“声入心通”：清末切音字运动和“国语统一”思潮的纠结

"Through the Ear into the Mind":The Alphabetic Writing Movement in the Late Qing Period and Its Entanglement with the Movement for "Unifying National Language"

19世纪90年代初开始,一些中国读书人认为汉字作为象形文字难以掌握,为开发民智而制作了多种切音字方案。切音字运动兴起之初,出现了一大批拼写南方方言的切音字方案。20世纪初,随着统一国语观念的流行,方音切音字被很多人认为破坏了"书同文"而受到激烈批评,但其支持者则强调方音切音字不但无阻反而有助于国语统一。另一方面,被诸多国语统一论者支持的官话音切音字也在一些地区遇到了类似的质疑,甚至直接影响到切音字本身的存在合理性。与此同时,汉字在历史上维持国家统一的作用也日益受到重视,"以文字统一语言"思路获得了越来越多的人的支持。不过,汉字拼音化在20世纪的大部分时间里都未终绝。

Beginning in the early 1890s,some Chinese intellectuals believed that Chinese characters,being hieroglyphs,were too difficult for the lower-classes to master,so they created a variety of alphabetic writing programs to enlighten ordinary people. In the early stage of the Alphabetic Writing Movement,there was a large number of alphabetic writing systems for spelling southern dialects. In the early 20th century,with the prevalence of the idea of a national language,alphabetic writing of dialects was intensely criticized by many people who thought it undermined the unification of Chinese writing. However,supporters emphasized that these writing systems contributed to national unity instead of obstructing it. In addition,alphabetic writing of Mandarin also faced similar questions in some areas,and these questions even had a direct affect on the perceived reasonableness of alphabetic writing as a whole. In the meantime,people paid more and more attention to the role of Chinese characters in maintaining national unity throughout history. Therefore,the idea of'unifying national languages through writing'gained the support of more and more Chinese people. Nevertheless,alphabetic writing of Chinese characters still existed throughout most of the 20th century.