Chinese characters constitute one of mankind
of oldest systems of writing, and have the most users in the world. There are numerous
Chinese characters, totaling about 60,000, with about 6,000 basis. Chinese Character
have a long history. It derived from the pictorial recording of events, know as
hieroglyph. The earliest Chinese characters discovered up to now are jiaguwen
- ancient Chinese characterd inscribled on tortoise shells or animal bones, about
3,400 years ago, which already been mature characters.
Chinese characters have undergone tremendous changes over the ages. From the earliest
form of hieroglyph to the more advanced symbol character composed of strokes, it
has experienced a process of jiaguwen, jinwen - ancient language used in
sinscription on ancient bronze objects, xiaozhuan - small seal character,
lishu - official script, and kaishu - regular script.
There are mainly four ways of creating a word as follows:
- Hieroglyph refers to the method by drawing the profile of the involved subject,
such as moon ?which looks like a curve.
- Self-explanatory characters are made up by adding self-explanatory symbols on pictographs,
or totally made up of symbols, such as blade ?, which is made up by adding a point
on the cutting edge of a knife, pointing out the position of the blade.
- Associative compounds are combination of two or more symbols to represent a new
character with a new meaning. For instance, the character bright ? is composed by
sun ?, and moon ?. Definitely, it will be bright when the sun and the moon appear
in the same place.
- Pictophonetic method is a word-format method combining one element of a character
indicationg meaning and the other pronunciation, into a new word. Form element indicates
the word's meaning and characteristic. Phonetic element indicates the pronunciation
of the word. For example, lake ?, is composed of three dots indicating water, and
hu ? indicating the pronunciation.
For thousands of years, Chinese had been writing in Complex Chinese Characters -
Traditional Chinese. However, Complex Chinese Characters are difficult to identify,
memorize and write due to their complicated strokes. From 1949, for the sake of
the popularization of education, Chinese government simplified the characters on
a large scale. There were more than 2,000 Complex Chinese Characters that were simplified
to today's apperarance. Nowaday, Simplified Chinese Character is one of the official
characters used by the UN.
In history, Chinese characters were borrowed by Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for a
long time. It has been borne out that Chinese characters are of vigorous vitality.
Reference data
- Xiaozhuan was the standard script of Qin Dynasty. This script, often used
in seals, is translated into English as "seal character". A passage written in Xiaozhuan
appears as a balanced and wellspaced series of neat columns and rows of equal squares.
- Lishu was the standard script of Han Dynasty. Being the turning point of
Chinese character evolvement history, it established the foundation of kaishu.
- Kaishu, also called zhenshu and zhengshu, appeared in late
Han Dynasty, and has been in use till now.
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