Last night I dreamed I was sharing tea with 秦始皇帝

Last night I dreamed I was sharing tea with 秦始皇帝 (Qin ruler who was largely responsible for a unified China and Chinese language).

Now, like many I am a struggling student of modern Chinese, and so as I was sipping away in the presence of the great emperor, I boldly faced him and said:

" 陛下 (your majesty), seeing as how you're standardizing the axle lengths and currency throughout your mighty kingdom, I really think you need to do something about these tones. Really now. For example, why don't you declare that from henceforth all verbs shall be rising tones (2), nouns are falling (4), adjectives are high (1), proper nouns are (3) and everything else whatever (5) is? Or make the tones dependent on the radicals in the hanzi. Or something, anything according to some sort of rules. It would make life soooooo much easier and no struggling student would ever forget them."

The execution was swift and merciful, but all the same I felt better having spoke my honest mind.

submitted by /u/etherified
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