Chapter 70: Monographs on Chinese Chinese Language, Writing and Culture
Before the invasion, oppression and enslavement of China by the Western powers, China's cultural class, that is, the scholars and intellectual elites, always believed that China was the only place in the world where culture was mastered, and that everything outside China was a wild land and a cultural desert. However, after the conquest of the East by the West, the Chinese cultural elite was driven to the bottom of despair, and they were forced to reflect and re-examine their own culture, and finally they were divided into three factions, the first group believed that the reason for China's defeat was that the Chinese people abandoned traditional culture, lacked the virtue of serving the common good, and lacked the patriotic heart and dedication of "the rise and fall of the world, and the husband is responsible". The second faction believes that the reason for China's defeat is that China's military technology is inferior to others, and China lacks advanced weapons such as foreign guns and artillery, so as long as China catches up with the West in terms of weapons manufacturing, China will immediately be able to turn defeat into victory and defeat the West. The third faction believes that the reason for China's defeat is that there are problems and defects in China's traditional culture, and that Chinese traditional culture can only create the servants of feudal emperors, which can cultivate civil society and Jianghu culture that sees the wind and steers, bullies the weak with guns, and cheats and cheats. This faction is called the reformists. In the early years of the Republic of China, the reformists basically became the mainstream of Chinese culture, the backbone of the reformists are some new intellectuals who have stayed abroad and actively accepted the brainwashing of Western culture, there is no rich content in Western culture, plus the traditional cultural foundation of these people is very shallow, so these reformers appear very inferior, impetuous and superficial, they privately help Chinese and Chinese culture find ancestors, saying that Chinese are descendants of someone, Chinese culture originated in a pharaoh's tomb or temple in the Mediterranean, They also like to find ancestors for various ethnic groups in East Asia, causing Chinese people to become more confused in their thinking and more serious ethnic contradictions. In the end, because of the emergence of great men and saints in China, the reformers did not abandon Chinese characters and the Chinese language, and Chinese regained their cultural self-confidence and national self-confidence, otherwise, China would have been reduced to a cultural desert area without culture and nations.
Here we will not discuss the essence and dross of traditional culture, but only the essential meaning of language, writing and culture.
The above discussion in this article shows that in terms of language, the languages of all human peoples come from a common source. According to the scientific speculation of this paper, human beings have created hieroglyphs 45,000 years ago, and according to the estimation of Western archaeologists, Phoenician is the earliest phonetic script in the world, which was produced in 1500 BC, and in 1000 BC the Greeks created Greek on the basis of the Phoenician alphabet. Therefore, in the long history of the development of human civilization, the history of the development of pinyin characters is only a short period of more than 3000 years, because the pinyin characters are only pure phonetic symbols, so the pinyin characters are just a kind of pronunciation, if there is no corresponding explanation, this pronunciation will be meaningless. Pure hieroglyphs describe a specific thing, phenomenon, behavior, and emotion through abstract line compositions, so that the reader can understand the meaning of the text and the content of the text without language cooperation. After the correspondence between the text and the language, the hieroglyphs were given the functions of transcription and borrowing in the construction, such as "Danda
"It is the beginning of the sun and the meaning of dawn, because Dan and gall are the same in pronunciation, so Dan has become the side of the sound of gall; Danda
It means red, and since the sun rises to appear red, Dan borrows the pronunciation of dan, and this phenomenon of phonetic and borrowing is very common in Chinese characters, and readers can study it for themselves.
That is to say, the amount of cultural information possessed by hieroglyphs is incomparable to that of pinyin characters. Chinese characters are a kind of continuous development of tens of thousands of years, and is still in use of living script, the Chinese characters that have been preserved a total of more than 30,000 words, experts speculate that the created Chinese characters will not be less than 100,000 words, and each Chinese character is a cultural concept and definition, it can be seen that the Chinese character itself is a cultural masterpiece, Chinese characters contain rich historical and cultural information of human beings, without Chinese characters human beings will lose a lot of cultural memory and cultural achievements.
When the text and language are perfectly combined, we see a lot of historical and ancient cultural phenomena outside of the official history books, and the traditional Chinese character "郷" is next to lang la
g, the pictographic interpretation of the text is "the place where there is Lang is called hometown", in the matrilineal clan society, the female village has the meaning of the hometown, the male village is generally a military camp or coolie workshop, Lang is an adult man who specializes in helping the female village to have children, if the female village does not have Lang, there will be no happiness, hope and future, so there is a hometown of Lang. At present, rows of phoenix tail bamboos are planted around the villages in Southeast Asia such as Guangxi Zhuang and Yunnan Zhuang and Dai people, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian regions, where the Thai-Vietnamese culture is still vivid. Because the Thai-Vietnamese people call bamboo la
g, the pronunciation of bamboo is the same as the pronunciation of lang, so the Thai-Vietnamese people planted bamboo next to the village to pray for "the continuation of future generations, children and grandchildren". In the Han Dynasty, the country of Yelang, which was entrenched in the ancient plateau, believed that bamboo was their ancestor, perhaps their ancestor was a langguan or langguan with ambition and superhuman courage.
There are similar cultural phenomena, such as "money qia."
In the ancient Yue language, q is the same as x, so Qian is also pronounced as "Xianxia."
"In a matriarchal society" Xianxia
"Representing the woman, the Virgin and the Queen, the pictographic interpretation of the word money in the oracle bone inscription is a pile of metal next to a lot of Ge guarding, in a matriarchal society, only the queen has an army and has metal currency, hence the word "Xianxia" borrowed by the word "Xianxia."
This shows that in matriarchal societies there are only "immortals."
The heroine and queen can have metal currency, and these currencies are heavily guarded. Ancient currencies are referred to as "coin bi", coins and Pi homonym, Bi bi is the actual ruler of the matriarchal society, quite a boss, the king, the image of the coin in the oracle bone inscription is the cloth covered by hands and objects, etc., perhaps the matriarchal society stipulates that the king can use cloth and other high-value food as currency, but these currencies must be stored in a hidden and safe place, of course, the coin can only borrow the pronunciation of Pi. This phenomenon not only exists in the Chinese-speaking region, but also exists in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mauritius and other regions, the currency pronunciation borrows the phenomenon of Bibi pronunciation, these areas are called the currency for the rupee lubi, in the ancient Yue language, Lu lu is the meaning of boat, circulation, than bi is Pi, the literal translation is "the circulation of the king's currency", indicating that the currency is under the control of the royal power, and the currency in the private market is illegal.
Without Chinese characters and the Thai-Vietnamese language that has been preserved to this day, we would not be able to obtain the cultural information of these ancient times. This shows the importance of preserving human language and writing.
According to the analysis and reasoning of this paper, all the cultural phenomena and achievements of human beings today and in history are produced and formed because of the great migration, settlement and development of human beings. In order to understand the state of human civilization in more detail, this chapter will discuss the formation process of the Chinese language and writing separately.
Based on the research results of human cultural relics, historical documents, and the current state of civilization around the world, We believe that between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, before the great migration of human beings on land and sea, the ancient humans who gathered in southern China and mainland Southeast Asia during the Ice Age already had a number of systematic and complete language systems and writing systems, and found a large number of stone carvings and bone carvings in the left and right river basins of Guangxi, as well as a large number of squatting humanoid petroglyphs, these cultural relics reflect the main ethnic group of human land migration, the ancient Yue people, who had mastered the hieroglyphic system during the great migration. At present, many ethnic groups in southwest China, such as the Zhuang, Buyi, Shui, Yi and other ancient ethnic groups, still retain their own hieroglyphic systems, which are all evidence that the ancients mastered the pictographic system.
Before the Great Migration, the farming peoples had their own language and writing methods, and at the same time, the farming peoples living in hot areas had mastered the cultivation technology of crops in hot areas such as rice. Farming people in cold and arid areas have mastered the planting techniques of dryland crops such as barley, wheat, and wheat. In the early stage of human development, animal husbandry was not separated from farming, gathering and hunting, and before the Great Migration, farming peoples had mastered domestic animals and poultry such as buffalo, cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese, and the buffalo was the main animal power for farmers to cultivate paddy fields. Cattle are the main means of transportation for farming peoples; Pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese and other domestic animals and poultry are the main sources of animal protein food for farming peoples. At the same time, the agrarian people also mastered the use of fire, smelting metal, firing ceramics, cooking food, brewing wine, medicine, weaving, making leather, making clothing, and making tools and utensils such as metal, stone, bone, and wood. The entire content of the production and life of the agrarian people must be described through language and writing, and passed on from generation to generation, and this process promotes the explosive development of language and writing.
The earliest human society was a human society with the agrarian nation as the main body, and the management of the society promoted the language and writing of the agrarian people to a more comprehensive and complete direction, so that the language and writing of the agrarian people became the common language and writing of the people in Eurasia during the period of the Great Migration and after the end of the Great Migration. With the ancient Yue culture as the core, Chinese culture is the root of the common language and writing of human beings in Eurasia. Therefore, at present, the languages of various regions and countries in various regions of the world still retain more or less cultural elements of ancient Yue culture and Chinese culture.
According to the results of archaeological and anthropological research, the cultivation technology of rice, vegetables and melons and fruits around the world, the breeding technology of livestock and poultry such as buffalo, cattle, pigs, chickens and ducks, the technology of using fire, the technology of making pottery, brewing rice wine, and cooking food were all brought to the world by the ancient Yue people and the early Chinese. Without the global migration of the ancient Yue people and the early Chinese, there would not be so many people in the world who like to eat rice, pork, chicken and duck, like to bathe, and like to sing and dance. These techniques and lifestyles were unique to the ancient Yue people and the early Chinese.
According to the analysis of the current archaeological results, the language and writing of the ancient Yue people were formed between 35,000 and 25,000 years ago. Before the ancient Yue people entered Chinese mainland, there were ancient ethnic groups engaged in fishing, hunting and gathering, and there were already settlements and villages of maritime peoples in various river estuaries in Chinese mainland, but due to the limitations of production methods, the population development of these ethnic groups was limited, so the population population of marine, fishing, hunting and gathering was very limited.
After the ancient Yue people migrated to Guangdong, the ancient Yue people quickly assimilated the local fishing and hunting, hunting and gathering ethnic groups to engage in agricultural production, forming the Yang Yue, the Yang Yue people are basically the same as the ancient Yue people in language and writing, in order to distinguish the ethnic convenience, the ancient Yue people who settled in the southeast of Yunnan, northern Vietnam and the southwest of Guangxi were called Luo Yue. After the Qin and Han dynasties, the official language of the Qin and Han dynasties began to influence the Lingnan region, and the official language of the Qin and Han dynasties merged with the ancient Yue language to form the predecessor of the early Cantonese language, which is the predecessor of Cantonese, and the early Cantonese language was merged with the official language of the Tang and Song dynasties to form the modern Cantonese dialect, which is Cantonese. The Wu, Wenzhou, Hokkien, Chaoshan, Hakka, and Pinghua languages in the south of the Yangtze River are the result of the fusion of the local ancient Yue language with the official language of the Qin and Han dynasties, and the official language of the Tang and Song dynasties.
According to our investigation, the Hokkien language family in eastern Guangdong and Fujian retains many words of the maritime ethnic languages, namely Austronesian languages, such as 人 (
e
g), go (ti, di), eat (cie, qia), fish (ho), meat (
ie
g), cattle (gu), etc.; At the same time, the Old Vietnamese vocabulary is preserved in the Hokkien language family: such as mother (mie), father (bo), woman or wife (ya), man (di).
g), short (dem), tall (sa
g), water (lem), rice (hou), porridge (moi
etc.
Due to the profound influence of the Tang and Song dynasties on the Lingnan region, Min language, like other languages in the Lingnan region, retains many Chinese words that follow the pronunciation patterns of the Tang and Song dynasties, such as Xian (Tang and Song pronunciation is ham), salt (Tang and Song pronunciation is lu equivalent to halo, dew), and so on.
In the long historical process of the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin region where the culture is not closely connected, the Hunan and Chu culture are not much different, they all retain the same rice civilization and matriarchal culture customs, they call rice as hou or ou ou; It is called rice wine, and it is called mash lao or lou; They all believe that their ancestors are Mimie, and in the ancient Yue language, Mimie is the mother.
The ancient Yue people entered Poyang Lake and the Jiangnan region to develop farming, they fused into the Wu people, the Yue people, the Wenzhou people, etc., in the ancient Yue language, Wu wu is me, their own people mean, Wu people's Wang Fucha, the pronunciation of the Fu Cha The pronunciation of the word busai of the ancient Yue men is very similar, so the willingness of the Fu Cha may be "macho man", and the wordless call "you" is
o
Glennon, in the Old Yue language,
o
G Nong means younger brother, elder brother, brother, is a very affectionate name, and at present, Shanghai dialect and other Wu languages call you Nong
o
g, this is what the ancient Yue language is left over from the modern Wu language. The self-proclaimed Yue people in the Jiangnan region show that these people have completely retained the cultural customs of the ancient Yue people. Wenzhou people are the product of the fusion of the ancient Yue people and the maritime people, they can be classified as a group of people with the Minyue people, in the ancient Yue people, Wen we
It means people, human beings, and the sun, indicating that before the integration of the agricultural and sea peoples, many human beings had gathered and settled in this place, forming a prosperous society. The ancient Yue people were the first southern ethnic groups to trade with the Central Plains peoples, so there are many business-related ancient Yue words in the Chinese vocabulary, such as "buy si" in the ancient Yue language, which evolved into "shi shi" in Chinese; The ancient Vietnamese word "selling hai" evolved into the Chinese word "street jie,", and the Sichuan dialect retains the ancient Chinese pronunciation, and the Sichuan dialect pronounces the street as gai, which is very similar to the pronunciation of the ancient Vietnamese "selling hai", so in the ancient Vietnamese language and Chinese, the place where the "street market haishi" is bought and sold is a commercial place. The Chinese word "kaka" may be an evolution of the ancient Vietnamese word for "foot ga", which means to control pedestrian traffic, and pedestrians are porters. Of course, some Old Yue words are preserved in Old Chinese such as Sichuan dialect, but they are lost in modern Chinese, such as "shoe xie" in modern Chinese, and in Sichuan dialect and Old Yue (i.e., Zhuang), shoes are pronounced as hai, which is close to the pronunciation of "child".
Since the Warring States Period, the Yangtze River Basin has had frequent exchanges in the Central Plains located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, so the Chu, Hunan, Wu, Yue and other cultural monoliths have gradually been influenced by the Chinese culture of the Central Plains, and after entering the Han Dynasty, the Yangtze River Basin has basically integrated into the Han culture and become a part of the main body of Han culture. After the Han Dynasty, the people in the Yangtze River basin had the opportunity to identify with the Han Dynasty and Han culture, and they all called themselves Han people in public, but they still retained their original language and ethnic customs among the people.
The northward migration and development of the ancient Yue farming peoples was an important part of the formation of Chinese civilization. The migration route of the ancient Yue people is from the northwest of Guangxi and the southeast of Yunnan, to the north into the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the ancient Yue people first developed the agricultural areas of the whole territory of Guizhou such as the Nanpan River and the Beipan River Basin, and the ancient Yue people who settled here evolved into the Yelang people, that is, the current Buyi people; The ancient Yue people in Chongqing and the Jialing River basin area merged with the local ethnic groups to form the Ba and Di people, and the Ba and Di people are mainly composed of the ancient Yue people, so the cultural customs of the Ba and Di people are the same as those of the Yue people. Another group of ancient Yue people from the northwest of Guangxi and southeast of Yunnan along the east bank of the Jinsha River to the north to develop agricultural areas, they crossed the river in Yibin, Luzhou and other rivers into the southwest of Sichuan, and finally they entered the Chengdu Plain area to develop agricultural areas and settle, these ancient Yue people and the local ethnic fusion developed into the Shu people, the Shu people established the ancient Shu state. The Shu people, the Ba people, and the Di people are fraternal peoples, with common cultural customs, and they just belong to different interest groups.
After the demarcation of the ethnic sphere of influence in Sichuan, the Di people continued to enter the Qinling Mountains and Songpan Plateau in the north, then into the Qinchuan Basin and the Hexi Corridor in the north, and then into the Loess Plateau, the Mongolian Plateau, the Siberian steppe, the Arctic cold zone, and the Alaska region of North America in the north.
It was a long and developing process of ethnic migration, in which agriculture and animal husbandry became more specialized, and the two industries began to be completely separated. At this time, the Di people were the main agricultural and pastoral people, and some of the farming peoples who were proficient in animal husbandry gradually merged with the hunting peoples, and developed into the earliest nomadic people of mankind, the Qiang people, who were the earliest nomadic people recorded in Chinese history, and then differentiated from the Qiang people, such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Khitan, Turkic, Mongolian and other nomadic peoples who dominated the world. These nomadic peoples all retain the shamanism, the primitive religion of the ancient Yue people, as well as the management methods and systems of the tribal society. At the same time, nomadic and agrarian peoples have always maintained close economic and cultural exchanges. The economically and culturally prosperous agrarian society has always infused the nomads with strong spiritual and material strength, and in a long historical stage, the agrarian peoples and the nomads have maintained a very close interdependent relationship. In this era of ethnic communion, the agrarian people have realized the hue and cultivation of alpine and arid food crops, and barley, millet, wheat, and sorghum have been widely cultivated in these areas. In terms of nomadic herding, they invented large ox carts, tents, stoves and other nomadic equipment, and mastered the technology and practical operation of sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels and horses and other livestock domestication, grazing, winter and summer transition, so that animal husbandry has become a large-scale industry with complete technology and sustainable development.
As they became more and more estranged by blood and culture, the conflicts of interest between the two ethnic groups became more and more serious, culminating in the incompatibility and rivalry of the two major peoples, the agrarian and the nomadic, who fought to the death for land and natural resources.
In the era of the Great National Division, the farming ethnic groups in Qinchuan and Hetao gradually evolved into the Huaxia ethnic group, and the Huaxia ethnic group became the general representative and defender of the interests of the agricultural ethnic groups in the Yellow River Valley.
Since the rule of China's Qin, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties was based in the Yellow River Valley, Chinese culture has always been established as China's orthodox culture. However, Chinese culture has different manifestations in different historical stages, and in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chinese culture was presented in the form of Confucianism and other schools of thought; In the Han Dynasty, Chinese culture was presented in the form of Han culture, and now our understanding of Chinese culture basically comes from Han culture, the Han Dynasty's "Historical Records" classics, as well as the etiquette, rules and systems of the Han Dynasty. On the basis of Han culture, the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty enriched, perfected and developed the Chinese culture, which has the qualities of freedom, openness, tolerance, detachment and exquisiteness. The culture and customs of the Tang and Song dynasties still retain the culture and customs of China, and the culture of the Tang and Song dynasties has benefited the Chinese and the people of the world immensely. After the Tang and Song dynasties, the cultural elites of the mainstream society no longer knew the original appearance and value of Chinese culture, and they could only follow the historical classics and paint gourds, and Chinese culture lost its vitality and space for development.
In this long history of writing development, Chinese characters became the only Chinese characters, and modern Chinese characters became modern Chinese characters after undergoing the evolution of oracle bone script, seal, li, kai and other forms. The bone carvings and stone inscriptions found in the ancient Yue people's hometowns such as the Zuojiang River and the Hongshui River in Guangxi are very similar to the oracle bone inscriptions, and some of the characters are completely consistent in form. This shows that the ancient Yue and Huaxia people used to use the same writing system.
Since the ideograms of Chinese characters are not phonetic transcriptions, and the emperors and royal languages of all Chinese dynasties are the common languages of the country, the pronunciation of modern Chinese is no longer the original pronunciation of the Chinese language. Despite this, we can still find the remains of the ancient Yue language in Chinese characters, such as "Shuosuo" in ancient Chinese it means the north, and in the ancient Yue people it trembles and shiveres, at first the ancient Yue people certainly did not know how to call the north, because people have shivering and shivering when they encounter the cold, so it is natural and effective for the ancient Yue people to call the north "Shuosuo"; In Old Chinese, "Dan da."
It means the rising sun, which is da in the ancient Yue language
It is the meaning of red, that is, Dan, and one of the main characteristics of the rising sun is the brilliant red light, so it is used as "Dan da."
"It is very apt to indicate the rising sun; The ancient Yue people called themselves gu and wu, and in ancient Chinese, they called themselves "wu wu", while the ancient nomads called themselves "hu hu", "hu hu" and "wu wu" are very similar in pronunciation, and it is easy to confuse, and the people of southern China still cannot distinguish the pronunciation of these two words. In ancient Chinese, "涕ti" is commonly used to express tears, and in Cantonese (a typical representative of Tang and Song Dynasty Chinese), 涕 is pronounced as dei, and the name of tears and crying in the ancient Yue language is also dei, so it can be seen that 涕 is the reservation of the ancient Yue language in the ancient Yue language. The above discussion shows that in ancient times, the ancient Yue language, the ancient Chinese language, and the ancient Hu language (i.e., the Altaic language family) were intermingled.
At present, there are still a lot of place names related to the ancient Yue language in various parts of China, such as Luzhou, Sichuan, here is the confluence of the Jinsha River and the Tuojiang River, the confluence of the river, because the river channel is bent and circuitous, so the river surface here is wide and gentle, it is a good place to cross the river by boat and build a waterway transportation connection wharf, so these are the traffic arteries that connect the Sichuan region with the southwest region from ancient times to the present, and it is one of the main channels for the ancient Yue people to enter the Sichuan region during the great migration of human beings. In the ancient Yue language, Lulu is the meaning of a big boat, and the place name of Luzhou should be named by the ancient Chinese people, and there is a Naxi district in Luzhou, which is accepted in the ancient Vietnamese language
A is a paddy field for growing rice, Xi Xi means little husband or lover, and Naxi means "lover's field", perhaps in a matrilineal clan society at the time, it was a lover who was given this land to her by a queen, hence the name. In the Yangtze River basin, there are many place names related to Lu (Lu, Lu, Lu, Lu), the place here may be the ancient Yue pedestrian boat dock or dock, the southeast of the ancient mountain is the Lu country, the Lu character oracle bone inscription shows the fish on the round-bottomed long equipment, this is a specific image of the boat, so it can be inferred that the willingness of "Lu" is the boat, there are many lakes in the ancient Lu country, the water network is vertical and horizontal, and there must be many people living here at that time The ancient Yue people must have made a living by fishing. Nowadays, lulu is just the name of an oar, why is this so? Perhaps the ancients gradually gave up calling the boat "lu" in their labor, because when the ancients were not fishing, they would pull the boat to the shore to dry the bottom of the boat, repair the fishing boat, and then put the boat into the water when it was fishing, and glide down from a high place in the ancient Yue called chua
Or shua
At the opening ceremony, the most heard shout was "chua."
Or shua
Over time, people simply became ships for chua
, which is a verb that carries out the process of noun evolution. The Old Vietnamese language called the boat ti
G, a boat in modern Chinese is also called a boat
g, this Old Vietnamese word has been preserved in Chinese.
The human language and writing enumerated in this article do not contain a billion-hundred-thousandth of the cultural information of their actual connotation! Let us protect the human language and writing with a reverence for human history, so that they can continue to serve the progress of human civilization.