Last Updated: 2024-07-11 by Marvin
長期操持某種語言的人，一旦發現字典所載的規範音讀與自己所熟知／習用的音不同時，會有什麼反應？在中文的環境裡，經常查字典的人，可能早就習慣了這種情境，即便大感意外，仍能淡然處之。在多方查證確認之後，會開始尋思：過去的錯誤認知究竟是如何形成的？這個字的音、義對應關係究竟該如何理解？而不常查字典、對語文探究不深的人，可能就感到極大的震驚，難以接受擺在眼前的現實，然後開始找各種理由去否定字典內容的合理性。
當然，字典也可能出錯。如果你研究夠深的話，也許能寫一篇論文，用充分的理據指出字典的謬誤，或是找出其自相矛盾之處。不過大多數「死老百姓」的訴求，往往停留在主觀的情緒、感受層面，企圖利用「從眾壓力」來逼迫規範向群眾低頭。這種近似情緒勒索的反應，在嘗試以文字來理性論述時，最終往往都可以歸結為 Prescriptive 和 Descriptive 兩種取向的掙扎。
Prescriptive（規範性的）如同老師那樣，告訴你什麼是對的、什麼是錯的，要求大家要正確地使用語文。Descriptive（描述性的）則無預設立場，看大家怎麼使用語文，就怎麼記錄。這兩種取向，有點像是政經領域的左派和右派，很難斷言誰是誰非。熟悉美國字典的人大概知道，在美國歷史悠久、家喻戶曉的韋氏辭典（Webster's Dictionary）以前最受人詬病的，就是太過於 descriptive 了。許多被視為不雅的、俚俗的、誤用的、不恰當的措詞，都被「無預設立場」地收錄進韋氏辭典，造成年輕的後學者玉石不分，誤將一些不當的措詞當作養料「承襲」了下來。於是後來才有美國傳統辭典（The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language）問世，嘗試以較為 prescriptive 的取向，為某些被視為不當的措詞加上註記，讓使用者得以知所取法。
forvo.com 是一個語言學習平台，涵蓋了世界上絕大多數的主要語種。免費註冊的用戶可提交特定語言的字、詞、短語，由熱心的母語人士錄製真人發音。每個語種會由幾位參與度較高的熱心用戶擔任編輯（Editor），對該語種進行必要的維護。而整個 forvo 平台還有個系統管理群組，對於整個（跨語種）系統進行管理、維護。各語言區塊的 Editors 可以登入 Forum 查看其中的帖子並留言互動，也可以發帖求助。
在 Mandarin Chinese 區塊，小牲也是編輯之一。2020年的某天，另一位編輯 Grace（北京人，年輕女生）在 Forum 中發問。主要是說她在準備錄「曲阜」一詞時，查了字典才赫然發現標準音讀是；而她從沒聽人這麼唸過，她在北京從小到大所聽到的「曲阜」都是唸成「取府」的。喵蜀黍很納悶哪！Grace 小朋友從來不看電視的嗎？央視那些優質的主播、記者播報到孔子故鄉的時候，可都是按規範音來的啊！我在 Youtube 上隨手都能找到兩三支 CCTV 的相關新聞短片了，你怎麼會從沒接觸過呢？
forvo 系統的管理群貌似位於德國，似乎都是以德語為母語的人。既然是國際性、跨語種的服務，Forum 裡自然是用英文來溝通咯！所以 Grace 就用英文發了一帖，題為【Are common mispronunciations allowed?】，文中也抱怨中文字典對讀音的取決，並不是尊重民眾慣用的音讀，不像（她所以為的）英文詞典那樣依從群族語言的現實來決定發音。喵蜀黍忍不住要吐個槽：我說 Grace 同學，你有想過英文和中文本質上的區別嗎？前者是拼音文字，後者不是啊！再說，你以為英語詞典編纂者真的那麼「民主」，都沒有人為排除掉一些民間存在，但他們不認可的發音嗎？你知道在探討英語發音的領域，有個術語叫 "Received Pronunciation" 嗎？詳細了解 Received Pronunciation 的內涵之後，你還會認為英語詞書對發音的採定要比中文詞典更「民主」嗎？
BTW, 在 forvo 上成為 Mandarin Chinese 區塊的 Editor 以來，有一項重大的收穫就是從 Grace 所錄的許多詞語中，確認了「女國音」的存在。對於國音學有興趣的朋友可以去查「老國音」的相關資料，其中有個很特別的問題——「女國音」。因為擔任 editor 之後，為了盡到基本的區塊維護之責，每次登入 Editor's Panel 總會檢查一下新近錄製的詞條。因為 Grace 是北京人，又是年輕女性的聲音，聽了她很多的字音之後，印證了以前所讀到的有關「北京女國音」的描述，十分有趣。
以下就是 2020年五、六月間，在 forvo 系統的 forum 上，Grace 所發的帖以及小牲的回應。為便於閱讀，僅加上 HTML code 使論壇中的文字能以適當的形式顯示於網頁中，至於文字內容則是原原本本的原文照貼，未加任何更動。
【Are common mispronunciations allowed?】
Hello,
I've recently encountered a request for the pronunciation of the word "曲阜". I was going to pronounce it as qu3fu3, but since I wasn't quite sure, I looked it up in the dictionary and it says qu1fu4. However, I've never heard people pronounce it this way and I believe that most people mispronounce the word as qu3fu3. I consulted the Internet and found a post on Zhihu that confirmed my belief.
https://www.zhihu.com/question/65678670
In this post, the author also mentioned other cases of mispronunciation in Chinese. For example, pronounce 下载 as xia4zai3.
My question is, if the mispronunciation is much more common than the pronunciation listed in the dictionary, would the mispronunciation be allowed in Forvo?
Honestly, I think it is the way they write the dictionary that was problematic. If you look at the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a renounced source of reference for American English, they explain clearly how they include the pronunciations for a word. They listen to all sorts of documents from historical events to the contemporary ones, and they include all pronunciations that exist for the word. I doubt that the Chinese dictionary was written this way, because for almost every word listed in there, there is only one correct pronunciation, which sometimes is ridiculously different from how people would actually say the word in real life.
Looking forward to hearing from my fellow editors.
Best,
Grace
Hello, I'm Marvin, a newbie editor of the Mandarin Chinese section. I'm not sure if I have fully understood how Forvo works and what Forvo's goal is. If I've got the wrong ideas, please feel free to correct me. The "曲阜" issue Grace raised interests me very much. Now I'll try to express some of my thoughts on this rather complicated matter in an organized way.
【1】A Nomenclatural Sort-out
① "Standard Mandarin" is known as "Pǔtōnghuà (普通话)" or "Guóyǔ (國語)" among Chinese speaking communities. Although the standard pronunciation chosen for specific words are occasionally different between Putonghua and Guoyu, the 2 standards are basically identical in almost every aspect. This is legitimate given that academic discourses on the norm of both Putonghua and Guoyu have always traced their very fundamental grounds to the same source: the 1932-released《Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use (國音常用字彙) 》.
In the following discussion, I'll use "Putonghua" or "Standard Mandarin" to refer to the modern standard Mandarin Chinese language. Despite the different names, they should be regarded as the same thing. Further literal differentiation between these terms would go beyond the scope of the discussion here.
② "Mandarin Chinese" is commonly perceived by linguists as "Guānhuà (官话)," a group of dialects spoken mainly in, but not limited in, northern and southwestern China. "Standard Mandarin" can be seen as a substantially codified variety of Mandarin Chinese due to the historical fact that Mandarin Chinese, especially Northern Mandarin, has been the de facto lingua franca in China since the 14th century.
However, to those who aren't familiar with linguistics or Chinese languages, "Mandarin Chinese" may simply mean "Standard Mandarin."
③ "Běijīnghuà (北京话)," or, in other words, the Beijing dialect is one of the Mandarin Chinese varieties. As a prestige dialect, Beijinghua has considerable influence on Putonghua, especially in terms of phonology. It's noteworthy that Beijinghua is not equivalent to Putonghua, albeit Putonghua adopted a phonological system based on Beijinghua. (Please refer to 【5】.)
【2】What do Forvo's users want from the "Mandarin Chinese" section?
If I were someone from Italy, for instance, studying Chinese, I'd be most likely to expect the "standard" Mandarin Chinese (i.e. Putonghua) pronunciations from Forvo. If the pronunciations on Forvo's "Mandarin Chinese" section are not necessarily the standard Putonghua pronunciations, is there any means of identifying them? The users would definitely want to know which pronunciation is standard and which one is a folk pronunciation of some dialect community.
When I'm learning a Japanese expression on Forvo, I suppose the pronunciation must be in the standard Tokyo accent. If it's the Kansai (関西) dialect or Tōhoku (東北) dialect, you'd better let me know. I guess the same expectation may be found in most language learners around the globe.
【3】「曲阜」is pronounced "qūfù" in Standard Mandarin. "qǔfǔ" is probably the pronunciation in Beijinghua, instead of Putonghua.
Cf. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%98%9C%E6%88%90%E9%97%A8
阜成门（普通话：Fùchéngmén，北京话：Fǔchéngmén）位于.....
「阜」is pronounced "fù" (the 4th tone) in Modern Standard Mandarin, while its historical Middle Chinese (roughly from the 6th to 12th century AD) pronunciation was recorded as 上聲 (the 3rd tone) and this trait might have been kept in some dialects today.
Cf. https://www.zdic.net/hans/%E9%98%9C
also, https://www.zhihu.com/question/28460306/answer/74575237
「曲」has 2 pronunciations applied to different meanings in Standard Mandarin. When it denotes songs, music, or verses for singing, it is pronounced the 3rd tone "qǔ," as in 曲调, 乐曲, etc. When it means to bend or twist, or being curving, it's pronounced the 1st tone "qū," as in 曲折, 曲线, etc.
Pronouncing mistakes with heteronyms are never rarely heard among Chinese native speakers. 「曲」线 and 「曲」折离奇 are often mispronounced as "qǔ" in Taiwan; I guess the situation in Mainland China might be similar. In addition, for the people who don't know 曲阜 is Confucius's hometown, it may seem like some strange term from Archaic Chinese instead of a city in Shandong. Thus, it's no wonder for them to depend on guesswork and choose the most popular 3rd tone for the character "曲" before they turn to a dictionary or an encyclopedia for reference.
【4】Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
Being descriptive sounds tolerant and open-minded; it's great, isn't it? Who are pleasantly willing to accommodate themselves to a strict disciplinarian telling you this is correct and that's wrong?
I believe that before a decent dictionary has been compiled, linguists and lexicographers need to perform lots of studies descriptively. Despite the descriptive approach employed in linguistics, once a dictionary has been compiled, the outcome can only appear to be somewhat prescriptive. And it's almost inevitable because you don't seem to be able to tolerate everything without making selection and choices.
When I look up the word "bait" in English dictionaries, the pronunciation info shows /beɪt/ or an equivalent written in other phonetic symbols: Webster's, Oxford, Longman, Collins and Wisdom are all basically the same. Why don't they show me /bæɪʔ/, where the symbol "ʔ" represents a glottal stop instead of a "t" sound. All those renowned dictionaries are so prescriptive that even the well-known cockney accent got rejected!
Then, I check up the English word "three" and none of those dictionaries shows /friː/. Once again, the lovely cockney pronunciation is absent!
As I started to delve into the norms of Standard Mandarin nearly 20 years ago, I felt that Chinese dictionaries seemed more prescriptive than English dictionaries. But second thoughts developed soon after a further understanding of the nature of the Chinese languages, how the standard pronunciation of a word was decided, and the historical background of China in the early 20th century.
To take a glimpse into the nature of different languages and how the standard Mandarin pronunciation was chosen for a word, Yuan Ren Chao's 《The Language Problems》(赵元任《语言问题》, 商务印书馆) makes really inspiring reading, full of insights and examples in different languages and dialects. In the 8th chapter (titled "何为正音") of the book, Zhao's lecture mentioned quite a few examples to illustrate how the scholars had to choose between the pronunciations from historical records and the contemporary ones during the compiling sessions of the 1919-published 《國音字典》(Dictionary of National Pronunciation).
【5】Beijinghua (北京话) and Putonghua (普通话) are not the same thing!
It might be a bit confusing. Putonghua (i.e. Standard Mandarin) takes a phonological system from the phonology of Beijinghua. However, the pronunciations of words chosen for Putonghua do not necessarily reproduce all of those of the Beijing dialect. Therefore, Beijinghua is not 100% identical to Putonghua.
"Even if you are from Beijing, you'll have to learn Putonghua!" Such an appeal has kept appearing in the articles relating to Putonghua promotion (推普). I used to read them on the site "www.china-language.gov.cn" around 2003. And I remember some reputable linguists like Xu Shirong (徐世荣) and Song Xinqiao (宋欣桥) have all delivered statements like that.
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Here's an excerpt from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#cite_note-6
普通话是以北京语音为标准音的。那么北京人为什么还要学习普通话语音呢？这是因为北京话也是一种汉语方言。普通话采取北京语音系统作为标准音，并不是不加分析、不加选择地采用，而是要排除北京话的特殊土语成分。
(Translation) Putonghua takes the Beijing pronunciation as the standard pronunciation. Then why would Beijingers need to learn Putonghua's pronunciation? Because Beijing Chinese is a Chinese dialect. Putonghua does not absorb the Beijing pronunciation indiscriminately, but has to exclude special dialectal constituents.
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A more specific discourse: 徐世荣教授〈普通话语音和北京土音的界限〉
http://www.cltt.org/xuexiziyuan/2010053160.html