Diqin Designer

Chapter 202: Phonetic notation and dictionary compilation

Feeling the amazement and admiration from the audience, Li Nian was at a loss for words. He couldn't just say to everyone: You are wrong, this word was not created by Li. Li is just a carrier of culture and knowledge, and he just took advantage of the time travel.

As everyone was passing the paper around, Li Nian continued, "I asked you to come here not to compile characters, but because I have two things I want you to do: one is to annotate the pronunciation of these characters; the other is to annotate the meaning of these characters."

"I have completed the comparison between these characters and Qin seal script, but there are too many characters. It is difficult for me to complete the pronunciation and meaning of each character alone. I need your help."

"The meaning of Zhuyin is..."

Li Nian glanced to the left, and immediately two eunuchs brought a black wooden board onto the platform.

Walking to the black wooden board, Li Nian took a white object from a eunuch and quickly wrote sixteen words on the white wooden board, eight in Qin seal script and eight in paper-like characters.

People who knew Qin seal characters saw that what was written was "The sky and the earth are dark yellow, the universe is vast and boundless."

There are strange symbols on each character, such as a "tian" on the character "天" and a "di" on the character "地".

Li Nian pointed at these symbols and said, "It is not easy to read and write in today's world. Another major reason is that when teaching students, the teacher often reads each word one by one, and the students follow one by one. This method is difficult to teach and it is not easy for students to learn."

"But with this phonetic notation, it will be much easier. The pronunciation of characters is divided into initial consonants, medial vowels, finals, and tones. As long as you understand the rules and have a dictionary, you can learn the pronunciation of characters even without a teacher."

"For example, the Chinese character '天' has the initial consonant 't' and the final vowel 'ian', which together spell out '天(tian)'."

Li Nian taught it on the spot, and most people understood it immediately. Isn't it just splitting the pronunciation of a character according to a certain rule? As long as you master the rules of spelling and know the pronunciation of the character, you can spell it out by yourself.

The ancients were not stupid at all. They also thought of adding pinyin to characters. However, compared with modern pinyin, it has many shortcomings and is difficult to learn.

This phonetic notation method not only enables people to learn to recognize characters faster, but people also see another benefit: it can popularize a standard pronunciation throughout the world, achieving what Li Nian calls "same language".

In the future, no matter where they come from, as long as people learn to read and write in this way, they will all learn the same language.

There are so many characters, and if one has to annotate the pinyin for each character, it would not be impossible for one person to complete it, but it would be a huge waste of time and energy. No wonder this person invited them to help annotate the pinyin for each character.

But in addition to these, this person probably also wants them to be the first batch of learners of the new characters? Let them support the new characters!
Li Nian added: "The meaning of annotation is to explain the meaning of each word. Many places have different understandings of certain words. For example, a word is used to praise in one place, but it is used to be derogatory in another place. There is no unified standard, which is not a good phenomenon."

“So, annotation is to give a unified explanation of the meaning of each word, so that when a word or a sentence is spread throughout the world, there will be no ambiguity and everyone will know exactly what it means.”

Indeed, the meanings of words and sentences vary from place to place, which not only hinders communication between people from different places, but also affects the communication and understanding of government orders.

"Whether it is the phonetic notation or the meaning annotation, it is difficult for me to complete it alone, so I need your help to complete this task together."

"The pronunciation and meaning of all characters will be recorded in a book called 'Dictionary'. The function of the dictionary is to provide reading and literacy people with the ability to look up the pronunciation and meaning of characters."

“That is, when a student who has just begun to learn to read and write encounters an unfamiliar character, he can find its pronunciation and meaning in the dictionary and thus recognize it.” After hearing what Li Nian said, some people had questions: If it is an unfamiliar character, how can one find it in the dictionary?

But Li Nian answered this question immediately, "Some people may wonder, if it is a character that you don't know, how can you find it in the dictionary? This involves another key factor in the compilation of characters, the radicals."

"The new characters will not only have phonetic notation, but also radicals, such as these characters..."

Li Nian wrote several more words on the blackboard, which, according to the corresponding Qin seal characters, were "wolf", "dog", "fox", "raccoon", "yin", "yang", "steps", and "courtyard".

Li Nian didn't even need to explain, everyone already understood the meaning of the radicals.

Li Niandao said: "Their radicals are '犭' and '阝', and their radicals are also '犭' and '阝'."

"These characters with common radicals can be grouped together in the dictionary and marked on which page they are found for easy reference."

"But radicals and components are not exactly the same thing. Some characters are not easy to classify into certain radicals, such as 九, 千, 我, 午..."

"But these characters have a common stroke, which is also the first stroke when writing. '丿' can be used as their radical, and they can be classified into one category in the dictionary for easy reference."

When the concept of dictionary came out, everyone felt that compiling new characters was not easy. The real difficulty was not to give pronunciation and meaning to the characters, but to classify the characters so that future readers could quickly find the character in the dictionary when they encountered an unfamiliar character.

But if this dictionary can really be produced, it will be of great benefit to the world and will greatly reduce the difficulty of teaching.

This is a great achievement in educating the world and will surely go down in history!
What the philosophers failed to do, namely, educating the world and making everyone learn, may actually be achieved in the future, and the compilation of a dictionary must be included in this.

Many people looked at Li Nian with increasing admiration and complexity, because it was she who came up with the idea of ​​adding pronunciation and meaning to Chinese characters and compiling a dictionary.

Even Fan Zeng, who still harbored hatred towards Qin, admired Li Nian's talent.

Li Nian smiled and said, "It's called compiling new words, but in fact, I want to invite you to compile a dictionary. If it was in the past when there were bamboo slips, it would not be appropriate to compile this dictionary, because even if it could be compiled, with the number of words to be entered in the dictionary, I'm afraid a cart of bamboo slips would not be enough."

Everyone thought about it and realized that it was true. If a dictionary was made of bamboo slips, it would be neither convenient to carry nor to look up. Only paper was the best material for making a dictionary.

Fan Zeng and others who attended the night banquet last night thought of what Li Nian said at the banquet, that the study of things and mathematics really changed the world.

If there is no study of the world to produce paper, how can we talk about making a dictionary?
Li Nian said, "The second thing is to compile teaching materials. I talked about it once last night, but many of you were not there at the time, so I will talk about it again today."

"Now that the world is unified and it is a unified country, there should be a unified writing, a unified language, a unified meaning, and naturally a unified learning."

"Li said that he was compiling textbooks for this purpose. He wanted to compile a number of books for students all over the world to study together. But please don't misunderstand me. Li has no intention of eliminating or abolishing the theories of the Hundred Schools of Thought!"

(End of this chapter)