Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 304 Engineering Language and War Text

However, rather than struggling with language unification, Jeanne quickly became more interested in technical details.

"I probably understand what you mean. But if you promote Chinese characters as a common language, how can you connect with the local language?" She asked: "There are many local languages ​​here, and there are differences in vocabulary and grammar between them. Are they united?"

"We don't call it a common language." Guo Kang told her: "To be precise, Chinese characters should be called 'War Characters'. It is bound to the army, not a legal common language. It's just our civil system and the relationship between the army. close, so it appears to have a great influence.”

"Isn't it the same..." Little Jeanna muttered.

"It seems that the result is the same, but when it is actually implemented, there is a big difference." Guo Kang shook his head and explained: "Forcibly promoting a text that has no foundation or even has nothing to do with the local language is of course very difficult and almost impossible to succeed. .No matter how strong we are, we can’t even count as a tribe with only a few people.

"My ancestor Yuan Ting Gong, when he first arrived in the Bulgarian fiefdom, he found that he couldn't understand what people said. Not only he couldn't understand, but Boyan Timur Khan couldn't understand either. The Golden Horde Khanate who came with them The envoy also couldn’t understand it, and even the officials sent by the Bulgarian puppet tsar to help make contact couldn’t understand the local ‘Bulgarian dialect’.” He introduced Guo Gai’s deeds at the beginning:
"But there, there are too few people who can do translations—or in that kind of place, there are no people who can do native Chinese translations at all. You have to do double or even triple translations to have a dialogue with ordinary people. This kind of communication mode Obviously not sustainable in the long run.”

"Therefore, the lords who were appointed before this place have been unstable. Because as outsiders, they can't even pass the language barrier. In name, they are appointed by the Great Khan to manage the place, but in fact they can only give the locals occasionally The tyrants gave some simple instructions. These tyrants have long been used to the two ends of the first mouse. They know that every time the Golden Horde calls, it will not last long. They just need to pay the money to deal with it. In daily management, it is fundamental Don't take them seriously."

"Ordinary lords usually rely on the soldiers they brought over to maintain this kind of local order until the soldiers can't beat the powerful armed forces, or the income brought by maintaining the rule can no longer make up for expenses. You can use Greek Talking to a few local snakes here, urging them to pay their taxes on time, is already a very conscientious manager. Ordinary people don’t have the ability, nor the mood, to talk to ordinary natives.”

"But Mr. Yuanting is a man with great ambitions. He thinks that doing this is nothing more than a decoration. So he hopes to at least bypass the local nobles and powerful people, and directly recruit a group of residents and resettle them in his own farm. Otherwise, even If you don’t have a foundation, what else can you do in the future?”

"Fortunately, he was a quick learner. He quickly mastered some local dialect, so he went to organize the people himself. He also found someone to teach them how to farm and build water conservancy. In his spare time, he also taught others boxing and martial arts, and taught him his skills. "

"At that time, he didn't really have any idea of ​​popularizing the language. It was just that he couldn't learn the local dialect at home, and sometimes he couldn't help mixing some Chinese. The locals soon discovered that they could get close to him by learning simple Chinese. It is also more convenient to learn various skills. Therefore, many people come here admiringly, and he even makes gestures and guesses, teaching them like this."

"The local tyrants are very sensitive to this, and have come to provoke him many times. But Yuan Tinggong was also a knight who traveled all over the world. In fact, a conflict of this scale was decided by a few servants and thugs. He resolved the people a few times, The rest of the guards, bandits, etc., will disperse at once."

"The so-called popularization of the lingua franca is actually the same thing."

"But aren't you talking about organizing agricultural production?" Princess Jeanne asked.

"It's all the same thing." Guo Kang didn't even feel the need to explain: "It's the same in any industry. If you can organize farming, you can basically organize other things. Anyway, it's the same system."

"But in war, the need for a unified language is not great. If you gather people from the same place together, it is enough for an officer to understand the order." Princess Jeanne said: "As for farming, the requirements are even lower. Right. On weekdays, you only need to work in a fixed field, and at most do activities in the village, and you don’t have the opportunity to communicate with people who speak other languages.”

"We were not like this at the time." Guo Kang shook his head: "Aside from anything else, we have to build water conservancy. Can people in a village repair the river harnessing project?"

"Ah?" Princess Jeanna didn't seem to have thought about the issue of river governance.She thought for a while before saying, "There should be professional engineers doing these jobs. Let them do the design, and then subcontract people from different regions to build it. Isn't it all right? As long as the contractor can understand it Design, understand the engineer's explanation, it should be fine."

Guo Kang listened and shook his head.

"I don't know what level of engineering you are talking about, but the engineering we needed to carry out at that time should have higher requirements than this." He shook his head and said: "According to the rumors of the Li family, although it was later called 'military use' words', but they were really thinking primarily about engineering."

"The people over there are too scattered. After all, it is a den of refugees. There are everything from Greeks to Kipchaks. If you divide the teams one by one, you can't command them. Moreover, their projects are not suitable for fine operations. The requirements of construction may be higher than those of war. After all, at that time, most of the troops here knew that it was enough to advance according to the order. The requirements of construction are much more detailed than this."

"As for outsourcing, we can't find anyone. Because the Li brothers themselves are the best water conservancy contractors in this area. They can't find anyone else either..."

Princess Jeanna probably didn't expect that this kind of agricultural engineering was more technically demanding than war, so she was speechless for a while.

"Our later common characters were used when they were designing and guiding everyone to build water conservancy projects according to the plan." Guo Kang told her: "The local people are basically illiterate, and there is no difference between recognizing Chinese characters and Greek. , Chinese characters are more convenient.”

"Why?" asked Princess Jeanne.

"Just treat those Chinese characters as ideographic symbols. For them, characters like 'long', 'high' and 'square' are much easier to remember than a string of Greek codes." Guo Kang is sure of this point: "Graphs have a much greater information content than encodings. So there's definitely an advantage."

"This is probably an 'engineering language'. Later, we took advantage of these characteristics and applied them to the military, and we followed the trend."

(End of this chapter)