There were no hanyu pinyin letters in ancient times. How did the ancients read books?

In ancient China, people not only paid attention to literary talent and style, but also demanded a high grasp of temperament and tone. When the ancients wrote parallel prose, Tang poetry, Song ci and Yuanqu, they all needed the creators to master the pronunciation rules of Chinese characters in order to write cadence poems.

However, there was no Pinyin in ancient China. So how did the ancients master and record the pronunciation of Chinese characters? In fact, there was a special book in ancient China called "Rhyme Book".

For example, Qieyun, Yu Yun and Guang Yun, and another elegant book, Erya, Guangya and Shiming, all involve the pronunciation of Chinese characters.

Our clever ancients also developed various phonetic notation methods, such as analogy, reading if and reading like, as well as orthography and anti-tangency.

Among them, the phonetic notation of "reverse cutting" has been used for the longest time and has the greatest influence in history. Ci Hai still uses the phonetic notation method of "direct tone".