What were the seven languages before Qin Shihuang unified the characters?

In the previous article, Guo (General Theory of National History) mentioned that one of the important reasons why China can achieve "long-term stability" is the cultural identity of the Chinese nation, and the formation of this identity should first thank the first emperor Qin Shihuang who unified the writing more than 2,000 years ago. Then, before the reunification of Qin, what was the character of the seven heroes of the Warring States? Is the writing between the seven countries really to the point of not knowing each other?

Before the Warring States Period, the characters used by China people were basically the same, such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, and inscriptions on bronze in the Spring and Autumn Period of Western Zhou Dynasty. Although there were variant characters at that time as now, most people used "regular characters". However, from the 5th century BC, China entered the Warring States Period, and the war that lasted for hundreds of years not only brought about the separatist regime of princes, but even the culture began to "go its own way". Xu Shen, a scholar in the Han Dynasty, wrote in the preface to explaining words: "The princes are not unified in the past, and they hate their own rituals and music, but they all go to their classics, different clothes, different voices and different words." It means that every vassal state is unwilling to obey the Zhou royal family and change the previous unified culture into an independent system.

In fact, on the whole, the seven languages are not far apart, which has not reached the degree that the vassal States can't agree with each other, which has a lot to do with the fact that all seven languages are homologous. However, the figures of the seven countries revealed the clue of drifting away. After a long time, different countries will inevitably have different personalities.

Zhao, Wei and Han are all from Jin, so these three belong to one school, and the figures in the six countries can be summarized as Chu, Yan, Qi and Jin schools. These four factions are independent in the field. Almost all other small vassal States belong to these four factions. At this time, if you count the state of Qin, it is the five major factions.

After Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, he began to send letters to Guilin, but some locals did not know. The disunity of written language has undoubtedly hindered the economic and cultural exchanges between different places, and also affected the smooth flow of central government decrees. Therefore, Qin Shihuang ordered the implementation of "books with the same language, cars with the same track." After studying the previous characters, Li Si and others created a new character "Xiao Zhuan", and later "Li Shu" appeared, and the seven languages were unified.

If there were no unified writing by Qin Shihuang, maybe we would be as inseparable as some western countries now! What do you think of it?