Written Chinese in the pre-modern Southern Chinese regions

[Mark Yong]

Having spent quite some time studying the benzi 本字 for words peculiar to Southern Chinese dialects, I am interested to find out how formal and informal writing in Southern Chinese states (e.g. Guangdong 廣東, Fujian 福建) during the pre-modern era (i.e. before the advent of the written vernacular baihuawen 白話文 and a spoken vernacular putonghua 普通話 in the early-20th century) was like.

Prior to 1919, there was no such written or spoken vernacular standard, and dialects (especially the Southern Chinese dialects) were mutually-unintelligible. From what I gather, the only real means of communicating across such mutually-unintelligible dialects would have been via writing.

Insofar as the grammar is concerned, I am guessing that it would have been primarily based on the Classical Chinese wenyanwen 文言文 model, with some mild intrusion of characteristics from the local dialect of the writers. I am curious to know how, and to what extent, such local effects were.

But more importantly, what my question specifically refers to is the vocabulary employed in the writing. Prior to the advent of baihuawen 白話文, I would imagine that words from the Northern dialects’ lexicon (e.g. 給 for ‘give’, 怎麼 for ‘how’, 這 for ‘this’, 那 for ‘that’), would not yet have appeared in Southern Chinese writing (particularly informal writing).

So, to give some really simple (if not entirely applicable) examples:

1. “Gun” or “rifle” in the Minnan 閩南 dialect is 銃 (pronounced “ch’ĕng” in Minnan). This character for “gun” is rarely used in Modern Standard Chinese, now supplanted by 槍 (which originally meant “spear” or “lance”, but is now used for “gun”). My question is, supposing a 19th century Amoy native were to write to a colleague in Guangzhou regarding guns:

• Would he have used the character 銃 for gun, or 槍?

• “Gun” in Guangzhou is 槍 “ch’eong”. If the Amoy writer had, in fact, used 銃 in his letter, would the Guangzhou reader, in all probability, have understood?

• And had the Guangzhou reader now written a reply to the Amoy native, this time using 槍 for “gun”, would the Amoy native had understood it?

2. “To follow” in the Minnan dialect is 綴 (pronounced “tĕ” in Amoy and “tŏi” in Zhangzhou). The usage of this word to mean “follow” is peculiar to the Minnan dialect. Would this word have been used by our hypothetical 19th century Minnan native writer, or would he have used something else (e.g. 跟, 隨, 從), such words being virtually non-existent (well, at least in the context of "to follow") in regular Minnan speech?

In general, for the Southern dialects that did not enjoy the priviliege of having a written standard like Mandarin and Cantonese prior to the 20th Century, what was the grammar, vocabulary and style employed – be it formal or informal?

[zhwj]

I can't answer your question with any specifics, but I will say that I find Google Books to be an increasingly useful resource for lots of my historical language questions. There are a number of interesting books on the development of written Cantonese; one in particular notes:

One interesting feature of both Zhao Ziyong's Cantonese Love Songs and Xiang Mizi's More Cantonese Love Songs is that both included a glossary of dialect terms for Chinese readers who could not read Cantonese. One reason [the] authors may have felt it necessary to include such glossaries was that they were attempting to standardize the written forms of spoken words. Another likely reason is that they assumed the works would attract at least some non-Cantonese-speaking readers who would need assistance understanding the Cantonese vocabulary.

The absence of a standard would seem to imply that letter-writers of the time couldn't necessarily rely on their own fellow speakers understanding special characters, much less anyone outside of their dialect group.

Also, while there wasn't any official national language standard, China does have a large tradition of vernacular literature that formed a kind of fluid, de facto standard dating back to Yuan dynasty drama, which even people whose native tongues were in a different dialect could read (assuming they could read at all). Take 海上花列传 (late 19th century), for example: the dialogue is in the Wu dialect, but the narration is in the same sort of 白话 as, say, 水浒传 (which is still readable with a little effort even today).

I had a similar question about gun, actually. No final answer, but it looks like 銃 would have been known to the Cantonese speaker.

[Hanyu'sWay]

枪 is actually a spear shaped weapon while 铳 is the kind of weapon that shoots.

I have to believe that 铳 would be used to represent guns while 枪 the spear shaped weapon was still in use.

[Mark Yong]

zhwj wrote:

The absence of a standard would seem to imply that letter-writers of the time couldn't necessarily rely on their own fellow speakers understanding special characters, much less anyone outside of their dialect group.

This is the point of interest. Characters that are "special" to, say, a Cantonese reader receiving a document written by someone from, say Fujian province, may actually be "normal" or even "standard" in the Fujian writer's lexicon. For instance, "to lift" is 舉 to the Cantonese reader. In the Fujian dialect, "to lift" is 揭 gnia, which does carry the meaning "to lift something" (說文: 高舉也).

The above example refers to characters. What about phrases? In Mandarin, "convenient" is 方便, but in Shanghainese it is 便當. In Cantonese, "to discuss" is 商量, but in Minnan it is 參詳. Actually, this situation is still prevalent today, as there is a slight difference between terminologies (particularly technical and commercial ones) used in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan- though it is probably not as severe.

For want of a better analogy, a British automotive mechanic writing to his American counterpart would refer to the "boot" of a car, while his American counterpart would call it the "trunk" of the car - both terminologies are, in fact, standard for their respective localities! Would our 19th century Cantonese reader have recognised that the word 揭 in a letter written by his Fujianese counterpart was analogous to 舉 in his own parlance - in the same way that a British reader today would know that when an American writes "trunk", he really means "boot"?

The above would imply that the average reader's vocabulary would need to include both words from his own native dialect, as well as words more commonly used in other dialects.

[Mark Yong]

To make this discussion more specific, let us consider a hypothetical case of a sentence in a letter written by a 19th century Hokkien native that says "We will not be returning home tonight". Would the writer have written, say:

1. 吾等今夜不歸居 (approaching Category #1 above, i.e. the Classical Chinese model) OR
   
2. 我們今晚不回家 (approaching Category #2 above, i.e. the pre-modern Mandarin model) OR
   
3. 我人今暝無轉厝 (read using Minnan Chiang Chew pronunciation as guâ-láng kim-mǽ bŏ tnûi ch'ŭ (approaching Category #3 above, i.e. the spoken vernacular model - in this case, Minnan)?
   

The reason for my using the Minnan dialect as an example is because it falls under the category of dialects that did not have a well-developed written vernacular, and as such, there were many words in which there were no known Chinese characters for them. "Most estimates of the Taiwanese morphemes that lack an appropriate sinographic written form are about 20-25% for typical running texts" (Cheng 1978: 307-308; Chiung 1999).

By this token, Sentence #3 itself is an ideal example of a sentence where all the morphemes have known Chinese characters. In general, the spoken sentence would include morphemes where the Chinese character does not exist, e.g. e (possessive particle, analogous to the Mandarin 的). Let us use a simple example phrase: "My things". In this case, would the substitute character used be:

1. Use 之 i.e. 吾之物 (approaching Category #1 above, i.e. the Classical Chinese model) OR
   
2. Use 的 i.e. 我的東西 (approaching Category #2 above, i.e. the pre-modern Mandarin model) OR
   
3. Use a substitute character borrowed for its sound (假借字), say 耶 i.e. 我耶物件 (read using Minnan Chiang Chew pronunciation as guâ e mi-giă (approaching Category #3 above, i.e. the spoken vernacular model - in this case, Minnan) OR
   
4. A hybrid of (1) and (3), i.e. 我之物件?
   

In all the above cases, bearing in mind that the Mandarin dialect was not in widespread use in the pre-modern Southern Chinese provinces (except perhaps amongst the government officials in the 衙門 yamen's), I find it highly unlikely that Category #2 would have been used as the writing model for our hypothetical 19th century average Hokkien writer.

Notes:

1. The above examples are gross simplifications, and most texts would be a lot more complicated than what I have quoted above. I am guessing that the writing style would have been a hybrid between Categories #1 and #3 - in what proportions, I do not know.
   
2. For now, let us exclude those documents that fall under the categories of official written government documents or formal literary writing (as it is clear that those would have employed almost-exclusively Classical Chinese grammar and vocabulary) and focus our attention on those documents that fall under the semi-formal to informal category, e.g. newspapers, letters, diary entries and non-government notices.
   
3. We will limit our discussion only to the Southern dialects (since the Northern dialects had the advantage of a fairly-developed written vernacular) and also exclude the use of Romanisation (peh-oe-ji).
   

[zhwj]

The "average writer" of the time would have learned to read following the classical model; in his spare time, he would have had access to the same printed material that educated people across the land were reading, including vernacular fiction. It's not unreasonable to expect that their writing would resemble what they read.

The Northern Min city of Jianyang, for example, was a major publishing center. In the early 17th Century, Yu Xiangdou (余象斗) published a wide array of titles, including many vernacular novels. He's particularly known for his edition of the 水浒传, for which he wrote a well-known commentary (in classical Chinese, of course).

Zhu Xi (who grew up in Fujian) is known for including Song-era vernacular in 朱子语类 (it's an enormous book and I've only read snippets, so I can't really speak from my own impressions). "圣人所说底话，光明正大" is a pretty well-known line; other stuff isn't quite so familiar: 学者读书，须要敛身正坐，缓视微吟，虚心涵泳，切己省一作“体”。察。 又云：“读一句书，须体察这一句，我将来甚处用得。”又云：“文字是底固当 看，不是底也当看；精底固当看，粗底也当看。”He's using a standard pre-May 4 Mandarin variation for 的 in these lines.

[Mark Yong]

zhwj wrote:

In the early 17th Century, Yu Xiangdou (余象斗) published a wide array of titles, including many vernacular novels.

By "vernacular", do you mean Mandarin (pre-modern, presumably), or his own native vernacular?

zhwj wrote:

He's using a standard pre-May 4 Mandarin variation for 的 in these lines.

Are you referring to his use of 固 in place of 的?

[zhwj]

Yes, Mandarin vernacular (sorry, I originally had a line in there about Xiong Dada that I clipped, removing the context for the following sentence).

Zhu Xi has 底 in place of the modern 的.