As the most populous unofficial language in the world, how did Wu dialect disappear?

Wu dialect, the most populous unofficial language in the world.

At present, nearly 1 100 million people use Wu dialect, spanning Shanghai, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui, northeastern Jiangxi and northern Fujian. Wu dialect area is also divided into different regions, among which Taihu Lake area accounts for 65% of the total population of Wu dialect.

Strangely, it is listed as a seriously endangered language by the International Language and Culture Organization (ILCO).

In non-Wu dialect areas, Wu dialect seems to be heard less often than Guangzhou dialect and Hunan dialect. Where have all these 100 million people gone? Why do nearly 100 million people speak Wu? There are still so many people who say that Wu dialect is really going to disappear?

1. The historical development of Wu dialect.

Historically, before the development of Jiangnan area, the ancestor of Wu dialect was a minority language of Dong-Tai language family.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, the State of Wu and Yue rose in the State of Wu. In Fu Cha Biography of Wu Yue Chun Qiu, it is mentioned that "wuyue has the same rhyme * * *, the stars are above, and * * * is below", which shows that the concept of dialect was actually formed at that time.

"Lu Chunqiu Zhihua" records that "Wu Wang Fu Cha will cut Qi, and Zi Xu said: No, Fu Zhi is different from customs, and his words are unreasonable. I can't get a place, and neither can my people. " In order to expand the national territory, some people in wuyue have studied the languages of other countries. Later, with the expansion of Chu to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, Chu dialect also influenced the formation of Wu dialect to some extent.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the central government was established. The central government has stationed troops in various places, and the influence of Central Plains culture on various places is deepening day by day. The use of Chinese in the Central Plains expanded to the whole country, which had a great influence on Wu dialect.

By the Han Dynasty, Wu dialect had become a completely different language from Central Plains Chinese (Huaxia language). At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the three powers were separated, and Wu dialect continued to advance to Fujian and Guangdong, which also had a certain impact on the formation of Fujian dialect. At the same time, Wu dialect was introduced into Japan, which is one of the reasons why some Japanese sounds are very similar to Wu dialect.

After the "Yongjia Rebellion", the Xiongnu captured Luoyang, which also triggered the first wave of northerners moving south. After the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty established its capital in Jianye (now Nanjing, Jiangsu Province), and also introduced a large number of northern mandarin into Nanjing, assimilating the Nanjing accent. This further narrowed the area of Wu dialect, and only a small part of Nanjing today still retains Wu dialect.

"Anshi Rebellion" and "Jingkang Rebellion" are also the climax of northerners' southward migration. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin people invaded south and the Song family crossed south, bringing Kyoto from the capital of the Song Dynasty (now Kaifeng, Henan) to Lin 'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang). Therefore, Hangzhou dialect has a large number of Putonghua features, the most obvious of which is the "rolling tongue sound" of the tongue.

By the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Wu dialect had established the scale of modern Wu dialect, which was not far from modern Wu dialect. However, compared with the scale of Wu dialect in the Spring and Autumn Period, this scale has actually been greatly reduced.

2. Wu language, cultural contribution

If you have the heart to observe, you can always see Wu Yu in literary works or some artistic expressions.

Wu dialect often appears in A Dream of Red Mansions. For example, in the 25th episode, after Xifeng sent tea to Sister Lin, she did not forget to tease her: "Since you ate our tea, why don't you marry a daughter-in-law for our family?" Among them, the word "eat" is a typical Wu vocabulary. In Wu dialect, most people who accept a substance through their mouths can be called "eating" without chewing or swallowing, such as "drinking" for "drinking tea" for "eating tea" and "smoking" for "eating cigarettes".

Wu Yu is a frequent visitor in Lu Xun's creation. For example, there is a sentence in The True Story of Ah Q, "Grandpa Zhao has a circle in his stomach, and I think it will never hurt him." The "circle in the belly" here can be interpreted as "thinking in the brain", but the "circle" in Wu dialect also has the emotion of emphasizing the speed of thinking, which also highlights the cleverness and cunning of Grandpa Zhao.

If the local dialect is applied to literary works, it will help to shape the characters vividly, make them fuller and make some expressions more vivid. No wonder some people say, "What an interesting and vivid scene it would be if the characters in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms were interpreted in their own dialects".

Not only in literary creation, Wu dialect adds luster to works, but also in the translation of foreign works, many famous translators in Wu dialect areas have introduced many Wu vocabulary.

Jiang Yang's translation of Don Quixote includes Beggar, Thief's Skin and Thief's Bone, and Explain Clearly, while Zhu Qingying's translation of Jane Eyre includes Confusion, Not Very Good, and Nursing Child.

In addition to literary works, Wu Yu has more familiar artistic expressions.

In the movie "flowers of war", several Jiangnan women wearing cheongsam, holding the pipa and singing "The Scene of Qinhuai" went to the screen, which was really unforgettable. If this Suzhou pingtan song didn't have the gentle bonus of Wu Nong's soft language, it wouldn't be so "crisp" in people's hearts.

As the only informal opera among the five major operas, Yue Opera is sung in Wu dialect, and the most famous classic excerpt "Liang Zhu's Eighteen Crosstalk Songs" has become a model of love praised by people.

Besides Pingtan and Yue Opera, there are many artistic forms based on Wu dialect, such as Kunqu Opera, Wu Ge, Yong Opera and Tanchun.

However, literary works and artistic forms mixed with Wu dialect have also brought some problems.

The Biography of Flowers on the Sea, which was appraised by Hu Shi as "Wu Wenxue's first masterpiece", is rarely heard, because, as Sun said, "it is difficult for people to read it, so fine brushwork is unpopular". In order to expand the influence, Zhang Ailing also specially translated annotations, but it also had little effect.

Some people also reacted to Fu Lei's translation of Christopher, and some grammar and vocabulary were incomprehensible.

At one time, it was difficult for Yue Opera to get out of the Wu dialect area. In order to increase the audience, Yue Opera also absorbed some Zhongzhou phonology and Putonghua pronunciation, and selected some more understandable Wu dialects to sing. For example, sister Lin fell from the sky, and even people in non-Wu-speaking areas can understand it.

3. Wu dialect is special in expression.

There is a joke about Wu dialect: a mainlander asked people in Wu dialect "What do you say about fish, crabs and shrimps in Wu dialect", and that person replied "Uh-huh, ha, hoo". He said sadly, "What a nice person, he is dumb."

It can be seen that there are some differences in expression and pronunciation between Wu dialect and Mandarin, and even some daily expressions are difficult to be translated literally, which needs to be slightly changed.

Interestingly, the use of Wu dialect has a great particularity, that is, the word is polysemous, and even a word represents the opposite meaning. The most typical representative is "agriculture". "Nong" is a word in the ancient Baiyue language, with a single meaning of "person". In the ancient Wu dialect, there are three Nong's, which are my "I Nong", your "Er Nong" and his "Qu Nong".

In any department, people in Wu called me Nong, and in A Dream of Red Mansions, there was a sentence "I'm dead now, and I don't know when Nong will die", in which "Nong" obviously also means "I".

However, the words "I am a slave and you are destined to be here tonight" in The West Chamber and "Nong" in Hunting Birds in Shanghai Opera should be interpreted as "you".

Nowadays, different regions also retain different meanings of "agriculture". In Shanghai dialect, "Er Nong" is retained, while in Suzhou and Jinhua, "Wo Nong" is retained. However, in some places, such as Ningbo, some people still say three kinds of "Nong".

Another particularity of Wu dialect expression lies in adjectives. Compared with the "Geng" and "Zui" levels in Mandarin, Wu dialect divides adjectives into four levels.

Take the original "new" as an example; ABB type usually represents a "new cluster" of weakening level; BBA type is considered as intensive "cluster innovation"; If you want to use the superlative, it will often expand into a phrase, such as "tearing up melons and spicy new ones."

Some special grammars in Wu dialect can not be ignored.

It is common that the direct object is placed before the indirect object, such as "Mom gave me food" in Mandarin, and it becomes "Mom gave me food" in Wu dialect; After the complement is released, "hit him" becomes "hit him"; After the adverbial, "eat quickly" was changed to "eat quickly"

4. Present situation of Wu dialect.

As a person who can speak Wu dialect since childhood, I was a little shocked to see that Wu dialect was endangered, because it seems that most people in my hometown still speak Wu dialect. How can they be endangered?

However, some data do seem to explain some problems.

According to the survey in Wu dialect area, 78% people think they can communicate in Wu dialect everyday, among which 365,438+0% people think they are proficient in Wu dialect, while only 20% people under the age of 28 think they are proficient.

In the investigation report of Shanghai Wu dialect on 20 16, 86.8% local students can communicate with it in Shanghai dialect, and 28. 1% people think they can use it accurately and fluently. This seemingly good data, compared with 94.6% students in 2005 who used Shanghai dialect to communicate, 54.3% students think that they are fluent and accurate in Shanghai dialect, and really have no "accent".

Suzhou is also facing a similar situation. In 2007, the proportion of people who can't speak Suzhou dialect reached 30%, and about 50% of people below 14 can't or can't speak Suzhou dialect. By 20 12, 39.2% people can't speak Suzhou dialect at all, and the number of children has increased significantly.

Hangzhou is also greatly influenced by Putonghua, but the proportion of parents who can speak Hangzhou dialect is as high as 90.7%, while the proportion of the next generation who can speak Hangzhou dialect is almost cut off, only 48.5%.

It is not difficult to draw a conclusion from the above data that the population using Wu dialect is aging seriously.

Another phenomenon found in the survey is that most adults communicate in Wu, but in order to let the next generation learn Mandarin faster, two-thirds of parents choose to communicate with their children in Mandarin.

No wonder fishman, a language planner, pointed out that "endangered languages are called endangered languages because of the lack of informal transmission from generation to generation and informal daily life support, not because they are no longer taught in schools".

In addition to the fact that local people can speak Wu less and less, due to the increase of floating population, many life scenes do not need to use Wu.

20 12 the floating population in Suzhou has exceeded the local registered population; In Ningbo, the floating population accounts for more than 40% of the permanent population; Needless to say, the proportion of migrants in Shanghai is over 70%.

"Zhou Xun has been lonely for a long time. For thousands of years, the North guest ridiculed Wu."

At the same time, the foreign population in Wu-speaking areas seems to have little interest in mastering Wu. Taking Ningbo as an example, only 1 1.3% of the population in non-Wu-speaking areas can talk skillfully in Ningbo dialect, more than half of them think they can understand it, and 26.8% of them strongly oppose mastering the local dialect and try to maintain their local dialect.

5. Wu dialect, the dilemma of inheritance

The development and inheritance of many languages are often closely related to their forms of expression, such as the popularity of Cantonese, Hong Kong films, TVB and Cantonese songs. The popularity of Chongqing dialect is attributed to Chongqing dialect movies and songs to some extent.

So I listened to a Wu rap that was released before, and one word described it as "a puzzled face." I claim that I can understand Wu dialect in most areas, except Taihu Lake. When Wu Yu from other regions came out, the OS in my heart was "What is this?"

This is also the answer to the sentence "Wu dialect has different sounds in ten miles" In addition to the influence of immigrants, there are many hilly areas in Wu dialect area, and it is difficult to communicate in various regions, which also leads to some special words in various regions.

Therefore, in fact, "Wu Nong Ruan Yu" does not refer to all Wu dialect areas, but refers to Suzhou dialect to a certain extent. Compared with the self-deprecating Ningbo dialect, it is no wonder that there is a saying that it is better to listen to Ningbo people than to listen to Suzhou people quarreling.

Most of the Wu dialect areas are scattered. Compared with Cantonese, Guangzhou was defined as the standard earlier, and Wu dialect is even in the embarrassing situation of "no one obeys anyone", which is not convenient for unified communication.

Secondly, there is an objective reason. Wu dialect is really complicated. Taking Suzhou dialect as an example, there are 27 initials, 49 finals and single-syllable tones. Mandarin has only 23 initials and 24 finals.

There was a topic before, which was to discuss who would be taken away by whom in the end. Wu dialect does not have this trouble, and it will definitely be taken away by Hong Kong and Taiwan dialect or Northeast dialect. Because the other person can't understand you at all (smile).

Finally, the scope of application of Wu dialect is extremely limited. Speaking Mandarin is not only compulsory in schools, but also necessary in many formal occasions. Moreover, many customs and crafts have gradually faded out of life, and new things are constantly emerging. Many concepts can only be expressed in Mandarin or English.

In other words, the instrumentality of Wu dialect has gradually disappeared and become impractical, but should we let the human nature that coexists with it gradually die out?

"When young people leave home, the local accent will not change. When a child meets a stranger, he will smile and ask where the guest is from. " Why the "local accent" mentioned in "Two Towns United One" is the Wu dialect in the Tang Dynasty. On him, the local accent should be one of the few marks left by his hometown.

Mr. Wang Meng mentioned in "For the Great Rejuvenation of Chinese Character Culture": "Wu Nong's soft language, Sanqin's high accent, Sichuan dialect's hard words and Cantonese are also our wealth."

References:

Tu Guoping's investigation on the language life of the floating population in Ningbo and the geopolitics of the translator's language and target language —— A case study of Soviet translators and their use of Wu dialect.