[转载]陕西话之乐

The Joys of Shaanxi Hua

陕西话之乐

                                      （英）罗宾·吉尔班克

                                      胡宗锋  译

      For some time now friends have been referring to me as a zhai nan and mocking my reluctance to venture outside Shaanxi province for the warmer climes of the south in winter or to the metropolises of the Special Economic Zones for work. “Yes, one could earn twice or even triple the salary teaching in Shenzhen, but what of the rest of life?” I typically retort. “It’s barely three decades old – the same as me. Scrape away the layers of concrete and what will anyone find beneath the ground except for seams of fish bones and broken chopsticks?” The truth is perhaps that as a British man I derive a certain comfort from surroundings which although subject to change and the impress of progress are undergirded by a solid taproot of history.

这一段时间，朋友们都说我是“宅男”，笑话我冬天不愿离开陕西到暖和的南方，也不愿去特区城市工作。“是啊，到深圳教书，薪水是我现在的两倍，甚至是三倍，但还能有什么呢？”通常我会说，“那个城市和我一样大，只有三十岁。揭去地上的水泥，除了能找到一些鱼骨和筷子以外还能有什么呢？”事实也许在于作为一个英国人，身处日新月异但却具有浓郁历史痕迹的环境让我觉得舒适。

Over the next few months I shall present a series of articles dealing with Xi’an and the surrounding area. Some will concentrate on the intangible cultural heritage of the region, whilst others will highlight places or topics which have hitherto been neglected by existing publications and the mainstream media. These should not be seen as a foreigner’s account of life in China. Such a thing would be trite and unoriginal. Instead, they are a few occasional jottings set down out of curiosity.

我的文章都围绕着西安及其附近的地方说事，既说一个地方无形的文化遗产，也讲眼下主流媒体忽视的话题。要是被认为是一个老外描述的中国人生活，那就有点“跟背集”（陕西话喻过时了），无新意。我写这些只是好奇而已。

In this article, I should like to take a look at the dialect of the Guanzhong Plain. This may seem like an odd starting point since year on year so many international students and language learners flock to the universities of Xi’an City to help advance their Putonghua. Most people in this situation have, in my experience, acquired excellent proficiency in Standard Chinese, yet remained utterly inattentive to the local tongue. A prime example of this was a Canadian former colleague and a good friend of mine who lived in Xi’an for two years and would routinely tell foreigners who visited him how the Chinese were “quite the politest people on the planet”. I often had to snigger as whenever we would shop or walk in the park together someone – often women, indeed - could always be heard shouting bad words like guapi and ci ma er leng.

这里，我要说一说关中方言，得是开头有点怪，因为这些年来，很多外国留学生和学语言的人都蜂拥到西安的大学来学普通话，大多数人和我一样，普通话可以，对当地的方言一句也不懂。我的一个朋友和一个加拿大同事在西安呆了两年，总是对来看他们的外国人说中国是“世界上最彬彬有礼的”人。我总会一笑了之，因为每次我出门买东西或是去公园散步，经常会听到有人（经常还是女人）口出诸如“瓜毘”和“瓷麻二楞”等粗言。

As the past five years have rolled on, I have become increasingly convinced that it is hard to understand local culture – from the vulgar to the ancient – without any knowledge of Shaanxi dialect. I guess this is a common feature of civilizations across the world. It is just that some local languages prove more tendentious and information-laden than others.

在这里呆了五年后，我越来越觉得要是不懂陕西话，就很难理解这个地方从古到今的文化。我估计这是全世界所有文明的共同特色，只不过是有些方言比另外一些信息量大，用的人多罢了。

Growing up in the rural north of England, the language of my education was Standard English, but the older members of my family spoke the local East Yorkshire dialect. This tongue is heavily influenced by the Old Norse of the Vikings with many terms similar to modern Danish too. Our village is one of several that faces out into the North Sea and are famed for their relative isolation. The Victorian writer R.D. Blackmore, best known for writing Lorna Doone set one of his novels, Mary Anerley (1880) nearby, and referred to the place as “Little Denmark”. Meanwhile, the bestselling twentieth-century novelist J.B. Priestley claimed that as he toured our county he formed the impression that it lay halfway between the north of England and Denmark.

我在英国北部的农村长大，上学学的是标准英语，但我家里的老年人都说的是东约克郡的方言。这种方言深受维京时代老一辈挪威人的影响，许多话同现代的丹麦语一样。我们村子面朝北海，相对来说很闭塞。英国维多利亚时代的作家布莱克莫尔的R.D. Blackmore一本小说就是以这里为背景，他把这里称为是“小丹麦”。而英国现代作家普利斯特里J.B. Priestley则说，他到此地的感觉是这儿被夹在英国北部和丹麦之间。

It was only after moving away to attend university that I ever took an interest in my own linguistic heritage, an attitude probably sharpened by the fact that my university is situated in Wales and that half of the townspeople spoke the initially inscrutable Welsh minority language in everyday life. Becoming an outsider once again – and more so than before – raises these same old concerns. Now more than ever I am entranced by dialect as a living, breathing medium which is at once a tool for social communication, but which also supplies a kind of umbilical link to who we are and from whence we come.

     直到离开家乡上了大学之后，我才对老家的语言遗产有了兴趣，这也许是因为我的大学在威尔士，而这里的人有一半日常生活中讲的是难懂的威尔士方言。我又一次成了局外人，比以前感受更深，这唤起了我对方言的兴趣。方言是人们生活中必不可少的媒介，不仅是社会交往的工具，也像人身上的脐带一样显示我们的出身。

       Shaanxidialect is certainly ripe with reminders of ages past and nostalgic feeling. Two people originating from the same place who meet up and reminisce about old times may call themselves xiăng dàng. This means “fellow villagers” or “fellow townspeople”. One’s wife can be affectionately referred to as wu li tou di. The second character li implies that her habitual domain is inside the home. It is a little like saying “her indoors” in British slang.

    陕西的方言历史悠久，让人感触。两个出生在同一个地方的见面会互称“乡党”，意思是说他们是同一个村或同一个镇的人。他们很亲切的称自己的妻子为“屋里头的”，“里”就是说她的活动范围在家里面。这有点像英国俚语中的“家内”“her indoors”。

Approval and disapproval are expressed with relish. The special character liao denotes that something is very good. Aesthetically, the letter forms a very beautiful mixture of straight lines and curving strokes. Looking at it on the printed page, I wonder  Chinese children who see it for the first time experience the same frisson of excitement that the infant David Copperfield had when he was introduced to the fat black forms of the Roman alphabet in his mother’s primer. The origins of liao are ancient indeed as it features in the writings of the Western Han Dynasty scholar Yang Xiong (53 BC-18 BC). In Moonrise, Ballad of Cheng in the Book of Songs, there is the saying “How lovely is that beautiful lady”, using the word “liao”. Things deemed to be excellent are known as liao za lie. That is a particularly apt compliment to be passed onto the staff of a restaurant after a delicious meal or to a stallholder who has given one a favourable deal. Wú sù applies to that which causes annoyance or is undesirable. Falling in between these is bā lie - “just so-so”.

陕西方言中表示赞赏的话很有味，那就是“嫽”，意思是特别好。从美学上看，这个字是由漂亮的横竖和撇捺构成的。看着书本上的这个字，我不仅想，中国的孩子第一次见到这个字时，肯定会和英国作家狄根斯的小说《大卫·科波菲尔》中的大卫第一次在母亲介绍的识字本上见到圆嘟嘟的罗马字母一样激动。“嫽”这个字的确有年头，西汉学者杨雄说“嫽”就是好的意思，而《诗经·陈风·月出》中就有“佼人嫽兮”，即美人多漂亮啊！如果说很好，就会说“嫽扎咧”。特别是在饭馆吃的好或是路边的摊子生意不错时就会说这话。要是不舒心就说“粅素”，介乎于二者之间就说“罢了”。

  哈哈，新浪真好玩，后面的文字说是“有非法字符”不能发表，这样就只能发一张报纸的图片文章的开篇了。