Chapter 281 A different world

In the next few days, everyone on the ship became cold towards Liu Rushi and the three girls. They stopped pestering them for advice or listening to stories. No one even spoke to them unless necessary.

Their freedom also began to be very strictly restricted, and they were ordered to stay in a small cabin most of the time. Even when they wanted to relax and stretch their bodies, they were no longer allowed to get off the ship, even just half a step away from the ship.

Although the weather is relatively cold now and the cabin is not stuffy but even warmer, it still makes the three women uncomfortable and aggrieved.

Especially when it’s convenient!

Just thinking about the embarrassment of being in such a small space that it is difficult to avoid people and having almost no sound, is enough to make one go crazy.

But that's not the most unbearable thing!

The food they received also began to become rudimentary, no longer any different from the officers, soldiers and boatmen on the ship.

In fact, they no longer receive special care, but eat the same military meals as everyone else, and rarely see rice anymore.

In the end, they only ate dry fried noodles twice, and couldn't bear it anymore and starved for several meals. The three women, who were used to eating rice and having long been accustomed to fine food, completely gave in to hunger.

They actually began to gravitate toward northern snacks such as steamed buns and flatbreads that they had never touched before, even though they were cold and hard.

Chow mein must be the last option.

Fortunately, the drinking water they can get is always boiled clean water, so they don't have to worry about getting upset.

In this regard, this army once again proved incredibly unique.

Li Ping actually used military law to forcibly prohibit anyone from drinking raw water, regardless of soldiers or civilians.

And this has nothing to do with the swollen floating corpses that appear more and more frequently in the river, but it is said that this has been the case since Li Ping took charge of the army.

However, the increasingly frequent appearance of swollen and floating corpses in the river has also made people feel an increasingly intense atmosphere of war.

No matter how glorious Li Ping was said to have been, chasing down the million-strong bandit Zhang Xianzhong was undoubtedly a frightening journey.

In boredom and depression, the three women, who had been stuck in the cabin all day, had no choice but to look through the large number of soldiers' study books stored on the ship.

Although they had already been shocked, a closer look shocked them again.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that almost all books use abbreviations that are completely incomprehensible and even they have never seen before!

Although most of these soldiers' study books are relatively superficial in content, they are strictly classified into categories and cover everything from the simplest literacy to arithmetic, history, geography and even medicine.

It is said that these books are usually distributed to every company in Li Ping's army. Officers and soldiers study together as needed or find special custodians to borrow them.

Due to Dong Jiangpeng's factors and the fact that they are guarded by Li Ping's most elite and close guard battalion, and a large number of books that are usually not available even at the first level are also stored on their ship for the convenience of unified storage and transportation, the books on the ship are therefore more diverse.

It is complete and some of the books are quite in-depth.

As a result, there is quite a lot of content, even Liu Rushi, who has the most knowledge and miscellaneous knowledge, has often never been exposed to it.

Especially the more they read, the more unfamiliar words they come into contact with. Sometimes the number of unfamiliar words is so great that they can no longer read, so they have to frequently consult He Xiuer, who is very embarrassed.

In fact, Dong Jiangpeng is the one who knows the most and often speaks these unfamiliar words.

But since Dong Jiangpeng often stopped showing up now and always deliberately avoided them even after arriving on the boat, they had to retreat to the next best thing and ask He Xiuer, who was still not able to pull off too many faces and was also a woman.

It is indeed surprising that even Liu Rushi, a highly educated and well-informed person, cannot read.

Liu Rushi and the other three girls were also very confused.

But they can only remain confused!

Because this not only involves the rapid increase in vocabulary caused by the development of the times and the large number of proper nouns in subject books, but also involves the large number of Japanese borrowings in modern Chinese.

Although many people are disgusted with Little Japan, the large number of Japanese borrowings in modern Chinese is an unavoidable problem.

Politics, economy, culture, science, chemistry, physics, biology, military, law, society, fortifications, furniture, switching, procedures, surgery, philosophy, etc. These common words in our daily life are actually derived from Japanese.

Professor Chen Liwei, who specializes in studying this situation, estimates that there are at least 4,000 Japanese loanwords in modern Chinese common vocabulary.

Of course, some of these four thousand words are native to the Chinese language, but have been given new meanings in Japanese. For example, "physics" originally refers to "the principles of investigation of things" and is a philosophical term. In Japanese, it has become a scientific term.

Words such as economy, doctrine, society, culture, art, revolution, and production first entered Japanese from Chinese, were given modern new meanings in Japanese, and were later absorbed into Chinese.

Some of them are original to the Japanese language. For example, the word "military", a commonly used term that is inseparable from the modern army, was actually passed down during the Sino-Japanese War.

There are also Chinese characters like "ban, combination, stand, entrance, exit, square" that belong to pure Japanese language. And the words "gas, club, lymph, romance, concrete" are Chinese characters created by Japan for foreign languages.

Transliteration. As for "telephone, philosophy, art, subjectivity, symbol", it is a new translation created by Japan alone.

There are also some words, such as "information, number, estimation, purpose, failure, publication, illiteracy", which belong to Japanese Chinese, that is, words created by the Japanese using Chinese characters.

All of the above words are very commonly used by modern Chinese people. It can be said that without these words, you will not know how to speak or express your meaning.

Strictly speaking, among the 56,000 commonly used words in modern Chinese, there are 4,032 Japanese loanwords, which accounts for 7.2%. Of course, if the scope of Japanese loanwords is broadened, the number will increase.

Among the 4,000 commonly used words in the political, legal and economic fields of modern Chinese, the proportion of Japanese loanwords is as high as 38%.

This is also the reason why some Japanese people have a sense of cultural superiority when talking about Japanese loanwords in Chinese.

Because there are so many Japanese loanwords in modern Chinese, as well as the rapid increase in new vocabulary due to the development of the times and the large number of new proper nouns unique to subject books, there are almost a huge amount of vocabulary that does not exist in this era, Li Ping

It’s almost impossible to choose to leave it alone.

Moreover, when it comes to modern science and modern thought, it is impossible for him to avoid these words.

When he no longer cares about many things, Li Ping will naturally start to freely follow his own habits and directly adopt borrowingism, and then influence others around him to learn to use it.

Of course, this will inevitably make the language environment in Li Ping's army increasingly incompatible with its surroundings. The difference may be greater than the difference between dialects. After all, there are corresponding words that can be found in most dialects.

However, most of Li Ping's new "vocabularies" cannot find words that can correspond to the definitions, and must be explained using sentences. Some of them are even incomprehensible in one or two sentences.

This difference is also the biggest and most unignorable difference between Li Ping's army and those around him. It may also be the most unignorable difference in language and expression between modern Chinese and ancient Chinese.

But at the same time, this difference must also become more obvious the closer to Li Ping's inner circle.

After all, the influence of Li Ping's modern people is gradual. Those who are closer to them and who have been in Li Ping's army for a longer time will be more affected, while those from the periphery and those who have recently joined will not be so obvious or have a very small impact.

However, these modern vocabulary will also be exposed and no longer concealed in the books written by modern people such as Li Ping, Song Baolai, Gao Lei and Zhao Lanyue to promote the level of knowledge.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Liu Rushi and the three girls, who have just arrived, are confused and unable to understand.

Because there are too many differences, and the differences discovered are becoming more and more difficult to understand, the three women Liu Rushi are becoming more and more confused.

Especially here the difference in language in the book has almost reached a level that is completely incomprehensible.

Of course, they quickly understood that the root of all problems should point to the commander of this army - Li Ping.

But this is even more confusing.

Liu Rushi had a feeling that Li Ping came from a foreign land.

She told Li Xiangjun and Dong Xiaowan about this feeling, but they didn't take it seriously and thought Liu Rushi was overthinking it.

China is so big, with so many customs and customs, and so many strange people and strangers. It is not uncommon for those who don't want to study in the imperial examinations but are interested in miscellaneous studies. It is normal for them to be ignorant and ignorant.

What's more, Li Ping has a pure Chinese appearance and speaks fluent Chinese. Not to mention that he is an authentic Shandong native and is young. He has never heard of and probably has no time to visit any foreign country.

Liu Rushi had no choice but to suppress this strange feeling in her heart.

Due to the fast marching speed, Liu Rushi and her three daughters followed Li Ping's army to Badong County on this day.

After passing Badong County, they will officially enter Sichuan.

But while taking a rare brief rest here before entering Sichuan, the three Liu Rushi women also witnessed another thing that surprised them again.

Two human heads were stuck on bamboo poles and gongs were played along the road for public viewing.

According to the speaker who followed the head, the two men were soldiers from the 2nd Battalion and 6th Company of the 3rd Regiment. They robbed a family while performing a search mission in the mountains far away from the county seat. They were beheaded on the order of the Political Department.

Demonstrate military discipline to the public.

Military discipline is so strict. Although Liu Rushi and her three daughters, who have gradually come to understand it, were not too surprised, they were still touched again.

Especially when they heard that the soldiers on the ship who went to inquire for detailed information came back and told other soldiers and boatmen that the two beheaded soldiers only robbed things and did not hurt anyone, and the things they robbed were not worth a lot of money.

If they were not soldiers but civilians or camp workers in the support camp, they might just be punished by the police with flogging and multiple compensation requirements during the current march.

His life should not be lost.

But unfortunately, they are soldiers.

However, the order to execute the soldiers came from the political office in charge of the propaganda team, not Li Ping.

It is quite unexpected that Liu Rushi is the third daughter.

Liu Rushi realized that Li Ping's subordinate departments not only had the authority to handle the strictest military discipline enforcement, but also had a clear division of labor and had been giving full play to their functions.

And Li Ping does not seem to need to use such incidents to establish his personal prestige.

Although they had a lot of new emotions and thoughts, the three women soon no longer had the mood to pay attention to this matter.

They were able to rest for a day, no longer rushing on the road, and fires were lit everywhere to cook rice. The staple food today seemed to be rice, which made the three women salivate and no longer pay attention to anything else.

In fact, lighting fires everywhere and cooking rice has nothing to do with Liu Rushi and the three girls.

After Li Ping left Xiangyang, the main food he obtained was rice, and most of the civilian soldiers who followed him came from areas that only ate rice.

Since we were resting, we had enough free time, enough space, and enough firewood to collect, so we naturally had to adjust our staple food to rice, which had the largest supply.

While the three women were happily waiting to eat the fragrant rice, a strange and beautiful girl in simple clothes suddenly came to their boat accompanied by several capable soldiers.

This was the first person besides the ship's guards and Li Ping to approach them in these days, and they were not driven away.
To be continued...