After the family banquet in the palace, the family did not disperse immediately.

After Emperor Liu Xiu entered the palace, he gradually got used to life in the palace, but now it is not as good as before, and it is not as convenient as in the past to meet his children.

Now that the whole family is gathered together to share the joy of family, Liu Xiu is very pleased to see several young grandchildren, granddaughters and grandchildren. He used to be just a showman, and he didn't know much about national affairs, and he didn't want to get involved.

"Emperor, I heard that there are more than ten Mongolian women in your palace who are pregnant, is this really true?"

The queen mother and several eldest princesses and the queen and the four concubines and a few ladies were chatting together, at this time, she suddenly turned her head and asked Liu Jun, who was talking to her father and brother.

Liu Jun nodded in response, "Hmm." ”

Nowadays, there are many Mongolian women in the palace, and there are hundreds of concubines who have been sent to the palace before and after. Later, Liu Jun saw that more and more were sent, and hurriedly issued an order with the Mongolian princes, and only the princes with the title of earl and above would be included in the palace. This will caused many small princes such as Zinanxun to be very dissatisfied.

In the end, Liu Jun had to make another will, the Mongol nobles such as the sons, knights, warriors, etc., the imperial court selected a batch of their school-age daughters to be sent to the palace every year, but as palace maids. Each of them was in the palace for five years, and during the five years, they learned etiquette and culture in the palace, and then the emperor of the Han Dynasty gave them marriages and allowed them to Han officials and their children.

If there are those who are favored by the emperor, they will naturally be able to stay in the palace.

However, despite this change, Liu Jun has been included in the palace and given more than 300 names, in addition, there are more than 3,000 palace people who have married into the palace with these princes' daughters, and there are thousands of daughters sent by nobles.

As a result, there are only 3,000 eunuchs in the palace now, but there are more than 10,000 palace maids. Two-thirds of them are Mongolian women. With so many Mongolian women entering the palace, Liu Jun naturally couldn't hang them all. Even if it was for the sake of the covenant with the princes, Liu Jun had to fulfill some obligations.

Up to now, there are already eleven pregnant Mongolian concubines in the palace, and if the queen and several concubines and Jieyu are also pregnant, the emperor will welcome no less than twenty children next year.

"Another day, you bring them over too. I see them too. The Empress Dowager said, "It is not easy to come from the distant steppe. Now that they are pregnant, they must take good care of them, they are pregnant with the flesh and blood of our Liu family. Emperor, you have to treat people well. ”

Queen Lu Xueqi listened to it very unpleasantly, she originally brought it up. She originally wanted to use the status of the queen mother to knock down the emperor, so as not to let him accept more and more, and now she has accepted hundreds of Mongolian women in. If you turn around and get a few hundred southwestern Yi in, then what's the matter?

Who knows, the Queen Mother and she don't think the same thing at all.

The queen mother didn't care whether her son accepted a Mongolian woman or a Korean woman, anyway, it was the Liu family who entered the door, and the people who gave birth were all the flesh and blood of the Liu family. Liu Jun still has only two sons, and the queen mother certainly hopes that the emperor will have more children.

Liu Zhao looked envious. Liu Jun wanted to laugh when he saw it, so he deliberately raised his voice and said to him. "Big brother, there are not many people in your house. So far, there is only one child, Hong'er. How about I pick a few Mongolian girls from the palace and give them to you as concubines? ”

Liu Zhao looked like a pig brother, and nodded busily, "Okay." ”

The sister-in-law Mei over there was already uneasy, but in front of the emperor, the emperor and the queen mother. It's not good to oppose it directly. After all, now it is not as good as before, Liu Zhao is now only a wife, and he has never even dared to accept a concubine, and he has no room girl.

Mongol-Han marriage. This is important in the long run.

But it can't just be the emperor Namon woman, you have to let go in an all-round way. Liu Jun had already made a decree to advocate the marriage of Mongolia and Han, and he couldn't help getting married. At the same time, he took the lead and recruited more than 300 daughters of Mongolian princes, and now he has selected some folk girls who are willing to marry the children of Mongolian princes and sent them to Beijing for etiquette and other training.

Now a large number of daughters of Mongolian nobles have come to Beijing, and they also plan to marry the civil and military officials and children of the Han Dynasty. However, the average civil and military official has a wife, and even if he does not have a wife, he will not be willing to marry a Mongolian woman. It will take a long time to change this perception.

So now Liu Jun has made up his mind to let the civil and military officials take Mongolian women as concubines, he has already started, and then he is ready to let his brothers take the lead.

In the afternoon, the sun is warm, and the weather is rare.

After the family banquet, Liu Jun returned to the Qianqing Hall in advance.

Today Laba, tomorrow is the ninth day of the twelfth month, and it is also the day of the first imperial examination of the Han Dynasty. Originally, the township test was held in the autumn of the first year, and the test was held in the spring of the following year. And now the township test is still in the autumn, but the general test has been advanced to the end of the year and the beginning of the month.

However, everything that should be prepared has been prepared, and now the Jingshi is full of people. There are both those who came to take the exam, and there are also those who did not, but a large number of scholars who have been given the status of the same people, and they are coming to prepare for the admission of the Jingshi University Hall next spring.

There are also many scholars who neither come to take the examination nor come to enroll, they just come to join in the fun, see the grand occasion of the imperial examination, and communicate with their colleagues by the way. Now that the Central Plains is peaceful, the scholars are also willing to come out to study and walk around.

The influx of thousands of scholars made the Jingshi more and more lively during this time, and drove the economy of the Jingshi to become more and more prosperous.

When he arrived at the Qianqing Palace, Liu Jun was not in the mood to manage the government for a while, so he simply sent an edict and asked the eunuch to lead the way, and he went to sit next to the eleven pregnant Mongolian concubines.

These pregnant Mongolian women were all named concubines by Liu Junjin, and were given titles such as Zhaoyi Zhaorong respectively, and they had the rank of second grade. This can be regarded as a mother is more expensive than a child, although it is not yet known that they give birth to boys and girls, but in the palace, it is the same as in ordinary families, and the concubines who have children must have a higher status than those who have not given birth.

Liu Jun's sudden arrival surprised these Mongolian concubines.

However, Liu Jun soon discovered that he couldn't recognize all the eleven women who were pregnant with his child. Among them, the Qing Guifei Namu Zhong and the Qing princess Makata are very familiar, but the other women always feel a little blind, if it weren't for the whispered introduction of the eunuch of the Internal Affairs Office on the side, he has many of them who can't be named, or confused with others.

I thought it would be difficult to communicate with them. As a result, he was surprised to find that the daughters of these Mongolian princes already spoke Chinese. Although he didn't speak fluently, at least he understood.

At this time, he discovered another thing, they did not speak the emperor's hometown, nor the Ming emperor's hometown. It's not Luoyang's reading voice, they speak Beijing dialect.

Well, not the Beijing dialect of later generations, but almost.

At this time, the Beijing dialect should be called Dadu dialect.

The Dadu dialect is very close to the Beijing dialect of later generations, and it is also the most common language in Beijing for hundreds of years.

Under the continuous invasion and rule of the northern steppe tribes such as Liao, Jin, and Yuan, the language of the north has gradually changed over the past thousands of years.

By the time of the Yuan Dynasty, the official rule was that the pronunciation of Dadu based on the northern dialect was the standard of the common language of the world.

After the Yuan people occupied China, they began to forcibly promote the Dadu dialect. A large number of Mongolian words have been added to the Chinese language, the structure of the Chinese language has been changed, and the Chinese and Mongolian languages have been assimilated.

Liu Jun also discovered a particularly interesting thing at this time, the language of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan people is very similar to the language north of the Huai River, and Dadu language.

The fundamental reason for this is that the Mongols were the first to conquer these places, and then implemented the Dadu dialect in these places with the strongest force.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Zhengyun was revised. It was the Jianghuai dialect that was promoted as an official language. However, after Yongle moved its capital to Beijing, most of the dialects were still widely circulated.

Historically. Later, the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains and vigorously promoted the Dadu dialect, and finally the Mandarin of later generations was popularized with the Dadu dialect as the standard.

Speaking of official language, China is a large and special country, with a vast territory and many ethnic groups. Therefore, there are many language families. Under several major language families such as Cantonese, Min Chinese, Hakka, and Wu languages, there are also various dialects.

In Jiangxi and other places, there is even a phenomenon of ten miles of different languages. In a county, two townships not far apart may speak completely differently.

The gap between northern and southern dialects is even greater. It's like a foreign language, and I can't understand it at all.

Liu Jun once met with several officials who had performed well in the local area, but when they reported on their work, they talked for most of the day, but Liu Jun did not understand a word.

The Qin Dynasty had the same track and the same text, unified weights and measures, and unified writing, which made outstanding contributions to the process of Chinese civilization.

Historically, the official dialect of each dynasty and generation was different, and each dynasty also had a standard official dialect and launched a rhyme book. But in general, the language is still difficult to unify.

Readers have a reading sound, and the ancient Luoyang sound shall prevail. The Sui and Tang dynasties established the capital of Guanzhong, mainly in the Guanzhong language, and the emperor of the Ming Dynasty was born in Huainan, so he implemented Jianghuai dialect as the official language.

But later the capital was moved to Beijing, because Dadu dialect is the most widely circulated in the north, so in fact, Dadu dialect has the largest influence range.

In the northern areas north of the Huai River, as well as Yunnan, Guichuan and other places, the language is very close to the majority of the dialect, although there are some differences, but at least they can communicate with each other and understand each other.

Even these Mongolian women in the palace today are learning most of the languages, and they have a better foundation in learning these words, and they learn them quickly. And if you learn Jianghuai dialect, it will be difficult.

Liu Jun sat there a little distracted.

For a while, they forgot to talk to the Mongolian concubine, who thought that the emperor was dissatisfied and felt uneasy.

Liu Jun couldn't take care of her anymore, he thought of an important thing.

The empire is so big, if even a lingua franca cannot be popularized, this is quite disadvantageous. The role of the lingua franca is enormous, and language, like writing, is an important part of a civilization.

In general, the absence of a universal lingua franca will lead to a lack of cohesion and centripetal force in the empire. To put it mildly, this also makes it inconvenient for people to communicate.

Which language should be used as the lingua franca of the Han Dynasty, Mandarin?

The official dialect of the northern capital or the official dialect of Jianghuai Nanjing and the official dialect of the Central Plains?

Or Cantonese, Min, Hakka, Wu, Xiang, Gan?

I remember someone once said that Cantonese is the best preserved ancient Chinese dialect. However, the popularity of Cantonese is far less than that of northern dialects, and among northern dialects, it is definitely the most popular and popular dialect.

If a language is chosen to popularize it, the general practice is to develop a rhyme book. However, in the past, the rhyme books of the previous dynasties used Chinese characters to cut backwards, which still had the shortcomings of illegality, and the pronunciation was difficult to be accurate.

Do you want to promote Hanyu Pinyin?

Pinyin is also a type of phonology, but it is more precise. In particular, the use of letters is better, and although it is not 100% perfect, it is at least stronger than all the others.

The biggest requirement of the lingua franca is that it must be simple and convenient enough so that it can be quickly popularized. Just like Chinese characters, it also needs to be simple.

Liu Jun even thinks that when implementing the lingua franca and engaging in Chinese pinyin, simplified Chinese characters can also be implemented.

Today's traditional Chinese characters are indeed very inconvenient to write, and there are too many strokes.

Now the imperial court is preparing to promote education and engage in primary universal education, and at this time the implementation of Mandarin and simplified Chinese characters, Liu Jun believes that the promotion will be greatly strengthened.

However, simplified Chinese characters should not be too simple, and appropriate amounts. Just like in later generations, when the simplified Chinese characters were implemented, the second-level simplified characters were once made, but those characters were simplified, but they had lost the foundation of Chinese characters and pictographs, and they could not express the meaning at all.

In the end, those words didn't really circulate, but became shorthand variants.

In fact, simplified Chinese characters do not come out of thin air, and it should be said that simplifying Chinese characters has been around for a long time. Chinese characters are mostly the earliest oracle bone inscriptions, Jinding scripts, and then to seal scripts, and then to official scripts and regular scripts, and Chinese characters have been constantly changing.

The oldest Chinese character is the oracle bone script, which is also the simplest stroke, but the total amount is too small. During the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties, the shape of Chinese characters changed the most, from seal script to official script to regular script, all of which were completed during this period.

The regular script that appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty stabilized the font from then on, which is why the characters were later called Chinese characters.

However, the official script is a simplification of the seal script, and the line script and cursive script are the simplification of the official script.

In addition to the current formal script font, there are also many simplified characters in circulation, from the calligraphy works of the Han, Tang, Song and Ming dynasties, there are many simple ways to write Chinese characters, and the number of abbreviated characters in these writing habits is still many, as many as hundreds.

Liu Jun believes that the implementation of simplified Chinese characters can greatly reduce the difficulty of education, improve the literacy rate, and increase the writing efficiency of Chinese characters. However, simplified Chinese characters cannot be simplified, if they are simplified to the appearance of later Korean characters and Japanese characters, they are all circled and dotted, then their cultural connotation and historical significance will be gone.

Since the Han Dynasty, there have been characters with the habit of simplifying writing, which can be sorted out and promoted, and on this basis, some simple ancient characters, vulgar characters, morphophonetic characters, and so on can be used.

The aim is to make it easier to read Chinese books and improve literacy and efficiency.

Liu Jun is also opposed to merging a large number of Chinese characters, and it is not necessary to merge them in large quantities, just simplify some particularly complex characters.

Dahan now has a population of more than 200 million, and although there are 600,000 talented people and millions of scholars, the literacy rate is not high for a population of more than 200 million.

Especially the natives of those frontier lands are even less literate and can write Chinese characters.

Simplifying Chinese characters can not only strengthen the literacy rate of Chinese characters, but also allow those border minority natives to quickly accept Chinese characters. If the lingua franca is fully promoted, the centripetal force of the empire will inevitably be stronger at that time.

In order to improve the literacy rate and popularize the lingua franca, Liu Jun feels that the implementation of simplified Chinese characters and the most widely circulated Beijing dialect is the best solution, and he believes that adding a Chinese pinyin to Beijing dialect can improve efficiency.

Well, for the imperial court, efficiency is the most important. (To be continued.) )

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