese people rarely speak Mandarin. No one can fully understand them while watching TV. Since the Chinese movement, Tuipu has been in a lifetime. To what extent have the grades been achieved?
At the end of 1998, newspapers said that 80% of the population in large and medium-sized cities could speak Mandarin, but it was not known whether this meant "standard Mandarin" or "dialect Mandarin".
The standard for popularization is that the school uses Mandarin as the campus language, and public activities use universal communication as the communication medium. One would like to know how many schools across the country have adopted Mandarin as the campus language. The results of the push need to be explained by statistics.
There are two opposing views of "dialect Mandarin". One is the affirmative view that dialect Mandarin is an objective and extensive existence and should be used as the basis for pushing and popularizing; the other is a negative view, holding that dialect Mandarin is a Mandarin that does not "meet the standards" and that advocating the Lanqing dialect will only hinder the promotion of standardized Putonghua. As far as the masses are concerned, when learning "standardized Mandarin," what they actually get is often "dialect Mandarin." Lanqing Mandarin is an immature Mandarin. This is the so-called "take the law from above, only get the middle." Linguist Mr. Wang Li said: The standards must be consistent, the requirements can be graded, and the learning can be gradual.
Many people say that the Putonghua test standard should not pay too much attention to the phonetic characteristics of "soft, childlike, and inflected". It is said that these linguistic characteristics are gradually weakening in the spoken language of broadcasters and television hosts. Whether this is really the case requires investigative research. The masses are pushing and testing, against academicism. Listening to the opinions of the masses may be conducive to improving work.
The study of the "normative common language" by the whole people is the product of capitalist large-scale production and compulsory education for the whole people. In the feudal era, the people relocated, and the masses did not need to standardize the common language. China is a society that is barely entering the modern era, but it is obsessed with ancient times, and the problems encountered in establishing and promoting a standardized common language are different from those encountered in advanced countries.
The level of achievements in Tuipu is the cold and hot table of education, and the level of achievement in education is the cold and hot table of social development. The work of promoting popularization has a heavy task and a long way to go, and it is necessary to improve methods, strengthen intensity, and forge ahead in spite of difficulties.
February 20, 2001