"That's right." Princess Jeanna thought for a while, and finally nodded and said: "The languages here are not very perfect, and most of them don't have corresponding characters. In comparison, Chinese characters do have more advantages. . But how did it deal with the competition from Greek in the first place?”
"In terms of history and cultural accumulation, Greek even surpasses Latin. I heard those Greeks claim that the Romans had already begun to learn Greek in the ancient Roman times. Until the Rus area, people used Greek or its derivatives There are already hundreds of letters to write with. 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: "There are no pure Greeks anyway, so I'll tell you the truth. In fact, when we first established ourselves here, our Greek language was almost broken."
"In addition to the area around the Aegean Sea, people still speak Greek in the mountainous areas 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 too far away and it had no impact on our situation at that time.”
"In Bulgaria and Serbia in the north, and in more distant places once ruled by Rome, the language of the locals should theoretically belong to Slavonic. In Asia Minor in the east, the local languages are already various Turkmen dialects and Armenian dialects Overseas areas such as Alexandria and Syria have also been basically lost. The scope of Greek use has shrunk significantly, almost returning to the era of nearly two thousand years ago."
In later generations, these Slavic languages can be divided into Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian and Montenegrin, etc. Of course, there are many languages in them, and there is not much difference. Rather than saying that different languages form different nations and separate different countries, it is better to say that it is because they need to be divided into multiple countries, so they need to invent different nations, and then force similar dialects into different languages.
However, these have nothing to do with Greece.
"There are already big problems with Greek at this time." Guo Kang said: "Basically, only scholars and nobles in the city can still use the rigorous and meticulous classical Greek. In most areas, It's a very colloquial language. To put it simply, as time goes by, the 'Wenbai separation' begins."
"Originally, this is a normal situation for an ancient civilization. However, the Greek region has been suffering from long-term wars, especially in the past hundred years or so, and it has been difficult to maintain a unified political power. The Latin lords, Greek tycoons, and even the Ottomans and The forces of various Slavic countries have divided themselves into separate parties and have their own affairs."
"The wars between them not only affected education, but also made the language more fragmented. They did not have a common grammar, and the poor people in the mountains did not have the money to receive formal grammar education. Therefore, even if the grammar of classical language has It’s very neat and well-structured, but only a few people are using it.”
"For Greek, this situation is very serious. The same set of Chinese characters can be used to write the classical Chinese classics of three generations in ancient times and the current vernacular market at the same time. But if Greek is used to write classical Chinese and vernacular, it may become two language."
"So, the influence of Greek at that time was not as great as it is now. Those Greek nobles couldn't even teach ordinary people outside the city, so how could they compete with us?"
"Then how did you do it?" Princess Jeanne asked.
"At that time, the predecessors came up with 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 those words caused by case, person, and tense. Change and replace it with a separate additional word."
"This makes grammar learning much easier and avoids possible misunderstandings caused by grammatical errors. People who can write some basic words can still use this set of tools to communicate, even if they speak completely different dialects. Writing documents and announcements.”
"So, there is no grammar on purpose?" Princess Jeanne said in surprise: "I thought it was because of the low level of education that everyone could only express themselves in this way."
"Grammar is as long as it does not affect the correct meaning." Guo Kang said: "I heard people tell a joke that when Sigismund went to attend a religious meeting, he made grammatical errors in his speech, so he was criticized by the priests. ridicule."
"Sigismund was very angry and said, 'I am the king and I am Grammar.' He also repeatedly claimed that as the king of Alemannia, his power was above Grammar. You see, even a nobleman of this level I can’t even understand the grammar, which shows that this thing doesn’t have a great impact.”
"In actual application, 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,' they can directly Write 'At a certain outpost, thirty arrows will be collected in the next month'. Even in this order, as long as all the key words are included, others can still understand what he means."
"The so-called grammar we train only needs to ensure that they can express the meaning of this level clearly - it is not so much grammar as the format of official documents. The remaining higher-level requirements are not something that all these grassroots soldiers must master. ”
"This is why I say that it is just a military language, not a lingua franca. On the one hand, it is a matter of name, and on the other hand, it is not meaningful when used as a lingua franca." Guo Kang admitted:
"Over the years, we have made many attempts and improvements. Many legionnaires are stationed in different places. Using this method, combined with vocabulary in Chinese and local languages, they can also make gestures and guesses to express their meaning clearly without the help of a translator. But this This 'Legion Talk' is, after all, just an extremely simplified version, very imperfect and sounds weird. Therefore, there are other higher-level methods."
"What is that?" Princess Jeanne became more and more curious.
"On the one hand, we have greatly simplified classical Greek based on current spoken Greek. On the other hand, we are indeed promoting the Chinese vernacular itself." Guo Kang said: "Although these languages are still relatively difficult, they are relatively It’s pretty easy to teach. If you want to continue learning, this is still the main way.”
(End of chapter)
