Create high-quality Chinese
Han Shaogong
(This article is the author's 2016 speech at Tsinghua University)
"I think he's become a new-age barbaro, talking non-stop day and day, but he's dumb. That is to say, he was dumbfounded about the most important, most heartfelt, and most emotional thing about himself. In fact, we all have to be vigilant: we must not become barbarians of the civilized age, do not become gibberish or difficult to speak. --Han Shaogong
Language should be able to express the truest and subtlest of psychology
There is a word in Greek: barbro, which refers both to barbarians and to stuttering that cannot speak. In the eyes of the Greeks, language is the symbol of civilization – if we do not have high-quality Chinese, we cannot talk about Chinese civilization at all. So what is quality Chinese?
In my opinion, a good language does not equal a strong language, not a popular language. High-quality language must have strong parsing ability, and second, it must have strong descriptive ability.
The former supports man's intellectual activity, while the latter supports man's perceptual activity. A person who usually speaks should be "reasonable", that is, the unity of intellect and sensibility.
I've been an editor for many years, and I don't like editors to write big words and empty words on manuscripts. "This one is well written", "This one is very written with a sense of the times", "This one is very avant-garde". What do you mean? What is "good"? What is "sense of the times" or "avant-garde"?
The person who writes these big words may have some thoughts in their hearts, but they can't analyze them; they may have feelings in their hearts, but they can't describe them, so they have to casually find some big words to perfunctory. Once he is so perfunctory, his thoughts and feelings will be rough and chaotic, blunted and degenerated.
Once a nation becomes so perfunctory, its civilization will fail. I've said to some of my editor friends: Don't you hate it most when bureaucrats talk on stage? If you yourself are accustomed to empty talk, you are no different from the bureaucracy.
We can forgive a child for speaking in a big and general way: it is either "good" or "bad", either "good" or "bad", because the child has no civilization to speak of, and is only half an animal. But a person with a mature civilization, a nation with a mature civilization, should be good at expressing his truest and most subtle psychology. Language performs this function.
We cannot ask all of them to speak accurately and vividly. Clichés are everywhere, and it should be said that it is a normal situation in a society.
However, intellectuals represent the grade height of social civilization and should assume a responsibility to continuously enhance the analytical and descriptive ability of the Chinese language. It is at this point that we cannot say that the vernacular is done. The development of vernacular literature to this day may only be the first step.
▍ Modern Chinese basically imitates English grammar
At least, many of us still lack the consciousness of language at the moment. Our rational understanding of the Chinese language is still shrouded in the shadow of blind Europeanization, without its own face, and even less in its own creation. Modern Chinese grammar is based on Ma's Wentong, which basically copies English grammar. This copy cannot be said to be without merit.
Chinese does learn a lot from English, not only learning the "she" we mentioned earlier, but also learning tense expressions, such as the widespread use of "on", "on", "over": "on" is when it is carried out, "up" is when it is completed, and "over" is the past tense. This use makes up for the lack of logical regulation of Chinese, and some of the advantages of English are limitedly absorbed and digested.
There are many more examples of this. But the Chinese foot does not fully apply to the English grammar shoe. Most of our current Chinese studies are still in a state of flux. Let's look at the sports report in the newspaper: "The Chinese team defeated the American team", which means that the Chinese team won; "the Chinese team defeated the American team", which also means that the Chinese team won.
This must confuse foreigners: "victory" and "defeat" are obviously a pair of antonyms, how did they become synonymous with you? In fact, this phenomenon of non-grammar, inverse grammar, and hypergrammatical is common in Chinese.
Chinese is often heavy on the sense of language and light on grammar, or in other words, it is a sense of language instead of grammar. For example, here, "big", the emotion comes up, the sense of language comes up, then whether it is "win" or "lose", it is a victory, and the meaning will not be misunderstood.
For example, in Chinese, ranking and duality are most likely to appear. If you go to the countryside, the biggest literary activity in China is to write couplets, which should be said to be unique in the world. Some couplets are so well written wow, you have to admire.
But English theory certainly does not pay much attention to duality, because the syllables of English words are uneven and it is not easy to form duals. English only has the so-called accent and light ordering, and there is no four-tone variation of Chinese.
It is said that there are also thirteen variations in Cantonese, which form a terrible test for our ears. Obscure poetry has a representative poet many. Once he said to me: He once recited poems in the Library of London, England, and an old gentleman who did not understand Chinese, but was very excited to hear it, and afterwards told him that he did not expect such a beautiful language in the world.
This old gentleman was fascinated by the change in tone of the Chinese language, and felt that the depression and frustration of the Chinese language was simply music. From this, it is not difficult to understand that Western language theory will not be concerned enough about syllable symmetry and vocal rhythm changes, and there will be no theoretical results in these aspects. If we parrots learn to tongue, in many ways we will hold the golden rice bowl and beg for food.
There are also idiomatic allusions. I once wrote an article saying that the number of idioms and allusions is a major tradition in The Chinese language. A peasant can also export the canon of the chapters, but if the interpreters translate these idioms into foreign languages, as soon as they listen, their heads will be too big to translate.
It should be said that other languages also have idioms, but because Chinese is centered on characters, it has lasted for thousands of years without interruption, so it has formed a huge storage of idiom allusions, which cannot be compared with other languages. Each allusion is a story, with a complete context, with complete characters and plots, basically a condensation of a literary work.
"Neighbor steals axe", "cover your ears and steal the bell", "carve a boat and ask for a sword", "cut enough to fit", "pull out seedlings to help grow"... These idioms are almost all satirical subjectivism, but the Chinese language does not value what doctrine, does not value abstract rules, always guides speakers to avoid conceptual systems, and only uses practical cases, or even vivid and interesting stories, to promote thoughts and feelings.
Isn't that a bit wordy? Is it too literary? Maybe. But this takes into account the diversity of life practices and the differences in specific contexts, constantly reducing abstraction to concreteness and leading the general to the individual. In this respect, Chinese is more like one of the most "postmodern" philosophical styles, a particularly fashionable avant-garde language.
▍ Create a grammar theory that is more suitable for Chinese
This evening, we are talking about the characteristics of the Chinese language. But if you think about it roughly, you can also know that Chinese is different from English, and it is impossible to be the same as English. Therefore, the Chinese language urgently needs a suitable theoretical description, and it needs to use a new theoretical innovation to liberate itself and develop itself.
In fact, "Ma's Wentong" is only a part of English grammar. I read an English grammar book, which is a small dictionary. What I am particularly curious about is that in this professional dictionary, "symbolism", "romanticism", "realism", "typical environment and typical character", etc., are listed as entries.
Is this also some grammatical concept? Why shouldn't it? In language activities, grammar, rhetoric, and stylistic style cannot be completely separated, but are integrated. Grammar is rhetoric, the sum of stylistic, and even linguistic experience.
This statement is too far from the definition of many of our textbooks, and may make us despair, and many stereotypical grammar experts despair: Where does this vast combination of linguistic experiences begin? But I prefer to believe that in order to create a grammar theory that is more suitable for the Chinese language, we must overthrow the hegemony of grammar, especially the hegemony of foreign grammar, and liberate all kinds of living experiences in our language practice.
The vast sea of poetry, word theory, and literary theory in Chinese history actually contains many language theories with Chinese characteristics, but these valuable resources have been ignored by us.
Saussure, a famous Swiss linguist, wrote a "General Linguistics Course", which made pioneering contributions to Western modern linguistics, including the creation of many new concepts.
Ferdinand de Saussure was recognized by later scholars as the founder of structuralism and the founder of modern linguistic theory. Sophie was the father of modern linguistics, and he shaped linguistics as an independent discipline with great influence.
He did not know Chinese, and although he mentioned Chinese, he left it blank and left room for it, so when he talked about language and writing, he focused on language; when talking about the synchronicity and diachronic nature of language, he mainly talked about synchronicity. He believes that "language is changeable and words are conserved".
So what is the most conserved language in the world? Chinese, of course. If Chinese cannot enter his field of vision and become his research material, he can only leave a blank space.
Interestingly, many of us often don't pay attention to this gap when we talk about Saussure. After his "General Linguistics Course", Chinese should have written a "General Philology Course", but this task has not been completed so far.
Saussure has a characteristic that is very good at analogy in the article. For example, he uses a chessboard as a metaphor for context. He believes that each word itself has no meaning, and that this meaning is determined by the other pieces on the board, by the sum of the relationships between the pieces.
"He" refers to everything before "it" appears, but after "it" appears, it can only refer to the generation. Similarly, "he" refers to everyone before "she" appears, but after "she" appears, he can only refer to men. And all that. This is how the meaning and function of the pieces change as other pieces increase or decrease.
Here, the chess game reflects the synchronic relationship, and the constant change of the chess game reflects the diachronic relationship. It's a very wonderful metaphor that impressed us.
▍ Chinese chess game
So what kind of chess game is Chinese in at the moment? How have the three resources of loanwords, folk languages, and old Chinese changed since the Vernacular Movement?
After the vernacular movement, after nearly a century of cultural conflict and integration, is it possible that these three resources will be more optimally combined and utilized? Do resources, including literary language, need to get out of the cold palace and re-enter our vision? These are all problems.
At present, television, radio, mobile phones, the Internet, newspapers and books, and various language carriers are achieving explosive scale expansion, making people's language activities unprecedentedly frequent and violent.
Some say it was an age of language. In fact, in my opinion, it is also an era of language crisis, an era of language garbage everywhere. We can't take it lightly.
I heard someone say yesterday: "I'm so happy", "I'm so impressed". Is this something you learned from a Taiwanese TV movie? Even some college students are saying it, right? It's a crap. What does "good" mean? What's good about being "good"? What else is "happy" is a completely sick sentence.
Does "first time" make more sense than "as soon as possible", "as soon as possible", "immediately"? "Making love" is also very popular at the moment, which really makes me disagree. This is not as good as the "cloud rain" in the text. Do work, do sales, do logistics, do bread, "love" is also like this with the induction certificate busy make out?
I have a friend, a middle-aged man, who is a rich boss. He told me not long ago that one day he had read a bland reminiscence essay in the newspaper at noon, and suddenly he was crying in his office. He couldn't explain his crying afterwards, not only did he not have the right language to describe his feelings, but at the beginning he had no language to think about what was wrong with him.
I think he has become a new era barbaro, talking non-stop day and day, but he has become a mute in the eyes. That is to say, he was dumbfounded about the most important, most heartfelt, and most emotional thing about himself.
In fact, we all have to be vigilant: we must not become barbarians of the civilized age, do not become gibberish or difficult to speak.
This article is the author's speech at Tsinghua University in 2016, the original title is "Creating Quality Chinese", only represents the author's views, welcome to share personally, please contact the copyright owner for media reprint.