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如果你遇见有人被冤枉，被诬陷的，即使明知道他是好人，也万不可挺身而出，去给他解释或分辩，否则，你就会被人说是他的亲戚，或得了他的贿路……
If you encounter someone being wronged, even if you know they are a good person, you definitely shouldn't step forward and and defend them, otherwise, others will say he's your relative, or that you've received his bribe.

Wait, I studied 贿赂 not 贿路. I'm not sure if this is a typo (which I doubt; it's quoted over the Internet like this), or if it's written that way because the word has changed characters over time (ye olde hanzi), or for some other reason entirely.

Question: Why did 鲁迅 write 贿路 and not 贿赂?

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  • 贿路 was a printing room mistake.
    – Tang Ho ♦
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 11:06
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    Typo is plausible. 鲁迅 consistently used 贿赂 in other places, and I cannot find 贿路 used by others as an alternative spelling.
    – user2249675
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 14:59
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    贿路 appears here: marxists.org/chinese/reference-books/luxun/14/032.htm The bottom of the page says: 本篇最初发表于一九三三年十一月十五日《申报月刊》第二卷第十一号. So if someone can get a copy of this issue we would know if it's typo in the original publication or typo in 鲁迅全集.
    – user2249675
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 15:01
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    @NanningYouth Very creative thought, but remember this was written in 1933, there's no computer-based censorship like today. If you were to evade censorship you certainly wouldn't just change one character. I also can't see why 贿路 makes reading more interesting.
    – user2249675
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 2:08
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    Hi all, I finally found a copy of 申报月刊. See my updated answer.
    – user2249675
    Commented Dec 4, 2023 at 5:11

3 Answers 3

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The article in question was published in 1933 in 申报月刊, but I can't locate a copy of that magazin. However, I was able to get a copy of 《南腔北调集》 published by 鲁迅先生纪念委员会 in 1941 through my university library, which contains that article. This is the earliest version of the article I could find. In this version the word in question was 贿赂, not 贿路.

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New update 2023/12/04: I found a copy of 1933 申报月刊. The scanning is not very clear, but sufficient to see that the word in question is 贿赂, not 贿路.

enter image description here

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  • (For the reader's benefit, the 贿赂 is in traditional characters, so it's written 賄賂, and is the 3rd and 4th hanzi in the second image [reading top to bottom, right to left].)
    – Becky 李蓓 ♦
    Commented Nov 7, 2023 at 0:53
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Auctually, there are many similar examples in most of 鲁迅's works, like “烂熳” as “烂漫” in《藤野先生》. People usually call this 通假字. But there are also some people say that 鲁迅 just wrote the wrong character. Maybe it was the right character to use in his time, but the world is in progress and the usage of words is also constantly changing. Anyway, when reading 鲁迅's work you don't always have to know why he used some "uncommon" words.

If you are interested, you can google '鲁迅' '通假字' to learn more.

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    even in the same exact work, the other term is used multiple times. So typo seems by far most likely.
    – zagrycha
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 18:07
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Answer is simple,this just a other expression. This article are written in a period that modern Chinese just came out,so there's no standard for their writing,it's normal for some expression are different from now. Actually this phenomenon also shows at ancient Chinese,we usually call it 通假字(Frankly speaking,it's just wrongly written or mispronounced characters)

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  • 3
    But 贿赂 is a word already appeared in 左传. There is also no evidence that 路 can be 通假 of 赂.
    – user2249675
    Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 16:21

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