Chapter 52: Borrowing Sound
Early in the morning, Su Shi and Sun Shan got up. Guyu quickly helped his brother wash and brought him breakfast.
Sun Shan saw that it was salted pork and dried vegetables porridge. It tasted good and warm.
Su brought in the lunch box and said to Sun Bomin, "Dad, hurry up and get out. Don't be late."
Sun Bomin said "oh", picked up Sun Shan who had just finished his meal, and quickly walked out of the yard to Uncle Sun's house, shouting, "Brother De, it's time to go to school, come out quickly, you're late."
It was Aunt Sun who opened the door. She smiled and said, "Uncle, it's still early. De Ge'er is having breakfast."
Sun Shan called out to his third aunt, slipped into the yard, and saw his third uncle's three sons eating sweet potatoes.
De Geer picked up a big red sweet potato and ate it all up. He muttered, "Uncle, Shanzi, you guys are here too early."
Sun Bomin smiled and said, "It's late. If you go late, you will be beaten."
Sun Bomin had been beaten with a stick several times in his childhood, one of which was because of being late. Naturally, he didn't want Shanzi to be beaten. Master Zheng was kind, but he was very strict with the rules. He would beat him without mercy.
Sun Shan said, "Brother De, before we went to school, the teacher had already told us the rules of the school. If we don't go early, we will be slapped if we are late."
Zheng Tongsheng first explained the rules of the school to the freshmen, and then arranged for Zheng Bo to explain it again. Both students and parents must know the school discipline.
De Ge'er quickly finished eating the sweet potato, packed up his school supplies, and said hurriedly: "Dad, Mom, Big Brother, Second Brother, I'm going to school first, you guys eat slowly and wait for the spanking."
After he finished speaking, he pulled Sun Shan and ran out of the yard, with Sun Bomin following closely behind.
As for Uncle Sun, he had already made it clear that he would not go to pick us up.
Guang and Yong in the yard quickly finished their sweet potatoes and said anxiously, "Dad, Mom, we are going to school too."
Everyone was not nervous at first, but after Shanzi and Dege'er's actions, everyone became nervous, especially Yongge'er, who was once spanked by Zheng Tongsheng for being late.
The two of them turned around and went to Uncle Sun's house to call Qing'er out. The three brothers were all in the middle class and went to school together.
Sun Boming and his companions soon arrived at the gate of Zheng's School. Just like yesterday, Zheng Bo was already waiting there.
Sun Bomin instructed: "Shanzi, Dege'er, go in quickly, study hard, and don't cause trouble."
The last sentence was said to De Ge'er. Shanzi was dull and well-behaved, and he was content as long as others didn't provoke him.
Sun Shan, De Ge'er and Sun Bomin said goodbye, said hello to Zheng Bo, and then walked into the school. They put their lunch boxes in the kitchen before walking into the classroom.
Yang Qingbei was already there, and when he saw the two of them, he called out, "Good morning."
Sun Shan nodded and said, "Good morning, Tsinghua University and Peking University."
De Geer slid over to Yang Qingbei and saw him practicing calligraphy on paper. He said enviously, "Qingbei, your handwriting is really beautiful."
Sun Shan looked over curiously and was amazed. The words written by Yang Qingbei were in the nine-square grid. They were not beautiful, but they were all of the same size and neatly arranged. It was obvious that they were written with great care.
Yang Qingbei blushed easily because he was pale, and said shyly, "No, my writing is just average."
Sun Shan was not really a child. He knew that Yang Qingbei, a little brat, was very happy to hear the compliment. He smiled and said, "Qingbei, your writing is really beautiful. You can write it all in the grid. I can't do that. My characters are as big as cows."
De Geer shouted, "Ouch, I forgot how to write. No, I need to practice hard."
After saying this, he immediately unfolded the four treasures of the study, but replaced paper with slate.
Seeing that it was still early, Sun Shan did not practice calligraphy, but instead reviewed what he had learned yesterday. These were just twelve words, which were extremely difficult.
Sun Shan felt that his brain was so dull, and it was difficult to read it in Beijing dialect.
After reviewing it over and over again, Master Zheng finally arrived.
When Sun Shan and his two companions saw the Master come in, they immediately stood up, bowed and greeted him.
Master Zheng said kindly, "Do you remember what I taught you yesterday?"
Sun Shan and his two companions said they remembered.
Master Zheng stroked his beard with satisfaction, pointed to Sun Shan and said, "Sun Shan, recite it again, using the official language."
Twelve characters, not difficult at all, I memorized them quickly. Yang Qingbei was also able to memorize De Ge'er smoothly.
Yesterday, Master Zheng assigned us a homework, which was to copy twelve characters.
The three of them handed in their homework.
Master Zheng called out the names of the students and said, "Yang Qingbei writes the best. Not bad. Sun Shan and Sun Dingde, you need to practice harder. The stroke order is correct, but the characters are too big. You need to practice making them smaller."
Sun Shan and De Ge'er expressed their gratitude for the teacher's teachings and said they would practice hard.
After that, Master Zheng started the day's formal classes.
This time, he taught twenty-four words.
Teach students how to write and read stroke by stroke.
First read it in Guangnan dialect, explain its meaning, and tell the story in it, and then read it in Shangjing Mandarin.
Master Zheng said, "You are just beginning to learn, so I will still speak Guangnan dialect to you. After a while, I will use Shangjing dialect in class. Remember, you must learn Shangjing dialect well. If you have the opportunity in the future and go to different places, Shangjing dialect will be the common language."
Sun Shan and the other two said they understood and would definitely learn from the Master.
When Sun Shan heard Zheng Tongsheng's Mandarin with a strong Guangnan accent, he knew it was not authentic.
But what does it matter? Language, language, just make sure others can understand you. It doesn’t matter if you have a Guangnan accent or a Guangbei accent. You are not a professional anchor of CCTV.
After Master Zheng finished teaching, he went to teach the next class.
There was only one teacher in the entire Zheng's school. It seemed that the workload was quite heavy. Fortunately, there were few students, so it was easy to teach.
When De Geer saw the teacher leave, he threw himself on Sun Shan's desk and whispered, "Shanzi, the teacher taught me too much today. I don't understand some of it."
Before Sun Shan could reply, he rushed to Yang Qingbei's desk and asked in the same way: "Qingbei boy, do you know everything?"
Yang Qingbei said without even looking up: "Yes."
A concise and clear reply, a critical hit to Degeer.
De Ge'er's eyes widened and he asked in disbelief, "Really? You are not lying to me, are you?"
Before Yang Qingbei could reply, he turned around and said to Sun Shan, "Shanzi, Qingbei has learned everything."
Sun Shan nodded and said, "I can do that, too."
He raised his head and said seriously, "Brother De, you must listen carefully in class. The teacher teaches very clearly. If you don't understand, you have to find the reason yourself."
Sun Shan knew how to write the twenty-four characters, but the Beijing dialect was difficult to learn.
Sun Shan thought of a way, which was to "borrow sounds" like he did when he learned English as a child.
For example, for the English word “lunch”, Sun Shan would write “bad song” next to it.
Last night I specially asked Sun Bomin to get me several simple charcoal pencils, and put phonetic symbols on the words that I can't read or are difficult to read.
Here it is said that there is no pinyin to learn Shangjing dialect, so Master Zheng can only read one sentence and the students can learn one sentence.
It is such a clumsy and repetitive learning process, and there is no guarantee that the pronunciation is accurate.