Fortunately, Putonghua has been popularized in our country, otherwise, as China people, they will have to speak in writing in the future.
Therefore, in the distant ancient times, education, transportation and media were almost primitive, and it was impossible to popularize Putonghua. How did people communicate at that time?
Historians say that ancient officials also promoted mandarin, such as elegant words and mandarin. Officials entering Beijing must learn to speak Mandarin, otherwise the emperor can't understand what you say, and where can he display his talents?
So that we can make up this picture. Li Bai sang "How the Yellow River water moves out of the sky" in Sichuan accent, and Du Fu recited "Although the country is broken, the mountains and rivers last forever, and the vegetation is green in spring" in Henan dialect.
Is that really the case? Of course not. Sichuan dialect in the Tang Dynasty is completely different from Sichuan dialect now.
There are many misunderstandings about how the ancients spoke Mandarin. Let me explain something to you.
Let's take medieval Chinese in the Tang Dynasty as an example. From the Middle Ages, that is, from the Three Kingdoms to the Song Dynasty and after the Yuan Dynasty, the pronunciation of the vast northern regions was closer to modern Chinese.
Question 1: Putonghua was not popularized in ancient times. If ordinary people haven't learned Mandarin, won't people in different places be unable to communicate?
Don't worry.
The main area of China in Tang Dynasty radiated from the middle reaches of the Yellow River in all directions. Nowadays, people in many places in China have ancestors who moved from the Central Plains, such as Lin and Chen in Fujian, and their roots are in the Central Plains.
Population migration naturally brings language migration. However, the differentiation of Chinese in the Tang Dynasty was not as great as it is now. At most, Chinese didn't deviate from dialects until Jiangnan or Saibei. Now the difference between Henan dialect and Shaanxi dialect and Shandong dialect is not too big, and so is the Tang Dynasty, so it is not difficult for everyone to communicate.
In other words, there was not such a large population in China in the Tang Dynasty, only10 million. The place is not that big, so there is not much difference in dialects.
Then the second question is, since the differentiation of Chinese in the Tang Dynasty was not great, why are the dialects of modern Chinese so different?
This is mainly because the territory of China is too large, and the same language will certainly change with the migration of population to other places.
The main factors of this change are geography, cultural exchange and population mobility.
What is the relationship between modern dialects and ancient Chinese? Of course, it is the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. Just like the same ancestor, his descendants live in different places and have been multiplied for many generations. Of course, descendants have retained some characteristics of their ancestors, but they have also evolved some unique things.
In the dialect of a place in my hometown, fish is pronounced "nv" with a strong nasal sound. In fact, in Middle Chinese, the pronunciation of fish is "nyo". In ancient times, fish and fish were different sounds. Many people will find that the pronunciation of some words in their dialect is very different from that in Mandarin, which may be the reason.
Another reason why dialects are difficult to understand is that the words used in dialects are different from those used in modern Chinese.
In Hong Kong dramas, the police are called "Chai Yan". I guess they are actually "policemen", that is, officers in ancient yamen. For example, the dialects in Hubei and Jiangxi call morning and afternoon "Sangzu" and "Hazu", but most people don't understand. In fact, their corresponding words are "heaven" and "next day". Looking at it, you can not only understand it in seconds, but also feel the full cultural atmosphere.
Modern linguists divide Chinese dialects in China into northern dialects, Wu dialects, Cantonese, Min dialects and Xiang dialects. And even subdivide sub-dialects in the same dialect. For example, Cantonese includes Guangfu dialect, Chaoshan dialect and Hakka dialect. In fact, these dialects are all inherited from medieval Chinese, but they have undergone historical evolution.
Many features of medieval Chinese have been preserved in some dialects and lost in some dialects.
Use a popular example to explain this sentence.
In everyone's impression, northerners distinguish flat-rolled tongue sounds, while southerners don't distinguish flat-rolled tongue sounds, such as "Zici" and "Fasao"
According to linguists' research, there was a flat tongue in medieval Chinese, and the tongue in southern dialect was seriously degraded, but it was not completely extinct. Southern dialect also retains another major feature of Middle Chinese: entering tone rhyme, which disappeared in the north as early as the end of Ming Dynasty.
The so-called entering tone simply means that after a word is read, there will still be a sound, similar to the t after put and get in English. When you speak fast or connect with other words, you will only have a sigh of relief. If you talk to a Cantonese and ask him to separate the word "country" and speak slowly, you will obviously find this phenomenon.
Question 3: Are there any dialects in China that are ancient Chinese or are similar to ancient Chinese?
This issue has been debated on the Internet for a long time, and folk scientists from all over the world enthusiastically proved that their mother tongue is ancient Chinese. Typical examples are Cantonese (also called Cantonese), Minnan dialect and Hakka dialect, and even the "experts" in Hunan are not to be outdone.
If this is the case, we can imagine that a generation of heroes like Cao Cao and Li Shimin are pointing out the country with Cantonese accents, and the pictures are too beautiful to look at.
So which dialect is closer to Middle Chinese? The correct answer is that none of the above options are correct.
Language itself, like human life, is a dynamic process, constantly changing with the influence of time and the outside world. There is no fixed language, Chinese is like this, and so is English and Japanese.
For example, in order to pursue the efficiency of expression, human beings will inevitably divide a single complex syllable into multiple simple syllables. For example, when the ancients promised others, they would say "yes", and the promise of 1000 yuan came from this, while the modern people said "ok" or even "ok".
Or simplify complicated syllables, such as a large number of vowels and simplified sounds in northern spoken language. In Beijing dialect, "Tieermen" actually means "Tiananmen Square", and so do "Men's Ticket" and "Did you make it" in Taiwan Province province.
Then, with the development of the times, a large number of new words will inevitably appear.
Therefore, any dialect today is very different from Middle Chinese.
There is a saying that Beijing dialect is nonsense because it was occupied by ethnic minority regimes in history.
This is totally biased. A language will be affected by population migration, but it cannot be exaggerated indefinitely. There is not much difference between Beijing dialect and China northern dialect. Can minority languages be strong enough to assimilate the whole north?
Question 4: Why do some ancient poems have more dialect rhymes than Mandarin?
When the ancients wrote poems, they must have rhymed. Reading ancient poems in current Mandarin doesn't rhyme, which is of course caused by the difference between Mandarin and Middle Ages.
For example, in Du Fu's "The Hut is Blown by Autumn Wind", there is a sentence in Mandarin that doesn't rhyme:
The first column of phonetic symbols is modern Chinese Pinyin (followed by tone), the second column is Middle Chinese phonetic symbols, and the k behind it means entering tone, as long as you don't pronounce it.
It shows that ancient rhyming poems do not rhyme with Mandarin.
Some people say that poetry rhymes better in Cantonese, and this phenomenon also exists, because Cantonese retains many factors of ancient Chinese, such as entering tone.
But there are also some shortcomings, such as this song "Compassion for Farmers" which is familiar to China people:
The first phonetic symbol is Cantonese, so this poem rhymes better in Cantonese than in Mandarin. The last column is the phonetic symbol of middle ancient Chinese. It seems that Putonghua is sometimes superior to Cantonese in inheriting vowels in Middle Chinese.
The same phenomenon exists in the following words, and the phonetic symbol behind them is Cantonese.
These words end in /an/ in Mandarin and Middle Ages. What does this mean? After Cantonese inherited Middle Chinese, some phonetic changes have taken place.
Speaking of which, many people will ask, there was no tape recorder in ancient times. How do you know how to pronounce ancient Chinese?
Many experts have done in-depth research on this subject, such as China ancient famous scholars Wang Li and Zheng Zhang.
Although the ancients didn't have a tape recorder, they left many rhyme books, such as Qi Yun written by Lu Fayan in Sui Dynasty and Guang Yun written by Chen Pengnian in Song Dynasty. Nowadays, people can infer and imitate sounds according to the rhymes of ancient Chinese and the evolution of different sounds preserved in rhymes and dialects. Due to historical reasons, Hakka dialect in the south retains many medieval sounds.
I'm not sure I can guess 100%, but it's good to recover 60%.
Similarly, foreign experts are also trying to restore ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian, and the dialogue of ancient Egyptians was completely used in the "Ancient Egyptians" filmed by BBC.
Some people may ask, since ancient Chinese has disappeared in modern times, what is the significance of studying the pronunciation of ancient Chinese?
Of course, just a few examples.
If we know how the ancients spoke, it will be of great help to identify ancient books and documents.
For example, the ancients often used interchangeable words in their articles. Common words are only used when they have the same pronunciation. If two words are used as common words with different pronunciations at that time, they may be altered or even forged by later generations. Similarly, a Tang poem is found by the pronunciation of the Tang Dynasty not to rhyme or conform to the law of leveling, or it may be forged by later generations.
When you read history, you will find an interesting phenomenon. The names of the ancients are all very strange, especially in ancient times, such as Bigan and da ji, named Jiang, King Gou Jian, King Fu Cha and Parting. Not only is the meaning difficult to understand, but the pronunciation is also awkward.
This is precisely because the pronunciation of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese is too different. In ancient times, these names should be catchy. It is very helpful to identify ancient names and places with ancient Chinese pronunciation.
For example, Buddhist terms include "pagoda" and "Buddha", both of which are the same word. In Sanskrit, Buddha is buddah, and the middle pronunciation of "Buddha" is byoda, which is very similar. Therefore, people who are familiar with medieval Chinese will know a foreign word at once, whether it is translated in Han Dynasty or Tang Dynasty.
The pronunciation of ancient Chinese is not only useful in China, but also beneficial in the world.
For example, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese around China have inherited a large number of ancient Chinese words in their languages due to historical reasons, and even their phonetics have been completely preserved. People who have studied Japanese and Korean should be familiar with this.
For example, in Korean, the word passport is "?" The one marked as Pinyin is yeogwon, which is similar in pronunciation to Yao Guan. If I tell you that it is the middle ancient sound of the Chinese word "entering the customs", do you feel very kind?
However, after learning a little about the Middle Ages, I believe everyone is no longer interested in time-travel drama.
If we really go back to ancient times, even basic speaking will be a problem.
Now I want to read a well-known ancient Chinese poem. Let's feel the meaning of Li Bai's poem:
Finally, I declare that the pronunciation of ancient Chinese is a very profound knowledge, and I can only give you a superficial introduction. There must be many mistakes, please let me know.
Interested students can search for "Middle Ages" on Baidu and Youku, and there are many dry goods.