What Is Correct Chinese

To ERR IS HIJ; to correct is worse. For the trouble with men, to paraphrase Mencius a little, is that they like to correct others.l But the urge to be correct and to correct others is incorrigible. There has always been a quest for and the upholding of a norm in such a basic human institution as language. You are all familiar with (:onfucius' dictum about the importance of the rectification of names 2 and about Mencius' interest in the technique of teaching the more civilized language of the state of (:hyi to a speaker from the state of Chuu.3 For correctness in language is not correctness in language merely, but all that goes with language, and what aspect of life does not go with language ? Before taking up the main question of what is correct, let us first have a brief review of what was correct in the recent past. During the days when I went to school in China, back in the 1890's, there was no such thing as a standard national language. Nevertheless, every literate person had to write the correct characters, form the right sentences in the classical language, and pronounce in their reading according to the tradition which went back, at the latest, to the Swei and Tarng dynasties. It was easy enough to tell what were the correct forms of characters. There was even a standard handbook, Tzyhshyue Jeuyu (GFuide to Character Study), by Long Chiiruey,b published in 1872, which scholars scoffed at, because the standards of form were not always based on real etymology, and often quite arbitrary, but which the candidates at the civil service examinations could not afford to ignore without incurring the risk of disqualification. As for diction, grammar, and style, the only acceptible practice was to follow the practice of the ancient writers and nobody in those days I am talking about the pre-Hu Shih days would think of writing anything except in classical Chinese

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