Chapter 451

Mrs. Larry picked up a branch and began to write and draw on the ground. She first wrote down some strange symbols, like a kind of text, which everyone couldn't understand. She writes very carefully, scribbling and changing while writing, as if primary school students were dictating words.

The soft mud ground was soon covered with a large area. Mrs. Larry stopped to wipe the sweat on her forehead, looked carefully again, and said, "there should be no mistake. This is all the words I saw in the altar."

"It's a bit like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs," said Su Huilan

"It's a bit like that," said Mrs. Larry, "I first saw similar symbols on the scepter of the savage patriarch and some pottery in his house. I thought of the relationship between our mission to South Taiping and the Egyptian pyramids. At that time, I thought it was a variant of ancient Egyptian characters. But because there were too few samples, I couldn't draw a clear conclusion. Until I saw these in the altar——

I can be sure that this is a very ancient writing, which is different from the ancient Egyptian priestly writing, but it must have their origin. Before Shang Boliang deciphered the Rosetta monument, the ancient Egyptian writing has always been regarded as a simple hieroglyphic, but now we all know that it has more phonetic parts than pictorial parts, so it is actually a kind of phonetic writing with some pictographs And ideographic functions.

Ideographic characters are easy to spread but not easy to record. Ideographic characters can express accurately and deeply with less words, but it also increases the difficulty of mastering it, so it is not conducive to wide dissemination among different classes and races.

However, almost all characters in the world begin with pictographic ideograph, and then combine with the local oral language to form phonetic characters. In the process of communication, the ideographic part of the characters will gradually lose its phonetic function, and evolve into different pronunciation and symbol combinations everywhere.

In addition to China, which has entered a highly developed agricultural civilization since a very early time, and has maintained a unified dynasty for thousands of years, without fundamental division of family and country and interruption of civilization, and can retain the complex character system of Chinese characters, which has become the only ancient characters used so far, no matter the holy characters of ancient Egypt, Sumerian cuneiform or Mayan characters They have disappeared. Even if they exist, from the situation of our decoding, they have already evolved into a phonetic text.

Linguistic circles have been looking for evidence of the evolution of Egyptian holy script. We guess that before it, there should be a more abundant hieroglyphic and ideographic characters similar to the Chinese character system, which gradually evolved into the later holy script. "

"Could that be the evolution of Chinese characters?" interposed petru. He knew a little Chinese and agreed that Mrs. Larry's Chinese characters were the most complex characters in the world.

"No, it won't." as Mrs. Larry's assistant, Alice also has considerable research on philology, "There is no correlation between Chinese characters and holy script. Their structure and way of expressing meaning are completely different. Chinese characters are much more complex and ingenious than holy script. We should be glad that Chinese civilization has not been cut off. Otherwise, it will be more difficult to decipher Chinese characters than any password in the world."

"Isn't there a Chinese proverb that says' truth is always the simplest thing '? Why are Chinese characters so complex? The heart of people who use such complex things must be very complex!" petru glanced at Aoki and suhuilan. "If they were as simple, easy to learn and practical as English!"

"You think it's simple, but the Chinese don't necessarily think so!" Alice retorted. "If Western civilization hadn't dominated the world since the industrial revolution, maybe we're all speaking Chinese now!"

Petru shrugged noncommittally: "fortunately, it's not so, otherwise I must be illiterate."

Mrs. Larry shook her head and said: "The advantages of Chinese characters are obvious. Their ideographic function is very powerful and their application is more flexible. Compared with English and other languages, they can use fewer words to express richer meanings. The key point is that the word making ability of Chinese characters is much stronger than that of English. When human beings recognize more and more things and face new things, the performance of English will be dwarfed. Adding word roots will make words worse It becomes longer and longer, and the creation of new words will make our dictionary thicker and thicker. However, Chinese characters can easily create new nouns and even new adjective usages through rich ideographic functions and flexible word formation ability. So far, the number of all English words has exceeded 700000, and the vocabulary of Arabic has reached an amazing more than 10 million, and Chinese characters are used For thousands of years, there are less than 100000 words, and there are only a little more than 3000 commonly used words. "

After listening, the crow shouted, "quack! I can speak many Chinese characters quack!" and then led his neck to sing, "the whole world is learning Chinese quack... Confucius quack is becoming more and more international... The shoulder pole quack, the bench quack, the shoulder pole wants to be tied to the bench quack, the shoulder pole quack, the bench quack, the shoulder pole wants to be tied to the bench quack..."

The Chinese song sung by the crow, coupled with its strange pronunciation, made petru a little upset: "well, well, when I go out from here, I'll go to China to learn Chinese. The whole world can fucking speak Chinese!"

Mrs. Larry smiled:

"The shortcomings of Chinese characters are also obvious, as you said - difficult to learn!

Everyone is born to speak. It's not difficult to learn to speak and become proficient in conversation. You don't even need to go to school. But speaking doesn't mean you have mastered a language, and the process of civilization needs the help of language and words. For children from English speaking countries, after learning to speak and learning 26 letters, they basically master the language and can read newspapers, Can write email and tweet.

However, Chinese children must carry out systematic learning in order to truly master Chinese. Modern people may not find it difficult, but if you imagine the living conditions in ancient times and the land area of China, you will know how difficult it is to promote this language.

Language is a part of civilization, a symbol of the maturity of civilization and a catalyst for the development of civilization. To some extent, the prosperity of civilization around the Mediterranean and European civilization is inseparable from the contribution of Latin, and the uniqueness of Chinese civilization is more due to the indelible contribution of Chinese characters. However, Indo European languages and have natural advantages in communication. It can be easily accepted by people of different regions and races without the need for a unified central dynasty to implement its civilized mission and values.

So what Alice just said is not entirely right. It is not civilization that dominates language, but language that promotes civilization and even determines the mode of civilization to a certain extent. In terms of the efficiency of language communication and application in modern society and the development of globalization, English from Latin and Germanic has the most advantages, so it will become the most common language in the world. "

Petru asked puzzledly, "you say that Chinese is the most advanced language in the world and English is the best language today. What should you do? Why don't those fools of the United Nations unify the languages of the world?"

Mrs. Larry said: "the process of human civilization is very complex. It is not one-way linear, or even forward or upward. At different stages of civilization, different languages will show different vitality. Today's most suitable is English. Maybe in a few decades, the common language of the world will become Chinese or some other language."

"Oh, well, let me understand, but what does your saying have to do with our current situation? What can your paintings on the ground explain?" petru asked.