Mrs. Larry picked up a branch and began to write and paint on the ground. She first wrote some strange symbols, like a kind of text, which everyone can't understand. She wrote very carefully, altering it while writing, as if a pupil was writing words silently.

The soft mud was quickly covered with a large number of dense swaths. Mrs. Larry stopped and wiped the sweat from her forehead. After reading it carefully, she said, "There should be nothing wrong. This is what I saw in the altar. All of the text."

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

"It's a bit like." Mrs. Larry said, "I first saw similar symbols on the scepter of the savage patriarch and some pottery in his house. I think of the relationship between our mission to South Pacific and the pyramids of Egypt. , I thought it was a variant of ancient Egyptian script. But because the samples were too few, it was impossible to draw a clear conclusion. Until I saw these in the altar——

I can be sure that this is a very ancient script, which is different from the priest script of ancient Egypt, but it must have a relationship with each other. Before Shang Boliang deciphered the Rosetta stele, ancient Egyptian characters were always regarded as simple hieroglyphics, but we all know now that it has more phonetic parts than pictographic parts, so it is actually a kind of phonetic The main text has a part of pictographic and ideographic functions.

The characteristic of phonetic writing is that it is easy to spread and not easy to record. Ideographs can be accurately and in-depth expressed with a smaller number of words, but it also increases the difficulty of mastering it, so it is not conducive to widespread dissemination among different classes and races.

But almost all writings in the world start from pictographic ideograms, and then combine with the local spoken language to form phonetic writings. In the process of dissemination, the ideographic part of the text will gradually lose, leaving its phonetic function, and it will evolve into different pronunciation and symbol combinations in various places.

Except that China has entered a highly developed farming civilization from a very early time, and has maintained a unified dynasty for thousands of years, there has been no fundamental division of the family and the country and the interruption of civilization. It can retain the complex writing system of Chinese characters and become the present day. Except for the only ancient writings that have been applied to this day, no matter ancient Egyptian holy scriptures, Sumerian cuneiform writings or Mayan writings have died out. Even if they exist, judging from our deciphering situation, they have already evolved into a phonetic-based text.

The linguistics community has been looking for evidence of the evolution of the Egyptian sacred script. We guess that before it, there should be a kind of text with richer pictograms and ideograms similar to the Chinese character system, which gradually evolved into the later sacred script. "

"Could it be the evolution of Chinese characters?" Petru interrupted. He knows a little bit of Chinese, and he deeply agrees that Mrs. Larry's Chinese characters are the most complex 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 sacred scripts. Their structures and ideographic methods are completely different. It is much more complicated and ingenious than the sacred script. We should be thankful that Chinese civilization has not been cut off. Otherwise, the difficulty of deciphering Chinese characters will be more difficult than any cipher in the world."

"Isn't there a Chinese proverb called'Truth is always the simplest thing'? Why are Chinese characters so complicated? People who use such complicated things must have complicated hearts!" Petru glanced at Aoki and Su Huilan. , "If they were as good as English, simple, easy to learn, and practical!"

"It's as simple as you think, people Chinese may not think so!" Alice retorted, "If Western civilization had not dominated the world since the Industrial Revolution, maybe we are all speaking Chinese now!"

Petru shrugged noncommittal: "Fortunately, this is not the case, or I must be illiterate."

Mrs. Larry shook her head and said: "The advantages of Chinese characters are obvious. Their ideographic functions are very powerful and their applications are more flexible. Compared with English and other languages, they can use fewer words to express richer meanings. The key point is that. The ability of Chinese characters to make words is much stronger than that of English. When humans recognize more and more things and face new things, the performance of English is awkward. Adding roots will make words become longer and longer and create new ones. Words will make our dictionary thicker and thicker. However, Chinese characters can easily create new nouns and even new adjective usage through their rich ideographic functions and flexible word formation capabilities. So far, the total number of English words has been Over 700,000, the Arabic vocabulary has reached a staggering 10 million, while Chinese characters have been used for thousands of years, and so far there are fewer than 100,000 characters, and there are only more than 3,000 commonly used characters."

The crow yelled after hearing, "Quaqua! I can say a lot of Chinese characters!" Then she sang her neck, "The whole world is learning Chinese quack... Confucius's quack is getting more and more international... On the bench I want to tie my pole to the bench..."

The Chinese song that Crow sings, coupled with the peculiar pronunciation, made Petru a little annoyed: "Okay, okay, I will go to China to learn Chinese when I get out from here, and the whole world will **** speak Chinese!"

Mrs. Larry smiled:

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

Everyone is born to speak, and it is not difficult to go from babbling to proficiency in conversation, even without going to school. But being able to speak does not mean that you have mastered a language, and the progress of civilization requires the assistance of language. For children in English-speaking countries, if they learn to speak, and then learn 26 letters, they can basically master the language, read newspapers, write emails, and send tweets.

However, Chinese children must learn systematically in order to truly master Chinese. Modern people may not find it difficult, but if you imagine the ancient living conditions and the size of China, you will know how difficult it is to promote this language.

Language is a part of civilization, a sign of the maturity of civilization, and a catalyst for the development of civilization. To a certain extent, the prosperity of civilizations around the Mediterranean and European civilizations cannot be separated from the contribution of Latin, and the uniqueness of Chinese civilization has an indelible credit for Chinese characters. But in terms of dissemination, ~lightnovelpub.net~Indo-European languages ​​have a natural advantage. It can be easily accepted by people of different regions and races, without the need for a unified central dynasty to promote and implement its civilized mission and values.

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

Petru asked in a puzzled way: "You say that Chinese is the most advanced language in the world for a while, and English is the best language today, so what should you do? Why don't those idiots of the United Nations treat all the languages ​​of the world? Unite?"

Mrs. Larry said: "The process of human civilization is very complicated. It is not one-way linear, or even straight forward or upward. In different stages of civilization, different languages ​​will show different vitality. Today is the most suitable one. English, maybe in a few decades, the universal language of the world will become Chinese or some other language."

"Oh, okay, just assume I understand, but what has you said so much has to do with our current situation? What do your paintings on the ground tell us?" Petru asked.