Even when they heard Li Yuanjia emphasize that it was a simple version, Chen Qian and Huang Licheng were still stunned, wondering if their king was joking with him.

Is a book like "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" something that you can do if you want to?

Even if Li Yuanjia said that it was a simple version, only a few hundred words, but when they heard Chen Qian and Huang Licheng's ears, the two of them were still incredible.

For such a reaction, Li Yuanjia had no surprise feeling.

Although he is the prince of the Tang Dynasty, he wants money and money, and he can be regarded as a person, but if he wants to compile a book like "Shuowen Jie Zi", it is like in the 21st century, a rich second-generation college student suddenly said that he wanted to compile a "Xinhua Dictionary".

However, Li Yuanjia is sure of one thing, the few people in front of him will definitely not dare to laugh.

So when his gaze swept around, and after Chen Qian and Huang Licheng's faces were straight, Li Yuanjia said lightly: "Don't worry, I don't plan to take out this font, it's just for use in the Han Wangfu." ”

finally survived until the expiration of the filial piety period, and Li Yuanjia didn't want to die.

It's just a matter of writing two books related to mathematics, one is simple, that is, the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which is really not uncommon these days; Second, although mathematics is also one of the six arts of a gentleman, it is still far from the "knowledge" of the eight classics, and not many people care.

But something similar to "Shuowen Jie Zi" is different.

Li Yuanjia also thought about it for a long time before finally making up his mind to compile a dictionary for his Han Wangfu. And in order to cover it up in a sense, he also deliberately changed his name to a font......

To put it bluntly, it's actually a simple version of a dictionary.

"Goo-dong!"

After listening to what he said just now, Chen Qian asked cautiously, "King, I don't know what you just said...... Fonts, how do we do it? ”

Glancing at him, Li Yuanjia chuckled and said, "It's very simple, you and Mr. Huang will find a hundred of the most commonly used books first...... Remember, it must be the most commonly used book by readers, the most read and memorized books! ”

Looking at each other, Chen Qian and Huang Licheng became even more confused.

However, the two of them didn't dare to directly refute Li Yuanjia's order, Chen Qian only hesitated for a moment and immediately nodded: "Yes, Wang, after the subordinates go back, they will start sorting it out immediately." ”

"Hmm."

Nodding, Li Yuanjia quickly turned his gaze to Li Zhong and Ma Liang, and then said, "After Mr. Chen and they have collected all the hundred books, they will hand them over to the two of you, and you will count the number of times every word appears in these hundred books...... Remember, I want precise numbers, and the number of times each word appears is calculated for me with Tianzhu numbers! ”

“……”

After hearing his words, not only Li Zhong and Ma Liang, but also Chen Qian and Huang Licheng were stunned at the same time.

Find a hundred books and count the number of times each word appears?

This, what is this operation?

"Hehe, don't you understand?"

Seeing that several people were at a loss, Li Yuanjia smiled slightly, waved his hand and said, "You don't need to know what it is for the time being, just do what I say!" Mr. Chen, find 100 books in 10 days; Li Zhong, I will give you a month to calculate the Tianzhu number I want, without delay! ”

"Yes, King!"

This time, no one dared to hesitate, and the four of them bowed down at the same time and answered loudly......

……

After the four of them left together, Li Yuanjia strolled into the courtyard and sat down on his exclusive recliner. Leaned back comfortably, closed his eyes and gently shook the reclining chair, Li Yuanjia secretly pondered: "A thousand, or two thousand?" ”

His purpose in making this font is nothing more than to find out the commonly used words of this era.

The purpose of finding commonly used characters is twofold, one is to provide literacy materials for Ma Liang's Han Wangfu "primary school", and the other is to provide Li Zhong's people with a "list" of movable type.

For Ma Liang's students, Li Yuanjia's requirements are really not high. He doesn't need those little guys to be familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics, and he doesn't need them to learn any great skills in governing the country and leveling the world, as long as they can read simple documents. To put it bluntly, they only need to know one or two thousand of the most commonly used Chinese characters, be able to write a simple report, and help in the management of the royal property in the future. If there is an outstanding performance, it would be better to become the "R&D director" under Li Yuanjia like Li Zhong and others.

As for Li Zhong's side, he also needs such a "font library" to determine which movable types to be produced and how many of each word should be made.

No way, who made Li Yuanjia poor?

Hundreds of years later, Gutenberg invented modern movable type printing and became one of the greatest figures in history. But in the West, there are alphabetic characters, for example, 26 letters in English, and Gutenberg only needs to make 26 kinds of movable type, and then hundreds or thousands of characters for each character are enough.

However, each character has a different appearance, and movable characters must be made separately.

According to the calculation of the Chinese characters in "Shuowen Jie Zi", there are almost 10,000, as long as he thinks of the cost and cost of making them all, Li Yuanjia wants to directly give up movable type printing and let the people of this era always use engraving printing.

You know, it's not as simple as making 10,000 movable words.

You can't just make a movable type of some of the most commonly used Chinese characters in your daily life, because there is no way to use them at all. To give the simplest example, for example, the "Lanting Collection Preface" of the eternal Liufang, just more than 300 words, if it is printed with movable type, it may be possible to get it on two sheets of paper, but in these more than 300 words, there are 20 "zhi", plus the one in the payment is 21!

This means that twenty-one "zhi" must be used when printing.

In addition, there are some characters, such as "Xi", such as "Zi", such as "for", like this most commonly used and most common Chinese character, it is impossible to say that hundreds or even thousands of each of them have to be made for backup.

But there are other Chinese characters that may not be used once in several years.

For this kind of character, it is enough to make one or two movable types...... Even Li Yuanjia thought about not building it at all! After all, the most labor-intensive way to make movable type is when you start to make a word mold, as long as you create a word mold, and then use the way of yin and yang inverted mold can be infinitely copied, which is relatively simple.

Therefore, if you only make 1,000 or 2,000 movable type, you will definitely be able to greatly reduce the cost.

As for those Chinese characters that have not been created with movable type, in fact, Li Yuanjia also thought of a way, that is, when they are really used, they will vacate the corresponding positions in the typesetting! Because the corresponding position of the printed book is also blank, so just find a few guys who can write, and manually fill in the blank space one by one......

The premise of everything is to find out the 1,000 or 2,000 Chinese characters that are most commonly used, and then find the frequency of their use, so that Li Yuanjia can find a way to minimize the cost and meet the needs at the same time.

So......

"A thousand? Or two thousand? ”