Why are there different dialects in China?

August 2, 2004109: 09

Wang Luxiang: Why is the canal so clear? Because there is running water at the source. This is the "Dahongying Century Lecture Hall". I'm Wang Luxiang. Hello, everyone.

Speaking of China, everyone will describe it with a large population, a long history and a vast territory. In fact, China has another feature: rich language and numerous dialects. Speaking of dialects, we all have such experiences. We are all from Zhejiang, but Wenzhou people can't understand what Hangzhou people say, Hunan people can't understand what I am from Lianyuan, and Changsha people can't understand. The so-called "different customs in a hundred miles, different sounds in ten miles" has even formed dialect islands in some places. Why do Chinese produce so many dialects? How are dialects formed? What is the relationship between dialect and a nation's language? What is the relationship between dialect and culture? How did China culture spread with the evolution of dialects? Today, we invited Professor Zhang Hongming from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is also a visiting professor at Nankai University, to give us a lecture on these issues. His topic is "Chinese Dialect and China Culture".

Zhang Hongming's resume

Zhang Hongming, 1984, holds a master's degree in China history from Fudan University. After graduation, he stayed in school to teach, 1987 went to study in the United States. From 1990 to 1992, Zhang Hongming received a master's degree and a doctor's degree in general linguistics from the University of California. 1994, Zhang Hongming was employed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was awarded a tenured professorship in 1998.

In addition, Professor Zhang has also served as the editor-in-chief or executive editor-in-chief of various "China Linguistics Research Series", a reviewer of papers in various international academic journals and conferences, and made keynote speeches and invited speeches at various international and regional academic conferences for many times. 1999 has been the permanent secretary-general of the China International Linguistics Society, responsible for the actual operation of the whole society.

His main research fields are phonology theory, the interface between phonetics and grammar, historical linguistics, dialectology, poetry rhythm and so on.

Wang Luxiang: Speaking of dialects, in fact, each of us can speak dialects after birth. No one said that he would speak Mandarin after he was born. Even a Beijinger speaks Beijing dialect. Tianjin is very close to Beijing, and now it is Tianjin dialect. I find it strange that we are all Han Chinese, we are all called Han Chinese, and we all speak Chinese, but why are there so many people from China? What's going on here? What is this?

Zhang Hongming: Chinese is a big concept. It is easy for us to equate Chinese with Mandarin and Beijing dialect. In fact, from the perspective of language classification, the languages in our world can be divided into many language families. At the highest level, we can be divided into Sino-Tibetan language family and Indo-European language family, both of which are different language families. Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family, and then it is the Chinese branch of Sino-Tibetan language family. There are many subordinate branches of Chinese in the Chinese branch, that is, its dialect. The secondary classification of dialects is sub-dialects, dialects and specific words.

Wang Luxiang: Just like a tree, it has many small branches, and the words on the smallest branch are basically unreadable by others.

Zhang Hongming: Then implement it in Tianjin dialect.

Wang Luxiang: Speaking of this dialect, there are actually many interesting things, which are often separated by the language itself. In fact, language is originally for communication, and the essence and vocation of language seems to be born for communication. It just happens that many people can't communicate, and such obstacles, including misunderstandings, all occur in language.

Zhang Hongming: Yes.

Wang Luxiang: How do you understand this phenomenon? In fact, I always feel that language itself seems to be a natural phenomenon, which has something to do with water and soil and the environment of this place. For example, when people talk in the mountains, their voices smell like mountains; When people talk in the plain, they smell like rivers; When people talk by the river, they smell like a river. Language, like trees and grass, feels natural, but at the same time it feels artificial. For example, many languages are actually very artificial and are a recognition system.

Zhang Hongming: People are curious about the whole world. People's thirst for knowledge is part of the driving force of curiosity. Now man can reach the level of going into space and sending a spaceship to heaven. We know a lot about the outside world, but not much about ourselves. Human exploration and curiosity about language is actually our curiosity about ourselves and our exploration of ourselves. Therefore, what Mr. Wang said just now is generally the easiest understanding to produce, and it is a very intuitive understanding, which is why there are such great differences in dialects in the language, and it comes down to soil and water, geography and so on. But this view is not quite correct.

Wang Luxiang: Oh, that's not true. I also studied Chinese as an undergraduate, and Chinese is also an important course for us. However, many of our classmates find it boring to learn linguistics, so it is better to engage in literary creation and write poems for recreation. Why did you choose this boring linguistic research direction at that time and never look back, but now you have made such great achievements? What is this? Is this what you just said about curiosity?

Zhang Hongming: It's a shame to say that I want to be a literary youth, but you know that after the college entrance examination was resumed for the first time that year, we were in Grade 77. Although it was the first time to implement the voluntary college entrance examination system after the Cultural Revolution, it still had to obey the party's distribution to some extent.

Wang Luxiang: Yes.

Zhang Hongming: Actually, I volunteered to study literature in the Chinese Department of Fudan University, hoping to learn aesthetics from Mr. Jiang Kongyang. As a result, I entered the language major by mistake. After going in, I was still a thief for the first three years. I am now, my heart is in Korea, and I also took a literature class. Language classes have always been regarded as a coping measure. But in the fourth year, I had to return to reality from meditation. I'm going to graduate and write my graduation thesis. What is my future? At that time, I began to seriously consider the language problem, so I made it up in the last year. As a result, I think the language is also interesting, and there is something worthy of my dedication, so I decided to apply for graduate students. At that time, I took an examination of Mr. Zhang Shilu as a graduate student in the history of China. Once I made that decision, I was on the road of no return.

Ok, let's welcome Professor Zhang, who is on the road of Chinese studies, to give us a speech with warm applause. The theme of his speech today is Chinese dialects and China culture.

Numerous dialects bring trouble to communication.

August 2, 2004109: 05

Zhang Hongming: Today I'm going to talk about Chinese dialects and China culture. I think we should start with a well-known poem: "When a teenager leaves home, the old man returns, and the local accent remains unchanged. When a child meets a stranger, he will smile and ask where the guest is from. " This is a famous sentence by the Tang Dynasty poet He. This poem is about him going out in his early years and going home after retirement in his later years. That is, after he returned to China in his later years, his whole body and mind changed, but his accent remained. The local accent here is the dialect, which is his dialect.

Many dialects cause communication problems.

As Mr. Wang said just now, Chinese dialects are very rich. In our entire 9.6 million square kilometers of land, we have many dialects, which has caused many communication troubles and even some jokes. For example, Hubei people, there are Hubei people here, please forgive me if I offend you. Hubei people went to the streets to go to the fair. There are many people. When he walked, his shoes fell off. Then he shouted that my "child" had fallen. Hearing this, the people around him helped him find the "child" and found that his "shoes" had dropped.

Another time, we visited a kindergarten. I have been a visiting professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education for two years. On one occasion, we visited the situation of preschool education. There is a teacher from Shanghai. She teaches her students vividly with a picture. There are all kinds of patterns in this painting. As she hung the picture on the blackboard, she said, "Students, what's in the picture?" Later, those children, thirty or forty children, all said, "There are eyes." At first glance, this teacher has a stomach and eyes. She looked back and saw the children lift all the clothes one by one, with their bellies standing there, one belly and one eye. It turns out that this teacher is from Shanghai. She said there was something on her stomach. The pronunciation of "painting" in Shanghai dialect is very similar to "belly".

There are many people from Hubei here, aren't there? There are also Sichuanese and Hunan people. Their biggest problem is the confusion between "N-" and "L-", so in Sichuan dialect, "blue pants" are often called "men's pants". A girl in blue pants has become a girl in men's pants in Chengdu dialect. Nanjing dialect is just the opposite, saying "men's pants" as "blue pants".

This is the communication trouble brought by voice, which has caused many jokes. Vocabulary is the same problem. For example, today, we all know that "comrade" refers to a comrade-in-arms in the trenches, and like-minded people are engaged in a certain cause, but if you go to Hong Kong and Taiwan, this "comrade" refers to homosexuality, so be careful. There is also the "secretary", which is very big here. We are not principals, but secretaries. But in Hongkong and Taiwan Province Province, secretaries are the smallest officials and documents. "lover", we often call this my lover very intimately today, but in Hong Kong and Taiwan, lover refers to lover, lover. And "jail". What do you mean by prison? Cell, isn't it? In Hong Kong, it means classroom. You sit in the classroom all day.

This shows the importance of language. Although language can't prosper the country in one language and destroy the country in one language, it will at least cause a lot of trouble.

The contradiction between dialect and national homology

Zhang Hongming: Let's talk about dialects. What is a dialect? What is the relationship between the dialect we speak and Mandarin? Every language, every national language, has its own dialect, which is contrary to the national language. Dialect is a tribe and variant of language, and it is its geographical distribution. This difference is the difference between dialects and national languages, which has always existed, regardless of ancient and modern times.

Let's look at the opposition between "elegant words" and non-elegant words, common words and non-common words, common words and common sayings in the pre-Qin period. For example, "The Book of Rites and the King's System", "People from five parties have different language and different appetites". The language barrier here refers to the barrier caused by dialect barrier, just like different personal hobbies.

The Analects of Confucius says: "Confucius says elegance: poetry, books and rituals are elegant." Confucius also used the word * * * in the same language. When he reads poetry, books and salutes, he uses the same language of his own nation. " On Mencius and Teng Wengong's Shuowen, who is also quite eloquent today, is not the first in Wang Zhidao; Learning from children's teachers is also different from Ceng Zi. This is what Mencius said when he mocked and mocked the Chu people Xu Xing. This is the problem that he argued with Xu Xing. Many people here say it's a minority language, while others say it's Baiyue. I think this is a Chinese dialect. Why? Mencius can argue with Xu Xing, which shows that he can understand what Xu Xing said, so he should be a native of China. However, calling him a barbarian and mocking him as a barbarian means that the Chinese you speak is different from mine. Therefore, in the pre-Qin period, the existence of dialects was obviously opposed to homophones.

Zhou Deqing's "Rhyme of the Central Plains" in the Yuan Dynasty said, "The emissaries can be Yuefu, Shijing and the world's lingua franca, but not common sayings, ... local dialect and scholar's language." The book "Central Plains Rhyme" is very important, and it is the main source of our northern rhyme and Beijing dialect today. In that book, the opposition between standard language and dialect is also clearly pointed out. From these documents, we can know that dialects and national languages have been opposed since ancient times.

This is the case in China. In other countries in the world, there are also opposites between dialects and homophones. For example, we are most familiar with English. The standard language of American English is based on the dialects in the Midwest of the United States and the pronunciation of Chicago as the standard pronunciation. British English, on the other hand, is pronounced with the London accent as the standard. Like Italian and other countries, Tuscan dialect is the basic dialect, and Florence dialect is its standard pronunciation. Therefore, in other countries in the world, dialects and homonyms are a normal contradiction, no exception at all times.

Classification of dialects

Dialects can be further divided into regional dialects and social dialects. The so-called regional dialect refers to the varieties of this language in different regions. Social dialect refers to the social variety of this language, which is produced according to its social class. As we all know, the examples mentioned above are all variants of Chinese in different regions. Social dialects refer to social classes. In the same place, even in Tianjin, there may be different language expressions because of different social classes. But what we are going to discuss today is mainly regional varieties, that is, regional dialects.

So at the first level, how many dialects are there in Chinese? There are seven dialects: Northern dialect, Wu dialect, Min dialect, Cantonese (Cantonese is Cantonese), Hakka dialect, Hunan dialect (Miss Wang speaks Hunan dialect) and Gan dialect. Do you have seven dialects? Seven dialects. This is a first-class dialect. So how are these seven dialects formed? If you look closely, you will find a very strange phenomenon, which seems to be a very unique phenomenon in China. Where are six of the seven dialects? It's south of the Yangtze River. And they are basically in the southeast corner, and there is only one dialect on the north bank of the Yangtze River. How is this unbalanced trend formed? If language is naturally produced, just like branches grow on trees, it should be a discrete phenomenon and a random phenomenon. Why is the geographical distribution of Chinese dialects so unbalanced? How did this phenomenon come about? This involves how Chinese dialects are produced.

The Formation and Geographical Distribution of Chinese Dialects

August 2, 2004109: 06

So how did Chinese dialects come into being? There are two main reasons: one is immigration, and the other is studying abroad. Immigrants examine how the geographical distribution of Chinese dialects is formed from the perspective of the formation and development of historical administrative regions of the Chinese nation. From the perspective of language use, different levels, the evolution between levels, and the inconsistency of language evolution have caused differences in dialects. What we want to focus on is immigration, and how the immigrants in China's historical society formed the geographical distribution of the seven dialects today.

The Formation Process of Several Major Dialects

As we said before, there are seven dialects in Chinese, which is based on the general classification. Of course, there are various classifications in academic circles, so we don't have to worry. Some people think that there are eight dialects, nine dialects and even ten dialects. But we are based on a more widely accepted explanation, that is, seven dialects. So how are these seven dialects formed? We assume that they all originated from the Central Plains in a broad sense, and the earliest dialect is Wu dialect. According to the family records in Historical Records, Zhou's eldest son Taibo and his second son gave way to their younger brother, that is, their father, so Taibo and he fled, moved south, moved southeast, and then went straight to where? They came to Suzhou-Xichang in Jiangsu today, brought the dialect and language of Weishui to Suzhou-Xichang at that time, and then came into contact with the integration of the ancient Vietnamese language there, which was the earliest bottom of the ancient Wu language. Later, in the whole process, the Han people in the north migrated three times in history, which laid the foundation of modern Wu dialect today. During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Quan of the State of Wu developed in the south of the Yangtze River, and a large number of Han people multiplied in this area. There are also the turn of the Jin Dynasty, the turn of the Western Jin Dynasty and the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and the Yongkang Rebellion brought a group of people from the Central Plains to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. There is also the turn of the Song Dynasty. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin people invaded south and moved the capital to Hangzhou, bringing a group of northerners. This scale not only formed the pattern of modern Wu dialect today, but also produced a dialect island, which is today's Hangzhou dialect. The phonetic system of Hangzhou dialect is Wu dialect, but its vocabulary and word formation are northern dialects. This is the origin of Wu dialect.

Xiang dialect, how did Teacher Wang's Xiang dialect come into being? Xiang dialect has been around for a long time. According to records, at the end of the Yin Dynasty, the raccoon dogs of the Central Plains migrated to the southwest and moved to Hubei with a group of people. As a result, with the integration of the original minority languages, the bottom of the ancient Chu language was produced, and today's ancient Xiang language was produced on the basis of the ancient Chu language, resulting in the bottom of the Xiang language. But Xiang dialect should be divided into new Xiang dialect and old Xiang dialect, which has a very long history. New Xiang dialect is the result of the integration of Xiang dialect and Southwest Mandarin, so it is actually a kind of Southwest Mandarin and a branch of Southwest Mandarin.

Zhang Hongming: Cantonese is produced below. Cantonese was brought to Guangdong by soldiers of Qin State when they went to attack Vietnam. The 500 thousand soldiers stayed, guarding Tuen Mun and managing the three counties of Lingnan. This is the first floor of Cantonese. Later, the real modern Cantonese was formed in the late Song Dynasty. In order to avoid the attack of Liao and Jin people, the northern Han people fled all the way south and passed Nanxiong.

Therefore, these four dialects were first separated from Chinese in the Central Plains: Wu dialect, Guangzhou dialect, Hunan dialect, and one is Gan dialect. The status of Gan dialect is very special. The appearance of this Gan dialect, which we call Wu Tou Chu Wei, is the head of Wu dialect, and Chu dialect is also the end of Xiang dialect. After the attack of these two dialects, Gan dialect came into being, which is of course related to immigration. At that time, it was the early Tang Dynasty, and in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, a large number of immigrants entered northern Jiangxi. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, these people migrated from Jiangxi to western Fujian and northern Guangdong, forming today's Hakka dialect. Therefore, on the first level, Wu dialect, Yue dialect, Gan dialect and Xiang dialect are the earliest Chinese dialects in the Central Plains. The other two dialects, Min dialect and Hakka dialect, are separated at the second level. The emergence of Min dialect is that Wu people, that is, Wu dialect people moved to Fujian, Fujian, so Min dialect is not directly separated from Central Plains Chinese, but Central Plains Chinese first separated Wu dialect, and then separated Min dialect from Wu dialect. Therefore, from the distribution of these seven dialects, it can be seen that the reason why Chinese dialects show such an unbalanced trend in geography is directly related to the changes of immigrants and administrative regions.

Regional cultural information contained in dialects

Let's talk about the relationship between the development of language and culture and the evolution of language dialects. The evolution of dialects and the spread of culture, we don't want to cite ancient examples, we only cite the most direct examples in modern times, and we can appreciate the relationship between them. For example, there has been a trend in the last 20 years, that is, the whole domestic speaking atmosphere has gradually spread from Hong Kong to the south, especially in the entertainment circle. What is the favorite sentence that those singers say after singing? Just thank you, right? The word "thank you" has long been mixed with "Tuan" in northern dialect and Beijing dialect, and "Jane" and "Tuan" have long been separated. But today, many singers who speak Beijing dialect have to separate "Jian" from "Tuan", thinking that this is a fashion, and that Hong Kong culture seems to be a strong culture in this region, with advanced culture and Cantonese becoming a strong language. There are many examples between this language and culture. Historically, some cultures are inseparable from our daily life. For example, the rice we eat today is rice, which was originally called wo or gu. From the evolution of its pronunciation in Wo and Gu, the different pronunciations in various dialects and their distribution, we can see that the origin of rice originated from southern China and Guangdong, which is the birthplace of rice in the world. The cultural distribution of the whole meter just follows the language.

As for the most obvious taboo words, more is to reflect the regional culture. For example, Beijingers are taboo about "eggs", so they generally like preserved eggs. They don't say preserved eggs, they just say Songhua, just to avoid that word. Eggs are often used by bad people, illegitimate children, bastards, and these places. Shanghainese don't avoid this egg, avoid this "egg", and the "egg" in Shanghainese is used in bad words. Forget it, you are interested in your own research in the future. And in many places in China, the word "tiger" is also taboo, the tiger's tiger. Just now, I told Mr. Wang that I visited Hunan University last week. When I was eating, tofu, they didn't say tofu. They called it "cat milk", not tofu. That's because in Hunan dialect, rot and tiger are the same pronunciation, the same sound. In many places, tigers are taboo. Tigers don't talk about tigers, but they still talk about big cats, such as Wenzhou, North China and Hunan.

Wang Luxiang: We are talking about old bugs.

Zhang Hongming: Sun Erniang is obviously a tigress. What has she become? "female worm"

In addition, loanwords can also reflect some ways of cultural exchange, such as sofa, and English is SOFA. If translated from Mandarin and Beijing dialect, the translation is not good at all, and the transliteration is not quite corresponding, but we can immediately guess where the word comes from.

Wang Luxiang: Guangdong?

Zhang Hongming: Shanghai. The sofa in Shanghai is pronounced "Suofa" and the "sand" in Shanghai is pronounced "Suo". Canada, Mandarin is Canada, English is Canada, Shanghainese is Canada, and it is very close to Canada. There are also a number of words imported from Guangdong, such as opium, which is the pronunciation of Cantonese. Mandarin is completely different today. The most puzzling thing is "really cool", which was a very popular material in the early 1970s, but I bought a really cool dress at that time. It's not cool when I wear it, just like I'm sweating now.

Wang Luxiang: It's sealed.

Zhang Hongming: It's sealed. Why is it really cool? It was translated from Cantonese, but actually from polyester. But that beautiful, in Cantonese, means beautiful, beautiful but useless. This dress is very beautiful and crisp, which conforms to the aesthetic concept of people in the 1970 s So it was changed to "really beautiful", and as a result, this beautiful homonym became cool, which actually means beautiful. But from these things, we immediately knew that these words must come from Guangzhou.

So are other reverse loanwords. Today, English tea, called the in French and tee in German all come from the Minnan language te. Then in Persian, Turkish, Greek and Russian, they all read chaa, which comes from the land in the north and northwest, while English, French and German all pass through the sea, southeast and coastal roads. We can do it soon. Another popular word in English is ketchup. Where does ketchup come from? It's Cantonese. Cantonese tomato juice, Cantonese tomato juice spread to English. From the language, we can also see some vestiges of society and human civilization. In some dialects, such as Miao language in southeastern Guizhou, its word order is very different from today's Chinese. For example, the parents' name is mi6-pa3, which actually means mom and dad. The meaning of husband and wife is vie3-zio6, which actually means husband and wife. In Chinese, the word "male" comes first and the word "female" comes last. We have completed the transformation from matriarchal society to paternal society a long time ago, but in these areas, some are matriarchal society, some have just transitioned to paternal society, and some are left over from matriarchal society. All these can show the corresponding relationship between the evolution of dialects and cultural inheritance. I think the last question is left for discussion.

Our language policy should be very cautious.

August 2, 2004109: 07

Wang Luxiang: Just now, Professor Zhang gave a lot of very interesting speeches about dialects, which made us know a lot. In fact, we speak dialects every day, but there may be many things we don't know about dialects, their origins and the relationship between dialects and culture. In the process of listening here, I also have some questions, because there is an old saying among the people that dialects go with the flow. From what you just said, I also think this folk saying has some truth, because you just said that the seven dialects in China, especially the five dialects in the southeast and south of the Yangtze River, are basically caused by many immigrants in history. We know that ancient immigrants, especially large-scale group immigrants, followed the water.

Zhang Hongming: Waterway is one of them.

Wang Luxiang: Basically, we follow the water, because the biggest traffic line in the past was the waterline. In this case, I can probably understand this meaning from here. But I have been thinking, if it is such a thing, such as the Yellow River, a friend I know once made a water sculpture. Just a few kilometers between the source of the Yellow River and the estuary, I intercepted a water body and put it in a transparent body. Then I intercepted more than 100 large transparent water boxes at once and put this water box in a wall. You will find that its color is gradually changing. Then I also wonder, for example, whether dialects follow the water, like a big river, from upstream to downstream. Has anyone done this kind of research? For example, starting from Qinghai in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, we regard Chinese as a minority language, all the way to the mouth of Shandong. A dialect of a big river can have such a gradual change as this water body. Is there such a relationship between them?

Zhang Hongming: This is a very interesting angle. Just now, Mr. Wang conceived the idea. In fact, there are some scholars. We say that large-scale research has not yet been carried out, but this kind of research has been carried out in some places. For example, a scholar who studies Shanxi dialect thinks that the distribution of Shanxi dialect has a corresponding relationship with the trend of Fenhe River basin. He investigated all the way along the whole Fenhe River basin and looked at the language.

Wang Luxiang: There is another saying, because China is the hometown of operas, we have many local operas, and we also have a lot of rap art, both of which are actually extensions of dialects. Without such a rich dialect, it is hard to imagine that China has such a rich local opera and rap art. At present, some people engaged in local opera reform do not seem to agree with this statement. For example, Hebei Bangzi, someone once said that you changed Hebei Bangzi to speak English and sing English, because you wanted to sing Hebei dialect, which was not understood by foreigners, which was not conducive to international communication. So if you sing English, people will understand, so you try to sing English with Hebei Bangzi. what do you think?

Zhang Hongming: It's just an attempt. As an attempt, it's ok. English and Chinese are two extreme examples. Let me find a less extreme example. I think there is a precedent in the history of China's drama. For example, Huangmei tune and Huangmei opera, which used to be local operas in Huangmei County, Hubei Province, are now in the Hubei-speaking area. But today's Huangmei Opera is sung in Anhui dialect. This song and words can correspond, which is no problem, but they can also be misplaced. This dislocation is not without success, but I personally think that all kinds of practices can be tried, but not extreme. If I try all the operas in China after the success of Huangmei Opera, it will go to the other extreme; We dare not even try, so we don't know what the result will be. We can't see the new atmosphere, so I think treating these cultural problems is the same as treating all kinds of problems, that is to say, we need a rational attitude, which should be inclusive, but we must also have our own certain standards.

Wang Luxiang: I think after listening to Professor Zhang's report today, the students here will definitely have a lot of questions. Please raise your hand if you have any questions.

Student: First of all, thank Mr. Zhang for his wonderful speech. May I speak dialect first?

Zhang Hongming: Yes, welcome.

Wang Luxiang: Can you test him and see if you understand?

Student: This thing is very, very small. It's okay to put it here, it's okay to put it there, and it's okay to put it anywhere.

Zhang Hongming: Is this Japanese?

Student: Actually, many students sound like Japanese dialects.

Zhang Hongming: You are from Anhui, right?

Student: No, I am very, very close to your hometown Shanghai, which belongs to Nantong, Jiangsu. Its meaning is very simple, that is, this thing is very, very small, and there is nothing to put here and there. We can put it anywhere.

Wang Luxiang: Nothing happened.

Student: Nantong, Jiangsu Province should be very, very close to Teacher Zhang's hometown of Shanghai, but Teacher Zhang still can't guess. Because Nantong dialect is used in a small place, the dialects of one city and six counties in Nantong are all impassable. I wonder if dialects like this will disappear in the future? Thank you.

Zhang Hongming: This classmate mentioned a question just now, which is actually about the future fate of dialects. This is also a very important issue. In fact, this is also a very sensitive issue in academic circles. Dialect is the same as mother tongue and nationality.