China’s modern language revolution started with the literary revolution. Huang Zunxian, who advocated the "revolution in poetry", wrote this poem as early as 1868 (the seventh year of Tongzhi): "I write with my hand and my mouth, how can I be restrained by the past? As a popular saying today, if I wait for the compilation, the descendants of five thousand years will "It is astonishingly colorful." ③ Huang Zunxian advocates the consistency of spoken language and written text in literary creation, and regards "popular sayings" as a model for poetry to last forever. Colloquialisms are included in dialects. A dialect is a regional language, which is a local variation of a language. The dialect of a certain region always has some common characteristics with the language of the entire nation. At the same time, there are certain differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar between local dialects. Colloquial sayings are some stereotyped popular sentences popular among the people, including proverbs, slang, idioms, etc. Colloquial sayings often have strong local color, so some colloquial sayings are also dialect words, and it is difficult to separate them clearly. Therefore, many dialect interpretation works include colloquialisms. Mr. Lu Xun said in "Wenwaiwentan" that "dialects and dialects often have profound meanings. We call them 'Lianhua' here, and they are very interesting to use. Just like classical Chinese in classical Chinese, the listeners find it interesting." Huang Zunxian The high admiration for "popular sayings" is indeed not unreasonable. As the saying goes: "The cleanest water is spring water, and the most concise words are proverbs." I also heard that "Proverbs are the salt of language." Literary masters have never despised dialects.
Liang Qichao, who was almost at the same time as Huang Zunxian, also advocated the use of "vulgar language style" with consistent language and words. He believes that "since the Song Dynasty, there has actually been a great evolution of the motherland's literature. Why? It is because of the great development of vernacular literature. There are two major schools of vernacular literature after the Song Dynasty, one is the quotations of Confucianism and Zen, and the other is novels. Novels. This is definitely not the case with the literary style of ancient Chinese.” Moreover, “if you want to popularize your ideas, this style should be adopted by novelists, and this is the case in hundreds of articles.”④ Qiu Tingliang also summarized the “vernacular”. The "Eight Benefits" are "saving daily energy", "getting rid of arrogance", "avoiding wasted study", "protecting the saints", "facilitating learning for young children", "refining mental strength", "less abandoning talents" and "helping the poor". ”,⑤It is obvious that they are all aimed at the ideological content of the work and the reform of language tools.
The vernacular movement of the May Fourth period was the forerunner and symbol of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. It was also first a literary revolution. “Words match words” remains its tenet. So, is the "vernacular" at this time the "mandarin" that is often spoken? It seems not. Qian Xuantong said, "When we advocate new literature, naturally we don't just change classical Chinese to vernacular. But the first step is to change to vernacular." ⑥ In Hu Shi's "Eight Things", "Four are: Avoid vulgar words and idioms (do not mind writing poems in vernacular)." By 1918, in a letter written by Hu Shi to Qian Xuantong's "On Novels and Vernacular Prose", he summarized the linguistic characteristics of "vernacular" into three items:
"(1) The characteristics of vernacular" Bai' is the 'bai' of 'speaking white' on the stage, and is the 'bai' of the colloquial saying 'Tubai'."
"(2) The 'bai' of vernacular is. The "bai" of "innocent" is the "bai" of "clearness". Vernacular words need to be "clear as words", so you might as well include a few words in classical Chinese that are easy to understand."
" (3) Vernacular words. The word "bai" is the word "white" of "black and white". If the vernacular is clean and without decoration, it can also contain a few clear and easy-to-understand classical Chinese words. "⑦
It can be seen that Hu Shi. The so-called "vernacular" or "hua" is proposed from the perspective of spoken language. "Vernacular" is opposed to classical Chinese but includes dialects. Hu Shi did not clearly distinguish dialects from dialects. Hu Shi believes that "Dialects are not unavoidable in writing. For example, people in Jiangsu say the word 'like there is a thing', but there is no word in the various dialects I know that can express this meaning." ⑧ On the relationship between "Guoyu" and "Dialect" , Hu Shi also had unique and thought-provoking insights: "Mandarin is just the most superior dialect; today's Mandarin literature was just dialect literature a few years ago. It is precisely because people at that time were willing to use dialects to write literature. , dared to write literature in dialects, so a lot of living literature was accumulated over more than a thousand years, and the most universal part of it was gradually recognized as the foundation of Chinese literature... Chinese literature originated from dialect literature. After that, we still need to look for new materials, new blood, and new life in dialect literature.”⑨… Only with the literature of the Chinese language can we have the national language of literature. … Only with the literary Chinese language can we have the standard Chinese language. ("On the Literary Revolution of Construction"). "The same is true for literature in dialects. There must be literary works in dialects first, and then there can be dialects for literature. With dialects for literature, dialects have more or less written standards, and then they can continue to produce richer and more valuable dialect literature. "⑨ From the perspective of Hu Shi and others, the roles of dialects and Mandarin in literature are almost equal. They complement and promote each other, and both work hard for the prosperity of literature.