古籍中的“羌”“差”之乱

The Confusion of Using Qiang(羌) and Cha(差) in Ancient Books

古发语词"羌"出自楚语,主要出现于句首,用以加强语气,对后面分句有强调作用,义近"实乃"。隋唐以后"羌"的使用减少,逐渐淡出历史舞台,故后人对其句法语义功能不甚了了,且因其手写体与程度副词"差"相似,句法位置相当,故在后代的刻本文献中常被误认为"差",甚至被径改为叹词"嗟",或者被替换为"尤"、"固"、"若"等副词、连词,导致今人对古籍文意的理解产生偏差,故不可不辨。

The ancient modal particle qiang(羌)at the beginning of sentences comes from Chu(楚)dialect.It mainly uses at the beginning of sentences to strengthen the tone and emphasize the subordinate clause.Its meaning is close to shinai(实乃).After the Sui(隋)and Tang(唐)dynasties,the use of qiang(羌)had decreased and gradually faded out of the historical stage,so people don’t know much more about its syntactic and semantic functions.Because of the similarity between qiang(羌)and adverb of degree cha(差)in handwriting and having similar syntactic position,qiang(羌)is mistaken for cha(差)in the block-printed documents of later ages,and even directly written as interjection jie(嗟)or replaced by adverb or conjunction,such as you(尤)gu(固)ruo(若),which lead people in the modern to produce the deviation in the understanding of the meaning of ancient books.Therefore,we must distinguish between them.