This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account:Netease Digital Reading (ID: DataBlog163), Author: Chen Sizhong, Designer: Zhao Peng Road
Is it "a world of mortals" or "a world of mortals" that won the princess’s smile?
Recently, the news that the pronunciation of some words is about to be revised has caused quite a stir on social networks. Although the relevant person in charge of the Institute of Language and Character Application of the Ministry of Education responded that the final version of the audition table is still being decided, the confusion caused by the audition standard is an indisputable fact.
Netizens have said that after studying hard for more than ten years, I finally remembered the standard pronunciation and had to learn it again. "I’m afraid I didn’t go to a fake school."
Origin of disagreement: it is difficult to read different words.
In fact, how to pronounce words is an eternal topic. Language is not only convenient for people to transmit information, but also constantly evolves or declines under the influence of external social changes.
There are seven dialect areas in China, and the dialects may be completely different across a mountain, so it is normal for the same word to have different pronunciations. In The Legend of Wulin, the phrase "Oh, my God" was heard all over the country, while the word "I" in southern Fujian was pronounced "wow" and the word "I" in Shanghai was said.
Compared with southern dialects, Putonghua, which is based on Beijing pronunciation, has a strong interoperability, but there are still many different readings.For example, in Beijing dialect, the quality of "quality" can be pronounced as "zhi" or "zhǐ", but the different pronunciations do not affect the meaning of "quality" in words.
"Modern Chinese Special Course" defines this kind of phenomenon as heteronym [1], which is different from polyphonic words in that polyphonic words distinguish meanings, while heteronymic words do not.
There is also a special phenomenon in the words with different pronunciations, which is called "literary and colloquial pronunciations".To put it simply, it is the same word, and the pronunciation written on paper is different from that used orally.Suppose that in class, the teacher asked Xiaoming to read the "exploitation" in the text, then "peeling" was pronounced "B not" at this time, but after class, Xiaoming called his partners to peel peanuts together and eat them, and "peeling" was pronounced "bāo".
Generally speaking, white reading pronunciation is derived from the words inherent in dialects, while literary reading pronunciation may be deeply influenced by ancient classical Chinese, terminology and mandarin.
It can be seen that the pronunciation regularity of different words is not strong, and the so-called standard pronunciation can only be mastered by rote learning.
There has been a study on the cognition of Chinese words with different pronunciations in Hebei province, and it is found that the accuracy of pronunciation is not standardized. People sometimes tend to read in the text, sometimes tend to read in the white, and sometimes mix the two. [2]
The lowest accuracy is the usage of "rainbow" in spoken language. According to the standard of the sound meter in 1985, if the rain clears up, people say "a rainbow appears in the sky". At this time, "rainbow" should be pronounced "jiàng", but in the survey, only 5.5% of the candidates pronounced it correctly.
Words with the same usage also affect people’s judgment in different word combinations. The vernacular pronunciation of "jué", which is also "chewing", has a correct rate of 93.5% when used in the word "chewing", but only 12.5% of the people in the classical Chinese "munching through the gate" have the correct pronunciation.
Changing pronunciation of Chinese characters
Due to the impact of social changes and regional culture on the development of pronunciation, in order to meet the public’s demand for language in life, China has been correcting pronunciation by revising dictionaries since ancient times.
For example, during the Song Dynasty, Song Zhenzong ordered the government to major in a book "Guang Yun" according to the rhymes of the previous dynasty, adding notes to the words and phrases, and increasing the number of rhymes [3]. From then on, people have a clear understanding of the differentiation of Chinese pronunciation driven by meaning.
In 1956, the State Council officially announced the promotion of Putonghua, and soon after, a "Putonghua Audition Committee" was established, consisting of 15 intellectuals at that time, including writers Lao She, Ou Yangyuqian and linguist Zhou Youguang.
This audition has been going on for six years, and three batches of Audition Tables published during this period were regarded as the standard by education, culture, film and other departments in the climax of popularizing Putonghua in the 1950s [4].
However, in the next 30 years, influenced by radio, opera and film and television, some of the established pronunciation and reading gradually lost its binding force. Therefore, in 1982, the government re-organized and re-established the Putonghua Phonetic Examination Committee. The members tried to proceed from reality and only examine and revise the words with different pronunciations in spoken Putonghua and the new pronunciations of some words.
In 2016, the Ministry of Education issued a revised draft for the audition form to solicit public opinions. Among them, more than half of the changes are to correct the pronunciation of specific words.
There are 16 amendments to change the polyphonic characters into unified pronunciation. For example, the "shell" of a body should be pronounced "qiào" originally, but the public’s understanding of this pronunciation is very low. Therefore, the revised draft suggests that the "shell" should be read as "ké" and only the "crust" and "golden cicada shell" should be treated specially and read "qiào".
The other 11 items have changed the pronunciation of some words in phrase collocation. For example, the 1985 edition of the phonological table stipulates that "tired" should be the third sound "lěi" in the process of being involved, implicated and implicated. However, the new revision suggests that the pronunciation in this case should be changed to the fourth sound "lèi", and the third sound should be used to express the meaning of accumulation.
Another example is the word "blood", which was pronounced as "xuè" in the past and "xiě" in the spoken language. But in fact, most people in life pronounce it "Xu". People’s daily usage is also noticed in the revised draft, and "xuè" and "xiě" are read as "xuě".
It is not difficult to find that the sound-checking table adopts enumeration method, which is suspected of "hanging one and leaking ten thousand"Cao Xianzhuo, former director of the National Institute of Linguistic Application, once pointed out in his paper that it is morphemes, not words, that should be examined in phonetic examination.
In the 2016 exposure draft, there were 12 changes that were purely aimed at supplementing the previous pronunciation. In the original draft, four words with different pronunciations were listed in the entry of "chù": animal power, livestock, livestock and young livestock. In the exposure draft, only one "animal" was added under this item, and no explanation was given, which made people confused.
The seesaw of "language purity" and "convention"
Different from the general rules and regulations, it is thankless to examine the pronunciation of different words. The problem it faces is that there is usually no right or wrong pronunciation in the language, which can be described as "public speaking makes sense, while old woman makes sense".
When the old news came out, many people expressed their dissatisfaction: "Bad money drives out good money!" "There is no culture and reason."
butThis is not the only case of "black and white inversion" in the history of language development.. Many pronunciations that we are used to now include many examples in which the standard of listening to sounds has been changed because of "a long story makes a long story".
I’m afraid people who are surnamed Ji now don’t remember themselves. Ji Zuo used to read "jǐ" when he was surnamed. Ji Xiaolan with Iron Teeth and Copper Teeth, which was all the rage in the Millennium, pronounced "Ji" as "Ji", which was actually a wrong pronunciation at that time.
In 2016, only 10.2% people chose the correct pronunciation in the survey organized by the National Language Committee. This may be because the public is driven by the psychology of seeking simplicity and seeking common ground, plus the misleading boost of the media. Therefore, in the draft for comments, the research group temporarily chose to read "Ji" as "Ji".
There are many similar situations. Have you ever thought that your backpack doesn’t always say "bēibāo"?
In fact, before the word "backpack" was pronounced as "bēibāo" in the 2005 edition of Modern Chinese Dictionary, all Chinese dictionaries in the dictionary publishing industry used the 1996 edition of "bē ibā o" as the standard pronunciation.
Scholars from Communication University of China once conducted a survey on some students and parents of Beijing dingfuzhuang No.2 Primary School in 2007 [6]. At that time, the phonetic notation of the word "backpack" was still "bèibāo" in the first grade Chinese textbooks of primary schools. The questionnaire shows that the first-year students are greatly influenced by textbooks, and 94.5% of them think that the pinyin they have learned in textbooks is "bèibāo", while 93.3% of the third-year students who have used the same textbook think that the pinyin taught by their teachers is "bê ibā o".
Even parents don’t approve of following the script.The survey shows that most parents read "backpack" as "bēibāo", and 45.5% people think that the phonetic notation of "bēibāo" in the textbook is acceptable, but they still say "bē ibā o" in actual use, and only 20% people choose to pronounce it according to the pronunciation in the textbook in their daily life.
This may be because living habits have changed the shaping of pronunciation by memory, and the role played by mass media can not be ignored.
In the same study, scholars used the audio language corpus of Communication University of China, and found that among the 20 pieces of information extracted, well-known media columns including News Network, legal report and Tell the Truth all read "backpack" as "bēibāo", and the "backpack" in the corpus is used as a noun, not as a verb-object structure phrase.
And let the audience often call the Taiwanese accent that they can’t stand, such as "La"（lè）rubbish（sè）""hold（yǒng）Hug ""me and（hàn）You are only influenced by historical factors, and your pronunciation characteristics are slightly different from those of Mandarin.
Taiwan Mandarin and Putonghua are born from the same root, and their pronunciation systems both inherited the Mandarin in the Republic of China [7]. However, Taiwan Province’s pronunciation mostly retains the false tone, which is greatly influenced by Minnan dialect. According to the statistics of China Renmin University and the Institute of Language and Character Application of the Ministry of Education [8], there are 1080 words in the Examination Table of One Word and Multi-Tone of Mandarin currently being implemented in Taiwan Province with different pronunciations from the Modern Chinese Dictionary of the Mainland in 2012.
In June 2016, the official solicited opinions from the society on the revised version of the audition form, but the new version of the audition form has not been officially released, and the pronunciation of words is taken out for discussion almost every year.
Pronunciation often follows the principle of "following the sound, following the custom and simplifying". However, from everyone’s attitude towards some corrected pronunciations, it can be seen that the "one size fits all" norm may cause more confusion, which requires the official to give a more detailed explanation of the results of the pronunciation review.
After all, speaking like a book, you have to be chewy.
References:
[1] Peking University Chinese Department of Chinese Teaching and Research Section. (2003). Modern Chinese Course.
[2] Du Danmei. (2007). Pronunciation Investigation of the Pronunciation Table of Different Pronunciation Words in Putonghua (Master’s Theory, Hebei University).
[3] Shi Jun. (2005). On the Different Reading of Guang Yun. (Master’s thesis, Suzhou University)
[4] Xu Shirong. (1995). Phonetic norms of Putonghua in the past 40 years. Language Construction, (6), 2-8.
[5] Cao Xianzhuo. (2002). Pronunciation of words with different pronunciations in Putonghua. China Language, (1), 82-96.
[6] Hou Min, & Wang Bin, & Wang Yiran,&Wen Caiju, & Zhou Xin. (2007). Investigation and reflection on the pronunciation of the word "backpack". Language and writing application, (2), 19-26.
[7] Guo Jiangshan. (2016). "Mandarin Promoters" in the Early Period of Taiwan’s Recovery. Research on Taiwan Strait Education, (3), 22-29.
[8] Yang Shujun,&Dai Hongliang. (2015). A Comparative Study of Pronunciation between the Two Sides of the Taiwan Straits —— Based on the Examination Table of One Word and Multi-tones in Mandarin and Modern Chinese Dictionary. Language and Character Application, (2), 58-67.
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