Chapter 324

Looking at these unfamiliar symbols and letters, Guo Jia, Zhou Yu, and the others were all confused!

"These things are called letters; there are 26 basic ones in total. I will teach you first!"

Lin Yang spoke, and then he recited the pinyin pronunciation of the twenty-six letters!

Listening to Lin Yang explain the pronunciation of these letters, Zhou Yu, Guo Jia, and the others didn't understand!

These things!

What did they have to do with books?

"Fengxiao, these two letters can be combined. For example, for 'Li', you just need 'L' plus 'I', and when joined together like this, you can read it out!"

Speaking, Lin Yang gave examples and explained the usage of pinyin!

Pinyin!

This was one of Lin Yang's major weapons against the noble families!

After Lin Yang's demonstration and operation, the five people in the room finally understood the ingenuity of pinyin!

"Wonderful! Using these pinyin combinations to represent complex characters makes teaching much more convenient!"

Gu Yong's eyes lit up as he watched the pinyin teaching!

As the head of the Gu family, he would usually teach his own sons!

For reading and literacy, all he could do was teach character by character!

Now with this pinyin, as long as some characters were marked, people who learned pinyin could recognize them bit by bit!

"My lord, but having pinyin alone is useless!"

Guo Jia, Zhou Yu, and the others frowned, not quite understanding!

Lin Yang's pinyin indeed had advantages!

As long as one learned pinyin, one could basically understand text marked with pinyin!

But this required all future books to be marked with pinyin!

What a workload that would be!

And!

This woodblock didn't have pinyin annotations either!

"Fengxiao, this thing needs to be used in combination with another thing!"

Speaking, Lin Yang took a somewhat thick book from the wooden crate to the side!

This thing was what Lin Yang had asked Cai Yan to make!

Don't look at it as just a thin hundred pages of paper; the content on it took Cai Yan nearly a year!

And this was Cai Yan, a talented woman!

If it were an ordinary person, it would probably be even more troublesome!

"Look, this thing is called a dictionary!"

Taking out this dictionary, Lin Yang handed it to everyone present!

For a moment, upon hearing the word 'dictionary', countless eyes looked over!

Flipping open the dictionary, the characters written on it and the pinyin made everyone's expressions change!

"This, combining the corresponding characters with pinyin?!"

Guo Jia, Zhou Yu, Gu Yong, and the others looked at the dictionary in their hands in astonishment; this was crazy!

According to historical records, there were over five thousand characters in the Great Han!

Writing down over five thousand characters and marking them with pinyin!

With such a book in hand!

Didn't that mean that as long as one knew pinyin!

One would understand all the characters in the world!

"Don't be so excited; what is recorded here is just over two thousand commonly used characters!"

Calming everyone down, Lin Yang hadn't asked Cai Yan to carve them all!

Are you kidding?

Marking five thousand characters with pinyin would tire someone to death!

This wasn't the future where you could just copy a Xinhua dictionary!

In this era, the work of compiling characters was extremely troublesome!

Not to mention explaining the meanings of the characters!

Lin Yang was already pleasantly surprised that Cai Yan could finish it in nearly a year!

"My lord, how can we not be excited? With this pinyin and this dictionary, as long as it's popularized, everyone in the world will be able to read!"

Guo Jia, Cheng Yu, Zhou Yu, and the others were all scared silly!

Yes!

This shock was far greater than the paper just now!

Even if Lin Yang had one billion sheets of paper and fifty million books, they would just think 'so what'!

Although there were books!

If the common people were illiterate, it was still useless!

In this day and age, even simple literacy required a teacher!

That way, the noble families still controlled the path for ordinary people to advance!

But with the appearance of pinyin and the dictionary, it basically gave ordinary people a chance to learn characters!

One only needed to be familiar with these pinyin to use the dictionary to recognize characters!

This was simply a genius invention!

"My lord, how did you ever think of this?"

Guo Jia's mind was full of doubt and confusion!

With such a combination of moves!

It simply hit the noble families so hard they couldn't lift their heads!

"Haha, it's a secret!"

Lin Yang laughed lightly; the pinyin and dictionary weren't his own ideas!

They were thought of by the predecessors of his past life to popularize nine-year compulsory education and launch a literacy campaign!

The China of that time was almost the same as the current Eastern Han!

Ninety-nine percent of the people were illiterate!

To let ordinary people learn characters, one could only use this simplest and most basic method!

Facts proved that pinyin combined with a dictionary really achieved the goal of universal education!

Letting ninety-nine percent of people recognize Chinese characters!

The descendants of China emerged like bamboo shoots after a spring rain!

What Lin Yang wanted to do now was the same!

Perhaps he wouldn't let everyone read books, but he could let every scholar from a humble background find a path to the upper echelons!

This was the sharp sword to break the monopoly of the noble families!

"My lord, what do you intend to do?"

Zhou Yu to the side, holding pinyin in his left hand and the dictionary in his right, was completely convinced at this moment!

Sun Jian was far behind Lin Yang!

"Gongjin, I want to first popularize basic pinyin in the two provinces of Xuzhou and Yangzhou!"

Looking at Zhou Yu, Lin Yang stated his thoughts!

Now that the books and dictionaries were all finished!

Lin Yang also needed to discuss the next action plan with his civil officials!

"It doesn't need to be much every day; just learning one pinyin is enough!"

Lin Yang's goal was simple: learn one character a day, and in a month, learn all twenty-six pinyin letters!

Then learn more complex pinyin and the combined pronunciations!

"My lord might as well set up a special stall at the porridge shed; anyone who can recognize, write, and read pinyin can get an egg every day!"

Mi Zhu to the side thought for a moment and offered a suggestion!

"It doesn't need to be many; just ten people per county is enough, so the people have motivation!"