- Maya wrote:
我在想这语言变化的速度。
我们这些出来10多年的人现在是挺不适应“新的中国话”的，所以回国，他们一定看我们如同远古化石。 如果没有这internet，我们很快就要成遗老了。想当初来美国看那些老华侨写的文章，酸腐得很。我今天看华夏文摘上的那些“老华侨侃大山”怀旧的文章里使用的语言，我也挺难受。
一个时代有一个时代的语汇和说话方式。但是也奇怪，我们今天读张爱玲不觉得遥远拗口，但读其他四十年代人的作品，味道就不对， 别扭得很。 这是什么原因呢？
I'm not a fan of Zhang, but I think Maya made a good point. As I'm reading a book of Zhang's quotes last night I can see that. Why isn't Zhang's language outdated? I think it's because hers is oral but not local. Although BaiHuaWen is supposed to be the same as or close to oral language, most writers still write with a style that has a gap with spoken language. Those styles change faster than the general way we speak our language and therefore soon become outdated. On the other hand, a few writers like to use local oral laguange in their writings. As time passes, the population of a locality changes and therefore their oral langauge as well. Beijing residents in Wang Shuo's time no longer speaks the language spoken in Lao She's time. So, too much local oral language in writing also causes this problem. Only when a writer masters the core element of our oral languange but does not depend on local spoken language of the day, his/her language won't be outdated after half a century.
zxd
Great point, Lu Shun has the same comments on Lao She.
And the Buddhism sutra translation, even at 20 centuries ago,
the translators insist the oral and core of Chinese.
But some literature in contemporary style is fairly important
to keep the scenario, especially in Drama.