Zheng Zhang Fong, with silver hair, laughed at the author's report. He said that some foreign scholars mistakenly thought that he was a married lady and used her and her to quote his paper. Later, they learned that he advocated equality between parents and changed his double surname.
1In August, 933, Zheng Zhangshangfang was born at No.5 East Lane, Beitou Bridge, Siqian Street, Yongzhong Street, Longwan, formerly known as Zheng Xiangfang. When he was studying in middle school, he met five people with the same name. When he was a freshman, he found that there were people in junior high school. Some people forget to divide high school and junior high school when writing letters. They often open each other's letters. So he changed his name to Zheng Zhangxiangfang according to his parents' surnames. At that time, he had a pen name "Fang Shang" and later became "Zheng Zhang Shang Fang" together.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Zheng Zhang Shangfang's father was the manager of Wenzhou Oujiang Cloth Factory. He was wanted by the Kuomintang authorities for taking part in the strike and was forced to leave his hometown alone. Therefore, Zheng Zhang Shangfang was fostered at his grandfather's house in Shipu Village, Yongzhong Street. At that time, his grandfather had a miscellaneous word book left over from the Qing Dynasty, which recorded the words used in Wenzhou dialect and was also divided into five categories: grains, animals and utensils. This is the first time that young Zheng Zhang Fang learned the written expression of Wenzhou dialect, and he became interested in dialects.
Zheng Zhang Fangshang's middle school is in Wenzhou No.2 Middle School. In junior high school (then called Yongjia County Middle School), the Chinese teacher encouraged students to collect proverbs and enrich their vocabulary, so he took the lead in organizing a proverb interest group. Many dialects in Wenzhou are difficult to record in Chinese characters. In addition to looking up the dictionary, he also tried to use Pinyin to record those that could not be recorded in Chinese characters, and took the first step to explore and overcome the problem of recording dialects. He was fascinated by how to pinyin dialects. Later, he found the Modern Wu Dialect written by Zhao Yuanren in Wenzhou Library, which recorded a whole set of methods of recording Wenzhou Dialect with international phonetic symbols, which made him really explore the scientific road of language research.
1952 after graduating from high school, Zheng Zhang Fang went to Beijing Institute of Geology to study geophysical exploration. I worked as a geophysicist in the Ministry of Geology, a teacher in Wuma Middle School in Wenzhou, a cataloger in the city library, and a worker in a fishery machinery factory for more than ten years during the Cultural Revolution. I have always been keen on teaching myself linguistics. From 1955 to 1964, 10 pinyin and dialect articles were published. 1978- 198 1 Participated in the compilation group of Chinese Dictionary of Wenzhou Normal University. 1980 was admitted to the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as an associate researcher, and left his hometown to specialize in linguistic research in Beijing.
The legendary story of making friends with language masters
Due to family reasons, Zheng Zhang Shangfang failed to enter the university as he wished, but with his love for linguistics, he kept himself in Wenzhou Library for a long time and insisted on self-study. Later, he claimed to have graduated from Wenzhou Library University many times. Of course, on the road of his self-study, he also got help from many people. Many famous linguists, such as Lv Shuxiang, Yuan Jiahua, Wang Li, Wang Fushi and Li Rong, all cared about him and answered questions for him.
1962, 27-year-old Zheng Zhangshangfang's newborn calf was not afraid of tigers. He wrote a 65438+ million-word "Wenzhou Dialect Writing Plan and Teaching Outline" and sent it to the Institute of Linguistics of China Academy of Sciences. Unexpectedly, Lv Shuxiang, director of the Institute of Linguistics of China Academy of Sciences and a famous linguist in China, personally approved his writing plan. Considering that he didn't have a regular job at that time, the Institute of Linguistics specially remitted a fee of 100 yuan, which was quite generous at that time. In addition, Mr. Lu sends him 10 yuan from his personal salary every month to help solve his living problems.
In this regard, Zheng Zhang Fong, who is over 70 years old, is still grateful in retrospect. He said emotionally that Mr. Lu was an internationally renowned expert at that time. He was not only a junior, but also had never met him. It was not until 1979 that he first met Mr. Lu when he went to Beijing to revise the manuscript.
There is also a legendary story about Zhang Zheng's understanding of Teacher Wang Li. At that time, Mr. Wang Li wrote the phonetic part of A Historical Draft of Chinese, and Zheng Zhang put forward some suggestions for revision. At that time, one was a great scholar and the other was a nobody (a private Wuma middle school teacher). Unexpectedly, the great scholar attached great importance to the advice of this unknown person and appreciated it very much, so the two sides established an unforgettable friendship.
At that time, he sent the idea of studying ancient phonology to Wang Li, a famous linguist, and Mr. Wang Fushi, an expert from the Institute of National Languages, for advice, and got a reply soon. Mr. Wang Li wrote back personally: "I think it is very rare for you to learn phonology without a teacher." You have a lot of good ideas. The Song Department should be changed to Ai. You're absolutely right. "Mr. Wang Fushi once wrote a long letter with a page of 19, and his affection came from the paper.
The representative work "Ancient Phonology" is the condensation of Zheng Zhang Fang's painstaking efforts for most of his life. Based on the ancient phonological exegesis of 198 1, this book has formed its own "ancient onomatopoeic word system", which has been recognized and used by linguists, and is called "Zheng Zhang system" in the industry, alongside the previous systems of Mr. Wang Li and Mr. Fang Guili.
Zheng Zhang Fang said that Mr. Wang Li had promised to preface him. Unfortunately, Mr. Wang Li had passed away when Ancient Phonology was published in 2003, and this book can be regarded as a memorial to him.
Ancient Mandarin prevailed in Henan dialect.
"Wenzhou is located in the edge of Zhejiang and Fujian culture. A considerable number of people have migrated from Fujian and other places in the past dynasties, so Minnan dialect is still popular in Cangnan, Pingyang, Dongtou and Taishun." When talking about the changes of Wenzhou dialect, Zheng Zhang Fang talked with Kan Kan in Wenzhou dialect.
Not long ago, an article about the study of ancient Putonghua in China caused extensive discussion among netizens on the Internet. Zheng Zhang Fang Shang believes that Henan dialect is the standard pronunciation in ancient China Mandarin, but today's Beijing dialect is actually the Northeast dialect 400 years ago.
According to the old pronunciation, "there is such bright light at the foot of my bed. Could it have been frosted?" The wall is full of light, holding the box on the ground. Zheng Zhang Fang said that China had a common national language in ancient times, that is, "Putonghua" at that time. For example, there are 3,000 Confucius disciples all over the country. Without a unified teaching language, many disciples can't understand it. Therefore, Confucius used elegance to communicate with his disciples in those days, which is like Mandarin now.
Zheng Zhang Fang said that the most elegant word in ancient times was Xia Yan. The ancient Huaxia nationality was the core of the Han nationality, with the capital of Xia Jian in Luoyang, and then the construction of Yin Dynasty was also around Luoyang. Therefore, the basis of standard pronunciation of refined and popular characters in past dynasties was in Luoyang, until the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Therefore, it can be said that Luoyang dialect is the standard pronunciation in ancient mandarin. From ancient times to the Middle Ages, it has been followed to modern Mandarin, which lasted for more than 4,000 years.
"Today's Mandarin not only retains some ancient sounds, but also retains some ancient sounds in the pronunciation of Southeast Asian languages." Zheng Zhang Fang said that many neighboring countries of ancient China studied Chinese characters, and North Korea, Viet Nam and Japan all used Chinese characters for education. Their pronunciation now generally maintains the pronunciation of the Tang Dynasty, and some words are from the Han Dynasty.
So, why are there still many different dialects in China today, especially the gap between the northern and southern dialects is so great? Zheng Zhang Shangfang said that China dialect has both a complicated side and a unified side, which can be spoken from Heilongjiang to Yunnan. The southeast region is more complicated, because there used to be ethnic minorities, Yue people and that people, and their learning of Chinese was not standard, so it is more complicated to form dialects.
Later, because of the war and other reasons, northerners frequently went south. Some came from the Han Dynasty, some from the Jin Dynasty and some from the Song Dynasty. In different times, the pronunciation of the north is also changing. When I stayed here, the people in this place left their pronunciation at that time. For example, Hangzhou dialect, which was moved from the capital of song dynasty (Kaifeng) when it moved south, was brought here and combined with the local dialect, which contained a large number of suffixes "er".
Zheng Zhang Fang Shang said that today's Mandarin is closest to the pronunciation of the Qing Dynasty. The basis of Beijing dialect should be the Mandarin of the Central Plains and Hebei. After the Manchu entered Beijing, the original residents were driven to the outer city, and the banners lived in the inner city. So today's Beijing dialect is a combination of northeast flag language and old Beijing dialect. The northeast flavor is very strong, and the tone of listening to Northeast dialect is closer to Beijing than Tianjin dialect. The status of Beijing dialect did not improve until the middle and late Qing Dynasty. During the Republic of China, the educational circles proposed to use Beijing dialect as the national standard pronunciation, but it was not approved by the Ministry of Education at that time, and it was not decided until after liberation 1955 National Conference on Character Reform and Academic Conference on Standardization of Modern Chinese.
Innovation is an important direction of self-study.
As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. However, it is a miracle that Zheng Zhang Fangshang finally became the authority of ancient phonology research in the field of linguistics in China through self-study.
1992 The Ancestors of Chinese, edited by Wang Shiyuan, a famous American linguist, is an authoritative work on the history of Chinese. In the book, scholars' papers representing the first-class level in the comparative study of international historical languages in the second half of the 20th century were selected, among which only three scholars from Chinese mainland were selected, all of whom were from Wenzhou. They are Zheng Zhang Fang Shang, Pan Wuyun and You Rujie.
In order to learn Wenzhou dialect, Zheng Zhangshangfang often listens to other people's quarrels on the streets of Wenzhou, and records the quarrels on the spot into cards. He said it was one of the ways to learn a language. Many things happen. By 1966, he had accumulated more than 30,000 slang dialect cards and collected 64 books and materials about Wenzhou dialect. Regrettably, half of the books were plagiarized during the Cultural Revolution, which caused irreparable losses.
In order to learn Wenzhou dialect, Zheng Zhangshangfang taught himself basic vocabulary materials of China minority languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Japanese and Tibetan, Miao and Zhuang. He said that although you can't completely say the sentences in these languages, you can understand that you need to compare their materials.
Looking at linguists at home and abroad, Zheng Zhang Fang's education can be said to be the lowest. Not only did he not go to graduate school, but he didn't even go to undergraduate school. Looking back on 30 years of hard self-study, he said that self-study is not enough by hard work, but also by enduring loneliness. In order to teach Wenzhou dialect by himself, he went to Wenzhou Library as a volunteer and contract worker for five years. It is with these solid foundations that he can be admitted to China Academy of Social Sciences, the highest research institution of social sciences in China, become a researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, and finally become a linguist who enjoys the lifelong allowance from the government.
"To learn, we must first set up an ambition. It doesn't matter whether young people can be admitted to colleges and universities better. As long as they pursue their own ambitions and work hard, they can also succeed by self-study. " Zheng Zhang Fang Shang believes that there are many ways to learn, and self-study has the advantages of self-study. Because self-study has no teacher's inheritance, you can go on according to your own ideas without the influence of teachers. Of course, it is very important to have the ability to innovate and be good at innovating on the basis of predecessors and putting forward new ideas. If there is no innovation, always following others will accomplish nothing, so innovation is an important direction for self-learners.
In fact, Wenzhou people have a very rare spirit of innovation. Wenzhou people rely on innovative spirit to run enterprises, and Wenzhou people also rely on innovative spirit to learn. From this perspective, there are similarities and differences between the two.
Zheng Zhang Fang can imagine the hardships on the road of self-study. And the wealth he left us in life is not only an academic achievement, but also a spiritual will, which deserves our study and admiration!