Classical Chinese is the written language in ancient China, mainly including the written language based on the spoken language in the pre-Qin period. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, no articles were invented to record characters, but bamboo slips, silks and other things were used to record characters, and silks were expensive, bamboo slips were huge and the number of words recorded was limited. In order to record more things on a roll of bamboo slips, unimportant words must be deleted. Later, when "paper" was used on a large scale, the habit of using "official documents" among the ruling classes had been finalized, and the ability to use "classical Chinese" had evolved into a symbol of reading and literacy. Classical Chinese comes from vernacular Chinese, which is characterized by writing based on words, paying attention to allusions, parallel prose, neat rhythm and punctuation, including strategies, poems, words, songs, stereotyped writing, parallel prose and ancient prose.
The main characteristics of classical Chinese:
The first word "Wen" means beauty. The word "Yan" means writing, expressing and recording. The word "classical Chinese" means written language. Classical Chinese is relative to spoken Chinese, which is also called vernacular Chinese. The last word "Wen" refers to works, articles, etc. , and represents the genre.
"Classical Chinese" means "beautiful language articles", which is also called stylistic writing. And "vernacular" means: "articles written in ordinary and plain oral language", such as "have you eaten?" .
In ancient China, it was different to express the same thing in "spoken language" (written language). For example, if you want to ask someone if they have eaten, you can express it in spoken English as "Have you eaten?" And expressed in written language, it is "rice?" . "Fanbu" is classical Chinese. Here, the noun "Fanbu" is used as a verb, which means to eat.
Before 19 18, China's articles were all written in classical Chinese. Now we generally call "ancient Chinese" "classical Chinese".
In the history of China for thousands of years, great changes have taken place in spoken English, but the classical Chinese has always maintained a similar format. Classical Chinese can make users of different languages "talk in writing", which is a fixed format but not very difficult way of communication.
2. Did China's ancient prose develop in different dynasties? It seems that in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, there were few records in China's ancient prose, and most of them were carved on tortoise shells and utensils for sacrifice. Now, if it is an authentic bronze antique, it is one million words. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, due to the development of agriculture, many interesting literary carriers appeared, and poems appeared, but they were catchy but not recorded. In the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius' The Book of Songs and Qu Yuan's Songs of the South recorded the relevant folk customs and local production and life, especially the hundreds of bamboo slips played a great role in recording his thoughts and masterpieces, but the ancient classical Chinese was difficult to understand, and there were also many customs and habits that were difficult to understand. Qin Shihuang unified the six countries and the written language, which made great contributions to the inheritance of ancient Chinese culture. Although the Qin dynasty was short, the Qin system lasted for thousands of years.
By the Han Dynasty, the country was rich and the people were strong, and the literary genre was mostly poetry. For example, Sima Xiangru, though empty, is really gorgeous, and Yuefu poems are developed, many of which have been handed down because of the government.
By the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the seven sons of Jian 'an and the seven sages of Bamboo Forest had written many famous poems, especially those of Cao Cao. Because the country was not unified during this period, and the north was ruled by the Hu people, there was a scene of prosperity in the southern Jin Dynasty in the south of the Yangtze River, but Hu Hua was in the north.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, literature was not only a cultural carrier, but also a means to obtain official positions. Poetry in the Tang Dynasty flourished, and Tang poetry was world-famous and there were too many talents, so I won't talk about it. But at this time, the ancient prose movement appeared, and Liu Zongyuan, a cool jade, became a trend, focusing on simplicity and practicality.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, China ancient literature didn't develop much in the 60 years of chaos in the Central Plains. In the Song Dynasty, the peak of literature appeared in China, and the writing flourished, so I won't talk about it here. At the same time, calligraphy and painting rose. In an era when the king of subjugation was a painter, it is conceivable how prosperous the culture of the Song Dynasty was and how talented people came forth in large numbers!
Yuan Dynasty is the tragedy of China's ancient prose. People are too idle to do anything and dare not scribble. They can only write some plays because they are afraid of writing books without being beheaded.
By the Ming Dynasty, literature reached its peak, novels came out, and drama flourished. Many famous literati, such as the Gong 'an School and Tongcheng School, inherited and developed literature.
There were many poems, paintings and calligraphy in Qing Dynasty. The calligraphy of Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics, Kangxi Qianlong, Honglou and Zeng Guofan, a great scholar, has played a great role in the inheritance and development of China ancient literature.
China has a long history. Today, the development of ancient Chinese literature is only more and more complex in form, more and more delicate in expression and more and more diversified in carrier.
Only on behalf of family members, please forgive me if there is anything wrong! !
3. What is the development of classical Chinese? "Classical Chinese" means "articles written in written language". And "vernacular" means: "articles written in plain spoken language".
In ancient China, it was different to express the same thing in spoken and written language. For example, if you want to ask someone if they have eaten, you can express it in spoken English as "Have you eaten?" And using books and language to express it is "rice?" . "Fanbu" is classical Chinese. In ancient China, all articles were written in written language. Therefore, now we generally refer to ancient Chinese as "classical Chinese"; Classical Chinese is a treasure of China culture, and the ancients left us a lot of classical Chinese. In China, the study of classical Chinese plays a very important role in the Chinese curriculum in middle schools.
Chinese mainland's revival of classical Chinese began to sprout in 1980s. The concept of revival of classical Chinese was clearly put forward by Liu Zhou, a young scholar, in The First Step of Cultural Revival in China (Suggestions). In 2007, Guangming Daily published "Hundred Cities Fu", which showed the state's attitude towards the revival of classical Chinese. The proposal of the revival of classical Chinese was put forward by a young scholar, which shows that the development potential of the revival of classical Chinese is very strong.
4. The development of classical Chinese is divided into several stages. When people use the term "ancient Chinese", it is given three different meanings in different contexts: ancient Chinese, ancient Chinese and classical Chinese. Ancient Chinese first refers to "ancient Chinese". We can't hear the spoken language of the ancients. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, an ancient China man, has a history of about 3,000 years since Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Like anything, it has developed and changed. Language is also constantly developing and changing. In the past 3000 years, Chinese has experienced great changes. According to the changes of Chinese grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, scholars divide ancient Chinese into three development periods: ancient, medieval and modern. Ancient times refers to the Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han Dynasties before the 3rd century BC. Conclusion: The development of classical Chinese can be simply divided into three stages: ancient, medieval and modern.
5. the origin and development of classical Chinese "classical Chinese" means "articles written in written language".
And "vernacular" means: "articles written in plain spoken language". In ancient China, it was different to express the same thing in spoken and written language. For example, if you want to ask someone if they have eaten, you can express it in spoken English as "Have you eaten?" And using books and language to express it is "rice?" .
"Fanbu" is classical Chinese. In ancient China, all articles were written in written language.
Therefore, now we generally refer to ancient Chinese as "classical Chinese"; Classical Chinese is a treasure of China culture, and the ancients left us a lot of classical Chinese. In China, the study of classical Chinese plays a very important role in the Chinese curriculum in middle schools.
Chinese mainland's revival of classical Chinese began to sprout in 1980s. The concept of revival of classical Chinese was clearly put forward by Liu Zhou, a young scholar, in The First Step of Cultural Revival in China (Suggestions).
In 2007, Guangming Daily published "Hundred Cities Fu", which showed the state's attitude towards the revival of classical Chinese. The proposal of the revival of classical Chinese was put forward by a young scholar, which shows that the development potential of the revival of classical Chinese is very strong.
6. What role did classical Chinese play in the development of Chinese civilization? First of all, our language is questioned because we are still hieroglyphics. According to westerners, this is the low stage of language evolution, and their pinyin is the advanced stage of language. It should be noted here that our language belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family, which is relatively independent all over the world, while those countries around us who yearn for Chinese civilization in history, such as Japan, North Korea and Mongolia, etc. Don't belong to the same language family as us. They belong to the Tatar language family and also belong to phonetic symbols. Although they also have Chinese characters, and even created their own characters based on them, their language structure and methods are fundamentally different from those of China.
But our hieroglyphics are facing great challenges in today's electronic society, because electronic input is very troublesome. Although excellent input methods such as five-stroke input method were invented later, there are still many problems. For example, pinyin input cannot be typed blindly, while Wu Bi's input vocabulary is limited. With the popularization of computers, many uncommon words of China people died out because they could not be input. Therefore, the development of electronic Chinese characters today is costly, but I still want to talk about the historical role of the superiority of Chinese characters.
First of all, I want to say that our written language has protected the unity and cohesion of China. China has experienced many periods of division in history. Since China has a unified script, the reunification of China has become very easy. Language has a characteristic, and its pronunciation will naturally change with the passage of time, just like Mandarin in Taiwan Province Province is different from Mandarin in Beijing, so dialects have been formed for a long time, although the pronunciation of different local languages in China is very different. Northerners listening to southerners' dialects is like listening to a foreign language, but once they get back to words, they are exactly the same. In Europe, after the division of Germanic countries, each country used letters to form characters in its own way. Although they are all Latin languages, they have become multilingual, so the cultural differences above the languages are even greater, and there is no unified foundation for the country.
The second point I want to make is that China's historical language protects its cultural heritage. Before the May 4th Movement, China was a country with different written classical Chinese and daily speech, thus maintaining the basic consistency of classical Chinese in the long history of more than 2,000 years after the reunification of Qin Shihuang. At the same time, folk language has a different look. The so-called vernacular, in fact, is the dialect of Guangdong, and now Mandarin is actually the official history. It is the Peking dialect with Manchu accent, and the expression of folk language has changed a lot, which is the vernacular advocated by Lu Xun, but now it is more and more difficult for us to read Lu Xun's articles, which is only a few years! Therefore, China's classical Chinese writing system is actually to let readers read the works of their ancestors without obstacles.
At the beginning of last century, the great changes in the world and the reform in Japan led many radical people to overthrow Kongjiadian. For this result, they first turned classical Chinese into vernacular Chinese, then changed the vertical version into horizontal version, and finally simplified Chinese characters. As a result, it is very difficult for people to understand the works of our ancestors. Ordinary people actually have to read the explanations in classical Chinese, as if they had a foreign language translator. However, once the classical Chinese is interpreted, many wonderful tastes are gone, and the aesthetic feeling of phonology is gone, which directly leads people not to read it. If these cultural records do not have the reader base of ordinary people and become the sacred books of most ordinary people, many of our cultural heritages will be cut off. At present, it is not enough to print many ancient books in simplified horizontal format, but in traditional vertical format. The purpose is not to facilitate too many people to read. At the same time, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a publishing editor who can edit ancient Chinese. Those old editors who can edit ancient prose are running out of time. As a result of the current policy, the benefits of China's spoken and written languages have not been reflected at all, but the problem of electronic input has not been solved, which is always a regrettable thing.
7. The development process of ancient Chinese Chinese is one of the oldest languages in the world and one of the languages with the longest common time.
The historical evolution of Chinese is a very interesting question. China's writing system, Chinese characters, is not phonetic, so it can't directly know the historical pronunciation of the same word like phonetic.
Fortunately, effective information can be found in the translation of Chinese characters (especially pictophonetic characters), the rhythm of poetry and foreigners' names. According to the ancients in China, there were "states" in the era of the Yellow Emperor, 3,000 in the Xia Dynasty and 800 vassals in the early Zhou Dynasty, but "the people of five parties can't speak" (Book of Rites, Wang Zhi).
China existed in the early and middle period of the Zhou Dynasty (1 1 to the 7th century BC), and written records included bronze inscriptions, the Book of Songs, history books and some Yijing. According to Chapter 28 of the Doctrine of the Mean, "Get off the train today, write the same book and do the same thing".
It can be seen that the unification of language and writing began in the period of the establishment of Zhou Dynasty. In the early Spring and Autumn Period, there were more than 170 recorded vassal states.
In the Warring States period, the "seven chivalrous men" appeared, that is, "the princes were in power and did not unify with the king, ... the words were different, and the words were different" (Preface to Explaining Words). Hundred schools of thought's homonym of * * in his works before Qin Dynasty was called "Elegant Speech".
"Zi's words, Poems, Books and Rites are all elegant." (The Analects of Confucius) After the unification of the Qin Dynasty, the characters were further standardized, with Xiao Zhuan as the official script.
Medieval Chinese was used in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and early Song Dynasty (7th century to10th century), which can be divided into the early period involved in Qieyun (60 1 year) and the late period reflected in Guang Yun (10th century). Gao Benhan called this stage "ancient Chinese".
Linguists have been able to reconstruct the medieval phonology with confidence. This kind of evidence comes from several aspects: various modern dialects, rhyme books and foreign language translation.
Just as Indo-European can be reconstructed from modern Indo-European, so can Middle Chinese be reconstructed from dialects. In addition, China ancient writers spent a lot of energy to summarize the phonetic system of Chinese, and these materials are still the basis of modern linguists' work.
Finally, Chinese pronunciation can be learned from the translation of foreign languages. Modern Chinese Modern Chinese is a kind of Chinese between ancient Chinese and modern Chinese, represented by early vernacular literature.
Modern Chinese Modern Chinese is the language used by modern people in China. Modern Chinese in a broad sense includes various dialects of Chinese, that is, the languages used by Han people in different regions. These languages are all Chinese, but there are some differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
Modern Chinese in a narrow sense refers to "Putonghua", that is, "modern Chinese with Beijing accent as the standard, northern dialect as the basic dialect and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm". The standard modern Chinese, represented by Putonghua, is also the national common language of China.
8. History of the development of China's classical novels Liu Yichuan wrote a book about the development of China's classical short stories. In the Song Dynasty, short stories in classical Chinese can be roughly divided into three types: one is the legendary style, which is the aftermath of novels in the Tang Dynasty; Second, short stories in the form of notes, which is the evolution of childhood chronicles; The third kind is strange style, which is the continuation of childhood strange novels. The achievements of legendary novels in Song Dynasty are far less than those in Tang Dynasty. "Tang people generally write current events; However, people in Song Dynasty talked more about ancient things, while novels in Tang Dynasty were less. There are many lessons in the Song Dynasty. " "Probably speaking freely in the Tang Dynasty, although writing current events will not be a disaster; However, in the Song Dynasty, there were many taboos, so scholars tried to avoid them and tell stories about the past. In addition, the Song Dynasty was very popular because novels were also more rational. " In a word, there are many historical legends in the Song Dynasty, and the overall achievements are not high, but there are also many scattered works, such as Tan Yi Ge Wei who plays alcohol, the anonymous legend of Li Shishi, etc. There are more notes in the Song Dynasty than ever before. Many of them are novels or approximate novels. At the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, many things happened in the Tang and Five Dynasties, such as Sun Guangkuan's North Dream. After the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, he recorded many important events of this dynasty, such as Sima Guang's Su Shui Ji; People in the Southern Song Dynasty still remember the old years of the Northern Song Dynasty, such as Hui Zhou's Qingbo Magazine. The records of the Song Dynasty are "unremarkable and lacking in literary talent". Although their achievements are not as good as those of Notes on Historical Records, there are several influential works, such as Hong Mai's Jane Yizhi and Wu Shu's Strange Records of Jianghuai. Although the achievements of Song people's short stories in classical Chinese are not very high, they are numerous and varied, and should occupy a place in the history of novels. Ning Ren's greatest contribution to classical Chinese novels lies in compiling a voluminous Taiping Guangji, and many classical Chinese short stories before the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty were mostly preserved.
The classical Chinese short stories in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties did not exceed the level of the Song Dynasty in terms of quantity or quality. However, the development clues have never been broken, and there are some influential collections, such as Yuan Haowen's continuation of Jian Yizhi, Liu Qi's Return, and Tao's Record of Dropping Out of Farming in Nancun.
Although short stories in classical Chinese in Ming Dynasty can't be compared with contemporary vernacular novels, they occupy an important position in the development history of classical Chinese novels. The famous collections of stories with stories, strange stories and clear stories are: Qu You's New Theory of Cutting Lights, Li Zhen's Talking about Cutting Lights, Shao's Searching for Lights, Juck Zhang's New Theory of Jade Beginning, He's Yu Lin and so on. There are many literary and emotional works in these collections. In addition, some famous prose writers, such as Song Lian, Liu Ji and Ma, occasionally write famous novels.
From the early Song Dynasty to the late Ming Dynasty, most of the short stories in classical Chinese were in the Jin and Tang Dynasties, but none of them could surpass the Tang Dynasty. Great changes have taken place in the Qing Dynasty, and short stories in classical Chinese flourished, resulting in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio with world significance and influence, which pushed the development of short stories in classical Chinese to a peak. The legendary writer Lu Xun summed up the basic characteristics of the writing and content of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. The fundamental difference between Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and the Strange Tales of the Six Dynasties lies in: Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio does not believe in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, while people in the Six Dynasties believe in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio; The Six Dynasties people's "ambition in strangeness" was to promote strangeness unintentionally, while Pu Songling's "ambition in strangeness" was intended to contain it. There is a cloud in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio: "Many a mickle makes a mickle, and the ghost record continues in vain;" Floating white pen, only a lonely and angry book; It's sad to pin it on it! "A serial, go a long way. Although no one can compete with it, they also have their own achievements. The most influential ones are: Wang Shizhen's Occasionally Talking about the Red North, Yuan Mei's Midday Rain (that is, New Qi Xie), Shen Qifeng's Harmony Front, Manchu He Bange's Notes on Night Tan and Zeng Yandong's Little Bean Shed. Later, from the reign of Emperor Shizhi to Guangxu, there were Wang Tao's Dundong, Song Yin's Random Records, Song Bin Suohua and Xuanding's Night Rain and Autumn Records. Lu Xun commented on Ji Ziyun in this way: "His writing was purely for Liaozhai, which was circulated for a while. But the record has faded, and fireworks makeup is flourishing. "There are Cheng Zhixiang's" This Language "and Jia Ming's" Female Serial ". This shows the influence of Liaozhai and the grand occasion of its writing. After Liao Zhai became popular for more than one hundred years, Ji Yun's Notes on Yuewei Caotang came out one after another. Ji criticized Liaozhai, calling it "the pen of a gifted scholar, not a writer." "Zhi (zhǐ Di Yi)" is as detailed as the legend of the Tang Dynasty, and it has the disadvantages of the Six Dynasties. "(Lu Xun's language) Lu Xun praised" reading micro "and said it was" a good time to think about wonderful things; There are textual research and sentiment. The narrative is elegant and elegant, and the sky is more abundant. No one can win its back seat. "But Yue Wei's emphasis on taking notes makes sense. The story is not rich enough, the characters are not rich enough, and there are too many discussions. Therefore, there is a lack of strong novel meaning in serial, and the academic value is higher than the literary value. After reading Wei, believers joined in. Among the short stories in classical Chinese, note novels account for the largest proportion. But the notes are not all novels, and there are many works that meet the requirements of novels. Need us to identify and sort out.
9. Is it historical progress to replace classical Chinese with vernacular Chinese? There is a relationship of inheritance and development between vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese.
In ancient times, people's oral communication was not conducted in classical Chinese. The classical Chinese we are learning now is an ancient written recording language. Whether we understand the past history or inherit the ancient civilization, we must understand the ancient written language in order to understand the rich cultural heritage and precious spiritual wealth left by the ancients.
Even today, our communication and expression actually use many words handed down from ancient culture, not to mention the inner spirit. Therefore, although it is troublesome, the necessary understanding is essential.
Why should we learn ancient Chinese today? To be big is to inherit the cultural experience of predecessors, learn history and understand the ancient culture and history of the motherland. Being small means increasing knowledge, experience and accomplishment, which is the foundation of Chinese studies.
Looking ahead, it's usually for exams, hehe. In fact, the ancient prose in middle school is relatively simple and simple, which is only the basis for increasing one's humanistic quality.
Only when they arrive at the university will interested students begin to really study "ancient prose".