What did the ancients say?

In ancient times, people generally spoke dialects, but also Mandarin, which was called Mandarin, meaning that officials spoke Beijing dialect.

[confused]

People who have been to Beijing or heard of Beijing dialect have this understanding: Beijing dialect is different from Mandarin. People who speak Mandarin well may not understand Beijing dialect, and even radio announcers who speak Mandarin in Beijing sometimes don't understand the local Beijing dialect. This is the language reality of Mandarin and Beijing dialect. This fact shows that Mandarin is very different from the real Beijing dialect. However, it is clearly written in various books that Putonghua is scripted in Beijing dialect, which has caused great confusion to Chinese people: Is Putonghua really Beijing dialect? What is the relationship between Mandarin and Beijing dialect?

In order to find out the relationship between Beijing dialect and Putonghua, many people try to find the answer through various channels. I hope to find out the most basic language problems in this national life and have a clear concept of Putonghua and Beijing dialect. Is Mandarin actually a Beijing dialect? History will tell us the answer, because Mandarin didn't come into being out of thin air, it evolved from the original language step by step, just like all other languages in the world.

[Definition of Putonghua]

According to the accepted definition of Putonghua, Putonghua takes Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect and modern vernacular as the standard grammatical language.

However, is this definition really so absolutely correct?

For this definition, we can verify its scientific accuracy through a simple disproof. If this definition is correct, then the reverse should be correct, that is to say, according to the definition of Putonghua, it must be Putonghua with a pure Beijing accent, a pure northern dialect vocabulary and a standard modern vernacular grammar.

But in fact, this is not the case. It is still not Putonghua that is spoken according to the strict standards in the definition of Putonghua! In other words, with a pure Beijing accent, with a pure northern dialect vocabulary and standard modern vernacular grammar, it is still not Mandarin! Even a native of Beijing, what he says in the standard grammar of modern Chinese vernacular is not equal to Mandarin. This can be verified by anyone, and this is the fact. This clearly shows that the definition of Putonghua is not rigorous enough.

So, what exactly is Mandarin? This problem deserves our reflection. This is a puzzle to China people by the definition of Putonghua. With such confusion, it is necessary to re-examine what Mandarin is.

[Relationship between Immigration and Language]

So, how can we know exactly what Mandarin is?

The emergence, development and survival of any language in the world are inseparable from a certain social group, which we call language family for the time being. Crowd is the decisive factor of language, and even artificial languages such as Esperanto and Nvshu cannot escape the decisive role of social groups. Without people, language would not be produced and would not survive. Learning and thinking about a language must also start from the perspective of immigrants, so as to find the root of the language and truly understand the essence of a language.

Just like all other languages, Putonghua cannot escape its own history of formation and development, which must be integrated with the immigration history of Putonghua-speaking groups.

[Comparative analysis of differences in language relations]

As a linguist, you can abstract 10,000 features of Qian Qian from a certain language, explain them layer by layer, and find out many and various "relationships" between the two languages, even two almost unrelated languages like Chinese and English, and you can also find out many and many "homophones". However, the social roots of language are undeniable. History is history, history has no shame, only the fact of existence.

A Mr Jie Ga (Hercules) once wrote:

"If you have 100 numbered balls, randomly put them into five numbered boxes with 20 balls in each box. Not once. Play it again. How many balls of the same number are put into the same number box twice? At this rate,100 *1/5 *1/5 * 5 equals 20. What does this have to do with your theory? Wait a minute, listen to me slowly. There are about tens of thousands of words commonly used by human beings, so let's take 50 thousand. Regardless of tone, there are about 400 syllables in modern northern dialect, but there are many in English. It is said that there are tens of thousands of possible combinations. At first glance, the possibility of coincidence between the two should be very small, but there is no need to haggle over every ounce. In many cases, you don't consider rhyming. It's not your fault. It is true that initials are relatively stable in language changes, so there are only twenty or thirty combinations that can be considered. There are thousands of words with similar meanings and pronunciations. It's not over yet, and the initials are not static. There are examples of mutual transformation between Chinese and Indo-European languages, such as g-k-k', b-p-p', d-th-t-t', and there are many things I can't understand. Great, there are only a few B, D, G, L, X and S left in the box. Moreover, both English and ancient Chinese have consonants, which is equivalent to playing the ball twice. Finally, let's use our imagination to participate in a kind of collateral meeting. Haha, the same origin is tens of thousands. A netizen said that 2000 have been found, which is too few. Why don't you look through the Chinese-English, Hande and Chinese dictionaries and use your head more? Will be more convincing. "

Although he only compares Chinese, Indian and European cognates here, on the whole, synonymous homonyms have the probability of appearing in any language, and this probability is still very large. I think Mr. Jie Ge's problem should be taken seriously. This question can't be answered, and the homologous comparison between any languages is meaningless. In the past, scholars' analysis of what is Putonghua or the relationship between Putonghua and Beijing dialect almost always tends to compare the similar features of the two languages, but this analysis method is obviously very fallacious, which can be clearly proved by Mr. Heracles' example, which shows that when comparing the relationship between Putonghua and Beijing dialect, it is important to follow the ideas of the linguists, not the phonetic and linguistic features between them.

Mandarin is a natural language, which is naturally produced by a group of people (Mandarin speakers) in the long-term language practice. Language and the speaker are integrated, and understanding the speaker will naturally lead to understanding the language, which is the minimum logic. However, phonetic features are indirect in any case and have no direct proof significance. Besides, it's hard to say that phonetic features are different from such things. China's mother is a "horse", and English mothers are also called "horses". Is English a dialect separated from Chinese? Just because a certain language uses a certain phonetic system does not mean that Putonghua is Beijing dialect. If it is so simple, we can't classify sub-dialects.

The characteristic of my discussion is to start with people rather than analyze them from phonetics, which is quite different from the nonsense that Mandarin was influenced by Manchu before.

[Textual research on the history of common folk words]

From the perspective of phonetic textual research, the standard Putonghua with phonetic records can be traced back to Aisin Giorro Puyi in the late Qing Dynasty and the documentary of the trial by the Far East military court, among which there are doubts that Puyi speaks standard Putonghua instead of old Beijing dialect. Then, the time when Putonghua was designed should be before Puyi's life.

From the textual research of records, the following information can also prove that Putonghua was designed before the end of the Qing Dynasty:

The history of Putonghua that can be verified;

The word "Mandarin" was put forward in the late Qing Dynasty. Wu Rulun is considered to be the first scholar to mention the name Putonghua.

1909 (Xuantongyuan Year), Jiang Qian, a member of the Senior Advisory Committee, formally proposed to name Mandarin as "Mandarin".

In the same year, the Qing Dynasty established the "Mandarin Editorial Committee";

19 10, Jiang Qian once again put forward the view that "Putonghua and consonants should be combined to achieve a unified effect" in "Notes on Putonghua Education in Interrogation for Several Years".

19 1 1 year, the Ministry of Education held the "Central Education Conference" and adopted the Measures for the Unification of Putonghua.

After the founding of the Republic of China, 19 13 held the "Phonetic Unification Conference" in Beijing in February, and 1965438 edited and published the National Phonetic Dictionary in September.

Due to the contradiction between the phonetic standard of Guoyin Dictionary and that of Beijing, the "Beijing Debate" broke out in 1920.

Zhang Shiyi, director of the English Department of Nanjing Normal University, published the article "Unification of National Languages" on 1920, arguing that phonetic symbols and national sounds should be fundamentally reformed, national sounds should not be recognized, and Beijing sounds should be taken as the standard of national sounds, which has been echoed by many people. The National Education Federation and the primary schools affiliated to the Jiangsu Teachers' Federation successively made resolutions to take Beijing pronunciation as the standard pronunciation and began to promote it in schools. 1965438+April 2 1, in 2009, Beiyang = = established the Preparatory Committee for Unified Mandarin, and 1928 National = = changed it to the Preparatory Committee for Unified Mandarin. 1932 in may, the Ministry of education officially announced and published the "common vocabulary of Chinese pronunciation", which provided a model for establishing the standard of putonghua.