"That's right." Princess Jeanna thought for a while, and finally nodded, and said: "The languages here are not very perfect, and most of them do not have corresponding characters, compared to them, Chinese characters do have more advantages." But how did it deal with the Greek language competition in the first place? ”

"When it comes to history and culture, Greek even surpasses Latin. I've heard the Greeks claim that the Romans had been learning Greek since the time of the Romans. Until the Rus' region, people wrote in Greek or its derived alphabet, hundreds of times. They still have some advantages, right? ”

"This ......" Guo Kang hesitated: "Actually, telling the truth is more hurtful." But we don't have ...... here."

He glanced at Theodora: "There are no pure Greeks anyway, so I'll tell you the truth." In fact, when we first established ourselves here, the Greek language was almost gone. ”

"In addition to the area around the Aegean Sea, there are people who speak Greek in the mountains of the Greek peninsula. From the southeastern coast of the Black Sea to Cappadocia, the Greek language is also spoken, or the Turkmen dialect recorded in the Greek alphabet. But these people were so far away that it didn't make a difference to our situation at the time. ”

"In Bulgaria and Serbia to the north, and further afield, once ruled by Rome, the language of the natives should theoretically belong to Slavic. In Asia Minor to the east, the local languages are already various Turkmen dialects and Armenian dialects. Overseas regions such as Alexandria and Syria have also been largely lost. The use of Greek has shrunk dramatically, almost returning to the time of nearly 2,000 years ago. ”

In later generations, these Slavic languages were divided into Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, Montenegrin and so on – of course, there were many languages in them, and there were not much differences. It is not so much because of different languages, forming different peoples, and dividing different countries, but because it needs to be divided into multiple countries, so it is necessary to invent different peoples, and then forcibly set similar dialects into different languages.

However, none of this has anything to do with Greece.

"At this time, there was already a big problem with Greek." Guo Kang explains: "Basically, only the scholars and aristocrats in the city can still use the rigorous and meticulous classical Greek language. Most of the language is spoken in a very colloquial language. To put it simply, with the development of time, it began to 'separate the text and white'. ”

"Originally, for an ancient civilization, this is also a normal situation. However, the long-term war in Greece, especially for more than 100 years, has made it difficult to maintain even a unified regime. Latin lords, Greek powers, and even Ottoman and Slavic powers all divided their own ways. ”

"The fighting between them has not only affected education, but also made the language more fragmented. They didn't have a common grammar, and the poor people in the mountains couldn't afford to get a formal grammar education. Therefore, even though the grammar of classical language is very strict and the structure is perfect, it is still only used by a small number of people. ”

"For the Greek, the situation is serious. Chinese characters can be written in the same set of scripts, and at the same time write the classical Chinese classics of the three dynasties of antiquity, and the vernacular market of today. But if you write in Greek and in the vernacular, you can become two languages. ”

So, the Greek language was not as influential as it is now. Those Greek nobles can't even teach ordinary people outside the city, so how can they compete with us. ”

"And how do you do that?" Princess Jeanne asked.

"At that time, the predecessors came up with a plan, which was to use the local Bulgarian language as the basis and fill in Chinese characters." Guo Kang said: "They reduced the grammatical requirements as much as possible, removed the words caused by the case, personal pronoun, and tense, and replaced them with independent additional words. ”

"This makes it much easier to learn grammar and avoids the misunderstandings that can come with grammatical mistakes. People who can write a little bit of basic writing, even if they speak in completely different dialects, can use this set of tools to communicate, write documents and make announcements. ”

"So, it's deliberately not grammatical?" Princess Jeanne was surprised and said, "I thought it was because of the lack of education, so everyone could only express it like this." ”

"Grammar is a thing, as long as it doesn't affect the correct meaning." Guo Kang said: "I have heard people tell jokes about Sigismund who went to a religious conference and was ridiculed by the clergy because he made a grammatical error in his speech. ”

"Sigismund was so angry that he said, 'I am the king, I am Grammar,' and repeatedly claimed that as King Alemanni, power was over grammar. You see, even nobles of this level can't understand grammar, so it can be seen that this thing doesn't have a great impact. ”

"In practice, even if there are some errors in word order and grammar, the information transmission of the system is not greatly affected. For example, if someone wants to report 'we need to receive 30 arrows at a certain outpost next month', you can directly write '30 arrows will be taken from a certain outpost in the next month'. Even in this order, as long as the keywords are all in place, others will be able to understand what he is saying. ”

"The so-called grammar we train just needs to make sure that they can articulate the meaning of this level - not so much grammar as the official form. The remaining higher-level requirements are not something that everyone at the grassroots level must master. ”

"That's why I say it's just a military language, not a lingua franca. On the one hand, it is a matter of name, and on the other hand, it is also because this thing is a lingua franca, but it is actually a little less meaningful. Guo Kang admitted:

"Over the years, we've done a lot of experimentation and improvement. Many legionnaires were stationed in different places, and with this method, combined with the vocabulary of Chinese and local languages, they could also make comparisons and guesses, and express clear meanings without the help of translation. But this kind of 'legion talk', after all, is only an extremely simplified version, very imperfect, and sounds weird. That's why there's a higher level of other ways. ”

"So what?" Princess Jeanne became more and more curious.

"On the one hand, we have made a significant simplification of classical Greek based on the current spoken Greek language. On the other hand, we are also really promoting the Chinese vernacular itself. Guo Kang said: "Although these languages are still relatively difficult, they are relatively easy to teach. If you want to continue learning, this is still the main way. ”

(End of chapter)