Ask Mr. Lu Xun about the destruction of characters in his essays on Seven Streets Pavilion.

The fact that the word has been handed over to the public has existed since the late Qing Dynasty. "Don't beat drums, don't knock gongs, listen to me sing a peaceful song …" is a popular song issued by Qin Wei to educate the people. In addition, the scholar-officials run some vernacular newspapers, but the idea is that as long as everyone can understand them, they don't have to write. "Shu Ren Thousand-word Course" is less likely to be written, but it is only enough for bookkeeping and letter writing. If you want to write down your thoughts, its limited words are not enough. For example, prison guards did give people a piece of land, but there were restrictions. You can only sit and lie in this circle and never run out of the set iron fence. Lao Naixuan and Wang Zhao [4 1] both have simplified characters, and they have made great progress, so they can write by sound. In the early years of the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education had to write a letter, and they were all members. The old gentleman sent a representative, and Mr. Wang was very close to him. In order to save the waste, he fought with Mr. Wu Zhihui [42], so that Mr. Wu's stomach sank and his cotton trousers fell off. But in the end, after careful consideration, I made something called "phonetic symbol". At that time, many people thought it could replace Chinese characters, but it wasn't, because it was just a simple square character, just like the Japanese "pseudonym" [43], and it was ok to put a few on it or make notes next to Chinese characters. Want to make it handsome, the ability is not enough. It will be confused and dizzy. At that time, members called it "phonetic symbol" and knew its scope of ability. Look at Japan, some advocate reducing Chinese characters, some advocate Latin pinyin, but none advocate using only "pseudonyms". Even better, it is spelled in Roman letters, and Mr. Zhao Yuanren is the best researcher. I don't quite understand. It is very clear and good to put it together with Roman characters used all over the world-even Turkey has adopted it now. But for a layman like me, it seems that spelling is too complicated. To be precise, of course you have to be complicated, but if it is very complicated, it will become "difficult" and some will hinder popularization. It's better to be simple but not rough. Here, we can study new "Latinization" methods. There is a short book "The Latinization of China's Calligraphy" in the Daily International Anthology [44], and there is a book "Speech Science" in the appendix of the second year of World Journal [45]. The price is cheap, and interested people can buy it. It has only 2800 letters, and its spelling is easy to learn. The "man" is Rhen, the "house" is Fang Z, the "I eat fruit" is Wochgoz, and the "he is a worker" is Tashgunghrhen. At present, in the experiment among overseas Chinese, only the northern dialect has achieved results. However, I think there are still many people in China who speak northern dialect instead of Beijing dialect. If a popular language is widely used in the future, the main force is probably the northern dialect. For today's sake, as long as you add and subtract a little to make it suitable for the unique sound of each place, it can also be used in any hinterland. Then, as long as you know 28 letters and learn a little spelling and writing, everyone can understand them except slackers and imbeciles. Besides, it also has the advantage of fast writing speed. Americans say that time is money; But I think: time is life. Wasting other people's time for no reason is actually killing people for money. However, people like us who sit in the air and chat are exceptions. What about specialization and generalization? Here, I met another big problem: China's remarks are very different everywhere. Give a careless distinction casually. There are five dialects: Northern Dialect, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Dialect, Xiangchuan Dialect, Minnan Dialect and Cantonese. There are still small differences among these five dialects. Do you want to write in Latin, Mandarin or dialect now? To write Mandarin, people can't; If you write a dialect, people in other places can't understand it, but it will create a gap, which is not as good as the Chinese characters commonly used in the country. This is a big disadvantage! I mean: at the beginning of the Enlightenment, every place wrote its own dialect, regardless of the difference in meaning from other places. Before the Latin script was used, our illiterate people didn't need to communicate with Chinese characters, so the new one has no disadvantages at all, but it has new advantages. At least in the same language area, we can exchange views and absorb knowledge-of course, at the same time, someone has to write some useful books. The question is whether the popular language here should be specialized or popular in the future. In the dialect, there are some meaningful words, which we call "Hua Lian". They are very interesting to use, just like classical Chinese, and listeners find them very interesting. Specialization is to develop different dialects by refining their grammar and vocabulary. This is very good for literature, and it can be made more interesting than articles that only use ordinary words. But specialization is in danger of specialization. I don't understand linguistics. You see, biology often dies once it is specialized. Many animals and plants before human beings have lost their variability because of being too specialized, and the environment has changed, so they can't cope with it and have to perish. Fortunately, we humans are not specialized animals, so please don't worry. The masses want literature as well as literature, but they should never make sacrifices for literature. Otherwise, his absurdity is not the same as asking eight tenths of China people to become illiterate and martyrs in order to preserve Chinese characters. Therefore, I think that when we are enlightened, we should use dialects, but at the same time we should gradually add ordinary grammar and vocabulary. First, the promotion of a local language is inherent, and then the promotion of a national language is added. Although the plan negotiated by several scholars in the research may not work, it is not a good idea to leave everything as it is. Now on the docks, in institutions and universities, there are indeed things that look like Mandarin. Everyone speaks neither "Mandarin" nor Beijing dialect. They all have local accents and local accents, but they are not dialects. Even if it is difficult to say, it sounds difficult, but it is always said and understood. If we sort it out and help it develop, it is also one of the popular languages, and it may be the main force in the future. I said to add something new to the dialect, and this is the source of the "new thing". When this natural and artificial language becomes common, our popular language will be roughly unified. Of course, we have to do it afterwards. Over the years, the language has become more consistent, no less than "refined words", more vivid than "classical" and more exciting in literature. This can't be done right away. Don't you think it took three or four thousand years for the Chinese characters cherished by the quintessence of Chinese culture to achieve such strange achievements? As for who will do it, it goes without saying that he is an enlightened scholar. Some people say, "People should do things for themselves!