"Mandarin can take us far, and dialects can make us remember where our roots are." This sentence is used to explain why the dialect should be preserved.
Mandarin can indeed take us far, this is a truth from ancient times to the present day. Although there was no word for "Mandarin" in ancient China, a common language with a similar function – such as "Mandarin" – has existed since ancient times. As early as more than 2,000 years ago in the Zhou Dynasty, "Yayan" was the Mandarin of Chinese at that time.
There is a passage in "Historical Records: Wu Taibo's Family" that is recorded like this:
In four years, Wu made Ji Za hire in Lu, please watch Zhou Le. For the song Zhou Nan, Zhao Nan. He said: "Beautiful, the foundation, not yet." Be diligent and not complaining. "Ge Shao, Hu, Wei. He said: "Beautiful, deep, and those who are worried but not sleepy." I heard that Uncle Wei Kang and Wu Gong's virtue is like this, is it his Wei Fenghu? ”
Spring and autumn musical instruments
Ji Za is the son of Wu Wang Shoumeng, Wu Guoma, should belong to today's Jiangsu. He, a native of Jiangsu, went to Lu on a business trip, which is today's Shandong, to listen to music, so Lu Guo gave him a concert to welcome his arrival. Jiza was very satisfied with the concert, and on a whim, he also commented on the songs sung.
From this record, we can draw two conclusions: First, the nobles all knew "Mandarin". The second is that the music at that time was sung in "Mandarin".
For the nobles who were divided into different places, mastering the lingua franca of Yayan was a necessary skill for them.
If a nobleman does not know "Mandarin", let alone conduct diplomacy between countries, even with other nobles in the country, if the fief is far away, I am afraid that he will not be able to communicate. Even, getting married and enjoying music can be a problem.
Why is mastering "Mandarin" a necessary skill for nobles? In addition to the fact that the nobility has such practical needs, the most important premise is that the nobility has personal freedom and can run around for business trips. A slave is confined to a fixed place to work every day, and he does not even have personal freedom, and he has no chance to use Mandarin after learning it.
However, it is not only the aristocracy that can learn "Mandarin", for the "taxi" who need to look for jobs to sell themselves, just like today's college students who do not pass the English level 4 and cannot get a graduation certificate, they cannot learn "Mandarin", they cannot get the qualification to go out.
In the "Analects", it is said, "Zisuo Yayan, "Poems", "Books", and "Executions" are all Yayan. ”
Confucius was a native of Shandong, and he usually spoke the dialect of his hometown, but when he read poems and books, he used "Mandarin"; When saluting people, they also use "Mandarin".
Why?
Because these are also essential skills for nobles. Confucius taught his son that he should learn "Poems" and etiquette well, "If you don't learn poetry, you can't speak; If you don't learn etiquette, you can't stand. "The nobles have been learning poetry and etiquette since they were young, if you don't know this set of things, you can't understand what the nobles say, you don't know how to do things, you can't enter the aristocratic circle, and naturally you won't find a good job.
As a taxi attached to the aristocracy, in order to find a good job, it is necessary to master "Mandarin".
In order to find a job, Confucius spent more than ten years in the talent markets of Shandong, Henan, and Hubei to sell himself, leaving us with the idiom of "traveling around the world". If he could only speak the dialect of Qufu, Shandong, I am afraid that he would not be able to leave Shandong at all.
Su Qin, a famous columnist, if he could only speak Luoyang, Henan and couldn't speak "Mandarin", how could he lobby the princes of the Six Kingdoms, talk and laugh with them, and they were overjoyed, and finally wore the seal of the Six Kingdoms, and recited two lines of poetry at that time?
So, there is nothing wrong with "Mandarin can take us far".
"Tongues allow us to find our roots" also makes sense.
When I was in college, my classmates came from all over the world, and they usually chatted together, and everyone spoke Mandarin. Although some of the students have a slight accent in Mandarin, they can basically understand it. If you don't distinguish that accent carefully, it feels like everyone is the same, and you can't tell who is from where. However, as long as they talk to their families on the phone, they can immediately know where they come from when they speak in dialects from all over the world.
I am in favor of saying that dialects are our roots, the "living fossils" of local culture, so they should be protected. But in order to preserve our roots and avoid the extinction of dialects, I want to oppose the idea of letting dialects into the classroom and letting children learn them, as a certain southern city did.
Dialects deserve to be preserved, but not to be studied, and natural extinction is the best outcome of it.
So, don't we want our roots?
I don't think it's a question of whether you want it or not, but in the face of the general trend, don't use your mantis arm as a car needlessly.
How did such a thing as a dialect come about? At the extreme, we say that tongues themselves are a product of isolation. People in one place do not leave their homeland to go to other places, and people from other places do not come to this place. Then, this place will naturally form a very distinctive dialect that belongs to the local people. Therefore, the basis for the existence of dialects is the stability of being born, growing up, and dying in Si. In a society where many people never leave the village where they grew up, there is no question of dialects dying out.
But it is very realistic that since the dialect is now facing the problem of extinction, it means that the basis of its existence has changed, and the movement of population has dealt a fatal blow to the dialect.
"Mandarin can take us far, while dialects allow us to find our roots." I said it above, and these two sentences make a lot of sense. But the reality is that today we have left our hometowns and gone farther and farther to study, work, travel and live in other places. On the other hand, there are many outsiders who have left their hometowns and come to our hometowns to study, work, travel and live.
This is no longer the era of the past when you were born somewhere and you can only stay where you are for the rest of your life, the relaxation of restrictions on population movement, the transportation in all directions, the promotion of Mandarin, and the development of the economy, all of these factors have intensified the flow of Chinese mouths. As a result, we have become outsiders who have left our hometowns, and our hometowns are full of outsiders.
Language is used to use, and when we speak in tongues, tongues live; When we communicate more and more closely with outsiders and between outsiders and us, Mandarin is used more and more frequently, and it belongs to the unique dialect of each of us, and it is an unstoppable trend to disappear.
The "13th Five-Year Plan" outline mentions that it is necessary to accelerate the urbanization of the agricultural transfer population and accelerate the construction and development of urban agglomerations.
"Tongues are our roots."
The reality is that more and more peasants will leave their hometowns and move into the cities to become citizens. For these new citizens, the most important thing in order to survive is to learn Mandarin to communicate with outsiders. For those who can't go back to their hometown, their hometown is gone, and the dialect has no soil for survival. We can't drive them back to the countryside in order to protect their "roots".
The reality is that the half-hour economic circle, the one-hour economic circle, and the three-hour economic circle have made many of us born in city A, work in city B, and then live in city D. For us, instead of having to learn the local dialect in one place in order to protect our "roots", it is better for everyone to speak Mandarin, so that the cost of communication is low.
"Finding our roots" is not without sensationalism, but, as the folk proverb "the tree dies, the man lives", the root is a thing that is fixed by nature, and it cannot be separated from the ground under our feet, and it will die if it is moved. Today, we have to move around in order to live.
As the "living fossils" of local cultures, dialects, which are dying, are of course necessary for specialized conservation and research. However, there is no need to let everyone learn for the sake of protection. After all, in order to protect the giant pandas, there is no reason for one person to raise one.