1. Hu Shi was debating with his students whether classical Chinese or vernacular Chinese was more concise
Hu Shi was one of the earliest advocates and practitioners of the New Culture Movement. Vernacular literature was a new thing, and the opposition to it in society at that time was extremely fierce. Those who opposed the vernacular movement included great scholars Wu Mi, Huang Kan, Lin Shu, Mei Guangdi, Zhang Shizhao, and others, especially Huang Kan.
Huang Kan is the eldest disciple of Zhang Taiyan, the master of Chinese traditional culture. He is proud of his talent and is famous for his arrogance and acrimony. Once, Huang Kan said to Hu Shi: "You advocate vernacular literature, but you don't mean it!" Hu Shi asked him why he said this, and Huang Kan replied seriously: "If you advocate vernacular literature sincerely, you shouldn't be called 'Hu Shi'. It should be called 'Where to Go'." As soon as he said this, he looked up to the sky and slapped him three times, while Hu Shi turned pale with anger.
Once again, Huang Kan praised the excellence of classical Chinese in his lectures, giving an example: "If Hu Shi's wife died, his family would send a telegram saying: 'Your wife is dead! Come back quickly!' It is 11 characters long, while in classical Chinese it only needs 4 characters, "My wife is dead and she will return soon," and I can save two-thirds of the telegram fee."
This time, Hu Shi fought back, and he was clever. It's amazing. Also in class, when Hu Shi was talking about the advantages of vernacular writing, a classmate asked unconvincedly: Mr. Hu, doesn't it mean that there are no shortcomings in vernacular writing? Hu Shi smiled and said: No. The student recalled Huang Kan's argument that classical Chinese telegrams save money, and retorted: How could it not be possible? The vernacular language is not concise, and telegrams use more words and cost more. Hu Shi said: Not necessarily. How about we do an experiment. A few days ago, a friend from the Executive Yuan sent me a letter, inviting me to be the secretary of the Executive Yuan. I didn’t want to join politics, so I sent a telegram to refuse. The reply was written in vernacular, and it was very economical. If students are interested, you can draft a telegram for me in classical Chinese to see whether writing in vernacular or classical Chinese saves money.
As expected, the students drafted manuscripts one after another, and finally Hu Shi selected the one with the fewest words and complete expression from the telegraphed manuscripts. The content was "I have little talent and knowledge, and I may not be competent, so I will not obey the order." Hu Shi thought. After that, he said humorously: "This telegram is only 12 words, which is concise and comprehensive, but it is still too long. I only need 5 words in vernacular: Can't do it, thank you." Then Hu Shi explained: "Can't do it. " already contains the meaning of having little talent and knowledge and fear of being incompetent, while "thank you" not only expresses gratitude for the friend's troublesome introduction, but also means to decline. It can be seen that the simplicity of language does not depend on whether to use vernacular or classical Chinese. As long as the words are used appropriately, vernacular can be more concise than classical Chinese.
Hu Shi's incisive explanation was a rebuttal to Huang Kan's argument that "classical Chinese telegrams save money". After hearing this, the students couldn't help but nod in agreement. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of Hu Shi and others, vernacular Chinese eventually replaced classical Chinese. 2. Why did vernacular Chinese completely replace classical Chinese?
During the "May 4th" New Culture Movement, vernacular Chinese replaced classical Chinese. The private school education system was abolished, and students no longer had to read the "Four Books and Five Classics". From then on, most of the secondary school texts were in vernacular Chinese, and only a few were in classical Chinese. One article in last year's college entrance examination: The Death of Red Tuma, imitated "Three Kingdoms" in classical Chinese and won full marks. In society and theory, some praise and criticize. Detractors say: What age are we in, and classical Chinese is still advocated? Wasn’t the “May 4th New Culture Movement” in vain? Going back again.
Shouldn’t classical Chinese exist now? Are classical Chinese texts only for scholars to study? To answer this question, what role does the vernacular play in the first place? I think the role of vernacular Chinese only plays a certain role in popularizing writing. There is not much difference between simplified characters and traditional characters, except that the strokes are simple. If you are a reader, the effects of simplified and traditional characters are similar, and you will not be unable to remember them just because of the traditional characters. Vernacular Chinese is colloquial, and words and language are consistent. Classical Chinese is an inherited written language. Its characteristic is that it conveys the meaning concisely and is not as word-consuming as the words we speak.
So where does the gap between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese come from? The Analects, which records the words and deeds of Confucius, seems to be like a vernacular text. It is not very difficult to understand, but the language is essential. If you look at the [Zhu Zi language type] of the Song Dynasty, it is similar to the vernacular. It seems that the language customs of the Song Dynasty are not much different from the modern language. As for the Yuan operas and Ming and Qing novels, they are basically written in vernacular. No one who picked up a copy of "A Dream of Red Mansions", "Water Margin", and "Journey to the West" said they couldn't understand them. It can be seen that vernacular writing that combines with daily spoken language has existed for a long time, and it is not the result of the May Fourth Movement. Classical Chinese is just a simplified text when recording history; if it is for imperial examinations, it is used to write lyrics and poems.
Since classical Chinese exists as a form of written language and has not disappeared in historical inheritance, there are naturally other reasons. Judging from the history of human development, the origin of language precedes the origin of Chinese characters. Names are first expressed in words, and then in images. In the West, words are combined with language, each letter represents a syllable, and Pinyin is used as the text to make language and words consistent. But China is different. Language becomes language, and writing becomes like things into writing. Pinyin bytes only began to exist after Sanskrit was introduced to China. In the past, characters were spelled out with characters, and monosyllabic characters were spelled out with bisyllabic characters. It is precisely because of the gap between language and writing that Chinese writing will retain two characteristics for a long time, classical Chinese and vernacular.
Before the Qin Dynasty, each country had its own Chinese characters. One hieroglyph could be written in many ways, but the pronunciation was the same in each country. There is no historical record that countries would bring translators with them when sending envoys or meeting the emperor. After the Qin Dynasty, the writing system was unified and the Qin script was used as the standard writing system. Later, characters were unified, but the meanings of characters and spoken language were not unified. There were syllables commonly used in spoken language, but there were no symmetrical characters. There is also a word that represents a phrase. This custom lasted until the early days of the May Fourth Movement. By the time of the May 4th Movement, all Chinese were Westernized, imitating the Western pronunciation and word correspondences, making Hanyu Pinyin, and all words became colloquial. There are only about 3,000 Chinese characters in common use. In the past, each character represented one thing, but now it means that the sound is similar to the thing. Therefore, the number of Chinese characters has been greatly reduced, making most Chinese characters become Shengpi characters. Later, some people argued that Chinese characters could no longer be simplified. For the sake of popularization and literacy, pinyin script could be used instead. This is another bold move for total westernization after the May 4th Movement. No one in Chinese history has ever proposed to abolish Chinese characters. Today, everyone is bold and can become Cangjie. In a few days, Chinese characters will be will disappear.
Is the meaning of ancient Chinese still there? In ancient times, [Six Books] were used to create and use characters, and they belonged to philology. It is divided into six types: pictogram, onomatopoeia, image thing, image meaning, transfer note, and pretense. Nowadays, in spoken language, only the consonants are enough, and other characters are not necessary. If the Chinese characters are performed again, it can be performed as Japanese katakana, and in the end only the syllables are spelled out. Is this an international trend? The characters created by our ancients and their profound cultural heritage will probably be difficult for non-experts to understand in the future. The characters in ancient Chinese are all single-meaning characters. For example, after the May 4th Movement, vernacular and classical Chinese did not go hand in hand. Single-meaning characters became vernacular phrases, and most of the original meanings could no longer be interpreted. For example, "change" can be explained dialectically. "Change" can be said to be qualitative change, sudden change; "change" can be said to be quantitative change, slow "change". Such as "learning", "learning" is more important than thinking, "xi" is more important than practice, and the unity of knowledge and action is learning. These are all good dialectical pairs, but philosophical translators do not pay attention to these existing pairs and create new phrases, resulting in the words not conveying the meaning. It is difficult to appreciate the dialectical spirit of the ancients anymore. This is because the May Fourth movement only emphasized pronunciation and not the meaning of words. As a result, traditional Chinese culture failed to fit in with Western culture. 3. Who invented ancient Chinese into vernacular Chinese?
It was not one person, but the entire civilian class through their efforts.
The stylistic reform that began in the late Qing Dynasty can be divided into three stages: "new style", "vernacular style" and "popular language". The "new literary style" in the late Qing Dynasty was "popular classical Chinese" mixed with spoken language. The "vernacular" during the "May 4th" period was like the "quotation style" enlarged with little feet. The "popular language" of the 1930s advocated thorough colloquialism, and stylistic reform became more mature.
As early as the Tang and Song Dynasties, some people came out to oppose the disjointed language and restricted format. Han Yu (768-824) in the Tang Dynasty advocated prose and opposed parallel prose, which is known in history as "the decline of prose in the Eight Dynasties". Eight Dynasties: Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, Chen, and Sui. Parallel style originated in the Han and Wei dynasties and matured in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. It pays attention to antithesis and rhythm, with four characters and six characters alternately, which is called "four or six characters". Han Yu opposed this style of writing that focused on form and constrained thoughts, and advocated classical Chinese prose that was close to spoken language and free in expression, restoring the style to an era before it was bound by parallel prose, so it was called the "Ancient Prose Movement." The name "ancient literature" actually means "innovation".
Tang Dynasty temples promoted Buddhism and used storytelling to attract the masses. Show pictures and tell stories at the same time. The picture is called "disguised form", and the original text of rap is called "bianwen". There are some that alternate between prose and verse, and there are those that are all prose. Later it developed into drum lyrics and tanci. This is early vernacular literature.
The "Quotations" of the Song Dynasty are another early form of vernacular literature. Initially, Zen Buddhists compiled their master's talks in a colloquial style. Later, the disciples of Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, the acting scholar of the Song Dynasty, also recorded their teachers' remarks in spoken language. "Quotation style" is a kind of vernacular, with a "half-big-footed" flavor where small feet dare not put too much pressure on it.
There were also "huaben" in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. This is the basis for the storyteller to tell the story. "Hua" refers to the story, and "Ben" refers to the original text, which is divided into two categories: novels and history telling. The former are mostly short stories in vernacular, while the latter are long stories in simple classical Chinese.
The chapter novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as "Jin Ping Mei", "A Dream of Red Mansions" and "Water Margin", were written in the vernacular of the time, making the vernacular widely spread among the people. However, the authentic literature is classical Chinese.
During the reform movement in the late Qing Dynasty, vernacular began to be consciously promoted, and "popular classical Chinese" called "new literary style" emerged. For example, Huang Zunxian introduced common sayings into poetry and opposed worshiping the ancients. The new poems he wrote in 1868 (the 7th year of Tongzhi) were the pioneers of stylistic liberation: "I write with my hand and my mouth, how can I be tied to the past? Nowadays, as the saying goes, if I Posted in the compendium, 5,000 years later, people will be shocked by the stain of antiquity
In his article "On Vernacular as the Foundation of the Reform", Qiu Tingliang proposed that "vernacular is respected and classical Chinese is discarded". He said: Vernacular has "eight benefits". ”, among which items such as “save time (time), avoid wasted reading (misunderstanding), help young children learn, train their minds (thoughts), and help the poor” are advanced ideas. Chen Ronggun was the first person to advocate that newspapers use vernacular. Wang At this time, various small newspapers and periodicals in vernacular were published in various places.
Vernacular was originally a kind of folk literature, which was considered "unrefined", not a formal style, not authentic literature, and had no legal status.
Around the time of the May Fourth Movement, revolutionary thoughts surged, and the slogan of "literary revolution" was put forward. Oppose old literature and promote new literature. Old literature does not refer to the literature of the old period, but to the literature of the old nature. Its characteristics are that its style is classical Chinese, its content is outdated, and its ideas are feudal. New literature does not refer to literature in a new era, but to literature of a new nature. Its characteristics are that the style is vernacular, the content is novel, and the ideas are revolutionary.
As the initiator of the vernacular movement, Hu Shi is well versed in the relationship between ideological content and literary form. “I also know that vernacular literature cannot be considered new literature, and I also know that new literature must have new ideas and new spirit. "However, due to the long history of traditional concepts and the complexity of objective conditions, he emphasized the opposition and division between vernacular and classical Chinese, and spared no effort to advocate the instrumentality of "vernacular". "'Vernacular Literary Tools' is a new invention that a few of us young students have been discussing in America for more than a year." Compared with Hu Shi's radical, paranoid, and decisive attitude, Zhou Zuoren was slightly calmer. While emphasizing the reform of writing, he also Pay attention to the reform and transformation of ideas, otherwise even if the vernacular is used, "the ideas will still be absurd and harmful." "There is no strict boundary between classical Chinese and vernacular, so life and death are indistinguishable." Liu Bannong also believes that classical Chinese and vernacular "each have their own strengths and weaknesses." There are some inconsistencies.” "In January 1920, according to an order issued by the Ministry of Education at that time, the Chinese language curriculum in all grades of national schools also used the vernacular language (vernacular)."
This marked the initial victory of the "May Fourth" vernacular movement, but "Vernacular" also faces serious internal problems: the lack of aesthetic connotation; the separation of ideological content and written expression. Hu Shi had long been aware of this, "If future literati cannot create a vernacular literature that can be handed down for the May Fourth Movement... they will never be able to convince the ancient writers." In this regard, the vernacular novel "Diary of a Madman", the poetry collection "An Attempt Collection", Zhou Zuoren's "Beautiful Essays" series, and the "Bing Xin Style" novels all have pioneering or foundational significance. In the first decade of New Literature, vernacular written language creation was launched in various genres and was tested in practice. The most controversial among them is vernacular poetry (new poetry). Hu Shi's creation broke the rhythm of traditional poetry, but brought a "non-poetic" tendency; Guo Moruo's "Goddess" can pay more attention to the rules of poetry itself (especially imagery); the Creation of the Crescent School is the reaction of the first two It made poetry "standardized" and established the modern aesthetic principles of vernacular poetry in the connection between "new" and "old".
Vernacular writing is simple and popular. In terms of language, it is vivid, pungent, rough, full of life and full of expressiveness. Looking at the "May 4th" vernacular movement, it extensively absorbed Western vocabulary resources and grammatical structures, and unfolded at multiple levels such as language, writing, and thought. This movement was not just a "self-sufficient change within language", it was related to the entire thinking concept. The reform and national modernization movements are closely linked. The contest between "vernacular" and "classical Chinese" is, to a large extent, a collision between two different value systems and social ideologies. 4. In daily life, did the ancient Chinese speak classical Chinese or vernacular?
Ancient times is a very vague concept.
For example, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are ancient times, and the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty are also ancient times to us. But the pre-Qin era of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods was also ancient for the Song and Ming dynasties.
The spoken language in the pre-Qin era was actually the later classical Chinese. The wind in "The Book of Songs" is folk customs, which was the most popular pop music at that time. But it is this "wind" that is not popular to us, and it is not popular even to people of the Tang and Song Dynasties. Because the dialects and popular languages ??of the Pre-Qin Dynasty later evolved into classical Chinese, also known as ancient Chinese.
The ancient prose movement promoted by Liu Zongyuan and Han Yu in the middle of the Tang Dynasty actually advocated the restoration of the pre-Qin language system and the use of pre-Qin vernacular as the writing language.
In the Tang Dynasty, vernacular Chinese was already very different from classical Chinese. By the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the folk vernacular culture was not much different from the current vernacular. You can look at the suites of the Yuan Dynasty (Southern Opera and Northern Opera). The scripts of this kind of opera are actually written in folk vernacular and are very colloquial. You can also look at Zhu Xi's articles in the Song Dynasty. Although Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty is Chinese philosophy One of the most obscure parts of the book, but Zhu Xi's articles are very popular; the four famous works of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, "A Dream of Red Mansions", "Water Margin", "Journey to the West" and "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are all vernacular novels, among which The language of "Water Margin" is closer to vernacular, so "Water Margin" and "Jin Ping Mei" have become good materials for understanding the urban life of Ming and Qing Dynasties through language.
"A Dream of Red Mansions" is the highest peak of vernacular novels, and "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" is the highest peak of classical Chinese novels. The year that Pu Songling died happened to be the year that Cao Xueqin was born. The two books are almost in the same historical era, which shows that vernacular and classical Chinese existed at the same time in the language system of the medieval people.
It was not until after the May 4th Movement and the New Literature Movement that Hu Shi proposed "A Preliminary Proposal for the Reform of Writing" and personally tried the first collection of vernacular poems, "Trial Collection", advocating the use of vernacular. At this time, the status of vernacular was at its peak. Coupled with the pace of modernization and modernization, the existence of classical Chinese was almost eliminated. But the vernacular was not invented by Hu Shi; it had already appeared a thousand years ago.
5. Why should vernacular be used instead of classical Chinese
"Vernacular" is closely related to popular spoken language. "Popular language is not a special language other than vernacular. 'Popular' means that vernacular can be A skill that can be understood by the greatest number of people." Lu Xun believed that "the purpose of advocating popular language is to create a 'more accessible vernacular'". Some commentators believe that the vernacular movement is the prelude to the popularization movement; in fact, the conceptual connotations of the two are different, and the "vernacular movement" cannot be blindly equated with "popularization." In addition, the vernacular literature movement was also the theoretical starting point for "popular literature and art" during the Left Alliance period in the 1930s, and "literature and art serving the public" in the liberated areas in the 1940s. The latter was an extension and highlight of the former, and at the same time, the conceptual connotation was narrowed. . After "vernacular literature" was established as a category of modern literature, there are still some debates and interpretations to this day, mainly focusing on the "reflection" level, such as Qian Gurong's "Reflections on Vernacular Literature" and so on.
Vernacular Chinese is easier than classical Chinese. It can clearly express what people mean when they speak. However, classical Chinese is difficult to understand the literal meaning. You must use your brain and think repeatedly to understand the meaning. Vernacular Chinese is very difficult to understand. It is easy to express what you think and it is easy to understand.
Vernacular Chinese is a need for China’s development. It is concise and easy to understand. The literary revolution that started with the vernacular movement played an important role in spreading new ideas, prospering literary creation, and promoting national education.
Modern written vernacular language still has various levels. To participate in academic discussions in philosophy, one must master a complete set of basic discourse systems of modern philosophy. To participate in academic discussions in economics, one must master A complete discourse system of modern economics, but this does not mean that everyone who participates in written dialogue in society must master another independent discourse system like classical Chinese that is completely different from their actual daily spoken language, because modern various The discourse systems of different majors are gradually enriched and developed on the basis of real daily oral language. This kind of language developed on the basis of real daily oral language can also be specifically used in real daily oral communication.
6. Did people in ancient times speak classical Chinese or vernacular?
The issue of vernacular can be traced back to the history of the development of Chinese. I am a Chinese student. This question can tell you about the history of the development of Chinese and tell us: Pre-Qin Literature The written language of The Analects of Confucius is basically consistent with the spoken language of its time. Therefore, although the Analects of Confucius seems difficult to understand now, it was spoken language at that time, because it is a collection of quotations in itself, and it is impossible to use too much written language. In fact, at that time Written language and spoken language are not really separated, and people have little awareness of written language. The key to why the distinction between written language and spoken language appeared later is that later people worshiped the pre-Qin articles. Because of this worship, people after the Qin and Han Dynasties imitated the pre-Qin language one after another. However, in real life, spoken language has undergone major changes, with many changes in vocabulary and grammar. However, people have deliberately maintained the familiar language without much change. Of course, the ancients did not imitate Pre-Qin Chinese. Without home, they can only imitate some fixed idioms, such as not being there, how to be, how to be, how to have, etc., etc., but they often show flaws in some subtle vocabulary, and these are what we study The basis for the differences in written Chinese in different eras is for example: the Yu Gong article in the Book of Documents is superficially said to be written by Xia Yu, but the vocabulary in it is completely the language characteristics of the Warring States period, so we conclude that it is a forgery. On the other hand, the reason is that intellectuals are increasingly becoming the pillars of society, and education in ancient China was not universal. Therefore, in order to show their status, literati preferred to write articles that were jerky and difficult to understand, which gradually separated from the spoken language at that time. This phenomenon did not stop until the New Culture Movement of the 20th century. But at the same time, we must also pay attention: vernacular literature did not stop because of the awkwardness and difficulty of ancient Chinese literature. It was expressed from the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Taking novels as an example, the earliest Romance of the Three Kingdoms was relatively conservative and did not use vernacular, but simple classical Chinese. Water Margin was written in vernacular from the beginning. These vernacular works reflected the spoken language of the time and can be said to be unique. Although Bai Juyi's poems The old woman can understand it, but it is by no means plain vernacular, otherwise it cannot be called poetry. Poetry requires the artistic processing of the poet. Rich rhetoric and vivid imagery are essential elements of poetry. Although Bai Juyi’s poetic language is old woman It can be understood, but it cannot be completely vernacular. Huang Zunxian, a famous poet in modern China, pays attention to writing by hand and speaking in a simple and easy-to-understand form. It can be said that Bai Juyi was second to Bai Juyi. For vernacular literature, please refer to Hu Shi's book "History of Vernacular Literature" Now speaking of the changes in spoken language, you may have discovered from the above discussion that changes in spoken language are difficult to control. Therefore, in theory, since spoken language is a language popular among the masses, it cannot be too much influenced by literati. influence, so his changes should be relatively large, and the ancient prose of the past dynasties was actually produced by the literati's deliberate pursuit of similarity with the pre-Qin vernacular, so Han Yu's language is very similar to the pre-Qin language (although we can find Han Yu's language in the subtleties loopholes) The biggest change in spoken language is pronunciation. Even if we can go back to the time of Confucius, we will definitely not be able to understand a word of what Confucius and his disciples said when giving lectures, because the pronunciation of ancient Chinese is really different from that of today. It's too big. By the Tang and Song Dynasties, the spoken pronunciation was very similar to the current Cantonese and Fujian, so the Japanese pronunciation and Cantonese are always somewhat consistent (of course, Japanese is also developing). There are changes in word meanings and new words in vocabulary. For example, "stop and sit in love in the maple forest" and "sitting in the evening" had the meaning of "because" in medieval and modern times, but it did not have the smallest grammatical changes in ancient times. Some grammatical features of ancient Chinese have been retained with idioms, such as object preposition, What we are talking about now is that only someone is following the lead, and only someone is asking questions. It is all formed in this way. The following is the relevant content in our modern Chinese class notes: 2.2.1. Concepts and definitions of modern Chinese (1) Periods of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese Different versions of it: May Fourth Movement, Opium War, novels of the late Qing Dynasty.
(2) The meaning of modern Chinese: Broadly speaking: including Mandarin and various dialects. Narrow sense: refers specifically to Mandarin.
(3) How Mandarin was formed - ***Two ways to form synonyms: a. Naturally formed, non-mandatory: The influence of Shanghainese and Cantonese on Mandarin is non-mandatory , is formed naturally. b. Forced formation, artificial regulation: Promote and regulate on the basis of natural formation.
(4) ***Expression forms of the same language: a. Written language b. Spoken language The formation speed and process of the two are different. Mandarin has written language and spoken language, and they have different formation processes. 2.2.2. The formation of modern Chinese vernacular Chinese vernacular is also the written language of modern Chinese.
(1) Ancient vernacular: Oracle bone inscriptions prove that it was similar to what it is today more than 3,000 years ago. A cross-regional language appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties - Yayan, that is, the language in Luoyang at that time was Xiayan.
Written language reflects spoken language differently. The "wind" in "The Book of Songs" faithfully records the spoken language and has the color of folk spoken language.
The Analects of Confucius records the spoken language of Confucius, reflecting the spoken language at that time. In fact, people in the pre-Qin Dynasty did speak this way, and what was recorded must be spoken language.
(2) Vernacular in the process of separation of literary and white: After the Han and Wei dynasties, spoken language changed. The literati at that time deliberately imitated the expressions of the pre-Qin Dynasty, forming classical Chinese that was far from spoken language. The formation of classical Chinese separated written Chinese from spoken language. Classical Chinese continued to develop for thousands of years It has also occupied a dominant position in written language throughout the years.
The opposite of classical written language is vernacular written language. The "Shishuoxinyu" of the Southern Dynasties left many traces of the spoken language at that time, including many spoken words and sentences.
The translation of Buddhist scriptures in the Six Dynasties required speaking vernacular to the common people in the process of spreading Buddhist teachings. "Bianwen" appeared after the Tang and Five Dynasties, which is a kind of rap literature.
Ancient Buddhist Zen works were used for preaching in temples, promoting Buddhist stories, etc. They were written by people with low cultural level and heavy traces of vernacular writing, such as "Zen Quotes" and "Zitang Ji" etc. There are many oral records. In the Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism style of lecturing was prevalent, and "Zhu Xi's Quotations" was very close to spoken language.
In the late Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty, vernacular writing became popular. Most of the Huaben (Pingshu scripts) in the late Southern Song Dynasty were written in vernacular, while a lot of spoken language was retained in Zaju Sanqu. The novels written in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty were not in classical Chinese, but in ancient vernacular. Although they had quite local flavor, they were all written in northern dialect. The trend of using northern spoken language as written language emerged. The written language in the same language was gradually perfected, and the vernacular was basically formed.
(3).