Early the next morning, Marin woke up refreshed and went for a run alone. As for Angela, she didn't come along because of her "unwell".
After breakfast, Marin came to the office area in front of the palace and began to deal with daily affairs. In fact, the main thing is to sign something. After all, Jeffrey is also a good hand in handling government affairs. In addition to the financial issue, Marin sent people to supervise it to prevent corruption by the old bureaucrat Jeffrey, and Marin was not willing to take care of other affairs too much.
In addition to signing and stamping, Marin has another job to do, and it is very important. That is—he needs to write teaching materials for the new school...
In terms of language, Marin does not need to spend too much time. These days, schools in Western Europe basically use the Bible as their language document. Even the children of nobles read the Latin version of the "Bible" directly from an early age. Whether you understand it or not, memorize it first. Then, the missionary in charge of teaching will explain it to you slowly.
As for some missionary schools for civilians, they will use their own languages to teach the Bible to their students. Generally speaking, only noble children would learn Latin. Of course, the children who were sent to the monastery from an early age also learned Latin.
For this reason, Marin decided to implement bilingual teaching in artisan schools in schools throughout the territory. The so-called bilingual, of course, is German and Frisian.
However, Frisian does not have its own script. Currently, it is only a spoken language. In fact, Frisian used to use an ancient runic script. However, after being conquered by the Christians, the runic script was lost. Therefore, today's Frisians use colloquial Frisian for daily communication, while educated people learn German. Because German has a perfect writing.
Marin thought for a while, and felt that since the pronunciation of Frisian is similar to that of English, it is better to use English textbooks directly...
So he sent someone to England to buy the English version of the "Bible" as a teaching material for Frisian. As for the German version, there is no need to worry. This kind of German version of the "Bible" is everywhere in Germany.
Even, in order to facilitate education, Marin also sent people to the UK to hire a group of unsatisfactory missionaries with high salaries. In the name of traveling to the European continent, they came to the artisan school in East Frisia to teach Frisian, who is very close to English. language, and listings at local churches. After all, there was a serious shortage of educated missionaries in East Frisia. The previous missionaries had to give priority to supplying the five noble schools. Therefore, those schools in the countryside are relatively short of teachers. In addition to those literate craftsmen, Marin added some down-and-out missionaries in England, and most of them were missionaries in London, so that the students could learn a pure London accent...
Of course, as a traveler with modern thinking, Marin did not forget to mark the words with phonetic symbols. Therefore, the International Phonetic Alphabet was "invented" very simply.
After spending a long time, Marin completed the commentary on the English version of the Bible. In this way, as long as the children can memorize the International Phonetic Alphabet, they can read the Bible with ease after getting the marked English version of the Bible.
However, when it was his turn to annotate the phonetic symbols in German, Marin had a difficult time. Because German has 30 letters, 4 more than English. Also, the International Phonetic Alphabet is not enough to annotate German words.
Marin had learned English in his previous life, but never German. In this life, although he can speak German, in the two lifetimes combined, he has never seen German phonetic symbols...
For this reason, Marin had to let everyone teach German casually for the time being. As for himself, he studied how to refer to the International Phonetic Alphabet and made a table of German phonetic symbols.
In addition, there are many dialects in Germany. For convenience, Marin naturally wanted to set a standard. Otherwise, it will be troublesome to add phonetic annotations. Originally, Marin planned to use the pronunciation of High Standard German, which was popular in later generations. However, high and low German Marin himself can't pronounce correctly. If he uses his own inaccurate pronunciation to explain, it will definitely be a joke.
In the end, Marin decided to simply use the Low German pronunciation popular in the northwest coast of Germany as the written standard pronunciation. Among them, the Lower Rhine region, Marin's hometown, including the Frisian region, belongs to the Lower Saxon region, and the German used is also called Low Saxony. Because, a long time ago, the Principality of Saxony once controlled a vast area in northern Germany, which is completely different from the current territory of the Principality of Saxony. Even the British are descendants of the Angles and Saxons who crossed the sea. Therefore, English is also called "Anglo-Saxon". The Saxons here refer to the Lower Saxons on the North Sea.
Once, the ancestors of the British and the Frisians lived on the North Sea of Germany. Their languages are also very close or the same. Although hundreds of thousands of years have passed, Frisian is still very close to English. Because the Frisians have been excluded from the main ethnic group in Germany for a long time, the language of the Frisians has not changed much for thousands of years.
The Low Saxon language in the Lower Saxony region is different. The Lower Saxons have been integrated into the main body of Germany. They are greatly influenced by the High German in the east and south, and gradually differ from English.
In general, however, High German is very different from English; Frisian is close to English; and Low Saxon, the Northwestern language of Low German, is somewhere between German and English.
Low Saxon, and High German, can still communicate, just speak slowly. And Low Saxon, English and Frisian, communication is a bit difficult, but there are still a lot in common. Many words are very similar, just pronounced differently. People who speak Low Saxon can also communicate with people who speak English or Frisian if they add gestures.
Therefore, if the International Phonetic Alphabet is used to annotate the Low Saxon language, the change is not too big, and it is simpler. If you use an Austrian German accent, you can't communicate with English...
Moreover, Low Saxony is widely used. Its scope of application includes the entire Lower Saxony region (later Lower Saxony), as well as the North Rhine-Westphalia region (including the Ruhr area where Marin's hometown is located), as well as the Bremen and Hamburg regions in the east, Even the western half of the Schleswig-Holstein region under Danish control. In the eastern part of the Netherlands, Low Saxon is also popular, but Dutch is also spoken in the Franconian family.
In other words, Low Saxony has a wide range of applications, and is closer to English, which is convenient for the modification and use of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Therefore, Marin finally made up his mind to use Low Saxony as the pronunciation standard for East Frisian textbooks. After adding the phonetic symbols, it is very difficult to pronounce the wrong sound...
The importance of phonetic symbols is similar to that of Chinese Pinyin in later generations of Huaxia. In fact, Hanyu Pinyin is a Chinese system imitating the International Phonetic Alphabet. Its main function is to facilitate students to recognize characters and stipulate standard pronunciation, which is very convenient.
However, the modification of the International Phonetic Alphabet into the German version cannot be done by Marin alone. He was just an ordinary undergraduate student in his previous life, not a language expert. Therefore, Marin intends to invite several scholars who are also applicable to Low Saxon to complete this work together. Even if you can't invite college students, college students from the University of Cologne in Cologne, which also belongs to the Low Saxon-speaking area, are also a good choice. After all, with the International Phonetic Alphabet as a reference, it is still possible to compile a set of German Phonetic Alphabets.
If Marin does it himself, it's not that he can't do it, it just takes more time. After all, compiling a book requires consulting a large amount of information, repeated comparison and research. As a prince, he has a lot of things to do every day, how can he have time to do these things
You must know that Marin not only plans to write a set of German phonetic symbols suitable for German, but also plans to write a set of German dictionaries similar to the later "Xinhua Dictionary", which is a huge project. Therefore, he can't do it alone, and he doesn't have that much time. However, as the editor-in-chief, he definitely wants to hang one. After all, this is a great thing that will last forever. Marin will not give such credit to others...
So, Marin put aside the German phonetic symbols and German dictionary for the time being, and started writing primary school mathematics textbooks...
Mathematics in the first to third grades of elementary school is very simple, that is, the most basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and then the four mixed operations will be learned. Marin just needs to write some easy-to-understand exercises, such as counting ducks, counting eggs, pulling radishes and other childish questions...
In addition, in the primary school mathematics books, Marin fully used modern Arabic numerals (the writing style of Arabic numerals at this time is slightly different from modern ones), and completely eliminated Roman numerals and Greek letters. Roman numerals and the Greek alphabet, of course, appear in middle school mathematics. It's just that it's still early for middle school. After all, the first grade of elementary school hasn't started yet, and Marin has plenty of time to write middle school textbooks. For now, it is enough for Marin to compile the textbooks for the first to third grades of elementary school...
Before the German phonetic symbols and German dictionary were compiled, Marin directly asked the school to teach German in the original way. As for Frisian, it is natural to use the English version of the Bible with the International Phonetic Alphabet as the teaching material. In addition, Marin also plans to send people to the UK to invite a few scholars to write a small English-Frisian dictionary, so that students can learn Frisian...
Once the phonetic symbols and dictionaries are written and put into use, language learning will be simplified many times, and it will also be convenient for teachers to teach students to write and pronounce, so that culture can spread quickly. As the "inventor" and initiator of modern phonetic symbols and new-style dictionaries, Marin's reputation will surely be unparalleled...