Bi Fujian inscription for the nine-ball diva Pan Xiaoting: "nine" has no traditional characters, "jiu" is the Chinese character capitalization of the nine, generally only used for account bookkeeping; the traditional characters of "hou" have two "hou" and "hou", the front table orientation, used for "hou, hou, hou palace", the latter is similar to the title grade, used for the empress, emperor Tianhou soil.
One
Language is the most important communication tool of human beings, and writing is the writing symbol of language, the most important auxiliary language tool of human beings. For any tool, human beings require it to be highly efficient. The so-called high efficiency is generally manifested in two aspects:
First, the speed is fast, and the work done in a unit of time is more and done well;
Second, the cost is low, the consumption is small, saving effort and time, and naturally saving money.
The ideal tool that people demand can achieve "how fast and how good to save". People also have this demand for words. We want to have simple writing, simple structure, few strokes, and fast and labor-saving writing; we also want to write clearly, can express the language well, and have high resolution between words, and will not confuse the meaning and hinder communication. It is precisely the requirements of the two aspects that have caused the phenomenon of continuous simplification and multiplication in the history of the development of Chinese characters for 4000 to 5000 years. To simplify, the text should be simple, easy to learn, easy to write, and easy to remember; the text should be clear, the resolution should be strong, easy to recognize, and easy to use.
Due to the long history of Chinese characters, the vast area of use, the large population, the large number of classics recorded with it, the large time span, coupled with the reasons for engraving and schooling, the development of Chinese characters to modern times is very complex: the total number of words is too much, there are too many variant characters, and some character strokes are too much, making people feel difficult to learn, difficult to recognize, difficult to write, and difficult to use. In the first half of the last century, many people with lofty ideals believed that Chinese characters dragged down the country's cultural and educational undertakings, dragged down the development of science and technology, and even affected the economic development and the country's prosperity. They are determined to carry out a revolution in Chinese characters, to carry out Chinese character reform, and to engage in pinyin characters. The motives of these predecessors are unquestionable, they are patriots, they are revolutionaries. However, they only see one aspect of the problem. After the 1840s, our country was bullied and plundered by the imperialist powers, and the three mountains overwhelmed the broad masses of the people. The national strength is weak, the economy is backward, and it is difficult for cultural and educational undertakings to develop. The people are struggling in the depths of the water, and it is not possible to prolong their lives, let alone to read and learn, and improve science and technology? Until the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the number of illiterate people in our country was so astonishing that some people were still proud of themselves as big bosses and cadres of workers and peasants. This shows a truth: Carrying out political revolution and strengthening the economic foundation are the most fundamental problems in developing culture and education, developing science and technology, and solving the problem of literacy and writing. Without considering the fundamental issues of politics and economy, we only blame words for hindering the progress of society, and can only put the cart before the horse. Of course, it is no secret that as an important tool for auxiliary languages, there are advantages and disadvantages, difficulties and difficulties, and there are problems of sorting, improving and even reforming. Writing also has a certain influence on culture and education, scientific and technological progress, and even economic development, but this is not comparable to revolution or reform in the economic base and superstructure.
The difficult problem of Chinese characters is indeed prominent, with many words, many variants, many strokes, complex structure, and easy to change. This will bring some adverse effects to the learning, writing, and use of Chinese characters, as well as the mechanization and informatization of Chinese characters. Naturally, these problems of Chinese characters are not only modern, but have been produced in the history of its development along with its continuous evolution and improvement. Successive governments in china have also done some sorting out and unifying Chinese characters. However, the driving force of simplification work is the spontaneous use and convention of the people. In comparison, the scale, intensity, and remarkable results of the work of sorting out and simplifying Chinese characters carried out after the founding of the People's Republic of China are incomparable to any previous one. In 1952, the Chinese Character Reform Research Committee was established under the Cultural and Education Committee of the Council of Ministers, focusing on the simplification of Chinese characters. In 1953, Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out: "In making simplified characters, we should make more use of grass, find out the law of simplification, make basic shapes, and simplify them regularly." The number of Kanji must also be greatly reduced. Only by simplifying both physically and quantitatively can it be regarded as simplification. In December 1954, the Chinese Character Reform Research Committee was reorganized into the Chinese Character Reform Committee, referred to as the Cultural Reform Committee, directly under the State Council. In January 1955, the Cultural Reform Committee drew up the "Draft Simplified Chinese Characters Program", and in January 1956, the "Chinese Character Simplification Plan" was officially promulgated by the State Council. For the sake of prudence, the simplified words and simplifications in the plan were implemented in four batches from February 1956 to July 1959. In May 1964, the Literary Reform Committee compiled and printed the "Simplified Word General Table". After supplementation and adjustment, the number of simplified words increased from 515 to 2236 in the plan, and in October 1986, with the approval of the State Council, the "Simplified Word General Table" was re-published, and the individual words in the original general table were adjusted.
Two
In the 1950s and 1960s, China's policy of simplifying Chinese characters was stipulated as a convention and made steady progress. Conventional custom is the habit of using simplified characters formed or recognized by the broad masses of the people for a long period of time. It now appears that this policy is basically correct. The vast majority of simplified characters in the "Simplified Scheme of Chinese Characters" and the general table have the basis of convention and custom, and have their stability and universality. The simplification of Chinese characters simplifies the strokes of a considerable number of commonly used Chinese characters, and also reduces a certain number of Chinese characters. This simplification has been basically a success and has been welcomed by the broad masses of our mainland. However, due to the problematic implementation of the guiding ideology of simplifying Chinese characters at that time, it was only a matter of taking the work of simplifying Chinese characters as an "expedient method for the transitional period" (Wu Yuzhang) for reforming Chinese characters and leading to pinyin characters, which became a short-term behavior, and imagined the problem too simply, as if it could realize the pinyinization of Chinese characters relatively quickly, so there was a lack of in-depth and meticulous scientific demonstration of the theories and methods of sorting out and simplifying Chinese characters, the theory and systematization of Chinese characters, the integration of ancient and modern times, the conversion of complexity and simplicity, the coordination at home and abroad, and the symmetry and beauty of the glyphs. Chairman Mao Zedong's instructions stated that the simplification of Chinese characters should include both form and quantity, which is very correct. But it is also necessary to see that in simplification there is a contradiction between glyph simplicity and clarity, a contradiction between too few words and an accurate expression of language, and some simplifications that cause problems in the self-disordered system. The policy of seeking stability is correct, but the implementation of the principle of seeking stability in batches, one or two years, will cause the writing to be in a state of constant change for a considerable period of time, the original system will be destroyed, and the relatively stable new system will not be formed. In December 1977, not long after the promulgation and implementation of the Second Batch of Simplified Chinese Characters (Draft), it was not long after it was notified that its use would be stopped or even abolished, which was caused by its more prominent problems.
To determine a simplified word, you need to consider at least the following three principles:
First, conventions are established.
That is to say, the simplified characters to be determined have universality and stability in the practice of the use of Chinese characters, and have a broad and profound mass base. The vast majority of simplified characters promoted in China in the 1950s and 1960s have the characteristics of conventions, and many of them are long-standing folk characters and simplified characters, so it is easier to implement among the masses. Some of the words in "Erjian" are only used in individual industries or in a certain region, and their prevalence is not strong. Some are simple and simple, newly created by a few people, and lack the basis of convention, so it is difficult to implement in society.
Second, the principle of efficiency.
As mentioned earlier, writing is an important tool, and people will demand it from both the speed and quality of the work it uses. The selection of simplified characters also has this requirement, which requires that the simplified glyphs determined are simple, with few strokes, and that learning and writing are fast and labor-saving; at the same time, they are required to be distinguished from other words, the expression of language is clear, and the recognition and use of words are accurate and convenient.
Third, regularity.
Chairman Mao Zedong's instructions on the simplification of Chinese characters emphasized "finding out the law of simplification" and "simplifying in a regular manner.", which is very important. The production and development of Chinese characters have their own laws, and the creation and change generally have certain reasons, and the development and evolution have a certain system. Of course, the rationale and system are relative, and the systematization of Chinese characters is also constantly evolving and dynamic. The simplified Chinese character system is different from the original traditional Chinese character system. It is not correct to require the development and change of characters not to change the old system at all, for example, we cannot use the "Shuowen Jiezi" system to constrain the evolution of later Chinese characters, nor can we limit the simplification of Chinese characters with the traditional character system. However, on the other hand, the Chinese character system has inheritance in the development, such as in the original system is not broken or less damaged conditions can be developed into a new system, or more inheritance of the original system is better. The stability of the script is strong and the inheritance is high, which is conducive to the use of the script and the inheritance of the previous literature and traditional culture.
Three
By formulating a simplified plan for Chinese characters, the Cultural Reform Association summarized the methods and experiences of creating simplified characters, and divided simplified characters into eight types: 1. False loan characters. Borrowing simple strokes to replace the more complicated homophones or heterophonic words, such as the "face" of the face instead of the flour "麵", the valley "valley" instead of the "榖" of the valley, is a homophone fake loan; the divination "bu" instead of the "蔔" of the radish, the "bucket" of the rising bucket instead of the "bucket" of the struggle, is a different-sounded pseudo-borrowing. 2. Shape and sound. Refers to the simplification of Chinese characters using the principle of shape-sound structure to create characters, which has several situations. A. The original strokes are too complicated to change the strokes to simpler strokes, such as the wind-blowing-squirrel, the dirty-dirty-骯. B. The sound marks of the original characters that are too complicated are changed to simpler strokes, such as jacket-pants, lining-pants, and foundations; there are also more complex shapes and sound marks of the original strokes that are changed to simpler strokes, such as dirty-dirty, shock-surprise. C. The original characters with more complex insequent non-phonological characters are changed to new shaped sound characters with simpler strokes, such as postal-郵, channel-竄. 3. Cursive italics. Refers to the traditional characters of the writing, cursive writing, changed to the form of the script, such as east (east), car (car), shell (bei). 4. Characteristic words. Refers to the use of the characteristic part of the original word to replace the original word, some leave a corner, such as sound (sound), medicine (medicine); some leave half, such as record (record), number (number), Li (Li); some leave most of them, such as reclamation (墾), Yang (Yang), Ji (間). 5. Outline words. Refers to retaining the outline of the original character and omitting some of the strokes, such as halo (鹵), wu (烏). 6. Can mean words. Refers to a word related to the meaning of a few strokes or a side to represent a meaning, constituting a word. Such as dust (dust), pen (pen), tears (tears). 7. Symbolic words. Refers to the original character in the difficult part of the stroke, with simple words and strokes instead, these words and strokes in the word do not represent sound or meaning, only play the role of symbols. For example, use "and" of Han, sigh, hardship, difficulty, joy, view, power, persuasion, only, chicken, drama, Deng, right, and use "no" to return, ring, bad, and nostalgia. 8. Analogous words on the side. Refers to words that are derived from simplified words or side analogies. Such as the army (army), the array (array), the company (company), and the slander (諢).
Among the eight types of simplified characters, cursive italic characters are generally single characters, because they are the original characters of Chinese characters, which can significantly reduce the strokes of the characters and will not increase the number of Chinese characters, which is a better method. But this situation accounts for a small proportion of simplified words. Characteristic characters, contour characters, yi characters, symbolic characters and the like, if they are conventional words that have long been popular, they can reduce the strokes of the words without increasing the number of Chinese characters, which is also a good way. However, there are still some newly created simplified characters in these methods, such as "guide, wei, deng, hit, yan, nong, township, pan", etc., which are simplified as a single word, and the number of words as Chinese characters has not been reduced, and some have broken the original systematization, but it may not be beneficial to learning and recognizing related words. For example, "pan", the first half of the "like" is replaced by "boat", four paintings are missing, but there is more "pan" in the Chinese characters, and it loses the system with "like, moving, scars, and pan"; the word "guide" has no relationship with "Tao"; "Deng" is decoupled from the system of "deng, pedal, stare, hedge, stool, hammer, stirrup, and cheng".
Let's revert to the problem of simplified words in the form of sound words and partial analogy words, as well as pseudo-borrowed words.
As mentioned earlier, the shape-sound word in the simplified word is a word that is simplified according to the principle of shape-sound structure. Morphological sound characters have the side of phonetics and ideograms, and occupy a large proportion in the Chinese character system. Simplifying the simplified characters on the basis of the original shape and sound characters not only maintains the original shape and sound structure, but also has more connections with the original characters in the glyphs, which is convenient for learning and identification. However, in this method, whether it is to replace the original non-form sound characters and newly created shape sound characters or to change the shape and sound characters and sound marks of the original shape sound characters to form a new shape sound word, it is to reduce a traditional character, add a simplified word, but reduce the stroke of the word, and do not reduce the number of words. This is the same as, or even more, the shortcomings of the several methods mentioned earlier.
A partial analogy is a simplified word that uses a simplified side or word as a partial side and component analogy. The third table of the "Simplified Characters General Table" is to use the 54 simplified partial words included in the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" and the 92 simplified characters that can be used as simplified and partial to the supplementary provisions to introduce 1754 simplified characters. Due to the use of analogy simplification methods, a considerable number of Chinese characters in the commonly used Chinese characters have been simplified, and the Chinese characters have been simplified and sorted out to form a new system that is different from the original system. The analogous words in the simplified words are the same as the problems of the previous methods, and they can only reduce the strokes of the words, but cannot reduce the number of words. Abolish a traditional character, add a simplified word that is analogous, the word count has not decreased, in our dictionary, as long as it is simple and complex, it must be accepted, more simplified words than the original when there was no simplification. The newly created simplified characters and analogical simplified characters have added a considerable number of new members to our total Chinese character pool, which is inconsistent with the goal of reducing the total number of Chinese characters in Chinese character simplification.
Analogy simplification also has a scope problem. In the "Explanation" of the 1964 "General Table of Simplified Words", it is pointed out: "The third table contains simplified words obtained by applying the simplified words of the second table and the simplified partial side as the partial side. The total number of Chinese characters is very large, and this table does not have to be listed. ...... Now, in order to meet the general needs, the scope of simplified characters listed in the third table is basically based on the Xinhua Dictionary (the third edition in 1962, only about 8,000 Chinese characters) as the standard. Words not included in the third table should generally be simplified as well as those that use simplified words from the second table or simplified words on the side. "It is very clear that the authorities in charge of the simplification of Chinese characters at that time advocated that there was no scope limit to analogy simplification. The Chinese characters collected in the Modern Chinese Dictionary and Cihai published in the late 1970s were all simplified by analogy, and the revised version of the Xinhua Dictionary in 1980 added a lot of Chinese characters, which were also simplified by analogy. These dictionaries and dictionaries contain only more than 10,000 words, and the number of them does not exceed 20,000. After the 1980s, China wanted to edit and publish large-scale dictionaries and dictionaries, and analogy and simplification were prominent. In October 1986, the Hanyu Da Zidian began to be published, and in its "Fan Cases", it was said: "Simplified characters shall be subject to the words listed in the "Simplified Characters General List" compiled and issued by the Chinese Character Reform Committee. The Hanyu Da Dictionary, which began to be published in November 1986, also said in the "Fan Case" that "simplified characters only have single-word entries" and "simplified characters with notes and purposes, limited to 2236 characters listed in the "Simplified Characters General Table" jointly issued by the Chinese Character Reform Committee, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Education in 1964." That is to say, these two large dictionaries with more words (of which the Hanyu Da Zidian has more than 54,000 words), analogy simplification is limited to the scope of the "general table", and there is no analogy simplification other than that. However, the "Zhonghua Zihai" published in September 1994 collected 85,568 characters, which was more than 30,000 more than the "Great Dictionary", mainly including analogous simplified characters outside the scope of the "Simplified Word List", and even some ancient characters were also by analogy and simplification. The scope of these two kinds of simplified words is also much discussed in the dictionary circles. In recent years, with the establishment of large computer font libraries and the publication of simplified chinese versions of some ancient books, the problem of the scope of analogy simplification has become even more prominent. In our view, analogy simplification need not be limited to the "general table", the scope can be appropriately expanded, but it should not be unlimited. Is it possible to clarify the use of words in the main texts of ancient and modern times, and to clarify the words used in modern place names, and to determine a scope? Some of the rarer words other than this are only used in more specialized ancient books, or are only included in ancient character books, while the words that are not seen in ancient books, and some words cannot be pronounced on the word books, and some are even false characters. Some ancient words that are not used in modern times do not have to be included in the scope at all, and naturally do not have to be simplified by analogy. It is also possible that there will be important documents unearthed in the future, and it is necessary to produce simplified characters, and there will be words outside a certain range, which will be extremely limited, and the scope of analogy simplification can also be slightly adjusted.
The problem with the pretentious loan word. Replacing a word with a simple stroke for a word with a more complex stroke that is phonetically homogeneous or close to the sound is actually not only a substitution, but also a merger. Homophonic substitution is an important way to simplify Chinese characters in the history of the development of Chinese characters. This method not only simplifies the strokes, but also reduces the number of words, which is the most in line with the goal of Chinese character simplification, so it is also the most important attention of the competent departments that originally implemented The simplification of Chinese characters, and is listed as the first method and the preferred method for the simplification of Chinese characters. However, in the use of words, the problems of this method are more prominent. Because it is a homophonic substitution, some are not completely homophonic, which adds meaning to the selected words, and some also adds sounds, which may cause confusion. For example, the word "stem" is common in recent years, the word "stem cell", in which "dry" some people read Yin Ping, some people read the sound, if you do not understand the meaning of the term, it is difficult to determine; translating the place name "Tashkent" in the "dry", CCTV announcer more than one person read as a voice. For another example, I saw a manager's business card, all in traditional characters, the address above "Haidian District Furong Li" in the "Dian" printed as "澱", "Li" printed as "Li"; and some of the "home" characters were unrestrictedly converted into traditional characters into "Dai"; I bought a small folio with exquisite "Analects", typeset in traditional Chinese characters, which was used as a "cloud" in the meaning of speech, without exception, all of which were printed as "yun"; the word "dioxin" that appeared in recent years, because "evil" is a polysyllabic word, the common meaning is negative Therefore, experts insist on using the word "噁" next to the "mouth", but the simplified word list is abolished as a traditional version of "evil". Most of these problems are simplified by homophonic substitution or pseudo-borrowing without clear annotations.
Since the simplification of Chinese characters has been implemented for more than forty years, homophone substitution is an important method used, and the simplified characters it has identified have basically stabilized. It is impossible for us to change many of the simplified words that have been formed by the pseudo-borrowing relationship, but to make appropriate adjustments to the substitution of individual homophones for the complicated and simple relationships that are likely to cause confusion (such as "hou (後), hair (hair), gu (grain), dang (噹), Meng (濛)", etc.), and to explain those originally limited sham loans in general scope to prevent errors in the conversion (such as "dry (dry( dry), bucket (bucket), dian (澱), fan (fan), li (里)", etc.).
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He Qunxiong: The similarities and differences between the script reform and simplified characters in China and Japan
The origin of the problem
The commonality of simplified characters between China and Japan is an old problem. As early as January 1907 (Meiji 47), Kaneko Kentaro and Shuji Izawa initiated the "Unified Chinese Character Association", advocating the unification and improvement of commonly used Chinese characters in Japan, the Qing Dynasty, and Korea. "Kanji has the convenience of transporting the East Asian world" was a reason for opposing the abolition of Kanji in the Meiji era. From this point of view, it can be considered that the common problem of Chinese and Japanese Kanji is as long as the history of character reform. However, although the discussion and preparation for the reform of the script began very early, the national language and writing policy that really became put into practice was very late, and Japan became the use of Chinese characters in 1946, and China was also after liberation. In other words, until the post-war war fifty years ago, because there was no explicit stipulation, there was no clear dividing line between Chinese and Japanese Chinese characters, only some vague differences in customary usage. Therefore, in essence, the differentiation and commonality of simplified characters between China and Japan is a new problem arising after the entry into force of the language and writing policies of the Chinese and Japanese governments after the war.
On September 22, 1957, Zhou Enlai put forward the proposal of "common Simplified Characters between China and Japan". In his report on "Tasks of Current Character Reform" delivered at the Political Consultative Conference on January 10, 1958, Zhou also pointed out that Chinese simplified characters also used some Simplified Chinese characters in Japan. In the future, if both China and Japan promote simplified characters, the difference in glyphs is worth noting, and whether China and Japan can coordinate the issue of simplified characters. Soon after, takeshiro Kuraishi (1897-1975), the most influential Chinese scholar in postwar Japan, wrote an article entitled "Simplified Chinese Characters and Japanese Simplified Characters: An Oversimplified "Sino-Japanese Exchange" (Weekly Asahi, December 29, 1957/[Japanese] Showa 32), expressing doubts about the validity of the Sino-Japanese simplified character agreement. From March to May 1960, the Japanese Character Reform Inspection Mission was formed, centered on members of the Japanese Language Council, to conduct a field trip to China. After the restoration of sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, from February 26 to March 7, 1975 ( [Japanese] Showa 50 years), the Cultural Affairs Department of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology sent another investigation team to investigate the trend of Chinese character reform. In June, the investigation team submitted a report concluding that the unification of Chinese and Japanese Chinese characters was impossible. In 1977 (Showa 52), the Japanese Diet questioned the issue of the commonality of simplified characters between China and Japan, and the Japanese Language Council discussed them again, concluding that the basis and national conditions of the two countries "are completely different, and there is no need to consider the issue of simplified characters in China." ”
Folk dynamics
On September 3, 1977, in the "Forum" column of the Asahi Shimbun, the Nagoya Prefectural Office's Chikako Tatani published "The Universalization of Japanese and Chinese Kanji: Re-Understanding their Role in Deepening Mutual Understanding," in which it said:
"As a bridge for Japanese Chinese exchanges, Chinese characters have made great contributions since ancient times. Although the spoken languages of the two countries are different, they play a role in mutual understanding due to the use of the same Chinese characters. However, due to the simplification and new creation of the two countries in recent years, the Chinese characters that used to be the same are gradually becoming completely different things. The author proposes:
(1) In order to simplify Chinese characters in a common direction, a committee composed of representatives of the two countries should be established.
(2) The universalization of translated words. The first is that we can start with diplomatic and legal terms, and hopefully gradually spread to other humanities and natural sciences.
Soon, two more articles expressing objections were published in the same column of the same newspaper. First of all, on September 27 of the same year, Koshiro Murata, the overseas management department of the New Nippon Iron and Steel Corporation, wrote "There are too many problems with Chinese characters in Japan - compared to learning Chinese", which put forward four objections:
(1) Unified glyphs seem to help the Japanese side understand Chinese, but from the Chinese side, Japanese has kana, and a little unification of simplified characters does not help, and it is still impossible to understand Japanese without learning kana. So does the Chinese side have a desire for reunification? Is it possible to request the Japanese side to restrict the use of pseudonyms?
(2) There is a homophonic substitution in China's simplification policy, and at this point, Japanese may not be able to correspond to it, and it may be difficult to unify such simplified characters.
(3) The same Chinese character, there are often differences in meaning between Japan and China, only the unified glyph is not unified meaning is one-sided, and the unity of the meaning of the word is impossible.
(4) Regarding foreign languages, the Japanese "テレビ" chinese writing "TV", "ラジオ" writing "radio". Even if these words are unified into Chinese words, what about special nouns? "Coca-Cola" is acceptable, "Kennedy" and "Khrushchev" cannot be accepted. Japanese has such a convenient phonetic script as Kana, and it is impossible for Japanese people not to use it. In the future, China will also abolish the use of Roman characters in Chinese characters, and simplifying Chinese characters is only a backbone stage of character reform, that is to say, the basic ideas and positions of China and Japan are completely different.
Then, he added: "In fact, as long as the most basic two hundred and dozens of Simplified Chinese characters are memorized, other words can be analogous, and ordinary Japanese people can master them after a short period of study." Therefore, in addition to the inconvenience of printing, the difference in simplified words between Japan and China is not a big problem in terms of understanding. ”
The second is Daisaku Nitta, a professor at Shibu Women's University, published on October 22, "The Japanese Unification of Chinese Characters is Impossible—Knowledge That Only Leads to Confusion." The article said: "If you really want to be interested in friendship between Japan and China, you should not rely on simplified characters, starting from learning Chinese is the right way." The use of semi-inaccessible knowledge of Chinese characters led to the misunderstanding of China's 'Yin Jian' is not far away, and there are many in modern times. The author believes that "Japanese and Chinese kanji are still different."
In recent years, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Education of Japan has published two books, "Chinese Words Corresponding to Chinese (In Japanese)" (December 1978/[Japanese] Showa 53) and "Japanese-Tonal Correspondence of Kanji Phonetic Words" (May 1983/[Japanese]) for native Chinese language learners. Kiyohide Arakawa's "Chinese language and Chinese words: Commenting on chinese words corresponding to Chinese (in Japanese)" by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and Eishi Matsuoka's "Japanese Education "Village" and Chinese Education "Village"—criticized this practice of rushing for success and profit around the Agency for Cultural Affairs' "Chinese Words Corresponding to Chinese (in Japanese)".
In 1989, the Language Publishing House in Beijing published the book "Research on New Chinese and Japanese Simplified Characters" written by Xie Shiya in Singapore, and Xie believed that the simplified methods of Chinese and Japanese Chinese characters were roughly the same, but due to social customs and historical reasons, there were actually huge differences. This is easy to cause misunderstandings and is not conducive to cultural exchanges and word processing. China and Japan should jointly organize a committee on the simplification of Chinese characters, and put forward: China and Japan should adopt each other's simplified characters, one or two small differences in one or two different strokes should be unified after collegial discussion, and Japan should imitate China's eight suggestions, such as the analogy of the head of the ministry.
Matsuoka Eishi's article "Simplified Chinese Characters: The New Font of Japan: Revisiting the Possibility of The Universalization of Chinese and Japanese Characters" retorts that Chinese characters are used to record Chinese, and Japanese Chinese characters are used to record Japanese. As long as Chinese and Japanese are still two different languages based on different historical, cultural, and social foundations, there is nothing wrong with recording Chinese characters in these two languages, even if they are completely different. In order to prevent misunderstandings due to superficial similarities, we even think that the Chinese characters in China and Japan should be more different. Then he refuted Xie's suggestion one by one, saying that the biggest problem with Simplified Chinese characters was that they were analogous, resulting in a large number of variants. According to Mr. Chen Yuan, director of the State Language and Writing Work Committee, it was only because China did not know the situation in Japan when it engaged in simplified characters, if it knew, it would definitely learn from Japan and set the scope of simplification within the commonly used characters. The Sino-Japanese joint committee advocated by Xie Shi is easier said than done. I don't know how many years it will take to organize such a committee, but the number of questions about the selection of members, the competence of the committee... is too numerous to count. If such a committee were to exist, it would certainly be one of the most important diplomatic activities between the two countries. Hsieh stands in a third country like Singapore and looks at the problem purely theoretically. If you look at the history of chinese and Japanese literary reform, we can see that most of the problems are not in theory, but in practice, and domestic political pressure can easily distort theoretical problems.
In short, people engaged in practical work such as politics and economics hope to find a shortcut through the common use of Chinese characters, while some experts who rely on language and writing to eat are skeptical, emphasizing the difference between the "basis and national conditions" of the two countries' script reform.
Base plate and national conditions
It is necessary to sort out the differences in the "base and national conditions" of China and Japan that those experts emphasized.
The Kanji problem in Japanese includes at least several aspects such as word count, phonetic training, and glyphs, and is much more complex than in Chinese. Japanese writing reforms first focused on limiting the number of words in Chinese characters, while China focused primarily on reducing the strokes of Chinese characters. This difference is formed by the basic concepts and methods of the two countries' script reform, and its background is the difference between the two language systems. The modern Japanese writing system is the "Kanji Kana Mixed Style", the main part of which consists of kanji and kana. Of course, there are also Roman characters, Arabic numerals and other special symbols, etc., which are less important when discussing the issue of Chinese characters and can be ignored for the time being. Theoretically, Japanese Kanji is mainly used to represent the true meaning of the part, and kana is mainly used to represent the grammatical parts such as imaginary words and ending changes.
The fundamental problem of Japanese character reform is how to adjust the relationship between Kanji and Kana, which was discussed in the post-war "List of Kanji used" and "List of Commonly Used Kanji". Which ingredients should be written in Kanji, which should be written in Kana, and whether there are more or fewer Kanji. A large number of Chinese characters increases the burden on education and learners, and becomes an educational problem. There are fewer Chinese characters, which brings obstacles to expression and understanding, and the literary and art circles want to protest. Whether it is the "List of Chinese Characters used" or the "List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters", the first thing to do is to specify the number of words - to stipulate the range of Chinese characters that are allowed to be used, and both are closed character sets. This is possible because Japanese has kana, and kanji can be written in kana where kanji is not allowed. There is no Chinese, so although China has also formulated the "Common Character List" and the "General Character List", at best it only provides a reference standard for the educational community, and there is no function that limits the actual scope of use in society.
In fact, there have always been people in China who are considering the problem of limiting the number of Chinese characters. In November 1935, life bookstore published Hun Sen's "Pedagogy on the Use of Eleven Hundred Basic Chinese Characters", hoping that "in the future, all government statements, court criticisms, scholars' theories, and newspaper editorials may be written in all '1,100 basic characters' and '250 special characters', so that all the literate people can understand it." At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhai Jianxiong published "A Tool Problem for Eradicating Illiteracy" (Guoxun, No. 222, December 1939), proposing to record Chinese with 454 simple strokes representing Chinese syllables (without distinguishing between tones). The Small Dictionary of Basic Education in China, edited by Wu Lianming, published by the Zhonghua Book Company in 1948, contained 5,200 characters, and its explanation used only 1,100 basic characters and 500 supplementary words.
On March 25, 1953, the third meeting of the Chinese Character Reform Research Committee, in accordance with Chairman Mao Zedong's instruction that "the number of Chinese characters must also be greatly reduced", decided that the order of simplification work was: first sort out the number, then simplify the glyphs, and in November of the same year, the "7,685 Character Classification Table" was drawn up, with a total of 12 sub-tables:
(1) There are 836 words used in ancient chinese language - this part of the word is generally not used except for literature and history readings of colleges and secondary schools, and can be deleted.
(2) 466 rare words - can be pinyin.
(3) 87 foley words - can be pinyinized.
(4) There are 87 special words for transliteration - can be pinyinized.
(5) 615 lian mian characters - can be pinyinized.
(6) 1,581 variants – one for each group, the rest deleted.
(7) There are 439 special characters for geographical names - they can be replaced by homophones and near-syllable characters, or simply changed to pinyin.
(8) 106 special characters for surnames - it is intended to retain a part of the commonly used, the rest of the pinyin.
(9) There are 272 industry-specific words - pinyin in the article.
(10) 65 academic special words - replace or pinyin with homophones.
(11) 331 spoken words - using homophones instead of pinyin.
(12) Generally used 2,848 words.
Of the 2,848 general characters, some of them can be reduced by means of homophone substitution, which has been re-merged to form the "1,469 Condensed Chinese Character List". After experimenting with writing articles in various genres with this glossary, the following problems were found:
(1) Some monophonic words are not easy to understand after rewriting with simplified Chinese characters or pinyin, and it is inconvenient to rely more on the context to guess.
(2) Sometimes the original meaning of the condensed word is still in effect, which is easy to cause misunderstanding. For example, the use of "seedling removal" instead of "hoe seedlings" may be misunderstood as removing seedlings.
(3) In order to understand the part of the text rewritten with Zhuyin letters or pinyin letters, it is necessary to master its spelling method, but at that time there was no commonly familiar pinyin scheme.
(4) It is difficult for all industry and academic words to be replaced or pinyinized with homophones. For example, after rewriting "solution" to "dissolve the night", people feel confused.
(5) People who have been literate spend a lot of time memorizing or looking up the word list to figure out: which words should be retained, which words should be simplified, what words should be replaced by what words, what words should be written in pinyin, etc., which is very troublesome.
After the above problems were discovered, the work of streamlining the word count was shelved. In December 1954, the Character Reform Research Committee was reorganized into the Character Reform Committee directly under the State Council, and in January 1955, Director Wu Yuzhang submitted a report to the State Council pointing out that it is not easy to achieve satisfactory results in the study of sorting out and streamlining Chinese characters, while the work of implementing simplified characters and unifying variant characters is very urgent. Since then, China's script reform has mainly turned to reducing the strokes of Chinese characters.
Since then, there has been a lot of talk of condensed words. On May 3, 1964, the People's Daily published Guo Moruo's "Japanese Chinese Character Reform and Character Mechanization", which introduced Japan's "Chinese Characters for Use" and "Educational Chinese Characters", and believed that the number of common Chinese characters should be greatly reduced, and that onomatopoeia and foreign people and place names could be written in Pinyin. On June 24, 1964, guangming daily published Lin Handa's paper "Can 10,000 universal Chinese characters be cut in half?" 〉, and believes that it can be done with hard work. On July 22 of the same year, guangming daily published Zhou Youguang's "Restriction and Reduction of Modern Chinese Characters", arguing that the best way to compress common Chinese characters is to use pinyin in Chinese characters. On July 18, 1976, the People's Daily published an article co-authored by several workers, who chose the 3,260 characters that appeared more frequently as "standard Chinese characters", and designated a "representative word" in each syllable with no sound, and replaced the words other than 3,260 with homophone representative words. In 1982, the China Social Sciences Press published Zheng Linxi's Theory and Practice of Streamlining Chinese Characters, which proposed eight specific practices. The author believes that "according to the practical experience of the past few decades, it is probably impossible for some institutions or individuals to set a number in advance as a goal" to reduce the number of Chinese characters," but to "proceed from reality and make objective estimates, it is probably only possible to propose a few practical and feasible methods, through propaganda, to obtain the consent and support of the masses of the people, rely on the strength of the masses, from the beginning of easy to do, step by step to streamline, and finally to achieve a real reduction in the total number of modern common Chinese characters." "However, these are only some personal academic opinions, and have not become a national language and writing policy that has been put into practice."
After the war, China also formulated some frequency character lists, such as: the "List of Commonly Used Words" (2,000 words) of the Ministry of Education of the Central People's Government in 1952, the "List of Commonly Used Words in Modern Chinese" of the State Language and Writing Work Committee in 1988, and so on. However, these tables are mainly developed as reference standards for primary and secondary schools and adult education, and are not binding on practical use in society. Therefore, from the perspective of the national language and writing policy, the word count table between China and Japan is a thing of different nature and level, and its comparison has no policy significance. What can be seen through the comparison of the two is the rough similarities and differences between the most commonly used words actually used in Japan and China.
The List of Commonly Used Words in Modern Chinese includes 2,500 "commonly used characters" and 1,000 sub-common characters. The japanese "List of Commonly Used Kanji" that does not include these 3,500 characters is:
treatment, residence, town, torso, 笃, door, princess, 绀, impeachment, 诘, 濑, 戾, dormitory, 泷, charm, haiku, habit, rest, rest, 缲, so, 玺, excretion, thursday, 谒, 驿, 朕, 祉, ࠩ, 烁冣, 烁
And the japanese style: work, field, pass, monme, including, wall, frame
In other words, in addition to these 36 characters, the other 1,909 characters in the Japanese "List of Commonly Used Kanji" are also commonly used in China. Even the 36 characters that are not included in the List of CommonLy Used Words in Modern Chinese are still used in China, in addition to the "扱" and the Harmonic Chinese characters. In other words, judging from the actual use of words in China and Japan, the common words used in China and Japan are similar, and the differences between the two countries are mainly in the concept and practice of the word reform policy.
The second is the problem of sound training. Japan has set the scope of use of sounds and meanings for all characters that fall within the range of 1,850 or 1,945, which is a measure taken to take into account the complexity of the phonetic meanings of Japanese kanji. In Chinese, whether it is a simplified word list, a variant character collation list, or a common word list, this issue is not fully discussed.
Finally, there is the question of glyphs. The selection criteria for China's "First Batch of Variant Characters Sorting Table" (published on December 22, 1955) are: try to select as few strokes, easy to write, widely used, important group character elements, and general printing plants' standing lead characters, etc., and do not take glyphs that are easily confused with other characters. The two criteria stipulated in the "Preface" of Japan's "List of Kanji in Contemporary Use" promulgated in 1949 ([Japanese] Showa 24) are:
(1) The font of this table was selected as a reference standard for Chinese characters that are both easy to write and read, and correct.
(2) When selecting the glyphs of this table, not only consider the issues of unifying variant characters, using simplified characters, and sorting out the strokes of words, but also consider the habits of writing and the difficulty of learning. Consideration was also given to making the printed and handwritten styles as consistent as possible.
It can be seen that in the principle of "unifying variant characters and adopting simplified characters", the two tables of China and Japan are consistent. Regarding the unification of the variant glyphs, Masaji Anto, a member of the Chinese Characters Main Investigation Committee responsible for deliberating the "List of Chinese Character Fonts for Use", said in his report after deliberation:
(1) When more than two glyphs exist at the same time, do not take glyphs that are difficult to combine strokes, intricate, or difficult to write.
(2) Simplify stroke combinations of complex and omitted glyphs.
(3) Glyphs that do not care about nuances in strokes as much as possible.
(4) Try to use simplified characters that are widely used in society, although the history is relatively short.
It can be seen that in the selection standards of simplified characters, Neither China nor Japan has adopted "etymology". China and Japan are the same in adopting relatively simple glyphs, excluding complex glyphs that are easily confused with other characters, and attaching importance to social customs. On the whole, the principle of simplification between China and Japan is the same.
However, when it comes to the trade-offs of each word, there are big differences between the First Batch of Variant Characters Sorting Table and the List of Fonts Used in Chinese Characters. For example, the "First List of Variant Characters" treats and unifies the five groups of words "laughing (咲) niang (嬢) fruit (菓) and (and 竝) eating (喫)" as variant characters. However, in Japanese, these words have different meanings: "laugh" (わらうwarau) is equivalent to the Chinese "laugh", "咲" (さくsaku) is the "blossom" of "blossom". "Niang" (むすめmusume) is "daughter", "嬢" (じょうjou) is "miss". "Fruit" is pronounced "はたす (hatasu)" means "complete" and "exert (function)", retaining the ancient meaning of Chinese. Modern Chinese generally does not use it in this way except for more special uses such as "unsuccessful" with strong literary colors. "and" (なみnami) means "ordinary, general" in Japanese. As for "eating" and "喫", in the history of the Chinese language, they are also words with different sounds and meanings, and Japanese still retain this difference.
Some simplified strokes of characters are less in Chinese than in Japanese: "Hang (hang) traces (跡) Jie (Jie) tears (涙) discard (discard) liter (昇) rhyme (韻) 異 (異) Zhou (Zhou) Jealousy (妬) Pulse (脈) Cool (涼) Situation (涼) Minus (減) Decision (決) Net (淨)志(誌)塚(塚)Sister (姉) Tour (遊)Smoke (煙)". Some are the same, or there are more Chinese than Japanese, or the simplified methods of the two are different: "Disaster (災)Hanging (弔)Shame (恥)效()乘(乘)Window (窓)Praise (賛)Book (冊)". It can be seen that both sides are considering reducing strokes while also taking into account multiple factors such as attaching importance to habits and connecting with other words.
The basic methods of Chinese character simplification can be summarized as:
(1) Retain the outline of the original word: turtle → turtle, worry → worry.
(2) The characteristic parts that use the original word: sound → sound, medical →, open →.
(3) Change the simple sound marks of the strokes: → support, → battle, and → clean.
(4) Create a new form of sound characters: surprise → shock, protection → protection.
(5) Homophone substitution: →, ugly→, →, and →.
(6) Cursive italics: special →, →, east → east.
(7) Xinhui Yizi: many →, → extinguished, → stove.
(8) Simplify the side: chicken → chicken, happy →, difficult → difficult.
(9) Retro: Dust → dust, from →, electricity → electricity.
The "Preface to the List of Fonts for Chinese Characters" mentions that the table contains "fonts that have not been generally used to make pencil characters", in which the characters with reduced strokes are roughly equivalent to Chinese simplified characters. This type of word can be summarized into four types:
(1) Add or subtract one point and one painting: the →, the virtue →, the step →.
(2) Choose a glyph that is easier to write: ya →, →.
(3) Partial omission: Keio →, → art.
(4) Partial deformation: wide →, → roller.
From the perspective of basic principles, Japan's simplification method is roughly equivalent to China's (1), (2), (3) three, and China's (4) and the following articles are basically useless in Japan. Because Japan has kana, oversimplifying glyphs is not conducive to separating kana from kana, so it is better to use kana to be more straightforward. In addition, they argue that oversimplifying glyphs has many drawbacks. For example, the homophone substitution of article (5) seems to be missing a glyph, but at the same time it also adds meanings to other words, which is not conducive to sorting out the meanings. The cursive italicization of article (6) creates glyphs and sides that were not available before, adding a burden to the head of the finishing department. In short, simplifying glyphs too boldly will contradict the collation of Chinese characters. I taught a lady named Saito Setsuko to learn Chinese, and the first time I saw the simplified character "Feng (豐)", she blurted out: "This is no longer a Chinese character!" "The Japanese language has both kana and Kanji, and in its long-term use, it has intentionally or unintentionally created a hazy boundary between Kanji and non-Kanji in the minds of ordinary Japanese people, oversimplifying glyphs and their habits. The Japanese are more cautious and thoughtful about reducing strokes, and they are reluctant to create new, more complex problems in order to reduce one or two strokes. For example, the "less" character in the lower half of the Chinese "step" character does not have a right point, even if the "less" has two glyphs, it is not convenient to explain the glyphs to primary school students. In order to avoid this drawback, Japan writes "歩" with a right point.
In January 1965, China's Ministry of Culture and the Character Reform Committee published the "List of Printed Common Chinese Character glyphs", which has become the standard font in Today's China. The printing world is commonly known as "new glyphs", and the previous fonts are called "old glyphs". The "lianbi" in this table is actually a simplification, resulting in some differences between new and old glyphs that are not easily recognizable without looking closely, and there are also subtle differences with Japanese Kanji, such as:
Poor → poor, elephant → elephant, bone → bone
On the left is "New Glyph" and on the right is "Old Glyph". The difference between the two is very small, and it is almost impossible to see it without looking closely, and the vertical and one vertical in the box in the upper half of the word "bone" are changed to the left for the purpose of continuous writing. Although the difference in glyphs is small, the number of strokes of the word changes.
The biggest problem with Kanji glyphs in Japanese is the analogy of the first part (see book 5.3.2 "female" does not show the head, "mouth" does not open the mouth). Some of the characters in the "Table of Chinese Characters" and the "List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters" have been simplified, but a large number of words outside the table have not been simplified, and in order to reduce the one or two strokes of certain characters, the organic connection between Chinese characters has been cut off, the inherent system of Chinese characters has been disrupted, and the burden of education and learning has been increased. As early as May 1953 ([Japanese] Showa 28), the National Conference of the Lead Casting Industry in Japan discussed the issue of simplifying the unification of the head of the character department, and it has been encountered many times since then. For theoretical reasons, the Japanese Council has always adopted an evasive attitude as much as possible. When formulating JIS Chinese characters, for the convenience of technical processing, some of the radicals were simplified uniformly, which caused great dissatisfaction among linguists and educational circles.
After all, glyphs are only one aspect of the Kanji problem, whether in Japanese or Chinese, and to a large extent, glyphs ultimately depend on phonetic meanings and are subject to the concept of script reform in both countries. Therefore, just considering the glyph problem is one-sided, and it is difficult to get practical results. However, with the increase in exchanges between China and Japan, especially the formulation of the international common computer font collection in recent years, the glyph problem has become more and more prominent, so the discussion on this issue will still be lively in the future.
China should take greater responsibility for Chinese characters
For the issue of the unification of Chinese characters, it is best not to adopt the "pull" policy of "wishful thinking" to Japan, and modern people lack basic trust among themselves, and they always have the doubt that "it will probably not be a good product" for things that are actively sold to the door. After the war, the United States recommended Roman characters to Japan, but instead expelled some of the original advocates of writing reform. Valuable things do not need to be marketed, and in history Buddhism and Confucianism did not rely on any military pressure when they entered Japan. Under the cultural gap, the Japanese spontaneously and eagerly introduced. Rather, whether China itself should consider liquidating the negative legacy of the writing reform. The reform of the word is the trend of the world, and no one is a prophet, and we do not have to aspire to our predecessors. Similarly, at a time when the pros and cons are already known, there is no need for us to observe the festival for some inexplicable reason. Instead of pulling up Japan prematurely, it is better to first carry out unification in the Chinese circle. Owen Lattimore (1900-1989), a famous contemporary Chinese scholar, famously said: "If China's things are done well in Asia, it will be better, and China's things will not be good if Asia is not good." "Some Japanese people hate this statement very much. Since the late Qing Dynasty, zhangzhidong has taken the shortcut of modernization by learning from Japan's "second-hand goods", which has created the illusion that China is following Japan and Japan is an advanced country in Asia. But this can only be a temporary phenomenon in the transitional period, after an unprecedented "modern catastrophe", China will restore the prosperity it deserves. The reason why Japan wanted to abolish Chinese characters in the first place was because of the decline of China, and if we want to restore the "glory" of Chinese characters, I am afraid that we will have to wait until China is revived. A gentleman once said something clever: When China prospers again, Japan will be busy coming to join in the fun and learn Chinese characters.
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