There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 416 The True Rhyme of Xinghua (Part 2)
Nie Yu revealed a hearty smile: "As for how to determine the elegant language, the reading pronunciation, and the dialect, I already have a plan."

Upon hearing that the emperor already had a plan, the ministers were not relieved; instead, they were all immediately filled with anxiety.

This is probably what they call word-of-mouth!

When the emperor is so confident, it basically means he's about to make decisions unilaterally, even if those decisions are based on what they consider extremely inappropriate.

As the first Minister of Rites of the new dynasty, Gu Jing was responsible for establishing the elegant language and standard pronunciation of the new dynasty. Although he was not the chief editor, he was still responsible for it to the end.

Otherwise, if things go wrong, scholars of later generations might curse him for hundreds of years.

Gu Jing was about to subtly inquire about the emperor's plans for compiling the new dynasty's official rhyme scheme.

Nie Yufu continued, “Our Great Han only covers the southern half of the country, and the local dialects are already so complex and varied, even affecting the governance of the newly restored prefecture. This is not a good thing. Since that’s the case, why not unify all the local dialects in the Xinghua Zhengyun…”

Before he could finish speaking, Gu Jing couldn't hold back any longer and blurted out, "Your Majesty, you must not... No, what I mean is, Your Majesty must not do this, and unifying the dialects of all places is also something that is absolutely impossible."

No wonder he reacted so strongly; he almost forgot the etiquette between emperor and subject. The emperor's sudden demand to unify the dialects of the whole country was a huge deal.

Even the other senior cabinet ministers present also had drastic changes in expression, but since they were not the Minister of Rites, their reactions were not as strong as Gu Jing's.

Seeing this, Nie Yu felt somewhat helpless. He had thought that making this decision would be difficult, but he hadn't expected the resistance to be so great, with even his cabinet unwilling to support it.

Unifying the national dialects sounds like a win-win situation for the country and its people, but in practice, it's not that simple, and the resistance is immense.

This brings us to the current rules governing Chinese accents. Currently, Chinese language accents generally follow a two-tiered structure: "dialect - Standard Mandarin." Even minority dialects follow this same rule, also employing a two-tiered structure of "minority dialect - Standard Mandarin."

However, this refers to the accents of later generations; in ancient times, it was entirely different. To put it simply, the ancient accents were similar to the rules of accent conversion in later generations, involving dialects being converted to correspond with the official language of the imperial court.

However, the ancient pronunciation transformation had an additional step: "dialect - reading pronunciation - official language".

The three-level structure may seem like just one more level, but the complexity of learning a new accent increases exponentially.

This three-level accent, which can be regarded as standard Mandarin by Mandarin, was called "elegant speech" in the Qin Dynasty, and later "correct pronunciation" in the Ming Dynasty.

The second level of reading pronunciation belongs to the only standard pronunciation in ancient times, and its origin is the reading pronunciation in Luoyang.

This does not refer to the Luoyang dialect, but rather to the unique chanting style used in the Imperial Academy of Luoyang during the Eastern Han Dynasty, which produced a distinctive intonation when reading aloud.

No matter how the official pronunciation of Mandarin was defined in different dynasties, the Luoyang pronunciation was the only standard. Even if the pronunciations of different regions changed over time, at most they would evolve into different branches of the local pronunciation, but the core pronunciation system was still based on the Luoyang pronunciation.

The advantage of this reading pronunciation is that even if scholars are located in different parts of the country and speak different dialects, as long as they all know the reading pronunciation, they can communicate fluently with each other.

The official pronunciation books compiled during the Sui and Tang dynasties were based on the pronunciation of Luoyang, which was used to establish the official elegant language of the court.

Because the capital of the Tang Dynasty was Chang'an, the emperors generally spoke some of the Chang'an dialect. As a result, the remonstrating officials wrote to the emperors that their pronunciation was not standard and should be corrected in time.

This system, which used the Luoyang pronunciation as the basis for elegant speech, did not change until the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

Needless to say, the Yuan Dynasty was a foreign dynasty. They compiled a "Mongolian Rhyme Dictionary," which only has fifteen rhymes and is not very related to traditional Chinese.

After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, due to the problems with the rhyme system compiled by the Yuan court, and the fact that nine out of ten Han people in the north were depopulated, Zhu Yuanzhang mistakenly believed that the elegant language originated from the Jianghuai dialect, which led to the later "Hongwu Zhengyun" being based on the Nanjing dialect.

The consequence of this was that the "Hongwu Zhengyun" could not be promoted at all. Later, someone published a book called "Jiaotai Yun", but the "Jiaotai Yun" was based on the Central Plains dialect.

The official language compiled by the puppet Qing dynasty was not based on the Luoyang pronunciation, but on the Beijing dialect, commonly known as the Beijing accent.

Now, the new Han Dynasty has compiled official standard rhymes and elegant language, and its immediate goal is to unify the dialects of various regions. This is indeed impossible to achieve under the current language rules.

It's not that it can't be done, it's that it's impossible to do.

Nie Yu remained silent for a long time, waiting for the cabinet ministers to gradually calm down from their outburst before he comforted them, saying, "I understand what you all want to say. It's nothing more than that the three levels of dialect, reading pronunciation, and elegant speech are complicated and almost impossible to unify. Moreover, these three levels of accent have a long history. If we forcibly designate a local accent as the official language, I'm afraid that no region will be able to accept it."

This is the crux of the problem, and it's why they believe it's impossible to unify dialects.

Originally, each region spoke its own dialect, and everyone lived in harmony. But suddenly, the imperial court decreed that a certain local dialect must be the official language, forcing everyone to speak it. This was bound to cause discontent. Whether it was local gentry, scholars, or ordinary people, there would be resentment, and some might even openly curse the court and the emperor.

One reason why Zhu Yuanzhang's "Hongwu Zhengyun" failed to gain widespread popularity was this. The Nanjing dialect accent in this set of rhymes was too heavy, differing greatly from the reading pronunciation and from other local dialects. Apart from the people of the Jianghuai region, very few people from other places were willing to learn it.

Gu Jing had already anticipated what the emperor wanted to say and couldn't help but advise, "Your Majesty, the new dynasty has compiled the standard rhyme scheme, so we can just use the reading pronunciation as the standard. The reading pronunciations in different regions can be mutually intelligible, so there is no need to force the standardization and unification of dialects."

Nie Yu shook his head: "What I want is not just the standardization of dialects, but for people in all regions to have a unified and standardized accent. Only when accents are standardized can people in all regions better read and write, without being limited by the threshold of pronunciation."

The goal is not simply to promote Standard Mandarin, but to enable people to read and write without being limited by their pronunciation of classical Chinese.

While reading aloud might seem convenient, allowing for fluent communication across different dialects, it could also be seen as a language tool used by ancient scholars to monopolize knowledge.

This isn't unique to the East; the West has similar things too.

In the West, if you want to learn knowledge, you also have to learn Latin first, because all Western teaching books and texts are taught in Latin.

To put it bluntly, in the West, if you want to learn mathematics, you have to learn Latin first.

In contrast, in China, if you want to learn Chinese, you first need to be fluent in English.

Nie Yu had already given his reasons and insistence. Upon hearing this, the cabinet ministers exchanged glances, feeling somewhat helpless. They knew that the emperor was about to make decisions unilaterally again.

There was no way to persuade or stop them; they could only go along with the emperor's wishes.

Seeing the atmosphere become somewhat tense, Wang Ruoyu, the Minister of War, suddenly laughed and said, "Your Majesty is not wrong. If we take the traditional reading pronunciation as the standard, then promoting the standard rhyme will not make much difference to the common people. Scholars have already learned the reading pronunciation, and this new dynasty's standard rhyme based on the reading pronunciation will still only be spoken by them. If that's the case, then what's the point of my Great Han Dynasty redefining the standard rhyme?"

Wang Ruoyu successfully persuaded the cabinet ministers. There was nothing they could do if they hadn't. The emperor made a decision, and the ministers could only obey, especially since the emperor was the founding emperor.

Gu Jing was silent for a moment, then sighed and asked, "Your Majesty, if we don't follow the pronunciation of the written language, then what dialect should be used to compile the Xinghua Zhengyun?"

"What dialect were you speaking before?" Nie Yu asked.

Gu Jing said, "Before the Ming Dynasty, almost all dynasties used the Luoyang pronunciation as the standard. Only the Ming Dynasty was different, as it used the Jianghuai dialect as the official language."

"Jianghuai dialect...and what about the puppet Qing dynasty?" Nie Yu asked again.

Gu Jing said, "The pseudo-Qing dynasty used the Beijing dialect as its standard."

Nie Yu laughed and said, "Then let's stick with the Jianghuai dialect! We'll use the Jianghuai dialect as the standard and compile the Xinghua Zhengyun for our new Han Dynasty to first standardize and unify the southern accent. As for standardizing the accent, I also have a complete set of new phonetic transcription methods to better facilitate phonetic literacy."

There's no difference between speaking Beijing dialect and Jianghuai dialect, because Nie Yu definitely can't promote Mandarin; besides him, nobody else in this era can speak it.

Standard Mandarin has only four tones, while ancient dialects generally had seven tones.

Why are Cantonese, Hokkien, and Hakka so difficult to speak in later generations? It's because these three dialects have preserved the tonal rules of the past dialects, especially the most important entering tone.

Standard Mandarin does not have entering tones.

Gu Jing was somewhat resigned to the decision to adopt Jianghuai dialect (Nanjing dialect) as the official language.

Although he wasn't the chief editor, as the Minister of Rites in charge, once this set of "Xinghua Zhengyun" was published, it was obvious that scholars all over the world would criticize him.

However, upon further reflection, as a subject, he was unable to refuse, and he could not possibly disobey the imperial decree!

Moreover, since Luo Dian and Yuan Shu have already taken the blame and drawn most of the criticism from scholars across the country, the pressure on him is already very small.

If the Xinghua Zhengyun rhyme scheme were to be successfully promoted and become the only standard Mandarin in each province, as Your Majesty desires, what would happen?
A bad reputation during one's lifetime, but a good name after death?
Furthermore, the emperor was not entirely without a backup plan. Judging from the last few sentences of His Majesty's words, it seems that he had a completely new method of phonetic transcription.

Although the existing phonetic transcription method is already quite mature, His Majesty never fights a battle he is not confident of winning, nor does he make decisions without preparation. This new phonetic transcription method is likely to be the key.

(End of this chapter)