Southern Ming: A boy soldier at the beginning, supporting the world

Chapter 346: Eradicating Illiteracy
"The ruler is determined to promote education, but Nanyue is financially constrained and can only set the public school curriculum to five years. Children start school at the age of seven and have to learn to read and write and learn basic abacus within five years, which is really difficult." Fang Yizhi nodded to Gu Yanwu, motioning for him to continue.

This was a great opportunity to show off. Gu Yanwu had also worked hard on phonetics and said, "Abacus is simple, but literacy is difficult. Chinese characters are profound, but difficult to learn. In traditional literacy teaching, the most common methods are the reading method, the direct annotation method, and the fanqie method. If you want to teach two or three thousand commonly used Chinese characters within five years, these three methods are not up to the task.

"The Latin phonetic system is different. With only 20 to 30 letters, all Chinese characters can be spelled out. It is simple and practical, and has been verified by foreigners. Foreigners come from foreign countries and can learn Chinese characters using phonetic system. This shows that the Latin phonetic system is indeed effective."

The so-called "reading as if method" is to use characters with similar pronunciations to indicate pronunciation. For example, Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" adopted the "reading as if method". For example, the character "埻", "Shuowen Jiezi" explains: "埻, shooting target, read as if 准". The pronunciations of "埻" and "准" are similar. Although the pronunciations are similar, there are still differences. What is the difference? The "reading as if method" cannot explain it.

The so-called "direct annotation method" is to use another Chinese character to indicate the pronunciation of this Chinese character. For example, in "女为说己者容", "说者曰悦" is used for pronunciation. If you can't even figure out the pronunciation of "悦", the explanation is equivalent to a meaningless explanation.

The so-called "Fanqie method" is much more advanced than the "Du Ruo method" and the "Zhi Zhu method". It is said to be inspired by Sanskrit and uses the initial consonant of the first word and the final vowel and tone of the second word to indicate the pronunciation. For example, "Lian, Langdian Qie", that is, the pronunciation of "Lian" is composed of the initial consonant of "Lang" and the final vowel and tone of "Dian".

Bi Fangji and Tang Ruowang were of similar age, and both were quite knowledgeable about health preservation. Their thinking was quite clear. They said with a smile, "We foreigners have special phonological textbooks to learn Chinese, and we use Latin pinyin. But the pinyin designed by the king is more concise, practical, and natural."

Qian Bingdeng, the vice minister of the Ministry of Education, said: "Last year, Nanning Normal School found a village school and tried to use Latin pinyin to read Chinese characters. The results were remarkable, which shows that this is feasible."

……

"Chinese characters are pictographic and ideographic, and are the oldest and most perfect writing system in the world." Cen Danchu, like the other gentlemen present, was full of pride in Chinese characters. He said, "Looking overseas, even Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and Ryukyu all use Chinese characters as their official writing system while using their own languages ​​at the same time."

"This is because Chinese characters are not phonetic and cannot represent sounds. In the thousands of years of evolution and dissemination, the structure of the characters has not changed much, but the pronunciation has changed greatly. For example, the Book of Songs is widely circulated, but it no longer rhymes because of the changes in pronunciation between ancient and modern times.

"This has resulted in different dialects across the country, causing many differences in culture and customs, which is not conducive to maintaining a unified country. Using Latin letters to mark the pronunciation of Chinese characters will completely solve the problem of Chinese character phonetics, unify the pronunciation of Chinese characters, and promote cultural unification."

The easiest language to learn should be phonetic, such as English, Japanese, Latin, etc. English only uses 26 letters to express all words. Even if you don't know an English word, you can still spell it out according to the rules.

In modern times, there was a trend among Chinese people to abolish Chinese characters and use phonetic writing instead. Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam also rushed to change Chinese characters to phonetic writing. This was certainly out of consideration to get rid of sinicization, but also objectively because Chinese characters were difficult to learn.

However, the connotation and expressiveness of phonetic writing are far inferior to those of ideographic writing. In addition, Chinese characters are unique, with too many characters and too many homophones. For example, "张" and "章" have the same pronunciation, and "死世" and "世事" have the same pronunciation. If we create phonetic Chinese characters, it is difficult to avoid so many homophones.

The problem is that although Chinese characters are beautiful, they are relatively difficult to learn, which objectively is not conducive to the popularization of education.

The Ming people were active in thought and their education was much more advanced than that of previous dynasties. Fang Yizhi, Gu Yanwu and others noticed this and paid attention to the study of phonology and thought about ways to eliminate illiteracy.

They have been exploring the use of Latin letters to spell Chinese characters, but Cen Danchu went further. He not only proposed a feasible Latin spelling, but also decided to simplify Chinese characters from an official level to promote the popularization of education. Chinese characters are the treasure and crystallization of Chinese culture. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, although the Ming Dynasty was in decline, Chinese culture still has an unshakable position in East Asia. If Latin spelling and simplified characters can be promoted, the influence of Chinese characters and Chinese culture can be expanded, and foreign vassals can be better controlled. Let’s not talk about the distant ones first. For example, Vietnam has been in a civil war and the North and South are in confrontation. The Red Army is becoming stronger and stronger, and it should be no problem to control Vietnam, and it can even be put on the agenda.

Compared with Latin pinyin, there is not much resistance to simplifying Chinese characters.

Danchu said: "The oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty became the bronze script of the Zhou Dynasty, and the Qin seal script became the Han official script. From the historical development of Chinese characters, simplifying the font has always been the general trend. In informal occasions among the people, people are also accustomed to using simplified characters and like to use simplified characters.

"Officials mostly use traditional Chinese characters, which are too difficult and time-consuming for ordinary people to learn. Perhaps this is also a deliberate act by those in power, so that a few people can monopolize the right to literacy and facilitate their policy of keeping the people ignorant.

"The world belongs to the people, and so do the characters. Only by simplifying Chinese characters and making them easy to learn can we popularize Chinese characters. Only by popularizing Chinese characters can they have vitality and become valuable characters."

The Ming dynasty attached more importance to education than any other dynasty, but the illiteracy rate was still alarmingly high. Guangdong and Guangxi are located in remote Lingnan, with many ethnic minorities and an even higher illiteracy rate. With the introduction of Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters, there is hope for eliminating illiteracy.

As a time traveler, Cen Danchu can easily write thousands of simplified Chinese characters. He can also use his elementary school knowledge to use Latin letters to mark the precise pronunciation of Chinese characters.

Yu Houji, the left councillor, assisted in handling government affairs and said, "The king has put in a lot of effort. In his spare time, he paid attention to the phonetic fonts and designed Latin pinyin and simplified Chinese characters. Their ingenuity is so natural that even Confucius would be inferior to them. After the beginning of next spring, the government will go all out to popularize public schools in Guangdong and Guangxi."

“Are there any difficulties with teachers and funding?”

"There are difficulties, but they can be overcome." Yu Houji said: "There are more than 400 students in the Normal School. Six months of training is enough for them to master pinyin and simplified Chinese characters.

"It is expected that 300 qualified graduates will be selected from this batch and sent to various prefectures, counties and garrisons as supervisors. These supervisors will organize rotation training for teachers in their counties and prefectures for one year. By the spring of the seventh year of the Yongli reign at the latest, Latin pinyin and simplified Chinese characters can be fully promoted in Lingnan.

"As for public schools, they are mainly requisitioned from village schools, ancestral halls, temples, Taoist temples, etc. Teachers are transferred from private school teachers. Rural teachers are supplied according to the standards of combat infantry, and urban teachers are supplied according to the standards of combat cavalry. Funding is guaranteed."

"Very good, very good." Cen Danchu was still relieved that Yu Houji was doing the job.

In addition to popularizing public schools, the government has also made some major moves in education: a number of schools will be built, especially a Jinan University will be built in Guangzhou; many schools in Guangxi will also be moved to Guangdong, and in order to take care of Guangxi, these schools will retain branches in Guangxi...

(End of this chapter)