What is the origin of Sichuan dialect?

Sichuan dialect originated from the ancient non-Chinese languages of Shu and Cuban. Up to now, the original Sichuan dialect still retains words such as "Ba" (Ping Di), "Sister" (Mother) and "Yang" (You) from ancient Shu and ancient Cuban. Since then, Sichuan dialect has been developing and changing with the historical process and the changes of immigrants from Sichuan. First, after Qin destroyed Shu, Sichuan gradually formed a unique Sichuan dialect belonging to the Han family. Later, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to a large number of immigrants from Huguang and other places entering Sichuan, Sichuan dialect evolved and merged with immigrant dialects from all over the world, and finally formed today's Sichuan dialect. In ancient times, there were two non-Chinese peoples, Shu and Ba, and two independent countries, Shu and Ba. They not only have their own independent languages: ancient Shu and Cuban, but also have an independent writing system called Shu Tu. The ancient Shu language is completely different from Huaxia language at that time, and it is closely related to Qiang language, Jia Rong language, Yi language, Naxi language and Tujia language. In 3 16 BC, Qin destroyed Bashu successively, gradually introduced the system and laws of Huaxia State in the Central Plains to Sichuan, and began to immigrate to Sichuan in large numbers. In Sichuan, the coexistence and mutual infiltration of ancient Shu language and Huaxia language appeared. After that, a large number of Han people from the Central Plains moved to Shu in the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the Shu dialect with relatively unified characteristics was formed in the late Western Han Dynasty. Selected Works has been published for four years. According to Records of the Historian, "Shu people first knew China, and his words were equivalent to those of China". At the same time, according to the records in Yang Xiong Dialect, the dialect in Liang Yi area is close to the Qin Jin dialect at that time, indicating that the Shu dialect at this time has belonged to a branch of Chinese.

As an independent branch of the ancient Chinese family, Shu dialect, which was formed in the late Western Han Dynasty, has its own characteristics in tone and vocabulary. In terms of tone, Lu Fayan's preface to cutting rhyme records that "the voice of Qin Long is over, and the voice of Liang Yi is over". At the same time, Huang Jian's Yang Wengong said: "Today's surnames are Xu and Yong, and they are all quiet. Xu Chen in the Spring and Autumn Period and Yong Chi in the Han Dynasty were also for this purpose. The voice of Shu is called, and the rate of people who cover Shu is flat. " This shows that the tone of Shu dialect has its own characteristics at this time. In terms of vocabulary, a remarkable feature of Shu language at this time is to absorb vocabulary from non-Chinese ancient Shu language. Yang Xiong Dialect and other historical documents record a large number of Sichuan-specific words. The words from the ancient Shu dialect are Ba (Pingping), Sister (Mother), Irregular (Pen), Yang (You), Earthworm and Auntie (Aunt). At the end of Song Dynasty and the beginning of Yuan Dynasty, the 52-year anti-Yuan War between Shu and Han Dynasty severely damaged the highly developed Shu area since Tang Dynasty, resulting in a sharp drop in population and economic depression. In the sixteenth year of Jiading in the Southern Song Dynasty (1223), there were 2.59 million households in Shu (about120,000 people, accounting for 23.2% of the whole country in the Southern Song Dynasty). However, in the 19th year after Yuan occupied Shu (128 1 year), there were only120,000 households (about 600,000 people, accounting for 0.7% of the whole country), a decrease of about 95%. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, under this background of low population, immigrants from Huguang, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other places began to enter Sichuan one after another, forming the first large-scale immigration movement in the history of Sichuan. The fusion and evolution of ancient Shu dialect and immigrant dialects from all over the world gradually formed the present Sichuan dialect. By the Ming Dynasty, the number of indigenous people in Sichuan was still superior to that of immigrants, and Shu dialect continued to develop on the basis of Song, Yuan and Shu dialects, but it was close to the old Sichuan dialect (Guanchi dialect) in western Sichuan and southern Sichuan.

According to Yu Shu and other documents in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, the main phonological features of Shu dialect in Ming Dynasty include: First, the entering tone is still preserved and independently tuned, but the entering tone tail (throat plug) in eastern and northern Sichuan has declined. Second, there is no difference between yin and yang in flat tones, so there are only four tones in Shu dialect in Ming Dynasty. 3.[-m] rhyme has disappeared and merged into [-n] rhyme. These three characteristics are quite different from the Mandarin at this time. First, according to the phonology of the Central Plains, the northern Mandarin had disappeared as early as the Yuan Dynasty, and the yin and yang were equally divided. At the same time, the rhyme [-m] of northern mandarin has not disappeared, so Shu dialect and northern mandarin have not developed simultaneously. In addition, from the lexical point of view, the vocabulary of Shu dialect in Ming Dynasty is mostly monosyllabic, which shows the characteristics similar to those of southern Chinese, indicating that Shu dialect was influenced by southern Chinese more than northern Mandarin in its formation.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Sichuan fell into war again, and its population dropped sharply. Then, the second migration movement of "Huguang filling Sichuan" brought about drastic changes in the population composition of Sichuan. As far as Sichuan is concerned, after the migration movement, the aborigines in Sichuan only accounted for about 30% of the total population in Sichuan. However, during the war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the degree of damage in Sichuan varied greatly, with eastern and northern Sichuan seriously affected by the war and southern Sichuan slightly affected. At that time, a large number of Sichuan aborigines in eastern and northern Sichuan went to southern Sichuan and Yunnan and northern Guizhou adjacent to southern Sichuan to escape the war. Therefore, the number of Sichuan aborigines in southern Sichuan may still be superior to the number of immigrants, especially in Emei, Leshan and Qianwei, so that the Sichuan dialect of Ming Dynasty based on the dialects of Song, Yuan and Shu still exists in southern Sichuan. At the same time, a large number of immigrants from Huguang, Jiangxi, Guangdong and other places entered eastern Sichuan and northern Sichuan, which led to the division between the new school (eastern Sichuan and northern Sichuan) and the old school (western Sichuan and southern Sichuan) in Sichuan dialect, and laid the pattern of the coexistence of the old and new schools in Sichuan dialect today.