Sounds and speech音辭

The men of the nine provinces do not speak alike, and since the people were first born it has always been so. The Chunqiu has a commentary that marks off the speech of Qi, and the Lisao was taken as the classic of the songs of Chu. Here we may see the clear beginning of the matter. Later Yang Xiong made the Fangyan, and the record of such speech was fully furnished. Yet all of these examined whether the names of things were the same or different; they did not make plain what was right and wrong in sound and reading. Only when Zheng Xuan annotated the six classics, when Gao You explained the Lülan and the Huainan, when Xu Shen made the Shuowen and Liu Xi made the Shiming, did men begin to prove sounds and characters by likeness and by borrowed graphs. But the old speech differs from the speech of today, and what in it was light or heavy, clear or muddy, cannot yet be known. Add to that the inner speech and the outer speech, the quick speech and the slow speech, and the read-as notes (讀若), and a man is left more doubtful still. Sun Shuyan first made the Erya yinyi; he was a man of the end of Han who alone knew how to spell a sound from two characters. By the time of Wei this practice was everywhere. The Duke of Gaogui did not understand such spellings and thought them strange. From that time on rhymes and sounds came out like spear points, each with the manner of its own soil, and each laughed at the others as wrong. It is like pointing at a horse and calling it a deer — there is no knowing who is right. So men take the capitals of emperors and kings, weigh the ways of the regions against them, examine the old and the new, and find the middle. Weigh it out, and there are only Jinling and Luoyang. In the south the water and the soil are mild and soft, so the sound there is clear and lifted, quick and pointed; its fault lies in being floating and shallow, and its words are often coarse. In the north the hills and rivers are deep and heavy, so the sound there is sunken and muddy and blunt; it has plainness and straightness, and its words keep much of the old speech. Yet among gentlemen of cap and gown the south is the better, and among the small folk of the lanes the north is the better. Change their clothes and talk with them, and in the south the gentleman and the commoner are told apart in a few words; listen to them through a wall, and in the north court and country are hard to tell apart the whole day long. But the south is dyed by Wu and Yue and the north is mixed with the tribes beyond, so both have deep faults, more than can be set out here. Of the errors that are slight: southerners make qian (錢) into xian (涎), shi (石) into she (射), jian (賤) into xian (羨), shi (是) into shi (舐); northerners make shu (庶) into shu (戍), ru (如) into ru (儒), zi (紫) into zi (姊), qia (洽) into xia (狎). In cases of this kind the errors on both sides are very many. Since coming to Ye I have seen only Cui Ziyue and his nephew Cui Zhan, and the brothers Li Zuren and Li Wei, take any trouble with words and set them a little straight. Li Jijie made the Yinyun jueyi, which has mistakes here and there, and Yang Xiuzhi made a Qieyun, which is very rough and careless. The children of my house, small though they are, are corrected by degrees from the first, and one word gone wrong I count as my own fault. As for what things are called, whatever I have not looked up in the records I do not dare to name at will, as you all know.

The speech of old and of today is not the same from age to age, and those who wrote were each different, a man of Chu or a man of Xia. The Cangjie xungu spells bai (稗) from bu (逋) and mai (賣), and wa (娃) from yu (於) and guai (乖). The Zhanguo ce reads wen (刎) as mian (免), and the Mu tianzi zhuan reads jian (諫) as jian (間). The Shuowen reads jia (戛) as ji (棘) and min (皿) as meng (猛). The Zilin spells kan (看) from kou (口) and gan (甘), and reads shen (伸) as xin (辛). The Yunji puts cheng (成), reng (仍), hong (宏) and deng (登) together as two rhymes, and divides wei (爲), qi (奇), yi (益) and shi (石) into four sections. Li Deng's Shenglei reads xi (系) as yi (羿), and Liu Changzong's Zhouguan yin reads cheng (乘) like cheng (承). Cases of this kind are very wide, and must be examined. The spellings of former ages are also often not close. Xu Xianmin's Maoshi yin spells zhou (驟) from zai (在) and gou (遘), and his Zuozhuan yin spells chuan (椽) from tu (徒) and yuan (緣). Those that cannot be leaned on and believed are many. The scholars of today do not speak correctly either. What sort of men were the ancients alone, that we must follow them where they are wrong and off the mark? The Tongsu wen says, "To go into a room and search is called sou (搜)," and spells it from xiong (兄) and hou (侯). If that is so, then xiong should be spelled from suo (所) and rong (榮). This sound runs in the northern custom now, but it too is among the old speech that cannot be used. Yufan (璵璠) is the precious jade of the men of Lu, and should be read yu fan (餘煩), yet in Jiangnan it is all read with the fan of fanping (藩屏), a screening wall. Qishan (岐山) should be read with qi (奇), yet in Jiangnan it is all called with the qi of shenqi (神祇), the spirits of earth. When Jiangling fell, this sound spread into Guanzhong. I do not know what either of them rests on. With my shallow learning I had not heard of it before.

The sound of northern men often makes ju (舉) and ju (莒) into ju (矩). Only Li Jijie said, "When Duke Huan of Qi planned with Guan Zhong upon the terrace to strike Ju (莒), Dongguo Ya saw from afar that the duke's mouth opened and did not close, and so he knew that what they spoke of was Ju. If that is so, then ju (莒) and ju (矩) certainly cannot be called alike." This is knowing sound.

Things themselves have the fine and the coarse, and the fine and the coarse are called hao e (好惡). The heart of man has what it casts off and what it takes, and casting off and taking are called hao wu (好惡). These two sounds are seen in Ge Hong and in Xu Miao. Yet the scholars of Hebei read in the Shangshu hao sheng e sha (好生惡殺). This puts the one to the discussion of things and the other to the feelings of men, and it does not hold together at all.

Fu (甫) is a fine name for a man, and old books often borrow it for the character fu (父). Northern men in the end have not one who calls it fu (甫); this too they have not grasped. Only in the styles of Guan Zhong and Fan Zeng, Zhongfu and Yafu, must it be read as the character stands.

I have looked into it. In the several character books yan (焉) is the name of a bird, and some call it a particle, and all read it spelled from yu (於) and qian (愆). From Ge Hong's Yaoyong ziyuan the sound and the sense of the character yan were divided. Where it means "how" or "where", it should be spelled from yu (於) and qian (愆), as in yu yan xiaoyao (於焉逍遙), yu yan jiake (於焉嘉客), yan yong ning (焉用佞), yan de ren (焉得仁). Where it closes a phrase, or is a particle, it should be spelled from yi (矣) and qian (愆), as in gu cheng long yan (故稱龍焉), gu cheng xue yan (故稱血焉), you min ren yan (有民人焉), you sheji yan (有社稷焉), tuo shi yan er (託始焉爾), Jin Zheng yan yi (晉鄭焉依). Jiangnan keeps this distinction to this day, and it is bright and easy to understand. Hebei mixes them into one sound, and though this follows the old reading, it cannot be used now.

Ye (邪) is a word for what is not yet settled. The Zuozhuan says, "Is it that Heaven has cast off Lu? Or is it that the lord of Lu has sinned against the ghosts and spirits?" The Zhuangzi says, "Is it Heaven? Is it Earth?" The Han shu says, "Is it right? Is it wrong?" Such are the cases. Yet northern men call it ye (也), and this too is a mistake. One who argued the point said, "The Xici says, 'Are Qian and Kun the gate of the Yi (邪)?' Is this also a word for what is not settled?" The answer was this. "How should it not be! Above he first sets up the question, and only below does he set out the virtues and settle it."

The scholars of Jiangnan, reading the Zuozhuan, pass it down from mouth to mouth and make a rule of their own: when an army is beaten of itself they say bai (敗), and when it breaks another's army they say bai (敗), spelled from bu (補) and bai (敗). In the several records and commentaries no spelling from bu and bai is to be seen. Xu Xianmin, reading the Zuozhuan, has this sound in one place only, and there he does not speak of any difference between being beaten and beating another. This is only boring a hole where there is none.

The ancients said, "The rich and fat are hard to set straight," because they are proud and extravagant and content with themselves and cannot master themselves and press on. I have seen the princes and the kin of the consorts, and their speech is often not correct. This too is only because within they are dyed by mean nurses and tutors, and without they have no good teachers and friends. In the time of Liang there was a marquis who once drank and joked before Emperor Yuan, and saying of himself that he was chidun (癡鈍), dull and slow, it came out as siduan (颸段). Emperor Yuan answered him, "Si (颸) is not the cool wind, and duan (段) is not Ganmu (幹木)." He called Yingzhou (郢州) Yongzhou (永州), and when Emperor Yuan sent up a note to tell Emperor Jianwen of it, Jianwen said, "On the day gengchen Wu entered, and so it became the Sili." Things of this kind came out whenever he opened his mouth. Emperor Yuan taught the reading companions of his sons with his own hand, and made this a warning.

In Hebei they spell the character gong (攻) from gu (古) and cong (琮), making it differ from the three characters gong (工), gong (公) and gong (功); this is very perverse. In recent times a man whose name was Xian (暹) called himself Xian (纖); a man whose name was Kun (琨) called himself Gun (袞); a man whose name was Guang (洸) called himself Wang (汪); a man whose name was the character 䋤 called himself Shuo (獡). Not only do their sounds and rhymes go astray, they also throw the name-avoiding of their sons and grandsons into confusion.