Road to science and technology

"Louise, Louise!" Gary Donnelly reminded softly.

Dr. Banks finally came to her senses. She really hadn't noticed the angle Shang Shaojian was talking about before, so she was fascinated by it for a moment.

"I think there may be similarities, but they should be different." Dr. Banks came back to her senses and said, but since she has not studied the heptapod text deeply, she is not sure yet. .

As a linguist, she had studied Chinese and understood that ancient classical Chinese was just like the Seven Classics, with no punctuation marks at all. From this point of view, there were indeed similarities.

Thinking about this, she looked at Shang Shaojian and asked: "So, why did your Chinese develop two writing systems?"

Perhaps it was because the first words Shang Shaojian said made her fall into deep thought. Now Banks is more serious and there is less contempt on his face.

"I think it's because there was no paper in ancient times, and the ancients wanted to save space. For example, the Analects of Confucius says: 'No intention, no need, no solid, no self.' As a linguist, the doctor is also proficient in Chinese. He must know how to use this sentence. What would it be like to write in modern Chinese?" Shang Shaojian expressed his opinion with a smile. It seems that he is still somewhat educated.

However, he said this sentence in "The Analects" in Chinese, so that no one except Dr. Banks could understand what he said.

So much so that both Gary Donnelly and Colonel Webb looked at her in confusion.

Dr. Banks is also very knowledgeable. She only thought about it for a moment before replying: "The spoken Chinese should be like this: tell the facts and don't make assumptions; don't be arbitrary or willful when dealing with problems; do what is feasible; be flexible and never die. Don't be "me"-centered in everything, don't be self-righteous, and work together with the people around you to complete tasks together."

Dr. Banks said it once in Chinese, and then repeated it in English to the confused two people.

Shang Shaojian smiled kindly and said: "You see, the bamboo slips are not light. Imagine the difference in length when the ancients wrote both in the bamboo slips. I think this is why there are two writing systems!"

After understanding what Shang Shaojian meant, both Gary Donnelly and Colonel Webber stopped talking. Just now, Gary Donnelly wanted to complain about the two writing systems in Chinese, which were useless and made learning more troublesome. But after he understood it, a scroll of bamboo slips and a cart of bamboo slips naturally appeared in his mind. difference, and then he stopped talking.

He now seriously doubted that the heptapods had developed similarly.

At this time, Dr. Banks, who had been pondering for a long time, continued: "It is still different. In previous research, we have known that we cannot learn their spoken language by relying on their words, and their words are very different from English. The big difference is that the grammar of their words is a two-dimensional grammar for vision."

"A two-dimensional grammar for vision?" Shang Shaojian muttered as he entered the role and decided to play his role well.

He picked up the pen on the table and started writing on the blank paper. After a while, he raised the paper and faced Banks and asked, "Like this?"

Louise Banks saw the text on the paper and couldn't help but read: "Research shows that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading."

"Look more carefully, Dr. Banks." Shang Shaojian reminded.

Banks then looked carefully at each word, and then she was speechless, because she discovered that what Shang Shaojian actually wrote was: Research shows that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading.

Realizing that he had misread the words in a hurry to show his Chinese proficiency, Banks smiled bitterly and said: "Mr. Shang, this is different. This is just a subconscious deception for those who are familiar with Chinese characters. It is different from the words of the heptapods." It’s not the same at all.”

"Okay, then you continue." Seeing that she seemed a little excited, Shang Shaojian quickly comforted her in a gentle voice.

Dr. Banks sighed secretly. She felt a little suspicious that Mr. Shang did it on purpose, but she had no evidence.

But since Shang Shaojian used Chinese to talk about things both times, Dr. Banks decided to explain some of the differences between Qiwen and Chinese. She continued: "At some point, I also thought that Qiwen was a kind of logogram. But later I discovered that it is not accurate to say that the Seven Texts are logograms, because in ordinary logograms, each word corresponds to a word in spoken language, but the logograms of the heptapods are not as we imagined. ways to relate to their spoken language.”

At this time, Shang Shaojian was about to speak again, but Banks was keenly aware of it, and she quickly continued to speak to stop Shang Shaojian.

"Each word in the seven essays has its own meaning. When combined with other words, the meanings that can be conveyed are almost endless. Therefore, we cannot give an accurate definition of the seven essays. The sentences composed of the seven essays are simply extremely complicated. The seven essays express There is not even a punctuation mark between the sentences, and there are really no sentence breaks. The grammatical structure of the sentence completely depends on the combination of the seven articles in the sentence."

"With all due respect to Dr. Banks, so far I think the characteristics you mentioned are fully present in Chinese, especially when modern Chinese is combined with ancient Chinese. Each word has its own meaning, and the words composed of each word can later express The meanings are endless, and in ancient times, Chinese had no punctuation. Uh, okay, you go on, you go on." Shang Shaojian finally held back.

Dr. Banks resisted the urge to curse. She walked to the computer and called up several heptapod texts, then pointed and said: "These are sentences. The heptapods can put as many heptapods into sentences as they like." , or it can be glued into a big ball, and a big ball is also a sentence, or even a paragraph of text or a page of text. The difference lies in how big the area is."

After finishing speaking, Dr. Banks finally breathed a sigh of relief. She glanced at Shang Shaojian secretly and said to herself: This time, it doesn't matter if you can't speak classical Chinese!

Unexpectedly, Shang Shaojian looked at Yue Yuanzhou and asked, "Sir, look at this."

"If we calculate how many words can be packed in based on the area, then every kind of text can be used, but obviously Dr. Banks does not mean this." Yue Yuanzhou shook his head. He did not struggle with whether Chinese characters could be expressed in this way, but said: " What she probably means is that the heptapods are written in no order. The entire sentence is written at the same time. There is no situation where the first stroke is finished and then the second stroke is written. The entire sentence is written in one go. This means that long before the first stroke is written, the heptapods are written. Already know how the entire sentence is laid out, so they can convey the entire sentence’s information all at the same time.”

"Mr. Yue is right, that's it." Seeing that someone understood what she meant, Dr. Banks' heart finally fell. She no longer had to listen to Shang Shaojian speak Chinese.