Zhou, You Rujie's book Dialect and China Culture holds that the geographical distribution of Chinese dialects is obviously related to the language diffusion caused by historical migration.
Among the seven dialects of modern Chinese in China, the northern dialect can be regarded as the development of ancient Chinese in the vast northern region for thousands of years. The other six dialects were gradually formed by the continuous migration of northern residents to the south in history. The early Jiangnan area was mainly the residence of the Guyue nationality. The ancient Vietnamese they use is far from the ancient Chinese, so they can't speak. Later, the Han people in the north went south several times on a large scale, bringing ancient northern Chinese in different periods, which spread to various regions in the south of the Yangtze River and gradually formed six dialects that were obviously different from each other. There are three reasons for the differences in dialects: first, before the contact between northern Chinese and southern ancient Vietnamese, there were their own regional dialects; Second, the time for northern Chinese to go south is different, and the natural Chinese themselves are different; Third, the southern dialect developed in a certain unique environment.
Wu dialect is the oldest of the six dialects, which was brought by northern immigrants who went south about a week ago. Because this immigrant has a better cultural quality than the local residents, this language has formed the basis of Wu dialect there. After the influence of Wu in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty, especially in the Three Kingdoms period, Wu dialect has formed a completely different dialect from the Central Plains. Although Wu dialect has a long history and is close to the Central Plains, with the rapid economic development, it gradually occupies an important position and has been absorbing immigrants from the north, so Wu dialect has developed in form. On the contrary, the original features of Wu dialect should be found in Min dialect influenced by Wu dialect.
Xiang dialect was formed later than Wu dialect. From the ancient Chu language. Chu people originally lived in the Central Plains, and moved to Hubei after the chaos in the late Yin Dynasty. By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chu had developed into a vast area including Hunan. The Chu people who moved south brought ancient Chinese and evolved into ancient Xiang dialect.
Cantonese began in the Qin Dynasty. South Chu only goes to Wuling. After Qin unified the six countries, it sent troops to Nanling and set up three counties in the South China Sea. In order to consolidate southern Xinjiang, 500,000 people were left to guard the area. The language brought by these settled people has become the basis for the future development of Cantonese.
Min dialect was formed late. Administrative organizations appeared in Fujian in the late Western Han Dynasty. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, immigrants from the Three Kingdoms, Jiangnan and northern Zhejiang entered the northwest and coastal areas of Fujian by land and sea respectively. Therefore, the original Min dialect came from Wu dialect at that time. In addition, the different immigration routes make the language differences between Fujian coastal and northwest still exist today.
Gan dialect and Hakka dialect were formed at the latest. During the Eastern Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, northern immigrants entered northern and central Jiangxi, and the northern dialects they brought formed the basis of Gan dialect and Hakka dialect.
These dialects are directly or indirectly derived from the northern dialect, and the northern dialect itself is constantly evolving and integrating some northern minority languages. Although the southern dialect mainly comes from the northern dialect, it also absorbs the local indigenous languages. It seems that the spread of language has a lot to do with immigration. There have been many large-scale immigrants in the history of our country. It first appeared at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty and lasted until the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The second time was caused by the Anshi Rebellion in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. These two immigration activities caused a large number of people from northern China to move south. Immigrants are mainly concentrated along the Yangtze River and Jiangxi. As a result, the northern dialect replaced the original dialect in southern Beijing, narrowed the scope of Xiang dialect and weakened its influence. At the same time, in Jiangxi, where Wu dialect is in contact with Xiang dialect, new dialects such as Gan dialect and Hakka dialect have been formed. So far, the macro pattern of Chinese dialects in China has basically taken shape.
In the Song Dynasty, the third immigrants finally formed Hakka dialect, which spread to northern Guangdong and southwestern Fujian. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Minnan dialect spread to Chaoshan area and even entered Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Southwest Mandarin entered Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan with refugees and reclamation activities. It can be seen that since the Song Dynasty, the geographical distribution of the original dialect has only been slightly adjusted through immigration, and there has been no major change.
During the Qing Dynasty, the biggest change in dialect distribution was the northern dialect. Due to the opening up of Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, a large number of farmers from Shandong and Hebei moved to the Northeast China and Inner Mongolia for reclamation, and immigrated to northwest Xinjiang and other places, and the distribution of northern dialects has changed greatly.
From the above situation, the northern dialect has the largest range, and the internal differences are relatively small due to frequent changes and exchanges. In southern dialects, the southwest Mandarin of Xiang dialect and Xiajiang Mandarin of Wu dialect are closely related to the northern Mandarin, so they have been neck and neck, with little difference. However, Cantonese and Min dialect are very different because they are far away from the northern dialect and have difficulties in communication. Compared with Min dialect, Cantonese was formed late and closed. Due to traffic reasons, Cantonese has always been associated with northerners. Therefore, Cantonese is not as old as Fujian in form.
(c) Language transfer and population transfer
It can be seen from both English and Chinese that the spread of language has a great relationship with the migration and change of population, especially with the activities of conquerors. However, in history, due to the small population and low culture of the conquerors, they switched to the language of the local conquered. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, after the Northern Wei Dynasty moved its capital to Luoyang, Emperor Xiaowen banned Xianbei costumes in 495 AD and asked Xianbei people to change into Hanfu. Xianbei dialect is forbidden, and Luoyang dialect in Henan Province is spoken instead. After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Manchu and Chinese lived together, and Manchu gradually declined. Now, except for Aihui County and Fuyu County, a few people in Heilongjiang Province can speak Manchu, and other places have completely disappeared. In Finland, due to the great political and military power of Swedes in history, Finland belongs to the Kingdom of Sweden, and most Swedish soldiers and immigrants live along the coast of Finland. After Finland left Sweden, Finnish gradually expanded backward, while Swedish gradually retreated, and now the Swedish left in a few areas along the Baltic Sea is distributed in an island shape.
(D) the hierarchical diffusion of language
In addition to migration and diffusion, there is also hierarchical diffusion in language. For example, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, the distribution of Zhuang language and Chinese fully illustrates the hierarchical diffusion of Chinese. Chinese is widely used in big cities and Zhuang language is widely used in small counties, but Zhuang language is widely used in rural areas. For Zhuang people, the length of time and professional status of living in large and small cities also determine their familiarity and use of Chinese and Zhuang language. Generally speaking, living in a city, the bigger the city, the longer the residence time, the higher the level of holding public office, the more education you receive, the more opportunities you have to use Chinese, the higher your familiarity, and even Chinese becomes its main language. Most of the rural cadres are bilingual, and Chinese is used in urban offices. In rural areas, Zhuang language is often used. Lexically, hierarchical communication is also very obvious. For example, some American slang, such as stoned (drunk), far out (avantgarde) and heavy (thief). This slang was first used in the lower class and then spread to the upper class. There are also some slang words, which were first popular in the upper class and disappeared from the lower class after they were no longer used. In addition, there is a spread from the age level. People of different ages have different common words. For example, the slang "wearing a hat" (meaning "couldn't be better" or "excellent") in Beijing only became popular in the last ten years. According to the survey, the age structure of the people who say slang with hats is: 54.8% are under 30 years old, and only 65,438+03.7% are between 0 and 50 years old. It can be seen that among most young people. This slang is now spreading to the elderly.
Language communication, like other cultural phenomena, sometimes has obstacles. For example, Quebec, Canada, resisted the spread of English in order to maintain French tradition; In some elementary schools in the southwestern United States near Mexico, children speak Spanish on the court and are accused by teachers; There are also some words used by the upper class and the lower class, such as movies, books and radio.
(e) Language transmission and ethnic migration
From the process of English and Chinese language diffusion, we can see that language diffusion has a great relationship with national migration. In Britain, the earliest immigrants were Iberians, and their language was later replaced by Celtic. Today, Iberian has no trace to be found. Celtic was later replaced by Germanic, and Celtic only remained in the language landscape (place names and marginal areas). This shows that the early culture was backward, especially the ethnic groups that had not developed to the writing stage. After being conquered by the later advanced or large-scale and well-organized ethnic groups, their languages disappeared with their ethnic groups, or retreated to the harsh environment in the marginal areas to survive.
With the emigration of this nation, the language spread to other places. For example, due to the expansion of the region, there will be differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, and different dialects may appear. Indo-European languages are spread all over the world, forming different languages. The spread of British English, American English and other English shows that languages are divided in the process of diffusion, and at the same time, languages are constantly communicating with each other, absorbing other languages and forming new dialects or languages.
(6) The different results of Indo-European language family and Chinese communication.
Different results can be seen from the spread of Indo-European languages and Chinese. Indo-European languages have differentiated into different languages in the process of diffusion. However, after the formation of Chinese, due to the high cultural level of the Han nationality, a complete writing system has been formed. Although there have been several large-scale immigration activities, it still maintains close ties with the powerful political and economic center in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Therefore, language differentiation only forms dialects, instead of evolving into many different languages like Indo-European languages.
Compared with the spread of Chinese, English is a phonetic symbol. Although there are differences, the differences are not great. With the development of modern radio and television, people have frequent contacts and a high degree of language exchange, so they can talk to each other. However, Chinese is not a phonetic symbol. Although the words are the same, the phonetic differences between dialects in different places are much greater than those in English, and the degree of communication between them is also small, so they can't even talk to each other.