Chapter 111 Laying the foundation for education

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Punctuation is an integral part of written language and an indispensable auxiliary tool for written language, which can help people accurately express their thoughts and feelings and understand written language. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In the world where Zhang Jiashi originally lived, at first, it was believed that in ancient Chinese documents, punctuation marks were generally not added, but sentences were broken through the sense of language, mood particles, grammatical structures and other sentences (adding "sentence reading symbols" to the text: indicating the end of the sentence; reading numbers resembling the current pause number, indicating the pause of the tone), often appeared ambiguity and caused misunderstanding of the words and sentences of the article; for example, in the Qing Dynasty poet Zhao Tianyang's "Revised Interpretation of the New Collection of Interpreting the People", "Leave the guest on a rainy day and leave me without staying", there are seven ways to interpret one sentence.

However, through archaeological artifacts since the 20th century, it can be seen that in fact, China has had punctuation marks since the pre-Qin period, but there is no unified standard for these symbols.

For example, there are some sayings: "In fact, as far back as the age of oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, there was already a rather peculiar punctuation in China." ”

Qing Zhang Xuecheng's "Bingchen Notes" researched: "The method of dotting sentences has existed before the Han Dynasty. "Increasing Rhyme" cloud: "All sentences are absolutely dotted next to the words, and the reading points are slightly dotted between the words." Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty included punctuation marks in "Shuowen Jie Zi", and received it, "number", explained: "There is an end, and there is also knowledge." "I also received the "" number, explaining: "Hook recognition also." Qing Duanyu remarked: "Those who recognize the hook use the hook to recognize their place."

Zhang Jiashi did not know much about this, but he did not completely use the set of punctuation marks of later generations, but mainly chose about a dozen common symbols, such as periods, commas, double quotation marks, and single quotation marks, to segment this Analects.

What Kong doesn't understand is what the meaning of these punctuation marks is, not that he is completely unaware of the importance of these punctuation marks. After all, at this time, some of the books in the Confucian Mansion actually used some of the punctuation marks that were not standardized.

In Zhang Jiashi's mind, it is undeniable that the current use of this systematic punctuation mark is indeed an important auxiliary means to make education better implemented.

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But in contrast to punctuation, there are two more important foundations that must be done at the same time in order for the education system he conceived to be truly viable.

The first one is Hanyu Pinyin.

The Hanyu Pinyin that Zhang Jiashi intended to use was still based on the Hanyu Pinyin benchmark of later generations.

After all, Zhang Jiashi's most familiar language is Mandarin, although after coming to this world, Zhang Jiashi himself did not have the opportunity to speak this language, and because of the assistance of the Qingyu Lingshu, Zhang Jiashi can still understand the accent of many places, but this does not mean that Zhang Jiashi will forget the language he is most familiar with.

Hanyu Pinyin is a tool mainly based on Mandarin to assist in the pronunciation of Chinese characters, and many local dialects also have their own phonetic methods before Zhang Jiashi did not cross, but in general, the focus of Hanyu Pinyin is still used for the education of Mandarin.

The pronunciation of the current characters is mainly based on two methods, using the method of straight or reverse cutting to phonetize Chinese characters.

Straight sound, that is, the pronunciation of Chinese characters is indicated with homophones, if the homophones are all rare words, even if the pronunciation is noted, it cannot be read. Reverse cut, that is, two Chinese characters are used to phonetize another Chinese character, the reverse cut is the same as the initials of the noted word, and the reverse cut is the same as the finals and tone of the noted word.

However, these two methods of pronunciation are very inconvenient and have considerable errors.

It's just that it is undeniable that it is precisely these two phonetic methods that finally laid the foundation for the implementation of Hanyu Pinyin. After all, without the emergence of these two phonetic methods, I am afraid that the pronunciation of many characters will become messy.

The method of using straight or reverse cutting to phonetize Chinese characters was first changed in the late Ming Dynasty:

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Western missionaries came to China to preach, and in order to learn Chinese characters, they began to spell Chinese in the Latin alphabet. In 1605, Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary, published The Miracle of Western Characters in Beijing, in which four Chinese character articles were phonetized with Latin letters. This is the earliest publication to phonetize Chinese characters in the Latin alphabet, slightly later than the "Xiaojing" to use the Arabic alphabet to pinyin the Chinese characters, and the "Xiaojing" is probably the earliest attempt to use alphabet characters to phonetize Chinese characters.

Later, in 1626, the French Jesuit missionary Kinny Court published in Hangzhou the Western Confucian Ear and Eye, a glossary of Chinese characters phonetic in the Latin alphabet. The scheme used in Zhuyin is a modification of Matteo Ricci's scheme.

Matteo Ricci and Kinney Court's scheme is designed based on the standard of "Mandarin Reading Pronunciation", which is suitable for spelling Beijing pronunciation. This novel pinyin method has given great inspiration to Chinese scholars. However, for two or three hundred years, Matteo Ricci and Kinney Court's program was only used by foreign missionaries and was not widely spread among the Chinese.

What Matteo Ricci and Kinneyge didn't expect was that their design would change the foundation of Chinese phonetics in a big way, and let the Chinese phonetic method move forward in a way that has rules to follow.

Fang Yizhi, a phonologist at the end of the Ming Dynasty, said: "The difference between words is also the fate and the borrowing of the ear. If the matter is one word, each word has one meaning, such as the Far West because of the matter is a consonant. Because of the sound of words, not the same is not the same, not especially the better?"

Qing Dynasty scholar Yang Xuanqi said: "Xin Mao household subsistence old Jinwu period Weng family, its son Yunzhang, one day out of the "Western Confucian Ear and Eye Resources" to show the remainder, to read the unfinished volume, epiphany cut words have a certain reason, because it can be a certain law."

The corresponding comments of these two scholars of the Ming and Qing dynasties speak of the correctness of this phonetic method.

The Chinese's own Hanyu Pinyin movement began with the phonetic cutting movement in the last years of the Qing Dynasty.

After the Opium War, China was reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and the enthusiasm for saving the nation from peril and rejuvenating China inspired some patriotic intellectuals to put forward the idea of saving the country through education.

The "Cutting Character Movement" refers to the movement that originated in the late Qing Dynasty in the 20 years of the People's Republic of China to create and implement the Hanyu Pinyin scheme. Cutting sound is pinyin, also called chorus, and cutting phonetic characters refers to a variety of Chinese pinyin schemes produced in this movement.

These processes culminated in 1958, when the "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" was established as a compulsory course for primary school students to enter the classrooms of primary schools across the country. The Hanyu Pinyin Scheme is a set of pinyin letters and spelling methods for standardizing the spelling of Mandarin.

Zhang Jiashi used such a set of "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme". After all, after decades of development, this set of plans has been quite mature, and after thinking about it for a long time, Zhang Jiashi himself also believes that this method can implement his ideas in a large way in a short time, such as within ten years.

Zhang Jiashi himself did not think about using the mainstream language of the Xianyang area, which is now "Mandarin", as a phonetic model.

But after thinking about it for a long time, Zhang Jiashi had to give up this idea.

After all, Zhang Jiashi found one thing helplessly, that is, at his level, it is undoubtedly a fool's dream to want to perform such a thing as "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" with later generations of literary masters. Because he simply doesn't have the potential to do that.

So after thinking about it for a long time, Zhang Jiashi finally used this set of schemes, which were quite mature and quite feasible.

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The "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" was considered by Zhang Jiashi to be used, and it is natural that it will greatly affect another issue, that is, the official language of the Great Qin Empire, to a large extent, will gradually evolve into Mandarin without much push.

This is also the result that Zhang Jiashi is looking forward to, as well as an important criterion and another basis for the effective promotion of education methods.

The official name of Mandarin is Standard Chinese, which is also known as "Modern Common Chinese" by academics. This language is the lingua franca of communication between different ethnic groups in China, with Beijing pronunciation as the basic pronunciation, northern dialects as the basic dialects, and exemplary modern vernacular writings as the grammatical norms.

Therefore, after the emergence of the Chinese pinyin scheme, the popularization of Mandarin has been greatly helped.

Before this language promotion, there were two reasons to consider:

First, the northern dialect is the basic dialect, mainly considering that the capital of New China is Beijing, and the people in Beijing speak Mandarin, and it has a certain history and foundation of promotion as an official language, although the Han people in the north have their own dialect, but they can also speak a little Mandarin, so in order to stabilize the overall situation, New China will continue to use Mandarin as the official language.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other, in order to avoid the joint strangulation of foreign hostile forces, New China urgently needed a common language to realize the communication and exchange of the people of New China in different regions, and to raise the strength of the whole country to fight against foreign enemies, and Mandarin has three dynasties of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, with a history and foundation of more than 700 years of promotion, so it continues to use Mandarin as the official language.

In a sense, the language system of the Great Qin Empire was not strictly speaking, too complicated, or even messy.

Because according to records, the Shang Dynasty held the Central Plains Yayin at that time, until the Warring States Period, a hundred schools of thought contended, which also means that people have long ago had the understanding of "Yayin entering the market".

The earliest official policy to promote a common language was found in the Sui Dynasty. The Sui Dynasty unified China and made Chang'an its capital. Due to the long-term rule of the northern nomads in northern China at that time, the customs and culture of the Han nationality have undergone great changes, and Emperor Wen of Sui, who was bent on restoring the ritual music of the Han people, made many measures to restore the Han culture, including the compilation of "Cut Rhyme" by Ming Lu Fayan and others, which approved the more classic and pure Chinese.

The capital of the Yuan Dynasty was Dadu, which is today's Beijing. The imperial court of the Yuan Dynasty stipulated that school teaching should use the common language of the world based on the pronunciation of Dadu. The Yuan Dynasty was prevalent in miscellaneous opera and sanqu, two new forms of literature that were close to the oral language.

The famous miscellaneous playwrights Guan Hanqing, Ma Zhiyuan, and Wang Shifu are all from Dadu, and their works such as "Dou E's Injustice", "Autumn in the Han Palace", and "The Legend of the West Chamber" reflect the appearance of Dadu dialect at that time. Zhou Deqing's "Central Plains Phonology" in the Yuan Dynasty was written according to the rhyme of Yuan miscellaneous operas, and the phonetic system (initials, finals, and tones) summarized in the book was quite close to today's Beijing dialect, so Dadu dialect became the most primitive basis for the formation of modern Mandarin.

It can be said that the promotion of Mandarin is not too difficult in the mainstream and the sphere of influence of the Great Qin Empire, which still has the foundation of "Yayin" in the mainstream.

Zhang Jiashi was confident that the education program he had formulated could be successfully implemented, mainly because the Great Qin Empire had actually begun to carry out a unified development of education, that is, the implementation of the book and text system.

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Before Qin unified the Six Kingdoms, the vassal states went their own way, and the shape of the writing was extremely disordered. This poses a serious obstacle to the implementation of the decree and cultural exchanges. Therefore, after the unification of the six countries, Qin Shi Huang took the unification of the script as a top priority, and ordered the prime minister Li Si, the Zhongshu government order Zhao Gao, and the imperial official Ling Hu Wujing and others to sort out the characters. Based on the Qin script and referring to the Six Kingdoms script, Li Si created a new script with a uniform shape and simple strokes, called "Qin Seal", also known as "Xiao Seal", as the official standard script, and abolished other variant characters. Lishu is also called "Lizi" and "Ancient Book". It is a font produced on the basis of seal script to meet the needs of convenient writing. The small seal is simplified, and the uniform and round lines of the small seal are turned into straight and square strokes, which are easy to write.

Both forms of writing were promoted throughout the country. However, the small seal is used as the standard script of the Qin State, the official script is used as the daily script, the emperor's edict and official government documents are generally written in the small seal, and the unofficial documents are copied in the official script.

This situation made Zhang Jiashi realize that his ideas may have a certain degree of difficulty in implementation, but since there is this precedent, even if it is the implementation of "speaking the same language and speaking the same tone", Zhang Jiashi does not think there is any problem.

Of course, Zhang Jiashi didn't think that his idea, or the advance arrangement, was quite perfect.

But there is one thing that Zhang Jiashi also cannot deny, that is, the Hanyu Pinyin scheme and the tone of ordinary speech certainly have corresponding factors for the success of the implementation.

And there is one thing that Zhang Jiashi cannot deny. That's a lot of words, and he really doesn't know how to phonetize them.

So, before everything was implemented, Zhang Jiashi thought of using Confucianism to solve this problem.

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Kong looked up at Zhang Jiashi after a long time, and he had a strange feeling about Zhang Jiashi, that is, after reading the Analects, he also knew that some punctuation might play a role.

But I have to say that there is a feeling in his heart that what Zhang Jiashi asked them to do is definitely not so simple.