Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 533 Speech

If the first two articles on Linear b are a beginning, used to point out a new research direction, then Liang En's third article is to start a detailed study of Linear b.

The core content of the third paper is to list vowels and consonants, which is a crucial step in translating those phonetic characters, and then make a table similar to the Japanese 50 phonetic map.

Of course this table is just a skeleton, the vowels and consonants have no real value.Just gives the relationship between these syllables.

But this is already the most important step in deciphering Linear B, and the real deciphering only needs to perfect the table and assign values ​​to these syllables.

The beginning of Linear B deciphering is similar to Ancient Egyptian, that is, the breakthrough point is a noun with a fixed pronunciation. The only difference is that Ancient Egyptian begins with a person's name, while Linear B begins with a place name.

Because the pronunciation of place names or people's names is relatively fixed, if you determine the name of the place name, you can determine some pronunciations, and then further assign corresponding values ​​to the syllable table in Liang En's hand.

This was possible because clay tablets have been discovered more than once, and because of the previous excavations in Crete, Liang En has the right to access all the materials in this regard.

And right there in those tablets, he found a word that was common in the tablets found in Crete and the Peloponnese, but not found in another tablet called the Pylos Script. to the word.

Also because of this translation, Liang En added his own point of view, saying that words with the same prefix do not mean that they are all inflections of verbs, but derivatives.

The reason for this judgment is that if it is a verb, there is no reason why it is commonly used in one place and not in another, and that word is likely to be the name of a place on Crete.

A distant relative of the linear script wall is the Cyprus linear script. The islands of Cyprus and Crete are both in the Aegean Sea, and the two scripts are also very similar.

Greek and Phoenician written in Cyprus Linear script has a bilingual stele deciphered in 1870. Cyprus Linear script is 1000 years later than Linear B and has many different symbols.

But only relying on these connections, the researchers were still able to boldly use the Cyprus linear script symbols to speculate on the place names in the Cretan linear script.

Liang En chose a four-syllable place name as a breakthrough point. According to his guess after his previous research, the first syllable is a, and the third syllable is very similar to the ni in Cyprus linear script.

So from the known content, it can be considered that this is the name of a place on Crete called Aminisos [a mi ni so]. Based on this, we know the pronunciation of the two syllables mi and so.

In this way, row n, row m, row s, column i and column o are all known.Based on this, Liang En can reasonably deduce that another place name *noso is Knossos, which is the place where the Minos palace was discovered.

In this way, the k rows of this word table are also known, and then as long as one syllable in a row or a column is deciphered, the entire row and column can be read.

In this way, the deciphering of Linear B is very easy, and the pronunciation of each syllable will be known soon. If you read those documents at this time, you will find that the pronunciation of many words is similar to Greek.

In other words, the linear script b was indeed used to write ancient Greek, which is the most important and fundamental origin of a series of European languages ​​today.

For this reason, even though University College Cork is mediocre in archaeology, it still tracked and studied the content of this aspect, so in the free questions in the second half of this speech, everyone basically focused on this aspect.

The students present could ask because they had read Liang En's previous papers, but what they saw in the papers was not very perfect, and the on-site questions could just make up for this deficiency.

This also reflects the benefits of Liang En going through the whole process before. This process gave him a clear understanding of the whole thing, so that no matter what questions the students asked him, he could quickly answer them. .

If he copied directly and simply for the sake of saving trouble, there may be situations where some questions cannot be answered at this time or some questions have not been touched at all, so it is easy to be regarded as a plagiarist.

The current situation is exactly the opposite, because Liang En can answer every question and answer very quickly, so the vague contempt that those students had for Liang En at the beginning disappeared. .

After all, not only ordinary undergraduate students came here this time, but also postgraduates and doctoral students. At the beginning, they were a bit contemptuous of people who were younger than themselves and only had an undergraduate degree.

However, following Liang En's speech today, their contempt gradually disappeared, because through these questions and answers, they saw that Liang En did have a very good academic level in this area, even better than the professor in some aspects.

In addition to academic questions about this aspect, at the end of this speech, several young students also asked some questions about Liang En’s previous novel writing, such as where his writing inspiration came from.

"These inspirations are mainly related to the previous treasure hunting work." Liang En said with a smile. "For example, the fairy tale comes from a series of found documents, and the paranormal novel related to the polar regions comes from the Arctic expedition of the Search British Expedition."

"As for the vampire novel, I found a long-lost Hungarian nobleman before and got an old castle as a gift, and then wrote this novel in order to earn some money to pay property taxes—"

"Of course, I'm still writing a new novel about vampires, and I'm also trying to earn back the property tax. I should be able to release the first one next year."

After convincing these students academically, everyone realized Liang En's multiple identities at this time, so when Liang En made the final summary of this speech, the classroom was quiet, and everyone was listening to what he was saying.

"—In modern times, there are studies on history, so daily accumulation is very important, so reading more books is a good way to improve yourself." Liang En said to everyone at the end.

After getting off the stage, Professor Hunter began to make the final conclusion, and then it was time for some free activities. Somewhat unexpectedly, many students took out their pens and notebooks at this time, hoping for Liang En's signature.

Liang En was a little confused by everyone's enthusiasm at first, but he quickly reacted and signed for everyone. Fortunately, there were not many people in the room, so he quickly completed the signing work for those who wanted to get autographs.

"Your speech was very good today." Professor Hunter said to his student just as Liang En walked out of the library and was about to go to the parking lot to pick up his car and leave. "I think we will invite you to participate in activities in this area in the future."

"Then thank you very much." Liang En, who walked to the side of the car, shook hands with his professor and said, "As long as I am free, I will definitely come if you invite me. Goodbye!"

(End of this chapter)