Chao News Written by Tang Yihan.
záigì。"Goodbye)
Liu Heen, a 68-year-old villager from Shatangwan Village, Shipu Town, Xiangshan County, Ningbo City, packed up his fishing gear and said goodbye to his old friend in Shatangwan Hokkien. And when he opened the door, he changed to Xiangshan Shipu dialect (a strong local dialect) in order to communicate with his family.
In Shatangwan Village, there are only a dozen old people of his generation who can speak Shatangwan Hokkien like Liu Heen. This dialect was brought by the ancestors of Tong'an in Fujian Province three hundred years ago. Nowadays, the tourism industry in Shatangwan Village is thriving, but it is difficult to hear the authentic Shatangwan Hokkien dialect between people coming and going.
Will dialects eventually fade with the progress of the times?Recently, "Chinese Language Resources Collection - Zhejiang" was officially released, which is the seventh achievement published by the landmark achievement of the Chinese Chinese Language Resources Protection Project, "Chinese Chinese Language Resources Collection", which is a comprehensive display of the results of language protection surveys in Zhejiang in recent years, opening a window to understand Zhejiang's language and culture.
The Mandarin penetration rate reached 8072% of the time, the importance of dialects has once again sparked a discussion: with Mandarin, why do we still need dialects?Does the dialect require an investment in protection?What exactly are the tongues kept?
Chinese Chinese Language Resource Collection - Zhejiang" was released at the Ningbo International Convention and Exhibition Center (fifth from the right is Wang Hongzhong). Courtesy of Wang Hongzhong.
Dialects are the roots of the homeland.
At present, China has ten major Chinese dialects, including Mandarin, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Min, Cantonese, and Hakka, including 97 dialects and 101 dialects, but the influence and scope of use of dialects are not as good as before. Today, strong dialects, including Wu, Min and Cantonese, are facing an "existential crisis" to varying degrees.
For linguists who have been dealing with dialects for a long time, if they do not intervene, the death of dialects is inevitable and predictable. "It's our job to find authentic pronunciators and record dialects with text and images, but gradually we find that it is becoming more and more difficult to find suitable pronunciators, especially for endangered dialects. For Wang Hongzhong, a professor at the Institute of Chinese Dialects at Zhejiang Normal University, the rescue and protection of dialects is an urgent matter.
Bibliography of Dialect Protection Books in the Collection of the Chinese Dialect Research Institute **Courtesy of Zhou Luoxia.
However, many people believe that the decline of dialects has not caused problems in daily life. In the ancient town of Twenty Eight Du, Jiangshan City, Quzhou, where the endangered dialect "Twenty Eight Du Orthography" is used, vendors are greeting visitors in "colorful" Mandarin. During the conversation, the reporter learned that in order to facilitate communication with the outside world, Mandarin and Jiangshan dialect gradually replaced the local dialect, and the local children also gave up the local dialect to learn Xi wider range of languages, but most people were not aware of the loss of the local dialect.
So why do we need tongues?
For Liu Heen, who has lived in his hometown for a long time, dialect is a symbol to prove his origins;For Wang Hongzhong, who teaches in a foreign land, dialect is a nostalgia that cannot be parted with;For the vast number of wanderers who are studying everywhere, dialect is the tentacle that distinguishes their fellow villagers from the crowd...Dialect is the coordinate of local culture, precipitating life memories and condensing deep emotions.
During the interview, when talking about the local sound, there will always be a lot of stories related to the hometown. Zhou Luoxia, born in 99, is a native of Cixi, Ningbo, in her memory, the most interesting thing in her childhood was to play the game of "guess the miaozi" (guess the riddle) with her grandmother, for her, the dialect has temperature and weight, "The wonder of the dialect is that there are many words that can not be translated in Mandarin can only be understood, which has become the unique tacit understanding and memory of the people in our region, it is a pity that my younger brothers and sisters after me are not very good at speaking dialects." In order not to let the dialect be broken, and in order to maintain the bond between more people and her hometown, Zhou Luoxia chose to study dialectology.
Cherishing dialects, leaving local sounds, remembering nostalgia, and protecting the "ID card" of local voices is to "retain our roots", as Wang Hongzhong said, "No matter how far you go, people who speak the same dialect as you will always be the group of people who know you best." ”
Dialects are the soul of culture.
Dialect is not only a form of language, but also the key to deciphering different "cultural codes".
During the Spring Festival of one year, Wang Hongzhong returned to his hometown of Nantong, Jiangsu Province to visit relatives, and listened to him talk about his profession while chatting with his uncle Wang Nengqin, who was close to his old age. "My uncle was the sixteenth generation carpenter in the family, and at that time the funeral was still a traditional burial, and my uncle was responsible for burying the deceased. "Build a coffin, hammer nails, send them up the mountain, and bury them in the soil, there will be a mountain song that follows the deceased to the end of his life, which is a ballad passed down from generation to generation by Wang Nengqin's ancestors.
Wang Hongzhong clicked on the **, and the dialect came to the rhythm, "One step higher up the mountain, one step higher behind the next step..."The lyrics "up the mountain" and "down the mountain" are descriptions of the things themselves, and the pun "back" and "backgammon" are also comforts and blessings to the family of the deceased. If it weren't for this exchange, the final destination of this mountain song would have been brought to the ground. "Dialects express their meanings in specific regions and specific groups of people, and they have strong characteristics and appeal, and such emotions cannot be conveyed in Mandarin.
Dialects are also the key to interpretation of many literary works. Shanghai writer Jin Yucheng published **"Flowers", full of Shanghainese is the most interesting feature of this **. In addition, Han Bangqing's "The Legend of the Flowers on the Sea" and Zhang Ailing's "The Golden Lock" and other literary works also have many dialect elements. It's hard to imagine how these classic literary works would be interpreted if dialects were to decline and disappear.
In addition to regional dialects, there is also a form of linguistic expression called social dialects, which is a dialect system formed by members of the same regional society due to social differences such as occupation, class, age, gender, etc. Wang Hongzhong once searched for a secret language, "which is a kind of anti-cut language based on the local dialect, which is equivalent to a variation of the local dialect." "In Haimen, there were two old craftsmen who were hundreds of miles apart and did not know each other, and asked them to talk in secret language, and the result was fluent.
The more you understand it, the more you can feel the thickness of the dialect, the dialect is the soul of a regional opera, sketches, and customs, if the dialect disappears, the local characteristic culture can not be expressed, and can only go to stagnation and be buried in the fate, disappearing in the long river of history.
Protecting dialects is not only a task for the Chinese themselves, but the world also needs dialects as a cultural footnote. "About eight years ago, during the summer vacation, Japanese scholar Yuko Matsuke and others made a special trip to Jinhua with video equipment to investigate and record Taoist love dramas. Wang Hongzhong learned from these scholars that with the high degree of modernization of Japanese society, there are few traditional villages in their country, and the living folk culture no longer exists. When they parted, they hoped that Chinese dialect researchers would one day help them "translate" the Jinhua dialect used in their debut romance dramas, so as to shorten the distance between the world and China's local culture.
"Plant" the hometown sound back to your hometown.
Not long ago, the "Collection of Chinese Language Resources in Zhejiang", edited by Wang Hongzhong, Huang Xiaodong, Ye Han and Sun Yizhi, was officially released, which is one of the contents of the Chinese Chinese Language Resources Protection Project launched by the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission in 2015. It is understood that the project has completed a total of 1,712 points of language resources survey and collection tasks, covering all provinces including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 123 languages and their main dialects, which is the world's largest language resource protection project so far.
As a newcomer to language protection, Zhou Luoxia also joined the team of dialect protection and participated in the national social science major project presided over by Wang Wensheng, a professor of the Chinese Dialect Research Institute of Zhejiang Normal University: "Investigation and Research of Endangered Chinese Dialects in Zhejiang and Corpus Construction". The project is a supplement to the endangered dialects not covered by the "Chinese Chinese Language Resource Collection: Zhejiang", and it is also a more comprehensive coverage and protection of Zhejiang dialects.
The language protection team recorded the Hokkien language of Shatangwan in Shatangwan Village, Ningbo. Photo courtesy of Zhou Luoxia.
In fact, in the early stage of the promotion of Putonghua, the state proposed to realize the complementarity and common prosperity of Putonghua and dialects under the premise of promoting Putonghua. The official website of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China published "Promoting Putonghua and Protecting Dialects" as early as 2006, and the "Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening Language and Writing Work in the New Era" issued by the General Office in 2021 also mentioned the need to "scientifically protect dialects and minority languages".
Once the dialect disappears, it will be as difficult to know our own language again as it is to learn a foreign language. In this battle for the protection of dialects, the language protectors seem to pick up the seeds called "dialects" from all over the world and seal them, but in order to continue the vitality of dialects, more people need to consciously "plant" dialects back to their homeland.
Inheritance is the second half of dialect protection, and his writing requires more regional cultural self-confidence. Zhu Wenjuan, one of the pronunciators of "Chinese Chinese Language and Culture Collection: Jiangshan", is a local nanny trainer for confinement sisters, and unlike others, she requires the nannies she brings out to use the Jiangshan dialect when taking care of children.
I am very proud of myself to be a Jiangshan person and can speak authentic Jiangshan dialect, now many children are unwilling to learn dialects is actually related to their parents' education, parents' concept of hometown does not recognize will be subtly passed on to children, and Xi dialects from primary school is also to help children open a window to understand their hometown independently. Zhu Wenjuan is convinced that a child with confidence in regional culture is the future of dialect inheritance. In the past 20 years, she has brought out nearly 1,000 confinement nannies, and her methods have been recognized by more and more parents.
With the attention of all walks of life, the inheritance of dialects has gradually been valued. Hangzhou Binhe Primary School opened "Little Girl Speaks Hangzhou Dialect", Wuhan University added an elective course on "Dialect and Chinese Culture", Taiyuan in Shanxi Province built a dialect museum, Huizhou in Guangdong Province recruited dialect research talents, and dialect newspaper stations were implemented in Guangdong, Hong Kong and ZhejiangThese bright and distinctive practices have added new scenery to the local area, and the dialect has also regained its own light under the care and recognition of more and more people.
There is an interesting concept in dialectology called "dialect island", which refers to a larger area within a dialect area where there is a smaller dialect that speaks a completely different dialect. When the "island" becomes an image, each dialect can be regarded as an island with different expressions, and the common cultural genes and emotional identity make the people on the "island" closely connected, and guarding these "islands" is to protect the spiritual homeland and the imprint of the times.
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