This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 51, 2020, the original title of the original article is "Chengdu: The Most Sichuan Sound is Comfortable", it is strictly forbidden to reprint it privately, and infringement must be investigated
The Sichuan dialect, like Sichuan flavor, has swept the country in just 20 years. It seems that no matter where people are, they will say a sentence of "Bashi Deban" and "Xiongqi", just like the Sichuan hot pot restaurants that bloom all over the country, a prosperous scene. But these are just the floating hairs of Chuanyin, which seem to be dense, and the real flesh crisis is only understood by native Sichuan people.
Reporter/Xue Peng
Photography / Cai Xiaochuan
Designer and artist Wang Hai is a native of Chengdu "Street Baby"
Chengdu, not just Chengdu dialect
The day after we arrived in Chengdu, the COVID-19 outbreak broke out in Pidu District. A 70-year-old couple tested positive for nucleic acid one after another, and the next day, their 20-year-old granddaughter was diagnosed. Then, because she went to several bars in one night, the girl became the focus of the Internet storm. After the interview that evening, it was time for the evening rush hour, and we walked back to our accommodation with the crowd after work. Along the way, you can always hear people talking about this girl, there are accusations and understanding, there are Sichuan dialect and Mandarin.
Overnight, Chengdu, which was originally leisurely, quickly entered a state of tension. On weekdays, taikoo li and Chunxi Road are bustling, and the flow of people is reduced by more than half. In winter, Chengdu is always overcast and rainy, and it is difficult to see the sun, which makes the atmosphere of the whole city seem more depressed. No one knows whether there will be more confirmed cases the next day, and rumors of "lockdown" are spreading. On the road, everyone wore masks, but all kinds of inspections at the entrance and exit were also several times stricter. Several Sichuan opera and book review performance venues that were previously planned to be interviewed have closed their doors one after another, and the dialect interviews have suddenly disappeared.
Before that, as a foreigner, I was optimistic about the future of Sichuanese. When dialects such as Wu and Hakka are facing the dilemma of loss or degradation, Sichuan rap music, movies, short videos, and street buzzwords are popular throughout the country, not only in sichuan, but also its influence even radiates to other places, and it seems that the inheritance of Sichuan dialect does not seem to have such a big dilemma. At first, I wondered how the dialect coexisted and passed on in harmony with the city, and why it always had such a strong vitality. But after a few days of interviews with local linguists, sociologists, translators, and citizens, it is impossible to be so optimistic.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, I watched the news of Pidu District on the Internet, and there was a video recording a broadcast of a community in Pidu District at night, and a standard Pixian dialect in the loudspeaker shouted: "Cut when stepping on Su, run around." Believe in scraping home, nodules with live Ha bolt inspection and removal. Thin piles, thin smelly heat (sound ra) noisy. Wear a mask at the door and pay attention to elimination. ”
These few words, I used the pronunciation of Pixian dialect, translated as: "In special periods, don't run around, believe in the country, and actively cooperate with nucleic acid testing." Don't get together, don't join in the fun, wear a mask when you go out, and pay attention to disinfection. This is the first time I have listened to Pixian dialect seriously, and I have found that the pronunciation is quite different from Chengdu dialect, for example, chengdu people say the "guo" character of "country", which will be roughly the sound of "ghost", while Pixian dialect is pronounced as "scratch" sound, which is an open tone; "special" is also pronounced as "stepping" in Pixian dialect, and in Chengdu dialect it is the sound of "te"; "disinfection" of "poison", Chengdu people pronounce it a bit like "blocking", and the third sound, when it comes to Pixian, it becomes "grab".
Drinking tea and mahjong will be an indispensable way of life for Chengdu people
Pidu District, in the northwest of Chengdu, was originally Pi County, and in January 2017, Pidu District was officially established and became a district of Chengdu. There is a big difference between the dialect accents of the main urban area of the same city and the far suburban counties, and the difference in this accent can be heard by one ear here in Chengdu.
According to the difference in accent, the voice in the horn should be a middle-aged man who is 50 years old and facing upwards. This judgment was made after interviewing several old Chengdu people. Wang Di, a historian at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, is a native of Chengdu, born in 1956, and has been engaged in the study of Chinese social history, urban history, daily life history and micro history for many years, and his hometown of Chengdu is the most important sample in his research. Wang Di told me that when he was a child, there were several accents in the Chengdu area, such as the accents in and around the Funan River, and the double stream in Chengdu and the south was different. At that time, if subdivided by accent, the area of the dialect could be divided into a very small range, but now, the difference in accent within the small area is gradually narrowing. Therefore, even young Pixian people can speak the standard Pixian dialect in the loudspeaker.
However, whether it is Pidu District or Jinniu District, Qingyang District, Jinjiang District, they all speak authentic Chengdu dialect. According to the division of China's dialect system, Chengdu dialect belongs to the Southwest Mandarin dialect. In China's seven major dialect system, guan dialect is the most widely divided and most used, 70% of Han People speak guan dialect, that is, the northern dialect, of which there are about 270 million people who speak southwest guan dialect, which is the largest. After Chongqing became a municipality directly under the central government in 1997, many people juxtaposed Chongqing dialect with Chengdu dialect as the two most important representatives of Southwest Mandarin. However, there are also old linguists who, when studying dialects, do not deliberately distinguish dialects according to administrative divisions, and will still incorporate Chongqing dialects into the entire Sichuan dialect system to investigate, and the older generation will look at Sichuan dialects according to the four locations of east, west, south and north, and the eastern part of Sichuan is now Chongqing.
No matter how it is divided, in the land of Sichuan, the Southwest Mandarin dialect is the first dialect of the people. But interestingly, there are at least four dialects in the suburbs of Chengdu alone. For example, in the east of Longquanyi, there is a Luodai ancient town, which is one of the gathering areas of the Hakka people in Sichuan, they originally spoke Hakka dialect, but after staying in Sichuan for a long time, they became "Tuguangdong", speaking the Hakka dialect of Sichuan, Sichuan people can't understand, Hakka people can't understand, only Luodai people themselves formed a dialect closed loop - only each other can understand the dialect. Less than 20 kilometers northeast of Chengdu, there is Jintang County, where people speak Xiang; in Qingbaijiang District and Pengzhou City to the north, there will be some people who speak Hokkien; in addition, there are sporadic places that speak Sichuan-style Anhui dialect.
There are complex dialect areas distributed around Chengdu alone, which is just a microcosm of Sichuan, the entire Sichuan-Chongqing region, there are many dialect gathering areas in other places, most of them are not next to each other, local linguists call these places "dialect islands". Why did this situation arise, and where did the Southwest Mandarin come from? To understand this problem, we have to start with the great immigrants of 300 years ago.
In the old streets and alleys near Chengdu Boring Palladium Street, there is an authentic old Chengdu dialect hidden
Solidified and flowing language
Professor Huang Shangjun of the College of Literature of Sichuan Normal University, an expert on the study of Sichuan dialect, pointed out that as the most representative dialect in the southwest dialect, the circulation area of Sichuan dialect is not limited to the Sichuan region, but also includes a vast area from northern Shaanxi to southern Shaanxi, south to Yunnan-Guizhou, and east to xiang'exi, with a wide radiation range. "The vast majority of today's Sichuanese are no longer descendants of the ancient Bashu people, because the population of Sichuan has undergone great changes. Population migration is a historical socio-cultural phenomenon, while dialects are the product of socio-historical and cultural changes. ”
The current population of Sichuan is the result of the fusion of large immigrants, and the migration of immigrants in the late Yuan and early Ming and early Qing Dynasties into Shu determined the appearance of the current Sichuan dialect. According to a study of 58 genealogies in Chongqing, Hechuan, Nanxi, and Guang'an, of the 118 households that entered Sichuan before the Qing Dynasty, Huguang accounted for 85 households, of which 65 were Macheng residents. Therefore, in the early Qing Dynasty, in the climax of large-scale immigration into Sichuan, Huguang had the most nationality, called "Huguang Filling Sichuan". In this way, Hubei dialect has become an important foundation of Sichuan dialect, mixed with the characteristics of local dialects, under the long-term integration and change, Sichuan dialect has formed its current appearance. It is precisely because of the demographic change of the Qing Dynasty that there will be a phenomenon of Hakka, Xiang, Minnan dialect and other local dialects around Chengdu. The pronunciation system of Southwest Mandarin is also the simplest in Mandarin, in addition to the common characteristics of Mandarin dialects such as voiced Qinghua, most of The Southwest Mandarin dialects are not evenly divided and tongue-twisting, which is a kind of Southern Mandarin with transitional nature.
The Sichuan dialect we hear now is not an ancient dialect, its history is only more than 300 years, and it is not known what the Sichuanese people speak. But is it related to the earlier Paleoshu dialects? Or can we still find the shadow of the ancient Shu language in the modern Sichuan dialect? This problem has been studied by Wang Qiming, a linguist at Southwest Jiaotong University, for many years.
Wang Qiming's work is known as "dialect archaeology", and he wandered through various historical documents to find the pronunciation and grammatical structure of the ancient Shu language, and then reconstruct the language system of the Middle and Ancient Shu people.
How to confirm the pronunciation and rhythm of the ancient and medieval periods through the literature is a difficult point in Wang Qiming's "dialect archaeology", after years of research, he summed up his own set of methods. First of all, it is based on the basic judgment of the text, because about 80% of the text is a shape sound character, so that the pronunciation can be basically judged, but it may not be accurate; secondly, according to the rhyme, the connection of the rhyming foot characters, the rhyme of the past dynasties, and the author's place of origin are important references; the third is based on the ancient phonetic annotations, the Sui Dynasty Lu Fayan's book "Cut Rhyme" standardizes the pronunciation system of the official dialect in the Middle Ages, and is an important classic for the study of ancient sounds; finally, the translated works are also very important, like the Buddhist scriptures translated in the Middle Ages are precious document bases.
Wang Qiming explained that among the various elements of language, the fastest change is the vocabulary, each era has a specific vocabulary expression, which is also the most rapid tool for language generation, followed by pronunciation, and the slowest change is the grammatical structure. In Wang Qiming's view, "today's Sichuan dialect is already a mixed dialect, but its bottom layer is still the ancient Shu language."
Therefore, in the long history, the dialect is constantly moving and changing, but this change is extremely slow, compared with the change of political situation and taste, the dialect is static and solidified, but usually in the life of an individual, it is difficult to realize the change of dialect, only by jumping out and looking at it from a more macroscopic historical perspective, will you realize the change of dialect, just like the grammar of the Qin and Han Dynasties and the grammar of the Tang and Song Dynasties are completely different.
To this day, the Sichuan dialect is still changing. Human beings are always very clever in choosing languages, and those dialects that are not easy to use and gradually disconnect from the times have slowly faded out of the historical stage and become fossils for "dialect archaeology" in the future.
Professor Huang Shangjun listed several special words in Chengdu dialect: "One, two, three, four, four 'mouth' characters, combined together are the pronunciation of Chengdu dialect." It can also be seen from these words that according to the pronunciation of the Sichuan dialect, there are also words that do not exist in Mandarin. "A "mouth" is "mouth", two "mouth" characters are written side by side, for "吅", pronounced "ber" in Chengdu dialect, meaning mouth-to-mouth, that is, playing; three "mouths" are "pin"; four mouths are placed in one word, east, west, south and north each occupy a quadrant, writing "?", there is also this word in Mandarin, there are two common pronunciations of "jí" and "léi", which are almost not used, and in Sichuanese, people will pronounce "xiāo", the meaning of hustle and bustle. "吅" vs. "?" They are all very pictographic orthography, direct and clear.
There is also a word "丼", "丼" of "丼饭", the Japanese pronunciation is "don", the correct pronunciation in Mandarin is "dǎn", and in Chengdu dialect pronounced "ter", describing the sound of stones thrown into the well, is an onomatopoeia. The Chengdu people also created an interesting word "?", two "wood" sandwiched between a "stone", pronounced "kā" in the dialect, the group of words is "... Horn Corner", pronounced "kākāguǒguǒ", means 犄角旮旯.
Chengdu people always say "comfortable", not only refers to comfortable, but also refers to wonderful, very good meaning, and according to Huang Shangjun's research, this word is derived from "Zhuangzi". In "Zhuangzi Zhile", it is said: "Those who suffer must not be comfortable, their mouths must not be thick, their shapes must not be beautiful, their eyes must not be lustful, and their ears must not be sounded." In the current Sichuan dialect, it is probably the most appropriate continuation of the ancient meaning of the word "comfortable".
Many ancient words can be seen in the works of the Sichuan writer Li Jieren, and examples of "ease" are everywhere. There is another saying called "horse up face", the old Chengdu people use a lot, that is, angry to give the meaning of the face, the earliest from the "Sayings", Li Jieren wrote in his "Storm": "You see his appearance yo, head held high, horse face, half a day is not a sound, bigger than our general shelf of adults." ”
I found the above examples to illustrate the figurative nature of the Sichuan dialect. It is quite difficult to let language and words convey a very graphic meaning, and the above words, except for "ease", I think they have all done it. Many interesting dialect stems are translated onto paper and turned into words, and the meaning and fun are at least halved. People who do not understand this dialect and have no relevant life experience are even more confused. I always feel that dialects are used to say, write it, the taste is not right.
How to express language in words is the biggest dilemma I have encountered this time. For fellow photojournalists, his dilemma is how to express dialects with images. Can we only take some local customs and city street scenes as always? Where is the peculiarity of the dialect? He even bothered: "Do I have to slap people in the mouth?" "We've all had problems in our respective fields.
This problem is difficult to solve because there are essential differences between language, text and image, and the common point between them is that they all transmit content, and they can all transmit the same content, but these three media have their own strong expressive attributes and emphases, and the way of thinking and transmission form are completely different.
Wang Qiming, linguist at Southwest Jiaotong University
"Low end life" enthusiasts
On this issue, Zhou Chenglin, a local translator in Chengdu, has more say. He has translated "Naipaul Biography", Maugham's "Gentleman in the Living Room", John Berger's "Land of pigs", etc. He is an authentic Chengdu native who returned to Chengdu five years ago to live, but many years of overseas and Hong Kong and Macao life experience have allowed him to have another way of life, almost only watching English media, liking to wander in the streets, vegetable markets and tea houses in the most marketable, he said that he is a lover and digger of Chengdu's "low-end life". The meeting with Zhou Chenglin is in the Jinxin Tea House in Xin'er Village, five yuan a bowl of tea, you can sit here for a day, play mahjong for a day, this is Zhou Chenglin's favorite, belongs to the old Chengdu "low-end life".
Zhou Chenglin told me that when translating naipaul's biography, because naipaul was of Indian descent who grew up in the Caribbean, his family spoke Indian English, not very standard and not very authentic English pronunciation, with a thick accent, and some of the original tones were difficult to express. English is a letter text, see the word can imagine the pronunciation, in the Indians here, a lot of funny humor baggage are buried in the word misspelling or spelling, once translated into Chinese such hieroglyphs, its humor and ironic connotations, at most can only convey one-tenth, the fun of the original text is greatly reduced. This may be a natural barrier between language and writing, and because of this, language and writing can have their own charm and cannot be replaced by each other.
Zhou Chenglin also told a story: During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist government moved to the southwest, with Chengdu as the center and within 50 to 100 kilometers of the surrounding area, and there were 18 airports with names in history. In particular, between December 1943 and May 1944, more than 500,000 people built and expanded the world-class heavy bomber and fighter airfields around Chengdu.
Due to the development of communications and the transfer of cultural centers to the southwest, Chengdu can see new Hollywood movies earlier than Shanghai. When the film was first screened in Chengdu, the subtitles were also matched in Chengdu. In the era when Mandarin was not yet popular, there was no unified requirement for subtitles, so there were many Chengdu dialects in subtitles. Zhou Chenglin remembers one of the simplest and most common examples, such as intimate love words between men and women, calling each other "darling", which should be translated as "dear, you are so good", but the subtitles are in Chengdu, and this sentence becomes "obedient, you are so good". "Obedient" is a love name among Sichuan lovers, but foreigners in the 40s were confused - usually the word "well- usually the word "well- is always placed on children.
Chengdu people are very attached to their language, and one reason is that they have a strong sense of regional identity. Both Wang Di and Zhou Chenglin said that when they were young in Chengdu, they all took classes in Sichuan dialect, no teacher spoke Mandarin, and the students also spoke Yishui's Chengdu dialect. When Mandarin began to spread, the change in Chengdu dialect apparently accelerated.
Wang Hai, an old Chengdu native and artist, calls himself a "street baby", which is pronounced "the baby" in Chengdu dialect. He told me that in the 20th century, Chengdu experienced two important waves of immigration, the first was during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chongqing became the capital of the War of Resistance, the entire Sichuan region was the rear of the War of Resistance, during which time a large number of outsiders, especially intellectuals, came to Sichuan; the second was the period of the third-line construction in the 1960s, most of whom were immigrants from the northeast and Shanghai, many of whom lived in the compound, forming a "compound culture" that had never appeared in Chengdu before.
These scholars, who are born and raised in Chengdu, all speak the Chengdu dialect that has grown up in the body since childhood. Wang Di felt that this was because Chengdu people had a strong sense of the city, which was why I was optimistic about the future of the Sichuan dialect at first. However, in their view, although the current Sichuan dialect still retains the tone of Sichuan pronunciation, it has changed a lot from the Sichuan dialect when they were young. For example: Xian, Chengdu dialect reads "han", but the younger generation reads "xian"; xian, Chengdu dialect reads "xuan", the younger generation reads "xian"; Huanhuaxi, Chengdu dialect reads "hua kuan qi", and the younger generation reads "huan hua xi". These words basically retain the intonation of the Southwest Mandarin dialect, but the pronunciation has been almost assimilated by Mandarin.
A word that represents the modern Sichuan dialect, "Xiongqi", is actually a very recent new word. When football was hot in the 90s, Sichuan football, although not at the top level, was also a first-class team. The word "Xiongqi" was formed in the era when the A-ball game was popular. In fact, the meaning of the word is related to sex, but when used on the field, it becomes the meaning of "refueling". Extending from football, "Xiongqi" has become a buzzword with sichuan local characteristics.
Writer and translator Zhou Chenglin is a lover and explorer of Chengdu's "low-end life"
In the 1940s, the Swedish sinologist Qi erde examined dialects in China, and Sichuan was an important stop for him. Under the framework of structuralist linguistics, he also wrote "Syntactic Analysis of the Sticky Form of Sichuan Dialect" and "Sichuan Dialect English Textbook" for foreigners to learn Sichuan dialect. In his view, the ability to quickly understand China, the ability to listen and speak is particularly important, followed by the ability to read Chinese, and the ability to write Chinese characters. "The essence of learning Sichuanese lies in the vocabulary and sentences, not the square characters themselves, let alone idioms." Therefore, he spent a lot of effort to examine the dialect words, but unfortunately, many of the sayings are now even Sichuanese who can't say it.
Not long ago, Zhou Chenglin opened a juvenile writing class, which was basically attended by children between the sixth grade of primary school and the second grade of junior high school, who were about 12 years old and were facing or just experiencing the first relatively large threshold of life advancement - Xiaoshengchu. Starting from many years of experience in writing and translation, Zhou Chenglin hopes to teach children to establish an independent view of writing, which is different from the test-taking language education taught in schools. Originally, he simply taught writing, but Zhou Chenglin found that the children who came to class were far away from the dialect, and some of them could not even understand the Chengdu dialect of the vegetable market. The crisis of the Sichuan dialect lies in the constant change of the dialect, and the change of language means that the memory is changed or even lost. But there is also an optimistic view that dialects are formed in a constant division and fusion, and the old dialect patterns will change, and new ones may be born, but the process is still slow.