Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 282 A century-old plan, education comes first

late at night.

The yamen of the Ministry of Rites.

In the office hall.

The Minister of Rites, Yu Yanzhao, the left minister Huang Huai, the right minister Zeng Qi, together with Yin Sizheng, deputy Sizheng Xiejin, Fang Xiaoru, as well as Hanlin minister Chen Xun, Guozijian Changke Academy wine worshipper Hu Yan and other seven people are still there. Discussing how to remedy the shortcomings of the letter cut-to-sound scheme.

While everyone was immersed in the discussion, Zhu Gaoxu, who was wearing regular clothes, surrounded by Kang Ping and Zhao Junchen, quietly walked into the side hall of the Ministry of Rites' official office through the corner door.

Behind the three people, there were several young waiters carrying food boxes. These food boxes were covered with quilts, and they were obviously filled with hot food.

When the clerks on duty noticed Zhu Gaoxu, they were about to salute when the latter raised his hand to stop him.

Since it was late at night, it was naturally impossible for Yu Yanzhao and others to discover that Zhu Gaoxu had quietly slipped into the side hall of the official room.

Zhu Gaoxu decided to listen to Yu Yanzhao and others' true views on the letter-cutting scheme, as well as the remedies they discussed together.

About half an hour later, Yu Yanzhao cleared his throat and said: "Everyone, it's getting late. I will tell you the results of our discussion now, and then we will vote by a show of hands."

Before discussing the remedy, everyone agreed on two aspects.

First, the pronunciation of letters must be set according to the pronunciation of "Guangyun" to avoid different pronunciation methods when schools in different places teach students the pronunciation of diaphragmatic letters.

Second, using only 26 Latin letters to record the phonemes and phonemes of Mandarin is bound to be difficult to achieve because the total number of letters is less than the phonemes of Mandarin.

Therefore, after more than two hours of discussion, they proposed three remedies for the second problem.

"The first measure is to use several letters together to represent a phoneme and use it as a whole. Specifically, two letters are used to form a new letter. There are four groups in total, namely zh, ch, sh, and ng."

In the side hall, Zhu Gaoxu had no special reaction after hearing this measure, because this was indeed used in later Chinese pinyin plans.

This method not only solves the problem of insufficient letters, but also avoids creating or borrowing letters from other writing systems. This is a very clever method.

However, this measure also has shortcomings. The main reason is that the word form is too long. For example, six letters are required to spell words such as "zhuang, frost, window". If these words are combined with words of the same syllable, the word form will be longer. .

Yu Yanzhao continued: "The second measure is to use additional symbols, which is to add some symbols to the original letters to form new letters."

"The advantage of this is that you can create a new letter without designing new graphics or borrowing other letters, and in some cases additional symbols can be omitted."

Zhu Gaoxu frowned after hearing this, but he did not interrupt Yu Yanzhao's reporting speech.

"The third measure is to use one character for multiple purposes, that is, changing the pronunciation of letters under certain conditions so that one letter can represent different phonemes on different occasions, thereby increasing the number of letters."

Yu Yanzhao explained: "From a rigorous point of view, as a phonetic symbol, it is best to use one symbol for one sound. After all, it is very convenient to use. But multiple uses of one symbol can not only solve the problem of not enough letters, but also eliminate the need for more letters." Adding new letters, in comparison, always has more advantages than disadvantages.”

"Because our letter syntax plans and sounds have different appearance conditions, there will never be a situation where several sounds are pronounced under the same conditions."

"For example, i can only be a vowel in front of the tip of the tongue in the syllables zi, ci, and si, can only be a vowel in front of the tip of the tongue in zhi, chi, shi, and ri, and can only be a higher vowel in front of the tongue in bei and gai. The sound that appears in situations such as bi and pian can only be high vowels in front of the tongue. These phonemes are complementary to each other and belong to the same phoneme change."

"In short, using one symbol for multiple purposes will not cause confusion and confusion in pronunciation, and the difference in pronunciation is obvious."

Having said this, Yu Yanzhao paused for a moment.

After taking a short rest, he looked around at the crowd and said, "If you agree with adding these three remedial measures, please raise your right hand."

The next moment, Fang Xiaoru, Xie Jin, Huang Huai, Hu Yan, Zeng Qi, and Chen Xun all raised their arms one after another.

Zhu Gaoxu looked through the gap in the screen between the side hall and the main hall and saw everyone raising their hands, and immediately coughed lightly.

Kang Ping reacted quickly and immediately shouted at the top of his lungs: "Your Majesty is here!"

So, Zhu Gaoxu walked out of the side hall, walked around to the outer corridor, and walked into the official hall of the Rites Yamen through the main entrance again.

"I pay my respects to Your Majesty. Long live our Emperor."

"Without courtesy." Zhu Gaoxu raised his hand and said, "You guys stayed up all night and worked tirelessly to discuss the remedial measures for the alphabetic pronunciation plan. I came to visit you quietly and brought you mutton soup to warm your body."

After everyone heard this, although they had not yet drank the mutton soup, there was a warm current in their hearts.

In the late night of November, it was already very chilly. Emperor Qianxi of the Ming Dynasty personally brought them hot soup to warm their bodies. How could it not be touching?

"I thank Your Majesty for your kindness!"

Everyone headed by Yu Yanzhao acted very sensibly and knelt down to kowtow to Zhu Gaoxu to express gratitude.

Zhu Gaoxu quickly waved his hand and said: "No need, no need."

Immediately, he glanced at Kang Ping.

Kang Ping understood and immediately ordered the servants to distribute hot mutton soup to the ministers in the official room.

"It's just a bowl of hot soup. Just drink it while it's hot. Why are you hesitating?"

Seeing Fang Xiaoru holding mutton soup in both hands, Zhu Gaoxu's eyes were filled with tears of emotion, and he immediately added: "This is my will!"

"Thank you, Your Majesty!"

Fang Xiaoru was a typical traditional scholar-official. After hearing what Zhu Gaoxu said, he respectfully said a word of thanks, then picked up the bowl and drank the hot mutton soup into his stomach one after another.

Seeing that the eldest Fang Xiaoru had already drank the hot soup, the others all expressed their gratitude to Zhu Gaoxu and drank the mutton soup in their hands.

After the servants had put away everyone's bowls, Zhu Gaoxu said: "I just listened to the three remedies proposed by the ministers for the insufficient use of diaphragm letters, and I think the second plan can be further simplified."

Seeing that everyone looked like they were willing to hear the details, Zhu Gaoxu continued to explain.

"First of all, the additional symbols need to be written back. It is inconvenient to write consecutively and it is easy to miss words. If the tone symbols are added, it will be several layers above and below, and it will feel like a stacked bed frame house. It is neither convenient nor beautiful to write."

"Although the additional symbols proposed by Zhu Qing only have two letters, ê and yu, in fact, the additional symbols of these two letters have their own particularities. For example, ê is rarely used alone, and the above can be omitted when combined with i or yu. The additional symbol for , is written as e, because e does not actually appear after i or yu, so the e in ie and yue can only be ê."

“In addition, when yu is spelled with j, q, or It’s yu. And when the finals of ü (that is, the pronunciation of the finals of the word ‘green’) become syllables alone, they become yu according to the rules, and the affixed letter ü will not appear.”

"As far as I know, ü actually only appears in the four syllables lyu, lyue, nyu, and nyue, and the number of Chinese characters involved is less than half a hundred. Moreover, the "ü" in the final list of the alphabetical pronunciation plan announced by the Ministry of Rites does not The corresponding Latin alphabet exists."

"In order to avoid confusion, I think ü should be changed to yu uniformly, y should be omitted when spelled with j, q, and x, and yung should be rewritten as yong to facilitate identification. And the word 'green' should be spelled lyu, so as not to cause confusion in usage. .”

After Yu Yanzhao and others thought about it carefully, they thought it was very reasonable and were greatly surprised. They did not expect that Zhu Gaoxu had such a high attainment in phonology.

"Your Majesty's talents are comparable to those of the sages of ancient times, but the talents of your Majesty are far behind!"

Fang Xiaoru couldn't help but bow and praise.

"Your Majesty is wise, and I admire you greatly!"

Yu Yanzhao and others bowed and agreed.

Zhu Gaoxu smiled slightly, but said nothing. He just raised his hand to signal everyone to level up.

In fact, how could the ministers know that Zhu Gaoxu only had hundreds of years more experience than them.

At present, Zhu Gaoxu's understanding of pronunciation is no better than that of a primary school student in later generations.

"The implementation of the alphabetic sound-cutting plan will improve the literacy rate of our people in Ming Dynasty. In the future, there will only be more and more readers in Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Gaoxu solemnly said: "The more scholars there are, the more talents there will be. The more talents there will be, the more powerful the Ming Dynasty will be. Only then will our Ming Dynasty be able to continue to be strong and maintain its status as a great country. Dear gentlemen, Emperor Taizu Gao once said: 'The key to governing a country is education. "First". I deeply agree with this! You must keep in mind Taizu's words and continue to work hard for the prosperity of our Ming Dynasty's education!"

"My ministers respectfully abide by His Majesty's decree!"

Yu Yanzhao, Fang Xiaoru and other seven people all bowed and received orders.

(End of this chapter)