Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 305 Greek Simplification Program

"So it should be right." Princess Jeanna thought for a while, finally nodded, and said: "The language here is not very perfect, and most of them don't have corresponding characters. Compared with it, Chinese characters do have more advantages." .But in the first place, how did it deal with the Greek competition?"

"In terms of history and cultural accumulation, Greek even surpasses Latin. I heard those Greeks claim that in ancient Rome, the Romans had already begun to learn Greek. Until the Ross area, people used Greek or its derivatives. There are already hundreds of letters to write. They should still have certain advantages, right?"

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

He glanced at Theodora: "Anyway, there are no pure Greeks, so let me tell you the truth. In fact, when we first established here, the Greek language was almost dead."

"In addition to the circle around the Aegean Sea, there are still people who speak Greek in the mountains of the Greek Peninsula. From the southeastern coast of the Black Sea to Cappadocia, there are still people who use Greek, or the Turkmen dialect recorded in Greek letters. But these People were so far away that it didn't matter where we were at the time."

"In Bulgaria and Serbia in the north, and the more distant places once ruled by Rome, the language of the local people should theoretically belong to Slavic. In Asia Minor in the east, the local language is already a combination of various Turkmen and Armenian dialects. It’s like that. Overseas areas like Alexandria and Syria have basically been thrown away. The scope of use of Greek has shrunk significantly, and it has almost returned to the era nearly 2000 years ago.”

In later generations, these Slavic languages ​​can be divided into Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, Montenegrin, etc. - of course, there are many languages ​​in it, and there is not much difference.It is not so much because of different languages ​​that form different nations and split different countries, but it is because of the need to split into multiple countries, so it is necessary to invent different nations, and then force similar dialects to be different languages.

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

"Greek at this time has already had a big problem." Guo Kang introduced: "Basically, only scholars and nobles in the city can still use the rigorous and detailed classical Greek. It is a very colloquial language. To put it simply, with the development of time, the 'separation of text and white' began."

"Originally, this was a normal situation for an ancient civilization. However, the long-term war in Greece, especially the previous hundred years, made it difficult to maintain a unified regime. Latin lords everywhere, Greek tyrants, and even Ottoman and The powers of the Slavic countries have all separated from one side and acted on their own."

"The war between them not only affected education, but also made the language more fragmented. There is no common grammar on their side, and the poor in the mountains have no money to receive formal grammar education. Therefore, even if the grammar of the classical language has been It is very strict and the structure is perfect, but only a few people are still using it.”

"For Greek, this situation is very serious. Chinese characters can use the same set of characters to write classical Chinese classics of the three ancient generations and today's vernacular market novels. But if Greek is used to write classical Chinese and vernacular, it may become Two languages."

"So, the influence of Greek at that time was actually not as great as it is now. Those Greek nobles can't even teach ordinary people outside the city, so where else can they compete with us?"

"Then how do you do it?" Princess Jeanne asked.

"At that time, the predecessors thought of 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, and removed the words caused by case, person, and tense. change, and replace it with an independent additional word."

"This makes grammar learning a lot easier and avoids possible misunderstandings caused by grammatical errors. People who can write a little basic text, even if they speak a completely different dialect, can use this set of tools to communicate. Writing documents and announcements.”

"So, you didn't want to use grammar on purpose?" Princess Jeanna said in surprise, "I thought it was the only way for everyone to express it because of their low education level."

"Grammar is as long as it doesn't affect the correct meaning." Guo Kang said: "I heard people tell jokes that when Sigismund went to a religious meeting, he made a grammatical error in his speech, so he was punished by the priests." ridicule."

"Sigismund was very angry and said 'I am the king, I am grammar', and repeatedly claimed that, as the Alemanni king, his power was above grammar. You see, even a noble of this level I can’t even understand the grammar, which shows that the impact of this thing is not very big.”

"In actual use, even if there are some errors in word order and grammar, the information transmission of this system will not be greatly affected. For example, if someone wants to report 'we need to receive thirty arrows at a certain outpost next month', you can directly Write 'a certain outpost, will take thirty arrows, the next month'. Even in this order, as long as all the key words are included, other people can understand what he expresses."

"The so-called grammar we train, we only need to ensure that they can express the meaning of this level clearly - it is not so much grammar as official document format. The remaining more advanced requirements are not something that everyone at the grassroots level must master. gone."

"This is why I say that it is only a military language, not a common language. On the one hand, it is a name problem, and on the other hand, it is also because this thing is actually a little bit meaningless when it is used as a common language." Guo Kang admitted:
"After so many years, we have also made many attempts and improvements. Many legionnaires are stationed in different places. Using this method, with the vocabulary of Chinese and local languages, they can even make gestures and guesses, and express the meaning clearly without the help of a translator. But This kind of "legion dialect", after all, is just an extremely simplified version, very imperfect, and sounds weird. Therefore, there are other higher-level methods."

"What is that?" Princess Jeanna became more and more curious.

"On the one hand, we have greatly simplified the classical Greek language based on the current spoken Greek language. On the other hand, we are indeed promoting the vernacular Chinese itself." Guo Kang said: "Although these languages ​​are still relatively difficult, they are relatively It is already considered good teaching. If you want to continue learning, it is still the main way at present.”

(End of this chapter)