What is vernacular?

Zhuang dialect is the mother tongue of the vernacular dialect

In recent years, genetic surveys of Guangxi people have shown that the genes of most Han residents who speak vernacular dialects are closer to those of the Zhuang people, and are similar to those of the majority of Han people who speak Guiliu dialect. The residents are noticeably different. If most of the Han residents who speak the vernacular are really from the north, their genes should be closer to the north and different from the Zhuang people. This can only show that the majority of the Han residents who speak the vernacular come from the Zhuang ethnic group.

So how did some ancient Zhuang languages ??evolve into the current Guangxi vernacular represented by Nanning dialect? It is because some ancient Zhuang people look down on their own language and learn to speak the language of a few Han people from the north. As a result, the current Guangxi vernacular is nondescript and neither resembles modern Chinese nor can get rid of the strong influence of their own mother tongue. Later some people said this People who speak the vernacular traveled south and north along the Xijiang River. Under the influence of the local language and their own language changes, they evolved into the modern Cantonese dialect.

In modern Guangxi vernacular (represented by Nanning dialect), there are profound underlying words of ancient Zhuang dialect. Some animals, plants and gerunds in daily language in vernacular are similar to Zhuang dialect. Have many similar pronunciations.

Is the Guangxi vernacular developed under the influence of the local indigenous people after the northern Han people immigrated to the south, or is it inherited from their mother tongue by some indigenous Zhuang people in ancient times? Let’s look at contemporary language contact. In the Nanning area where Zhuang and vernacular are mixed, it has not been found that the modern northerners who went south changed the p and t in their mother tongue to b and d due to the influence of the local dialect. However, whether Zhuang dialect is spoken in the Nanning area People who speak vernacular often pronounce Mandarin p and t into b and d when learning Mandarin. The reason here is very simple. Guangxi vernacular is derived from ancient Zhuang language, not from ancient Chinese.

In Guangxi vernacular, we will encounter word orders that are impossible to appear in modern Chinese. For example, "you go first" is said as "you go first". This is also the word order of Zhuang language, so this special The word order is also left over from ancient Zhuang language.