Zhao Yuanren, Four Tutors of Tsinghua National Studies

Another great scholar among the four tutors is Zhao Yuanren. Zhao Yuanren (1892 ——19822.25) was born in Wujin, Jiangsu (now Changzhou) and Tianjin. 19 10 is the second batch of international students in the office of tourism aesthetics, who entered Cornell University in the United States and majored in mathematics. 19 14 received a bachelor of science degree. 19 18 received a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard university. 19 19 is a lecturer in physics at Cornell University. 1920 professor of psychology and physics at Ren Qinghua school. 192 1 went back to Harvard University to study phonetics, and later served as a lecturer in philosophy department and a professor in Chinese department of Harvard University. 1In June, 925, he was hired as a tutor of Tsinghua National College. His teaching scope was modern dialect, China phonology and general linguistics. 1929 After the end of June, he was hired by Academia Sinica as a researcher and director of the Language Group of the Institute of Historical Languages, and concurrently served as a lecturer in the Literature Department of China, Tsinghua, teaching phonology and other courses. 1938 has taught in the United States so far.

1892165438+1was born in Tianjin on October 3rd. My father is good at playing flute in the middle of the year. Mother feng lai Sun Shan's Poems and Kunqu Opera. 1900, Zhao Yuanren returned to his hometown in Qingguo Lane, Changzhou, and studied in Changzhou No.2 Middle School. Influenced by national culture in his early years, it has a profound influence on his life and career. Zhao Yuanren showed his talent for languages when he was very young. He learned all kinds of dialects as soon as he learned them. I entered Changzhou Xishan Primary School at the age of fourteen. 1907 entered the preparatory course of Nanjing Jiangnan Higher Education College with excellent results. He learned English and German very well and won the honor of American English teacher Jia Hua (D. J. Carve's favorite. Jiahua often invites Zhao Yuanren to his home. Mrs. Jiahua is good at playing the piano and singing. Zhao Yuanren learned from Mrs. Jiahua to sing songs such as Home, Sweet Home and Auld Lang Syne, which was the beginning of his acceptance of western music. Mr Zhao Yuanren is a pioneer of modern language and modern musicology in China. He is knowledgeable, a mathematician and physicist, and also has some attainments in philosophy. However, he is mainly known as a famous linguist. When he retired from the University of California, he taught in Tsinghua from 1920 to 1972 and worked in education for 52 years. Famous linguists in China, such as Wang Li, Zhu,,, etc. Are all his students. "Mr. Zhao Can is never wrong" is a lofty evaluation of him by American linguists.

Zhao Yuanren's ancestral home is Changzhou, Jiangsu, and 1892 was born in a scholarly bureaucratic family in Tianjin. Zhao Yi (Qianlong Jinshi), the author of the famous poem "Jiangshan has produced talented people, each leading the way for hundreds of years", is his sixth ancestor. At the end of Qing dynasty, his grandfather was an official in the north. When young Zhao Yuanren lived with his family in Beijing and Baoding, he learned Beijing dialect and Baoding dialect from his nanny. When I was 5 years old, I returned to my hometown Changzhou and was invited by a local tutor. He also learned to recite four books and five classics in Changzhou dialect. Later, I learned changshu dialect from my aunt and Fuzhou dialect from my aunt.

When he 15 was admitted to Nanjing Jiangnan College, only three of the 270 students in the school were authentic Nanjing people, and he learned authentic Nanjing dialect from these three Nanjing students. On one occasion, he dined at the same table with guests who happened to come from all directions. Zhao Yuanren can talk with his deskmate in eight dialects. According to his family, he likes to imitate others' speech since he was a child and is good at distinguishing local dialects and phonetic features.

This family history shows that Zhao Yuanren was trained in many dialects at an early age and began to master the language learning skills. 19 10, when he was 17 years old, he was admitted to Tsinghua by Nanjing University in Jiangsu Province to study for postgraduate students in the United States. Among the 72 formal students admitted, his total score ranked second (Hu Shi ranked 55th). I studied mathematics and physics at Cornell University, then philosophy at Harvard, and then linguistics. 1920 returned to China to teach in Tsinghua University. At that time, Dewey, an American educator, and China, an English philosopher were giving lectures, and Tsinghua University sent him as an interpreter for Russell. He learned to speak Hunan dialect when he accompanied Russell to Changsha, Hunan. Because of his clear speech, profound knowledge and dialect translation, Russell gave a better lecture than Dewey at that time. Since then, Zhao Yuanren's linguistic genius has been recognized, and he himself has decided to take linguistics as his main career for life.

1925, Tsinghua University established the Institute of Chinese Studies. He, Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei and Chen were hired as tutors to teach phonology, general linguistics, phonology in China and modern dialects in China. 1929 was hired as the director of the Institute of Historical Linguistics of Academia Sinica and the director of the Language Group. At 1938, he went to Harvard University to study linguistics. After six years of painstaking research, he became a world-famous linguist. From 65438 to 0945, he was president of the American Linguistic Society, and from 65438 to 0960, he was president of the American Oriental Society. He was awarded honorary doctorates by three American universities. Zhao Lao is the first scholar in China to investigate dialects and dialects by scientific methods. His ears can distinguish various subtle phonetic differences. During the 1920s and 1930s, I personally investigated and studied nearly 60 dialects such as Wu dialect.

Zhao Yuanren's study of dialects is beyond the reach of others. He knows 33 dialects. His rigorous and diligent spirit of scholarship is amazing.

1in the spring of 927, when Zhao Lao was a tutor in Tsinghua University Institute, he went to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to inspect Wu dialect. I often go to two or three places a day and record while investigating. If I can't find a hotel, I'll stay at a farmer's house. On one occasion, he and his assistant caught the train from Wuxi to Suzhou at night and only bought a fourth-class ticket with a hard seat. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the bench after I got on the bus. When I woke up, the car was in complete darkness. I looked out and realized that all the cars in front had left, leaving this fourth-class car. The assistant asked him what to do. He said, "I can't find a hotel now anyway. Just sleep in the car until dawn! " "The assistant saw that he was weak and advised him to do less research every day. He said humorously, "To do research is to work harder and hurry up, otherwise you can't go home early!"! "Isn't it more time-consuming and harder in the future?"

In that Wu dialect survey, he went to Zhenjiang, Danyang and Wuxi, got off at each stop, then took a small steamboat to Yixing, Liyang and returned to Wuxi. He braved the cold, ran back and forth, went deep into the masses, visited many places and recorded a large number of local dialects. Three months later, he returned to Beijing and wrote the investigation materials into a book "A Study of Modern Wu Language". When the book was published, the phonetic symbols were international phonetic symbols, and the printing house had no fonts. He and his assistant write, draw tables and make copies, and work more than 65,438+00 hours a day. After the book was published, it made a very precious contribution to the study of Wu dialect and dialect, and Zhao Yuanren also became the originator of Chinese dialect investigation. Professor Zhao Yuanren has excellent research in phonetics theory, China phonology, Chinese dialects and Chinese grammar, and has written and published a large number of influential papers and monographs, which enjoys a high reputation among scholars at home and abroad. In addition to teaching in American universities, he has also written a large number of linguistic works in English and Chinese: China Language Dictionary, An Introduction to China Language, A Study of Language Laws in China, A Study of Modern Wu Dialect, Notes on Middle Zen Dialect and Hubei Dialect Report.

From 65438 to 0972, after his retirement, Zhao Lao continued to devote himself to writing, including Linguistics and Symbol System, Vernacular Reading Materials and so on. Shortly before his death, he also conceived the homonym substitution method, and synthesized more than 1000 words in Kangxi Dictionary into a 2000-word universal word for daily writing, but unfortunately failed to do so.

In his early years, Zhao Yuanren and linguist Mr. li jinxi devoted themselves to popularizing Putonghua. To this end, he created the Mandarin Roman character (phonetic symbol II) and recorded the Mandarin phonograph record. Zhao Lao experienced the baptism of the May 4th New Culture Movement, and he always advocated thorough vernacular Chinese. When I visited Zhao Lao at 198 1, I felt this way about the spoken language of China people: "Now that people are highly educated, people's speech is influenced by the media such as radio, newspapers and television, and they export more written language, so they don't like to speak vernacular. For example, now Beijingers love to say "start" instead of "start"; Call the long coat "coat", not "coat" Even children speak in a literary way, and people's daily life language seems to lack the breath of life. "

During his visit to China and visiting relatives, he talked with friends and students in various dialects. When the famous crosstalk artist Hou met Zhao Lao, they talked cheerfully in dialect, which made everyone laugh.

Lv Shuxiang, a famous linguist in China and director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Social Sciences, praised Zhao Lao's contribution to linguistics in China. First of all, he took modern language as the research object of linguistics, which opened up a new way for China's linguistic research. Secondly, he trained a huge team for China's linguistic research.