中國的「十億個聲音」？

David Moser on the Struggle to Create a Modern Chinese Language
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW May 30, 2016

時報看中國
「十億個聲音」：一場定義現代漢語的鬥爭
狄雨霏 2016年5月30日


BEIJING — At a chaotic conference in Beijing in 1913 led by the Chinese linguist and political anarchist Wu Zhihui, the teacups flew, as well as the words, as participants tried to work out: What was the Chinese language?


北京——1913年，中國語言學家、無政府主義者吳稚暉在北京組織召開了一場研討會。混亂的會場上不僅有言語交鋒，甚至還有茶杯亂飛。與會者試圖解答一個問題：漢語是什麼。


It was an urgent task. Two years before, the last imperial dynasty had fallen in a republican revolution led by Sun Yat-sen. Reformers like Mr. Wu knew that China had to become a modern nation if it was to survive. But China was home to hundreds of spoken languages and dialects and a “fantastically hard” writing system that only a few highly educated people and officials were familiar with, according to David Moser, the author of “A Billion Voices,” a new book recounting the creation of modern Chinese.



這是一項緊迫的任務。兩年前，中國最後一個王朝在孫中山領導的共和革命中瓦解。像吳稚暉這樣的改革派知道，要想存活下來，中國必須變成一個現代國家。但據最近出版了《十億個聲音》(A Billion Voices)的莫大偉(David Moser)介紹，中國當時有成百上千種口頭語言和方言，書寫體系「非常難」，只有一些受教育程度很高的人和官員才熟悉。《十億個聲音》一書詳細記述了現代漢語的確立過程。


Standard Chinese — referred to in China as “Putonghua,” or “common language” — is, Mr. Moser said in an interview, a “Frankensteinian” amalgamation of several northern dialects that was finally adopted as the national language by the government in 1955, six years after the Communist revolution. But in some ways, he said, little has changed since that 1913 conference.


莫大偉在接受採訪時表示，標準漢語——在中國叫「普通話」——是一種「弗蘭肯斯坦式」的混合語言，結合了幾種北方方言，最終在共產主義革命結束六年後的1955年被政府作為國家語言。但他說，自1913年那次會議以來，在一些方面，情況並沒有發生什麼改變。


“Yes, you have a language, but if you want mass literacy, this thing is a disaster,” said Mr. Moser, who is the academic director at CET, a Chinese language program in Beijing, has a Ph.D. in psycholinguistics and Chinese, and has lived in China for more than 30 years. “The written symbols are fantastically hard to master.”


「是，是有了一種語言，但如果想普及讀寫，它就是一場災難，」莫大偉說。他是北京一個名叫CET的漢語項目的負責人，擁有漢學博士學位，研究過心理語言學。已在華生活30多年的他說，「書寫符號很難掌握。」David Moser holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan, with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy.


To make it easier to learn thousands of characters that do not correspond to the sound of words and must be memorized, a Romanization system called Pinyin was introduced. But the reformers’ most ambitious plan — abolishing the characters altogether — was never carried out.


漢語系統中有成千上萬個漢字。它們與讀音並不對應，必須靠記憶。為了降低學習漢字的難度，中國引進了一個用羅馬字母拼寫的系統，叫拼音。但改革派最宏偉的計劃，即徹底廢除漢字，始終沒有付諸實行。


“You have to feel sorry for Chinese school kids,” said Mr. Moser, who likened learning Chinese to a “cognitive traffic jam.” “In the first years of their basic education, they must study and master two script systems, one foreign, the other familiar but devilishly hard to write and unreasonably time-consuming to memorize.”


「不得不為中國學校裡的孩子們感到難過，」把學漢語比作「認知堵車」的莫大偉說。「在接受基礎教育的頭幾年裡，他們必須學習和掌握兩套書寫體系，一個是外國的，另一個他們熟悉，但卻非常難寫並且需要花費過多的時間記住。」


In Mr. Moser’s book, the efforts to define a national language run parallel with the decades-long fighting among warlords; the Kuomintang, or Nationalists; and the eventually victorious Communists to control and redefine the Chinese nation. As he described it:


在莫大偉的書中，和定義國家語言的多項行動同時進行的，是持續了幾十年的軍閥混戰，國共相爭，以及最終獲勝的共產黨控制並重新定義中華民族的過程。正如他在書中所寫：


“The first part is a historical documentation of the struggle for a unified language of some kind. That’s why I structured is as a battle to win China, since the warlords and Nationalists were also fighting linguistic battles.


「第一部分記述了為制定一種統一的語言而鬥爭的那段歷史。這也是為什麼我把它當做一場為贏得中國而進行的戰鬥，因為軍閥和國民黨當時也在語言學領域展開了爭奪。


“The second part is after Mao Zedong came to power, how they came to enact this policy under a unified government. That’s an ongoing story, the end of which is not seen. There are still 300 to 400 million people who cannot speak or read Putonghua easily.


「第二部分介紹了毛澤東掌權之後，他們如何在統一政府的領導下實行這項政策。這是一個仍在進行的故事。現在仍有三四億人無法輕鬆說或讀普通話。


“And the third part is the messy linguistic explanations I have to throw in, because I can’t assume the reader knows anything about Chinese.”


「第三部分是我給出的一些語言方面的解釋，我必須這麼做，因為我不能假設讀者都了解漢語。」


A major question he addressed is why the creation of a national language in China was so much more difficult than in, say, European nations.


他提出的一個主要問題是，在中國確立一種國家語言的難度，為什麼比在其他地方，比如歐洲國家大這麼多。


“The literary tradition began very much as an elite activity that only scholars could take part in. Very quickly in Greece and Rome there was a democratizing effort and the Greeks tried to publish their work in an oral language. That never happened in China. China has always had this problem with getting its language from basically a written form, a dead written form, to a living speech.”


「文學傳統一開始基本上是一種精英活動，只有學者能參加。很快，希臘和羅馬出現了一場民主化運動，希臘人嘗試發表用口頭語言創作的作品。這一幕從未在中國出現。中國的語言基本上是一種書寫形式，一種已死的書寫形式，一直沒能把它變成一種活的口頭形式。」


China, much like the African continent, had an enormous array of languages and dialects. But the Chinese government mostly calls them dialects rather than languages, even if some are mutually unintelligible. Mr. Moser explained the political reasoning behind this:


中國很像非洲大陸，語言和方言規模龐大。但中國政府通常都把它們叫做方言，而不是語言，儘管它們有的無法相互交流。莫大偉解釋了這背後的政治依據：


“The Chinese situation is exactly the same as other places on earth — Africa, Europe, too. But Chinese wanted to unify the nation. It’s a matter of political realities. The Roman Empire broke up into different countries. Had China broken up, suppose Mao had not unified it, we would be looking at something like Europe — with a ‘Guangdonia’ and ‘Shandonia’ or ‘Sichuania’ [derived from Guangdong, Shandong and Sichuan Provinces] with their own language and dialects.


「中國的情況和其他地方，比如非洲、歐洲完全一樣。但中國人希望統一這個國家。這是一個政治現實問題。如果中國四分五裂，假設毛澤東沒有統一中國，我們可能會看到和歐洲類似的情形——『廣東尼亞』和『山東尼亞』或『四川尼亞』都有各自的語言和方言。


“The difference is that China considers this country a unified political and cultural entity, and therefore, ‘We’re going to call these things dialects.’ You can’t call them languages, because that would imply they are different regions.”


「不同的是，中國認為這個國家是一個統一的政治和文化實體，因此，『我們把這些叫方言』。不能叫語言，因為那意味着它們屬於不同的地區。」


Hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere are learning Chinese. But without a phonetic system to guide pronunciation, it is famously difficult.


中國和其他地方有數億人在學習漢語。但因為沒有一個指導發音的語音系統，漢語的難學是出了名的。


“For languages that use alphabets, reading, writing and speaking form a ‘virtuous circle,’ making up one composite skill. In Chinese, the circle is broken and none reinforce the other. In English, the spelling of the word ‘dragon’ conveys the sound of the word, and the sound of the word is enough for the learner to quickly remember how to write it. In Chinese, the traditional character for ‘dragon,’ 龍, sits silent and imposing on the page and can only be remembered through countless hours of repetitive practice.


「對於使用字母表的語言來說，讀、寫、說會形成一個『良性循環』，構成一種綜合技能。在漢語中，這個循環被打破，任何一項都不會強化另一項。在英語中，『dragon』這個單詞的拼寫能傳達出它的讀音，讀音足以讓學習者迅速記住這個詞怎麼寫。而在漢語中，『dragon』對應的繁體字『龍』寫在紙上，無聲而威嚴，只能通過長時間的重複練習記下來。


Although young learners in China have little choice, outside the country, among the Chinese diaspora communities, the pull of English is strong. Mr. Moser laid out some of the consequences:


儘管中國國內年幼的學生幾乎別無選擇，但在國外，在海外華人群體中，英語有着強大的吸引力。莫大偉列出了一些後果：


“Parents don’t like to hear this, but kids aren’t stupid and they vote with their time and interest and say, you know, I’m going to skip the difficult Chinese and go with the fun English stuff. As long as I can remember, parents have been tearing their hair out: ‘How can I get my kids to read Chinese books?’ The issue is the characters, and people don’t want to admit that, but it’s true. It’s a serious impediment.


「父母不喜歡聽到這些話，但孩子們不傻，他們會通過時間和興趣來投票，說，我要跳過難學的中文，學習英語這些好玩的東西。我記得，家長一直都非常苦惱：『我怎麼能讓孩子看中文書？』問題在於字，人們不想承認，但這是事實。這是一個很大的障礙。


“And it’s a serious impediment to Chinese soft power. Because if you want your books to win prizes, your films to be watched, you need people to be able to delve directly in. And with the characters there it lowers participation drastically.”


「它也嚴重妨礙了中國的軟實力。因為如果想讓自己的書獲獎、電影有人看，就需要讓人能夠直接探索。因為漢字的原因，受眾的參與程度被大幅降低。」


What is saving Chinese now, he said, is digitization:


他說，現在正在拯救漢語的，是數字化：


“We have the godsend of word-processing and the World Wide Web, a computer literacy system that I think saved the life of Chinese. Programmers got clever with inputting Chinese characters and nowadays they are functional. The future of Chinese is people just talking into their phones and the characters coming out automatically.”


「我們有了文字處理系統和萬維網這樣的好東西，我認為這個計算機讀寫系統救了漢語的命。程序員們在漢字輸入方面更聰明了，如今已經很實用。漢語的未來是人們只用對着手機講話，文字就會自動顯示出來。」



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狄雨霏(Didi Kirsten Tatlow)是《紐約時報》駐京記者