"Notes on Yue Yanyu"

Author: Hou Youlan et al
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-04-01
Features: The Yue Yanyu (Folk Sayings of Yue), written by Fan Yin during the Qing Dynasty, is a work that records the dialect of the Yue region (Shaoxing). The author spent several years, "lovingly collecting the local dialects and folk songs and children's rhymes of the old capital of Goujian," reforming his heart to gather the colloquial language of the Yue region. He "compiled them into three volumes—Language, Names of Things, and Sound and Meaning—divided into upper, middle, and lower parts." He sought ancient meanings, traced origins, examined original characters, and distinguished colloquial characters, "making what was spoken in the mouth fully expressed in writing, making the profound accessible to the modern, and the ignorant knowledgeable in ancient matters." After years of effort, he finally completed The Yue Yanyu in the fourth year of the Guangxu reign (1878), compiling it into a book. The book covers various aspects of Yue customs, ethics, weather, agriculture, and ways of life, with a strong emphasis on tracing the origins or historical context of Yue dialect words. It holds great value for studying the phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, and culture of the Yue dialect in the mid-to-late Qing Dynasty. The The Yue Yanyu currently available is from the collection of Gu Ying Shan Fang, published in the mid-summer of the second year of the Guangxu reign (1878). Due to being printed from carved woodblocks, it uses traditional vertical characters in complex script, without punctuation, with many variant or abbreviated characters (including missing strokes). Additionally, to faithfully record the unique dialect and pronunciation, Fan Yin created some unique Yue dialect words and characters, making it difficult for general readers to understand. To facilitate broader understanding and further research on this valuable resource rich in Yue dialect words and culture, and to expand the readership and research community for The Yue Yanyu, the book Annotated The Yue Yanyu primarily undertakes the following three tasks:
1. Punctuation: By breaking sentences and marking punctuation, to clarify the structure of the text.
2. Character Standardization: First, converting traditional characters to simplified characters, but retaining the traditional form if simplification leads to ambiguity or if the original text requires distinction in character meaning. Second, standardizing variant characters or those with missing or added strokes due to different woodblock printing practices into common standardized forms. In the original The Yue Yanyu, homophones are retained in the annotated edition to preserve the original text, with notes indicating their homophones.
3. Annotations: Following the original The Yue Yanyu format, the original entries are printed in 10-point (Kaiti), while annotations are in 5-point (Songti). When an entry has two different interpretations, it is indicated in parentheses, such as "（）," meaning both "" (corner of the door) and "" (corner of the wall). New annotations in the annotated edition are provided as footnotes.
The Yue Yanyu records the Shaoxing Yue dialect, which, as a dialect, has a long history and deep origins, rich in cultural significance. The Yue dialect originated from ancient Yue language, and its development process has been quite complex. Since The Yue Yanyu is a dialect of central Yue, many Yue people have studied it historically, but many valuable achievements have been lost.