Chinese culture has a long history, and Chinese characters are one of the highlights. The process from complex to simple is extremely tortuous. In the late Qing Dynasty, China suffered aggression and oppression from the great powers, and the people's lives were very miserable.
Some patriots began to reflect on the reasons for the country's backwardness. Most people believe that the existing old culture and feudal ideas are stagnant, and traditional chinese is one of the expected changes. As a result, at that time, the simplification of Chinese characters attracted much attention.
Simplifying Chinese characters is the foreshadowing of the promotion of Hanyu Pinyin, and the second simplified character reform in the 1970s refers to the failure of the second simplified character reform. Although it fails, many people's surnames have changed as a result, has your last name also changed?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the benefits of simplifying Chinese characters</h1>
Since the beginning of the New Culture Movement in 1915, scholars from all walks of life have proposed simplifying Chinese characters. This simplification is a simplification.
Its purpose is to make it easier for everyone to learn to write and use Chinese characters, so as to break the monopoly of culture and knowledge by a small number of intellectuals and political leaders in feudal society, improve the cultural and educational level of Chinese, and make China stronger.
This simplification of Chinese characters is first reflected in the spelling of Chinese characters.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, all sectors of society produced works such as "Transliteration Fast Character", "Shengshi Vowel", "Jiangsu New Alphabet", "Chinese Phonetic Alphabet", "Chinese Roman Pinyin French Style", but in the end, Chinese adopted the current Hanyu Pinyin scheme, since then, Chinese spelling is no longer difficult, and in line with Western instrumental language, both sound and righteousness, making Chinese more perfect.
Since its inception, Chinese characters have developed to the present, and the Chinese characters we use now have been simplified. In general, it is a process from complex to simple.
However, because the Chinese characters themselves are very complex, even in the Republic of China era, the Chinese characters were very cumbersome. There are many kinds of common strokes, which are very difficult for everyday writing and recognition. Even if the working people learned, they would soon forget, because it was too complicated, and this traditional script was not conducive to the publication of books.
Because there are too many strokes, many writers are only willing to write the main idea when writing articles, and will not give in-depth explanations. This is also the reason why ancient texts are difficult to understand. Because just a few words contain a lot of meaning, readers need to grasp it little by little, which is very detrimental to the spread of books. Most people don't have that much time to read, let alone think deeply about the content of the book.
Therefore, if you want people to enjoy reading, you must make the knowledge in the book easy to understand. According to this book, people can learn to understand on their own, which is the best way. Only in this way can people really learn knowledge through books.
In the 19th century, Chinese society underwent tremendous changes, the corruption of the Qing Dynasty appeared frequently, and the invasion of Western powers also occurred. Just as the so-called internal and external troubles are concerned, the country will be defeated. In order to save the survival of the people, many patriotic progressives have made countless explorations, and the reform of Chinese characters, which is closely related to national education, has attracted much attention.
In 1909, Lu Feikui pointed out: "The rise and fall of education, the wisdom and ignorance of the people, all depend on the difficulty of literacy."
Lu Feikui
He believes that to popularize education, it is necessary to promote more convenient and easier to remember vernacular language. This view is supported by many people. Under the impetus of the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Movement, the reform of Chinese characters flourished vigorously. However, due to the lack of firm support from the National Government and the different opinions of various factions, there was a lot of resistance to the reform of simplified chinese characters and the development was slow. It was later interrupted by the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
In 1949, the founding of New China was in ruins.
Sun Yat-sen once said: "If a person does his best, he will do everything; if he does everything, he will be rich and strong enough to strategize." At that time, nearly 80 percent of China's population was illiterate or semi-illiterate. Where are the talents for the founding of the People's Republic of China?
To make a rich country and strengthen the people, we must vigorously "eradicate illiteracy" throughout the country.
After discussion by many deputies, the main direction of Chinese character reform is to simplify Chinese characters. After many drafts and revisions, the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" was officially published in 1956, simplifying more than 500 Chinese characters, such as the previous "understanding" was simplified to "understanding".
The result of this simplification is a rapid increase in the literacy rate of our people. This also marks the official implementation of Chinese character simplification in China. This is the famous Chinese character "Yijian" from the 1950s to the 1960s. Although there are shortcomings, but the flaws are not hidden, this simplification of Chinese characters is very successful, laying a solid foundation for the Chinese Simplified in China.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, why "secondary simplification"</h1>
The simplified chinese character policy is very successful, and the use of simplified characters is also very convenient. Of course, there are also people who complain that "love" removes the "heart" and becomes "heartless love". Such a person cannot recognize the culture of the times and does not consider the actual situation, which belongs to the corrupt view.
However, this success refers to the "first simplification", that is, the simplification of the 1950s. In fact, China has a second policy of simplifying Chinese characters, but this policy has completely failed. This was the "second simplification of Chinese characters" in the 1970s. This matter may be an impression of many middle-aged people, what is it?
In fact, the simplification of Chinese characters in the 1950s did not mean the complete completion of the work, but only the completion of the phased tasks. At that time, it was generally believed that the simplification of Chinese characters was not yet complete and not "simple" enough, so there was always the idea of continuing to simplify Chinese characters. But then, due to the turmoil of the current situation, the policy came to a standstill, and it was not until the 1970s that work began to resume.
In 1973, the Chinese Character Reform Commission began drafting a second simplified chinese character program. On May 15, 1975, the Chinese Character Reform Commission submitted it to the State Council for deliberation. On May 20, 1977, after soliciting the opinions of all parties, the Chinese Character Reform Commission drafted a revised draft of the Second Simplified Chinese Character Program, which was submitted to the State Council for approval.
After two years of repeated revisions, the second draft of the brief was finally officially adopted in December 1977, and on December 20, people's dailys, guangming daily, and people's liberation army daily published the "two janes" plan. The next day, people's daily began printing new newspapers with "two simple characters."
On March 2, 1978, the Education Bureau announced that it had begun to experiment with the "two characters" in textbooks. At that time, the draft included 412 simplified characters, but the central government was not satisfied with the results and put forward the idea of adding simplified characters.
It is precisely this view that makes the "two simplified" reform gradually deviate from its original intention. The Committee tried to add more simplified characters, but the reality was much more difficult than expected.
In the "One Jane" reform, the most popular folk styles were collected and sorted out, and the newly included simplified characters in the "Two Simplified Drafts" were selected by "digging three feet into the ground".
"Erjian" simplifies more than 800 Chinese characters, including 8 simplification methods, the most commonly used of which are homophone substitutions, morphophones, feature words, etc. The so-called homophone substitute word is to replace relatively complex words with simple words with the same pinyin, such as "through" at that time, it was proposed to use "笈" to replace, which will be conducive to writing and reducing the number of Chinese characters.
In the Chinese character structure, the shape sound character is replaced by a harmonic part. For example, the "Dong" proposed in the plan at that time can be replaced by "苳", which can highlight the voice part of "dong". Feature words retain some of the features of the original word for shorthand, for example, "贰" is abbreviated as "弍".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > third, "secondary simplification" gets into trouble</h1>
In fact, in the first simplification of Chinese characters, deconstructed characters were mainly derived from folk characters. The members of the Committee simply collected these folk texts and made simple modifications and collations, so it was not difficult.
However, the more than 400 words found in the secondary deconstruction scheme are vulgar characters that committee members dug three feet into. If we continue to increase the number of simplified words, they can only be created by the members of the Committee themselves.
Moreover, in the physical examination work, many daily lives are often simplified enough, while some of the more complex folk vocabulary does not need to be simplified. However, in response to the feedback from relevant departments, the committee members made difficult changes, and even simplified many of the simplified words in the first jane for a second time.
Subsequently, the local newspaper also responded to the call and began to print in secondary simplified characters. The following year, the Education Bureau announced that it had begun experimenting with simplified characters in textbooks. However, the simplified characters that have been revised many times have not been recognized by people, but have attracted many criticisms. The response from all walks of life was very strong, and many experts also began to write letters to relevant departments to express their opinions.
This is because many diphtheria are written as homophones or typos, and these homonyms, although pronounced the same, have very different meanings. Many meanings of Chinese characters can be expressed in terms of structure, which is also helpful for children's learning and understanding.
However, if these homonyms are written as a word, it will be very troublesome in the process of learning and using, and it is easy to confuse the original meaning of the word.
Zhou Youguang also wrote a letter with Hu Yuzhi, Wang Li, and 23 other people, asking that the simplified characters of the first table of the "Second Simplified Draft" should not be used. Under external pressure, the state announced in April 1978 that it would cease the use of "two simple characters" in newspapers, textbooks and books, and in the same year, new amendments were made to the draft.
Wang Li, one of the responsible persons, proposed that the "second simplicity" should follow the principle of routine and reasonable simplification, and cannot be simplified for the sake of simplicity. Regrettably, the revision of the draft did not fully implement those principles.
Zhou Youguang
In 1981, the "Second Simplified Revised Draft" was finally revised and completed, and this draft received more positive feedback when soliciting opinions from all walks of life. However, in the discussions in the following years, the parties were divided, and the final plan was delayed. And because of the "two simple characters", there have been phenomena such as word confusion and cognitive difficulties.
In short, these secondary simplified Chinese characters have not brought much convenience to people's daily lives, but have become a burden for daily learning and communication. Later, many linguists and sinologists jointly wrote letters, hoping that the relevant departments would stop the draft in the "Two Janes". Finally, in 1986, the State Council officially announced the abolition of the "Two Simplified" draft. At this point, after decades of "two simple" reforms, it has finally come to an end.
Hu Yuzhi
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > fourth, "secondary simplification" has a deep impact, and many people's surnames have changed</h1>
Although the "erjian character" was canceled, and the process was frequently stopped, but because of the publicity intensity and wide range of involvement, it has a certain impact on people's daily life, education and other aspects, "erjian character" has been circulated in the folk for nearly ten years, and many "two simplified characters" are still used in modern society.
Specific simplification methods are:
It mainly selects popular simplified words from the public; simplifies the shape of Chinese characters (590 original Chinese characters have an average stroke of 13.1 strokes, and 462 simplified characters have an average stroke of 6.9 strokes, simplifying the number of Chinese characters by nearly half compared with the original strokes; eliminating some words that are easy to misread and write; making some Chinese characters partial and stroke structures become commonly used words; reducing the partial side of Some Chinese characters.
For example, stew (stew), consultation (谘), and Yan (阎) became the standard characters, in addition, the two simplified characters of "meal" were "歺", "egg" was written as "Chicken Dan", and "parking" was written as "仃車" was also influenced by the "two simplified characters" at that time.
At the same time, as a result of the simplification reform, some surnames changed, resulting in a sharp increase in the population of this surname.
For example, when the Chinese character is simplified twice, Xiao is simplified to Xiao. Compared with the rare Xiao surname in ancient times, Xiao Ke is a very famous surname in history, which has been used for more than two thousand, and according to records, the national surnames of the three dynasties of Southern Qi, Southern Liang and Western Liang are all Xiao. The Lanling Xiao clan is a famous aristocratic clan in history, with a high proportion of the population, so it is at the forefront of the hundred family names.
Since the reform of the second simplified character, the word "Xiao" has been simplified to "Xiao", and now we can only vaguely see the existence of the Xiao surname from the genealogy or ancestral hall of the older generation. In the promotion of the simplification work, it was not clearly stated that the surname was not within the scope of the reform, so the surname Xiao was also included in the simplified Chinese characters, which is why the number of people with the surname Xiao increased sharply later.
The surname "Yan" was also changed to "Yan", and as a result, "Yan Po Xi" became "Yan Po Xi", and the actress "Yan Ni" instead of "Yan Ni".
It is worth noting that the interpretation of the surnames "Yan" and "Yan" in the Modern Chinese Canonical Dictionary is: "Yan and Yan are two different surnames, and Yan is not a simplified font of Yan." "Because your surname is now "Yan", that is to write "Yan", and the surname "Yan" is written "Yan". In addition, there are "lan surname" as "Lan surname", "Fu surname" as "Fu surname" and so on.
Once, a dai family surnamed Dai in Leek Jiang Village, Jining City, Shandong Province, collectively submitted an application form for changing their surname to the local police station. It is because during the "Erjian" reform period, their "Dai" surname was rewritten as "Dai", which caused the surname difference of the whole village and brought some trouble to the villagers.
After 37 years, the villagers finally changed their surnames en masse with the help of the local police station. However, in general, many of the simplification schemes in the "two simplified characters", although they have not been used for a long time later, have a very significant impact on the surnames of ordinary people, which has become an unintentional move after the implementation of the "two simplified characters".
There are also many Chinese characters that are affected by simplification, and there is almost no shadow of traditional Chinese, and people have different views on simplified reform. Although controversial, it has had a profound impact on modern culture.
Although the "two-word" reform has not caused much negative impact, its failure is still worthy of our deep reflection. The main reason for the failure of the "two janes" is that it did not follow the principle of "one jane", steadily advanced, one-sidedly pursued the simplification of strokes and the increase in the number of words, acted hastily, and deleted hard, which eventually led to the failure of reform.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Chinese characters are the treasures of our people and the carrier of historical inheritance. Chinese characters have their own unique charm. Each stroke is the crystallization of the wisdom and experience of the ancestors. After years of precipitation, it gradually penetrates into all aspects of life.
After the first simplification of Chinese characters was implemented, it has greatly accelerated the development of China's economy, the progress of science and technology, and the improvement of the people's living standards and education levels, which is of great significance.
All things must have a degree when implementing, beyond a certain standard will have a counter-effect, such as "secondary" Chinese character simplification, utilitarian pursuit is only to simplify and simplify, but there is no thousands of years of Chinese character history charm. Even the surnames that Chinese valued the most have changed.
China's traditional "root" culture has been destroyed, involving the vital interests of the people. Secondary simplification must be abandoned halfway.
In fact, in the development of history, the debate between complexity and simplicity has always existed. Until now, some people thought that simplifying Chinese characters would make Chinese characters lose their original charm. So this incident also tells us that any reform must be carefully decided, and blind reform will only make jokes.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > references:</h1>
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LI Xue. Analysis of the pros and cons of Chinese character simplification[J].Youth Years,2015(13):63.
Su Peicheng. Homographs formed by simplification of Chinese characters[N]. Language and Writing Weekly, 2020-12-16(002).
[5] Yu Quanyou. Discussion on Chinese character simplification and cultural inheritance needs to be clarified[J].Journal of Shenyang Normal University (Social Science Edition),2019,43(03):95-102.