Ancient Novels and Dialects -- A Brief Introduction to the Culture of Ancient Novels Series

Author: Yan Jingchang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: Classical Chinese has strong (normative), and modern Chinese also has relatively strong (normative), but the (normative) of colloquial tales and novels since the Song and Yuan dynasties is relatively poor. For example, in Water Margin, "" (Laozi) refers to an old man or an old head, while in Journey to the West, "" refers to a father. In Water Margin and Journey to the West, "" refers to an aunt, while in The Story of the Scholars, "" sometimes refers to an aunt and sometimes to a young woman. Originally, there were three rooms. In The World of Woe, it refers to there still being three rooms, but in The Plum in the Golden Vase, it refers to there originally being three rooms. Why is there such a difference? Because various colloquial novels are works of dialect, even if they are from the same era, such as Journey to the West, The World of Woe, and The Plum in the Golden Vase, they will still have relatively obvious dialectal characteristics. If the dialect and era are both different, the differences will be even greater. Reading ancient colloquial novels is not only an appreciation of classical literature but also a good opportunity to learn the language. The author wrote this small book with the purpose of providing readers with some potentially useful knowledge from a linguistic perspective to help everyone read the novels.