Prefecture schools and county schools have been operating for a long time. Although there are some shortcomings, in general, they have not subverted the long-term education system. The establishment of the Imperial College reform system and the four-level education is fundamentally an overhaul of the education system that has been passed down for thousands of years. It has been sorted out, optimized, supplemented and standardized to a certain extent, just like straightening and smoothing the tortuous and bumpy road.
However, the fundamental problem that restricts the popularization of education and the development of cultural education is not only the problem of the education system, but also the problem of educational methods. To sum up in three words, it is:
Can't teach...
That’s right, you just can’t teach it.
This problem is highlighted in social studies. Children go to school and are taught in class. Once they write on the blackboard, how to pronounce this character and how to write it, they then guide the students to read and hyphenate the characters. The next day, they turn over the textbook and wonder, oh, what is the pronunciation of this character? I forgot. …
My eyes have learned, my hands have also practiced, but my brain has not memorized it. I read familiar and unfamiliar words every two days, scratching my head and head. Especially after the winter vacation, when the teacher is not around, what should you do if you encounter a word you don’t recognize?
Find daddy, he will take the hoe, mommy, there are embroidery needles there, just leave them, as time goes by, the more you will forget them. How to make students better literate has become the most important issue in social studies education. If this problem is not solved, it will be difficult to promote social studies education.
Yang Shiqi concluded: "Education begins with literacy. There is no good way to learn literacy. We can only learn and memorize it hard and consolidate it day by day."
"Is there no other way?"
Zhu Yunwen asked.
Yang Shiqi thought for a while and sighed: "There are some methods, such as the Duruo method, the Zhiyin method, and the Fanqie method. These can all be used to indicate the pronunciation of words, but no matter what method is used, there are some flaws and cannot be completely covered. All words.”
"Read Ruofa, Zhiyin, Fanqie?"
Zhu Yunwen frowned and thought deeply. He knew some of these methods, which were the wisdom of ancient Chinese people in reading and literacy.
Chinese characters are pictographs and ideograms, which are completely different from Western phonetic characters, especially some ancient Chinese characters. Even if you don’t know them, you can know their meanings if you think about it carefully:
For example, isn't the character "禾" similar to the seedlings growing in the fields? Another example is the character "禾" in arrows, isn't it the image of an arrowhead? Not to mention the mountains, rivers, sun and moon.
To learn Chinese characters, you first need to figure out the correct pronunciation. Only with accurate pronunciation can you express and communicate. Although Western pinyin did not appear in the long development of Chinese education, the Chinese people's research on pronunciation of Chinese characters has not stopped.
According to Zhu Yunwen's knowledge, during the development of Chinese characters over thousands of years, there have been no less than ten methods of notating Chinese characters, the most important of which are the pronunciation method, the zhiyin method, and the fanqie method.
Speaking of Duruofa, we have to mention China's earliest dictionary "Shuowen Jiezi". Xu Shen, as the originator of pronunciation annotation for Chinese characters, proposed Duruofa, also known as Durufa, which means pronunciation with similar pronunciation.
For example, the interpretation of the word "噙" in "Shuowen Jiezi" reads:
Kuai, swallow. From the mouth, can speak, or read quickly.
It is simple and convenient to use the word "kuai" to mark the "噙" sound.
The Duruo method is still used by many people in later generations, especially when they are new to learning foreign languages. Examples such as "Three grams of oil", "Who stole the cat meat again", and "Who is special" are typical Duruo methods. I think in the Eastern Han Dynasty, people had done this trick...
There is a problem with reading "Ruofa". Sometimes you can't find other simple words to mark it, such as "Buddha", "touch", "give", and "egg" and "chaos". If you read Ruofa directly, the pronunciation is confusing. .
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, probably before the Three Kingdoms were divided, the Zhiyin method emerged based on the Duruo method, that is, using a character with the exact same pronunciation to mark another unfamiliar character.
For example, if you don't recognize the character "涊", you can directly mark it with the character "戊" and adopt the same pronunciation. But there is also a problem with this method, that is, you need to master a man with the same pronunciation first. If you don't master this, you won't be able to straighten your pronunciation even if you want to...
During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Yan completed "Erya Sound and Meaning", where he proposed the fanqie method. Later, this method was perfected in the Sui and Tang Dynasties and was used until later pinyin notation.
The Fanqie method can be said to be the most important method of phonetic notation of Chinese characters in ancient China, whether it is "Qie Yun" in the Sui Dynasty, "Tang Yun" in the Tang Dynasty, "Guang Yun" in the Song Dynasty, or even the "Cihui" of the Ming Dynasty and the "Cihui" of the Qing Dynasty. "Kangxi Dictionary" all uses the fanqie method for phonetic notation.
The essence of the fanqie method is to use two Chinese characters and cut their pronunciation in half. The initial consonant is extracted from the first character, the finals and tones are extracted from the latter character, and then spliced into the pronunciation of one character.
For example: altar, just dry cutting.
To mark altar, you can combine the initial consonant t of "tu" with the final an of "qian", and then the pronunciation of "tan".
Although there is no pinyin, the method is like this.
But there are also problems with this method. Some Chinese characters are complex and have many strokes. When cutting the characters, no matter where you cut the knife, if you are not sure, it will be cut into other characters...
But overall, the fanqie method is still the mainstream and a relatively scientific notation method. However, no matter which method is used, there is a condition: you must first know some basic characters...
Faced with this thorny problem, Zhu Yunwen decided to teach a lesson and ordered people to build a bracket on the east side of the high platform and hang a blackboard. Then he ordered people to drag Zhu Wenkui and Han Xiayu from the palace to the Imperial College.
"Now, sir, please write on the blackboard. I will mark it briefly and order Wen Kui and Xia Yu to read it. If there is any gentleman whose words they cannot read, or if they read them wrongly, I will give you five taels for each word."
Zhu Yunwen wrote the book.
Yang Shiqi frowned and looked at Zhu Wenkui and Han Xiayu carefully. They were both children. How many words could they read?
But strangely, Zhu Wenkui breathed a sigh of relief, and Han Xiayu smiled at Zhu Wenkui.
Could there be other mysteries?
Zhang Bozhi stood up and shouted: "I want to receive dozens of taels of silver and try to write some difficult words."
After finishing speaking, Zhang Bozhi stood up and walked to the blackboard, picked up the chalk, thought for a moment, and then wrote four words:
Bright and dark.
Zhu Yunwen smiled slightly. These four words were taken from Qu Yuan's "Heavenly Questions".
After Zhang Bozhi finished writing, others came on stage one after another. More than 200 words were quickly written on the blackboard, mostly rare and difficult words.
Zhu Yunwen looked at everyone and said: "The anti-cut method has its problems, but if we innovate on the basis of the anti-cut method, another labeling method will be formed. You may wish to see if this method is suitable."
Picking up the chalk, Zhu Yunwen marked the pinyin and intonation of each word on the blackboard.
Yang Shiqi squinted and looked at it. Weird symbols that didn't look like Chinese characters kept appearing. Look carefully, aren't these characters that appear in Western classics?
There are many Western classics in Qintian Prison written with this symbol.
Mahama, the dean of the Imperial Academy of Mathematics, was even more shocked. He was from Huihui and was proficient in Western scripts. Wasn't Zhu Yunwen using Western Latin scripts at this time? Western Catholicism lists Latin as the first official language, and many documents are written in Latin.
But if you look closely, you will see that these incredible combinations of symbols make no sense at all in Latin.
What exactly is going on?
Mahama was a little numb. He clearly knew the Latin alphabet, but at this moment, he couldn't spell a single word.
Those who are proficient in Latin don't understand, and others are even more confused and don't know why.
After Zhu Yunwen finished marking, he sighed secretly. He originally thought of using pinyin as the Zhu family's family education, but when he thought about it carefully, the Zhu family's empire was supported by countless families. They only cared about themselves and not the country. What kind of monarch is this?
Power is a public instrument, and education is the foundation of the country.
Hiding pinyin in the harem does not have much practical significance. It is better to let it go to the people.
Chinese pinyin and phonetic notation are not imported from the West, but the result of the Chinese combining the Latin alphabet with the fanqie method. It is a creation of the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures. This is a set of nearly perfect phonetic notation, and it is also the fastest way for students to learn to read. of a road.
For the sake of education in the Ming Dynasty, it can only be used.
Zhu Yunwen turned around and said to Zhu Wenkui and Han Xiayu: "Read half of it alone, be careful."
Zhu Wenkui stepped forward easily. He didn't recognize some words, but he was already familiar with the pinyin. As long as he spelled it silently, he could read it out with his mouth. Although it was a little slow, the words were correct and the tone was precise, which shocked everyone.
It is impossible for a child of one, four or five years old to recognize so many uncommon words, but Zhu Wenkui read them out clearly. When it was Han Xiayu's turn, he was even more eloquent. After reading, he was still unsatisfied. Compared with the content he studied with Zhu Wenkui, this assessment was much simpler...
"How is this going?"
Yang Changfeng could hardly believe his ears.
Zou Ji also knew that it was impossible for a child to recognize so many new words. No matter how good Zhu Wenkui was, he could not miss every word and every sound. After all, he was just a child!
Zhang Bozhi stared blankly, Sun Wenju was stunned, and even people like Xie Jin, Xia Yuanji, Chen Di, and Yang Shiqi were deeply shocked.
Zhu Yunwen looked at the noisy venue, raised his hand with a smile, lowered his voice, and said: "I believe that some of the people here can recognize that the symbols on the blackboard are Latin and Western characters. But I use them in The Latin here has a different pronunciation from the Latin you know, its name is Pinyin."
"Pinyin?"
Everyone was confused and at a loss.
Zhu Yunwen explained: “The so-called pinyin means that Chinese characters are marked with pinyin symbols. Before students learn Chinese characters, they must first learn pinyin. As long as they master these pinyin and mark them next to the words, students can clearly understand them. Read unfamiliar characters. There are a total of sixty-three pinyin. Mastering the sixty-three pinyin will open the door to learning Chinese characters. Compared with the fanqie method, this method is more suitable for beginners."
Only sixty-three?
Yang Shiqi's eyes flashed with light, how could there be such knowledge in the world?
"Your Majesty, this kind of knowledge has never been seen in ancient times. Who created it?"
Chen Di wanted to know, and everyone wanted to know too.
Zhu Yunwen smiled indifferently and looked at Zhu Wenkui. Zhu Wenkui took a step forward and said to everyone: "Father taught me that this set of Chinese Pinyin was created by Mr. Zhou Youguangzhou..."
PS:
I’m adding an update today to thank v Shameless v readers for their rewards, my friends for their recognition and support, and everyone for their company. Jingxue worked hard and tried her best to update everything after finishing the work in October.
