First, Wuyue culture.
China's 5,000-year history naturally gave birth to countless cultures, and this Wuyue culture is one of the more important ones. Even in the present 2 1 century, Shanghai is called the magic capital, which is the economic center of China, and Shanghai is the holy land of Wuyue culture. There are many things that ordinary people can know about the cultural history of wuyue. For example, Gou Jian, the King of Yue, tried his best to retaliate. After "ten years of reunion, ten years of lessons", Wu was finally destroyed and Fu Cha committed suicide. Gou Jian, the King of Yue, also dominated the Central Plains. Another example: the story of Wu Zixu's bald head and his daughter's one-night gratitude; Another example is Fan Li's successful retirement. Even Sun Tzu's art of war, which we are familiar with, is a part of Wu and Yue culture. Wuyue culture in the Spring and Autumn Period was a bright star in China. In the following thousands of years, countless emperors, generals and literati emerged, such as Sun Quan, Fan Zhongyan, Lu You, Lin Hejing, Wang Guowei and Lu Xun.
You may not be familiar with Wuyue culture, but you must be familiar with Jiangnan culture. In fact, after historical evolution, this Jiangnan culture is the Wuyue culture. The land of wuyue is called Jiangdong rather than Jiangnan in the ancient books of pre-Qin. However, times have changed. Jiangnan in the pre-Qin period is now called Jiangxiang and Jianghan, and Jiangdong in the pre-Qin period is called Jiangnan. This "Jiangnan" is not only a geographical Jiangnan, but also must have distinctive cultural characteristics. The "Jiangsu and Zhejiang" composed of the Yangtze River and Qiantang River (Zhejiang) is a small Jiangnan, or it can directly represent the word "Jiangnan". When Jiangdong changed its name to Jiangnan, "Jiangnan" in the cultural and economic sense more and more clearly refers to traditional areas such as Wudi, Sanwu and wuyue. If we simply explore Wuyue culture, we can regard it as Jiangnan culture. If someone can sort out the information belonging to wuyue from China's voluminous ancient books, such as the twenty-four histories, the content must be very impressive.
Second, where there is culture, there must be language, so what do people in Wu and Yue say?
As we all know, there are seven dialects in China, namely Cantonese, Gan dialect, Northern dialect, Min dialect, Wu dialect, Hakka dialect and Xiang dialect. Wuyue dialect is naturally Wu dialect. But what you may not know is that in the ancient Wu language, Wu is not a lingua franca, but an ancient Vietnamese language.
The Yue ethnic group is an indigenous ethnic group in wuyue. Later, some of them moved southward to the inhabited areas of Zhuang, Dong, Shui and Dai ethnic groups, and some of them merged with the Huaxia ethnic group to form today's ethnic group. At that time, the ancient Vietnamese they used (belonging to the Dong-Tai language family) was different from today's Wu language (belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family).
The ancient Vietnamese spoken by the residents of two ethnic groups in wuyue is roughly the present Dong-Tai language family (Tai-Ka Dai).
The ancestor of language). At present, the main speakers of this language are Zhuang, Dai and Thailand (the main ethnic groups in Thailand). As for why these ethnic minorities are mainly distributed in South Asia and Yunnan-Guizhou areas, it involves historical issues. The ancestors of this nation originally lived in the south of China, and later moved to the south. There are few written records that directly describe the pronunciation of the ancient Yue language, and there are sporadic records in Yuejueshu, Wuyue Chunqiu and Yang Xiong Dialect.
So today, we should interpret some documents and records of ancient wuyue, and even look for clues in Thai and Zhuang. We can refer to the Thai translation of Jia Ling-related works by linguist Professor Zheng Zhangshangfang. Liu Xiang recorded a Ren Yue song in the Spring and Autumn Period in Shuo Yuan Shan Shuo. In the story, E Junziyan said, "I don't know Ren Yue, so I'll try to tell him for me." It can be seen that Yue Ge can't understand it, so he needs the help of Chu Translator. Liu Xiang recorded sounds in Chinese characters and translated them into Chinese. According to textual research, the language used in Song Yue is closely related to Zhuang language, which shows that Guyue language is probably the mother tongue of Zhuang and Dong languages.
There are still quite a few ancient wuyue place names in the south of China, such as Zhuji, Yuhang, Jurong (called Gou in ancient times, the same below), Wuxi and Yuyao. If you want to talk about history, there will be more, such as Yu Yue, Yu Ling, Zhu You, Gu Su, Fu Jiao, Wu Cheng, Yu. Judging from these repeated geographical nouns, such as dog, ancient, English, thing and English, these words are generally a central word, which is also in line with the characteristics of the Dong-Tai language family. Judging from the duality of ancient Chinese, these local nouns also show that there are many low vowels and class A vowels in the pronunciation of ancient Vietnamese, which is also a common feature of many ancient languages.
However, with the passage of time, Wu dialect has gradually evolved from the ancient Yue language in the Dong-Tai language family to the Wu language in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Wu dialect can now be roughly understood as Shanghai dialect.