The first is the direct vocalization method. Direct pronunciation prevailed in Han Dynasty. This is particularly prominent in Shuo Wen Jie Zi compiled by Xu Shen. In Shuowen Jiezi, the pronunciation of Chinese characters is often said to be "like a certain sound" or "a certain sound", which is the fact. For example, the word "material, talent and sound" in Shuowen means that the pronunciation of the word "material" should be read as "talent". Later scholars described this method as "conspiracy theory", which means the same thing. For example, in the classic interpretation written by Lu Deming in the Tang Dynasty, there is the word "pick up ten". Although the direct vocalization method is simple and easy to understand, it has great limitations. Sometimes there will be a case where a Chinese character has no homophone, such as the word "lost", and we can't find a homophone to note the homonym; Sometimes, although the word has a homonym, those homonym Chinese characters are more difficult to understand and read than phonetic Chinese characters, that is, we often say that it is against the learning principle to remember common words with uncommon words.
Another phonetic notation method is very similar to the direct pronunciation method, that is, words with the same tone and different tones are used for phonetic notation. For example, the word "Dao" is noted in Kangxi Dictionary. "Tao" is a flat and voiced word, and "Tao" is a voiceless word. It is not accurate to use "Dao" for phonetic notation. Only by changing the tone of "Dao" can we get the pronunciation of "Dao". Similarly, although this phonetic notation method is better than the direct reading method, it is not very convenient because it needs to change the tone before reading the pronunciation.
There is also a kind of phonetic notation, called anti-cut, also called anti-cut. For more than 1,600 years from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty, the anti-tangent method has been playing a very important role in Chinese phonetic notation.
There are different opinions about the origin of the anti-tangent method, and there are four main viewpoints: First, it originated from Sun Yan and Ren Wei in the Three Kingdoms period. This statement was first seen in Yan Zhitui's "Yan Jia Xun" in the Northern Qi Dynasty: "Sun (that is) created erya, which is a unique irony in the late Han Dynasty. As for Wei, this matter is very popular. " Second, filial piety originated in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Four truths about Tibet in Japanese history quoted the "anti-sound example" in Yunquan by Wu Xuan in Tang Dynasty, saying: "Only sincerity is anti-sound." Zhang and others advocated this view in Qing Dynasty. Third, from the western regions. In Song Dynasty, Chen's "Jie Zhi Zhai Problem" Volume III: "Anti-tangent learning prevailed from the Western Regions to China and Qi Liang." Fourth, China has existed since ancient times. This statement may come from "two tones". Shen Kuo wrote in Volume 15 of Meng Qian's Bi Tan and Literature II: "The study of rhyme originated in the Western Regions, and the Han people taught Chinese characters to read like a certain character without backcutting. But there are two words in the old saying, such as "no", "why not", "so", "just" and "almost" of "Zhu", which are similar to western regional sounds. It may also come from the creation of characters. The narrative in Liu Xizai's Shuo Wen Shuang Sheng in Qing Dynasty said: "Segmentation began in the Western Regions? "Not really. This thing started with Wei? Not exactly. But where did it start? Yue: Since the beginning of writing. Xu's Shuowen is attached to the words, which makes it miserable. In the six books of husband, it is difficult to know, and it seems to be harmonious. Duplication and disyllabic are in harmony. On "Jiang" and "He" by Xu. There is no such thing as overlapping rhyme and double sound in Shi, but it is true that "He" and "Ke" are overlapping rhyme and "He" and "Zuo" are double sounds. Later generations cut off the sound, the next word is rhyme, and the rhyme is taken; The last word is a vowel, with a double tone. How else to open it? "
The backcutting method is to spell a sound with two words. For example, the pronunciation of "Chang" is "the ruler is good", which means that "ruler" and "good" are spelled together, while the pronunciation of "Chang" was obtained in the Tang Dynasty, and the word "anti" was removed and called "so-and-so", such as "Chang, the ruler is good." It can be seen that backcutting is a pinyin method, but it is different from modern Chinese pinyin. Modern Chinese Pinyin is phonemic Pinyin, that is, each phoneme is represented by one or two letters. Therefore, in Chinese Pinyin, one letter, such as "Oh", two letters, such as "Four" and three or four letters can be used to mark the pronunciation of a Chinese character. Backcutting is based on the principle of phonology, which is actually a double spelling method, and always uses two words to pinyin.
In backcutting, the first word (the upper word) represents the initial consonant and the second word (the lower word) represents the vowel. Even if the tone is "zero initial", there must be a backcutting upper word. For example, "An" means "Wu Hanche". Similarly, even if a vowel has both a beginning and an end, only one word can be deleted. For example, "Xiang" means "Xu Liang cut".
It can be seen that backcutting is much better than the above two phonetic notation methods. But inevitably, the arc tangent method also has its limitations. First of all, since the inverted word represents the initial consonant, it should only represent the consonant, but in fact each Chinese character represents a complete syllable, and there is no Chinese character that simply represents the consonant. Since Chinese characters written backwards represent vowels, they should only represent vowels, but similarly, there are few Chinese characters starting with vowels, so it is often necessary to borrow Chinese characters with consonants as Chinese characters written backwards; Secondly, in phonology, there are also some unreasonable places in anti-tangent. For example, the upside-down word is not necessarily the same as the word it cuts (the so-called "Hu" is a concept in phonology. In modern Chinese, there are open mouth, straight teeth, closed mouth and closed mouth, while in the middle ages, there were only two kinds of open mouth and closed mouth. For example, "Wu, sorrow is cut", in which "Wu" is called by mouth and "sorrow" is called by mouth.
In the later dynasties, the anti-tangent has been continuously improved, among which Guang Yun and Jiyun are the most prominent. Although they are all rhyme books of the Song Dynasty, the difference is only a few decades, but the anti-tangency of Jiyun has been improved a lot. Lv Kun in Ming Dynasty wrote "Jiao Tai Yun", and Pan Lei in Qing Dynasty wrote "Lei Yin", which designed a new anti-tangent method.
But in any case, there will be limitations in phonetic notation with Chinese characters. Therefore, after the Ming Dynasty, phonetic notation with letters began to appear in China. It was invented by western missionaries who preached in China. Matteo Ricci first invented the phonetic scheme of 26 initials and 44 finals according to Latin, and then the Missionary Genig published The Eyes and Ears of Western Confucianism in Hangzhou. This is the earliest vocabulary to phonetic Chinese characters with phoneme letters. Because it was modified on the basis of Matteo Ricci's plan, it was called "Li and Jin Plan". Its appearance triggered the trend of using alphabetic pinyin in China hundreds of years later. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, syncopation appeared, and after improvement, it is the phonetic symbol (the one next to the phonetic symbol) that we often see on the last page of the dictionary now.