Language Teaching and Research, 2003 (2):1-1.
On Language Unity of Reformists in Late Qing Dynasty
Li Yuming
From 1892 to 19 1 1, there was a far-reaching character reform movement, which was called "phonetic notation movement" by later generations. The idea of phonetic symbol movement can be summarized in three sentences: first, simplicity of painting and calligraphy; second, unity of characters; third, language.
(1) Use words uniformly. "Simple calligraphy and painting" requires simple and convenient words, which brings various schemes of phonetic notation cutting, which is later.
Phonetic symbols, Chinese phonetic schemes and simplification of Chinese characters pave the way for theory and practice. "Unification of words" mainly means that written language and spoken language should be consistent, which is the forerunner of the vernacular movement in later generations; "Language unification" made a preliminary public opinion and theoretical preparation for the later Mandarin movement and the promotion of Mandarin. Studying the theory and practice of phonetic symbol movement is of great significance to fully understand the modernization movement of language and writing in the past 100 years and do a good job in today's language and writing work. Based on the Collection of Literary Reforms in the Late Qing Dynasty published by Literature Reform Press 1958, this paper studies the expositions of these reformers on language unification.
There are elegant words, lingua franca and mandarin in the history of China. It replaced the position of * * * in different times, but these "quasi-* * homophones" mainly affected the officialdom and cultural circles, and the dialect differences in actual language life were very serious, even in the late Qing Dynasty. Facing the differences of dialects, people put forward the idea of unifying languages. As early as 1892, Lu Taizhang put forward "one cavity as the main brain" in "The First Accelerated Phonetic Preface of China" to unify the national language with Nanjing dialect. (P3) 1898, Lin Yi, a fellow villager of Lu Yizhang who was an official in Beijing, put forward the suggestion of "speaking homophones" in his book On Inspectors. (p 17) 1902, Wu Rulun's Travels to the East was published, which described Japan's achievements in promoting Mandarin and unifying languages, and introduced the Japanese viewpoint that "it is particularly urgent to observe the current situation in your country and unify languages". (P27-28) In the same year, Wu Rulun wrote to Zhang Baixi, Minister of Management, calling for "unifying the world's pronunciation" and "not making languages uneven". (P29) Since then, people have been calling for a unified language, which formed the knowledge of a group of people with lofty ideals at that time.
Eliminating dialect differences and unifying language was a good medicine for China at that time. One hundred years later, the great national cause of unifying the language has not been completed. This medicine still has the effect of eliminating pathogenic factors and strengthening the body resistance today.
The Selection of Homophones and the Establishment of Their Standards
Since unified language is a good medicine to save the country in the movement of word segmentation, the logical result is to choose language and determine what words to use as unified homophones.
1.* * * Homology selection
At that time, it was undoubtedly the most authoritative Mandarin that acted as a homonym. The author's research (Li Yuming, 2002) shows that at that time, Mandarin was not unified, and there were southern and northern schools. Nanpai Mandarin is based on Nanjing dialect, while Beipai Mandarin is represented by Beijing dialect. At that time, the status of Southern Mandarin was very high, even higher than that of Northern Mandarin.
Nevertheless, the idea of unifying the national language with Beijing dialect was the mainstream at that time. (2) 1898, Lin Yicun put forward this view in Lu Taizhang's "The First Aauto Quicker Protagonist in China" (see 1958 Literature Reform Publishing House's "Literary Reform in the Late Qing Dynasty", and the following pages are all books).
(2) Some people hold other opinions. For example, Zhang refutes China's theory of using world Newspeak and thinks that the pronunciation between Jianghan is a positive tone. Gan Shuo Wen Jie Zi said: "I think we should choose the national public voice as the national voice and the local unique voice as the local voice. The so-called national voice is similar to the official voice of the item, and (1)