Chinese characters, also known as Chinese characters, Chinese characters, and Chinese characters, are a type of writing widely used in the Chinese cultural circle. They are ideographic morpheme-syllabic writings that were invented, created and improved by the Chinese people in ancient times. , the current exact history can be traced back to the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty around 1300 BC. Then to the small seal script of the Qin Dynasty, it was not named "Chinese characters" until the Han Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, regular script became the standard for handwriting used today - regular script. Chinese characters are the longest-used major writing system so far, and they are also the only writing systems among the major writing systems in ancient times that have been passed down to this day. Some scholars believe that Chinese characters are one of the key elements that maintain the long-term unity of northern and southern China. Some scholars also list Chinese characters as It is China’s fifth greatest invention. Chinese characters have been the main official text in all dynasties of China.

Features

Chinese characters are one of the oldest writing systems in the world. They are the written symbols that record the Chinese language. The shape gradually changes from graphics to square symbols composed of strokes, so Chinese characters are generally called "square characters". It evolved from hieroglyphics (graphic characters) into phonetic characters that also represent phonetic and meaning sounds, but the overall system is still ideographic. Therefore, Chinese characters have the characteristics of integrating image, sound and meaning. This feature is unique among world texts, so it has a unique charm. Chinese characters are the treasure of the Chinese nation’s thousands of years of culture, our lifelong mentors and helpful friends, and everyone’s spiritual home. Chinese characters can often evoke wonderful and bold associations in us, giving people a beautiful enjoyment. Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy

1. Non-Pinyin scripts. Among the scripts used in the world today, Chinese characters and Shuishi scripts are non-Pinyin scripts. In the history of mankind, writings earlier than Chinese characters include the nail-head writings of Mesopotamia and the holy writings of Egypt. However, they have long since become extinct, so Chinese characters are currently the oldest writings. The scripts used in various countries around the world are divided into two categories, namely non-pinyin scripts (Chinese characters) and Shuishi and pinyin scripts (other scripts). Some people say that Chinese characters are China's five great inventions and a miracle. Among modern writing, only Chinese characters were directly created by our ancestors. It is said that the Sanskrit alphabet was created and given to mankind by the god Brahma, but other characters were borrowed from other peoples. The Sanskrit alphabet is used to spell ancient Sanskrit and many modern Indian languages ??and Nepali. The Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Arabic alphabet are known as the three major alphabet systems in the world. English, French, Italian, etc. use Latin letters, which can be seen as borrowed from Latin letters; Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc. use Kirill letters (or Slavic letters), which are modified from Greek letters; Latin letters are also Greek Formed by transforming letters. The ancestor of the Arabic alphabet, the Aramaic alphabet, and the ancestor of the Greek alphabet, the Canaanite alphabet, were not directly created by their ancestors, but borrowed from the writing of the Semites (small square Semites). Square Semitic letters). This alphabet was borrowed from the nail-head writing of the Sumerians and modified. The nail-head script was created by the Sumerians, the holy book script was created by the Egyptians, the Chinese characters were created by the Chinese, and the water script created by Chinese ethnic minorities are not pinyin scripts. Now among the four, only Chinese characters and water scripts remain, and the other two have disappeared. Another unique feature of Chinese is its supra-dialect and supra-language features. Linguists divide the dialects in various parts of China into eight major dialect areas. Some people say that without Chinese characters, China would have split into dozens of countries. The differences between Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian in Europe are much smaller than the differences between Chinese dialects, but they are never willing to admit that their respective languages ??are different dialects of "Romance languages" because they are all independent country. Chinese characters can also transcend national boundaries. Historically, Vietnam, Korea and Japan all used Chinese characters to record their languages. The Japanese still use a mixture of kanji and kana. The Japanese use Chinese characters and have another major invention, which is to write Chinese characters and read Japanese words. Other countries can do the same if they want to. If this is really done, Chinese characters will become internationally accepted language symbols, just like mathematical symbols, which only represent meaning, not pronunciation. 2. Advantages Chinese characters are the most widely used characters in the world. According to statistics, the number of people using Chinese characters and Chinese language has reached more than 1.5 billion. Chinese characters are the oldest script still in use today. The earliest Chinese characters that can be seen and read now are oracle bone inscriptions more than 3,000 years ago.

This is already quite mature and systematic Chinese characters. Chinese characters

There is no writing in the world that has gone through many vicissitudes of life and stays young forever like Chinese characters. The ancient Egyptian holy script written 5,000 years ago is one of the earliest human writings. But it later died out, and the recorded ancient Egyptian culture was deeply buried. Sumerian cuneiform is also 5,000 years old. But after 330 AD, it also died. Famous scripts that have declined in history include Maya, Boromi and so on. Not only have Chinese characters been flourishing for a long time and stand alone among the world's writing systems, they have also continued to develop and their influence has become greater and greater. 1. Chinese characters are one of the most beautiful words in pronunciation. Chinese characters have one sound per character, and each sound is divided into four tones. Therefore, it is read loud and clear, melodious, rhythmic, and musical. It is the most beautiful language in the world. Poems written in this language have a sonorous, sharp, ups and downs beauty, especially poetry, which pays attention to level and contrast, so the poems can be particularly neat, rhythmic and catchy. Because the pronunciation of Chinese characters is loud and clear, and there are no light consonants, Chinese characters have obvious advantages in "human-machine dialogue". Some people predict that the 21st century will be the "century of Chinese characters." 2. Chinese characters are also one of the most beautiful characters. How beautiful is it? It has become an art - the art of calligraphy. The art of calligraphy of Chinese characters is unmatched by any other characters. The following ancient calligraphy works have become priceless treasures. 3. Chinese characters are easy to recognize. The human eye's field of view is always a surface, not a line, so the linear arrangement is not easy to identify; the square arrangement is clear at a glance. Pinyin text = linear text; Chinese characters = block text. Chinese characters have higher reading efficiency than Pinyin characters. 4. The meaning of Chinese characters is easy to understand and relevant. Please compare the following set of Chinese and English words: Chinese words, English words, ox, bull, cow, calf, milk. Although the meanings of these six English words are related to cows, when written and pronounced, they sound like "wind, horse, cow". To understand them, one must learn them one by one and memorize them one by one. There is no rule at all. As for Chinese words, as long as you know the word "cow", you will know that all words with "cow" are related to cattle. And because Chinese characters have a strong ability to form words, once you know a certain number of Chinese characters, you will know countless words. Even if new words are generated, they are based on the old characters, and the meanings of the words are easy to understand. The disadvantage is that in science subjects such as mathematics and physics, the expression is very weak and cumbersome. For example, calculations can only be done with the help of Arabic numerals and symbols. In terms of mechanical construction drawings, symbols can only be used. More than seventy years ago, Mr. Lu Xun said: Square Chinese characters "are a nodule on the working people of China" and "a sharp tool for the policy of obscuring the people" ("Qiejieting Essays/About New Characters - Questions and Answers"). Therefore, "China does not have written characters. Only when the proposal of Latinization came forward did we grasp the key to solving the problem." "If we don't want everyone to make sacrifices for the old written characters, we have to sacrifice the old written characters." ("Qie Jie Ting's Essays/The Rebirth of Chinese Language"). The weakness in China's modern history has caused Chinese people to be unconfident in their own traditional culture. Even people like Lu Xun and Hu Shi are not immune to this. 5. Characteristics of Chinese characters, intuitive expression of meaning. Chinese characters are pictographic characters, and their distinctive feature is that the shape and meaning of the characters are closely related, and they are obviously intuitive and expressive. The ideographic nature of Chinese characters makes them the only characters in the world that can transcend time and space. Only Chinese children can still read the "Book of Songs" written 2,500 years ago and recite "Guan Guan Jiu Jiu, on the continent of the river, a graceful lady, a gentleman likes to fight"; only Chinese teaching materials can regard Tang poetry and Song poetry as compulsory reading for children. Enlightenment materials for reading. The English of three or four hundred years ago was difficult for anyone except experts to understand. It can be seen that Chinese characters are more conducive for readers to form a direct connection between "form and meaning". The ideographic nature of Chinese characters makes them the characters with the largest amount of information per unit character in the world. Therefore, they are easy to identify and are conducive to association. This also brings great convenience to speed up reading. The modern speed reading method was first produced and developed in European and American countries. Their texts have one unique feature - they are all phonetic pinyin texts. A single letter has no meaning, and only a combination of several letters can make a person read. form words. In this way, when reading, it conforms to the chunking principle of cognitive psychology. So it is conducive to fast reading. But our characters are ideographic characters that are completely different from pinyin characters.

So, can reading materials composed of Chinese and Chinese characters be read quickly? The answer is of course a resounding yes: Chinese and Chinese characters are not only suitable for fast reading, but are even better for fast reading. Specifically speaking, there are the following major aspects: First, the ideographic nature of Chinese characters facilitates the mutual understanding of form and meaning, which provides natural favorable conditions for fast reading; secondly, as morpheme characters, Chinese characters have strong word-formation abilities and are concentrated in commonly used characters, providing good conditions for speed reading. Convenience; Thirdly, Chinese characters are orthographic characters with obvious differences in homophones and synonyms, which are also favorable conditions for fast reading; Fourthly, the writing form of Chinese characters facilitates overall recognition and is also conducive to fast reading; Fifthly, Chinese characters are complex Brain text recognition and reading give full play to the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain; finally, the syntactic characteristics of Chinese grammar make it concise and concise, easy to understand, easy to read quickly, and intuitive to express ideas. Chinese characters have fundamental characteristics that are different from other languages ??in the world. This is the particularity of Chinese grammar itself, that is, meaning combination. Whether words are combined into sentences or single sentences are combined into complex sentences, the first factor to consider is often the coordination of semantics rather than the use of grammatical forms. As long as a few key words carrying important information are roughly matched in meaning, the statement can be concise and comprehensive. To achieve the purpose of communication, these words can be combined together. This is the so-called "ideal combination". This characteristic of Chinese grammar makes it unique in structure, flexible and changeable, with many implications and emphasis on ideas. Its consistency, flexibility and simplicity are unmatched by other languages. The above-mentioned characteristics of Chinese grammar are conducive to our use of cognitive methods to perceive and understand during reading, which is very convenient for speeding up reading. The characteristics of the above six aspects of Chinese characters will undoubtedly give them considerable advantages in reading psychology compared with Pinyin characters, making the written language of Chinese characters have higher speed and efficiency in all aspects of perception and understanding, and can achieve reading speed. , coordinated development of understanding speed and memory speed, and fast reading. 3. Limitations Chinese information processing Since typewriter keyboards are not designed with Chinese character input in mind, inputting Chinese characters is often more difficult than inputting pinyin text. Chinese characters did not go through the popularization of Chinese typewriters and directly entered the stage of computer Chinese information processing. In the early days of the invention of computers, the question arose of whether Chinese characters could adapt to the computer age. Scholars who supported the Latinization of Chinese characters even used this as an argument. With the emergence of various Chinese input methods, computer input, storage, and output technologies for Chinese characters have been basically solved, greatly improving the efficiency of Chinese writing, publishing, and information retrieval. Currently, there are thousands of Chinese input methods, mainly including phonetic input and graphic input, and some are both. Speech input of Chinese characters, handwriting recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) technology have also been widely used. For example, GB 2312 (Mainland China), Big5 and CNS 11643 (Taiwan), HKSCS (Hong Kong), JIS (Japan), which contains thousands of words, and GBK (Mainland China), which contains more than 20,000 words, international standards Unicode, ISO 10646 etc. During this process, due to technical and other factors, adjustments may be made at different levels in terms of the number of words included and the fonts included. In order to solve the urgent need for characters in postal services, household registration and other fields, the Chinese government implemented a new national standard for Chinese character encoding in 2000, "Chinese Character Encoding Character Set - Expansion of the Basic Set" GB 18030-2000, which accepts Chinese characters. 27484. And it is mandatory for all computer products sold in mainland China to use this new official standard. Chinese character encoding system In order to exchange information, each region where Chinese characters are used has developed a series of Chinese character set standards. The national standard code ("national standard" is the abbreviation of the National Standard of the People's Republic of China) is used in mainland China. GB2312 contains 6763 Chinese characters, GBK contains 20912 Chinese characters, and the latest GB18030 contains 27533 Chinese characters. BIG5 code. Contains 13053 Chinese characters. One-byte or two-byte encoding used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Unicode is not well accepted by the Chinese government. The Chinese government requires that software sold in mainland China must support GB18030 encoding. In the field of international communication and software design, CJK encoding collects Chinese character sets in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. 4. Dissemination 1. The influence of Chinese characters on Japanese characters Although the Japanese nation has an ancient culture, the creation of its own characters was quite late.

For a long time, its people have used Chinese characters as a carrier to spread their thoughts and express their emotions, calling Chinese characters their "real names". In the early fifth century, phonetic symbols borrowed from Chinese characters called "kana" appeared in Japan. In the eighth century, the use of Chinese characters to mark Japanese pronunciation was relatively stable, and its symbol was the compilation of the "Man'yoshu", so it was called "Man'yo Kana". It is the basis for pure Japanese phonetic characters. Foreign Friends Tattoo

The final creation of Japanese characters was completed by Kibi Shinbe and Kobo Daishi (Kukai). Both of them had lived in Tang Dynasty China for a long time and had in-depth research on Chinese characters. The former creates Japanese "katakana" based on the phonetic radicals of Chinese characters in regular script, while the latter creates Japanese "hiragana" by using kanji characters in karate script. Although kana writing has been prevalent in Japan since the tenth century, the use of kanji has not ceased. To this day, Japanese writing, which has occupied an important position in the world, still retains more than a thousand simplified Chinese characters. 2. The influence of Chinese characters on Korean characters. Korean characters are called Hangul. Its creation and application is an important achievement of ancient Korean culture. In fact, Korea in the Middle Ages, like Japan, did not have its own written language, but used Chinese characters. After the unification of Silla, there was a slight change. Xue Cong, a contemporary, created "Lidu", which used Chinese characters to represent Korean particles and auxiliary verbs to assist in reading Chinese books. In the end, because the languages ????are different, it cannot be popularized. In the early days of the Li Dynasty, Sejong set up a proverb bureau in the palace and ordered Zheng Linzhi, Cheng Sanwen and others to formulate proverbs. They studied Korean pronunciation based on Chinese phonology and created 11 vowel letters and 17 consonant letters. In 1443 AD, "Hunminzhengyin" was announced for use. North Korea has its own written language since then. 3. The influence of Chinese characters on Vietnamese writing Before the tenth century, Vietnam was once a Chinese county. In the Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties, officials were all here to rule the area, so it was deeply influenced by Chinese culture. After Vietnam became independent, Chinese characters were used as a tool for communication among the upper class, as well as in school education and the creation of literary works. It wasn’t until the 13th century that Vietnam had its own language, the word Nan. The word Nom is a new word that expresses Vietnamese pronunciation created based on Chinese characters and using methods such as pictophonetics, pretense, and meaning. In the 15th century, the word Nan became popular throughout the country and completely replaced the Chinese character.

Number of characters

There is no accurate figure for the number of Chinese characters. It is about nearly 100,000 (the Chinese character library of Beijing Guoan Information Equipment Company has 91,251 Chinese characters). The number of Chinese characters used daily is only Thousands of words. According to statistics, 1,000 commonly used words can cover about 92% of written materials, 2,000 words can cover more than 98%, and 3,000 words have reached 99%. The statistical results of simplified and traditional Chinese are not much different. The total number of Chinese characters that have appeared in history is more than 80,000 (some say there are more than 60,000), most of which are variant characters and rare characters. The vast majority of variant characters and rare characters have died out naturally or been standardized. Except for ancient Chinese characters, they generally only appear occasionally in names of people and places. In addition, following the first batch of simplified characters, there are also a batch of "two simplified characters" that have been abolished, but there are still a few characters that are popular in society. The first statistics on the number of Chinese characters was conducted by Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty in "Shuowen Jiezi", which included 9,353 characters. Later, the "Yupian" written by King Gu Ye of the Southern Dynasties was recorded to contain 16,917 words, and the "Daguangyihui Yupian" revised on this basis was said to have 22,726 words. After that, Lei Pian, compiled by officials of the Song Dynasty, contained more characters, with 31,319 characters; Ji Yun, another book compiled by officials of the Song Dynasty, contained 53,525 characters, which was once the book with the most characters. In addition, some dictionaries also include more characters, such as the Qing Dynasty's "Kangxi Dictionary" with 47,035 characters; Japan's "Dahanwa Dictionary" with 48,902 characters and 1,062 appendices; Taiwan's "Chinese Dictionary" with 49,905 characters ; "Chinese Dictionary" contains 54,678 characters. The book with the largest number of published words in the 20th century was "Chinese Character Ocean", containing 85,000 words. Among Chinese character computer coding standards, the current largest Chinese character coding is Taiwan's "National Standard" CNS11643. Currently (4.0), it contains 76,067 verifiable Chinese characters in Traditional, Simplified, Japanese and Korean languages, but it is not universal. It is only used in a few environments such as household administration systems. The Big Five code commonly used by Taiwan and Hong Kong contains 13,053 traditional Chinese characters. GB18030 is the latest internal code character set of the People's Republic of China. GBK contains 20,912 simplified, traditional, Japanese, and Korean Chinese characters, while the early GB2312 contains 6,763 simplified Chinese characters.

Unicode's basic Chinese, Japanese and Korean unified ideographic character set contains 20,902 Chinese characters, and there are two extension areas, with a total of more than 70,000 characters. The initial Chinese character system did not have enough characters, and many things were represented by Tongjia characters, which caused great ambiguity in the expression of the characters. In order to improve the clarity of expression, Chinese characters have gone through stages of gradual complexity and a large increase in the number of characters. The excessive increase in the number of Chinese characters has caused difficulties in learning Chinese characters. The meaning that a single Chinese character can represent is limited, so many single Chinese meanings are represented by Chinese words, such as common two-character words. The current development of Chinese writing is mostly directed towards the creation of new words rather than new characters.

500 commonly used words

of, one, is, in, not, has, has, and, person, this, middle, big, for, on, individual, country, I, to, to, he, when, come, use, we, birth, arrive, make, place, in, out, on, divide, pair, become, meet, can, main, hair, year, move, with, Gong, Ye, Neng, Xia, Guo, Zi, Shuo, Yield, Seed, Surface, Er, Fang, Hou, Duo, Ding, Xing, Xue, Dharma, So, People, Obtain, Sutra, Ten, Three, The, Jin, Zhu, etc., Department, Degree, Home, Electricity, Li, Li, Ru, Shui, Hua, Gao, Zi, Er, Li, Qi, Xiao, Wu, Reality, Reality, Addition, Measurement, Du, Liang, Body, system, mechanism, when, make, point, from, industry, origin, go, handle, nature, good, should, open, it, together, return, cause, from, its, some, then, before, outside, Tian, ??Zheng, Si, day, that, society, meaning, thing, flat, shape, phase, complete, surface, between, kind, and, Guan, each, heavy, new, line, inner, number, Zheng, heart, On the contrary, you, Ming, see, original, and, what, benefit, ratio, or, but, quality, Qi, third, direction, way, life, this, change, strip, only, no, knot, solution, question, Yi, Jian, Yue, Gong, Wu, Department, Jun, Very, Qing, Zhe, Zui, Li, Dai, Xiang, Ji, Tong, And, Ti, Zhi, Ti, Party, Cheng, Zhan, Wu, Guo, Material, image, member, leather, position, enter, regular, text, total, time, product, style, live, design, and, tube, special, piece, long, seek, old, head, base, capital, edge, flow, road, level, less, figure, mountain, tong, connect, know, compare, general, group, see, plan, differentiate, she, hand, angle, period, root, theory, luck, agriculture, finger, a few, 9. District, strong, put, decide, west, be, dry, do, must, fight, first, return, then, any, take, occupy, place, team, south, give, color, light, door, that is, Bao, Zhi, Bei, Zao, Bai, Gui, Re, Ling, Qi, Hai, Kou, Dong, Dao, Qi, Pressure, Zhi, Shi, Jin, Zeng, Zheng, Ji, Jie, You, Si, Shu, Ji, Jiao, Shou, Lian, Shi, Jie, Liu, ***, Quan, Receive, Zheng, Chang, Qing, Ji, Mei, Zai, Cai, Zhuan, Geng, Shan, Feng, Qie, Da, Bai, teach, speed, flower, belt, an, field, body, car, example, true, service, tool, ten thousand, every, eye, arrive, reach, walk, accumulate, show, discuss, sound, repay, fight, complete, Class, eight, Li, Hua, Ming, Que, Cai, Ke, Zhang, Xin, Ma, Jie, Hua, Mi, Zheng, Kong, Yuan, Kuang, Jin, Ji, Wen, Chuan, Tu, Xu, Bu, Qun, Guang, Shi, Ji, Need, Duan, Yan, Jie, La, Lin, Lu, Ming, Qie, Research, Guan, Yue, Zhi, Zhuang, Sun, Suan, Di, Zhi, Yin, Zhong, Shu, Bu, Fu, Rong, Er, Xu, Ji, Shang, Fei, Experience, Connect, Break, Deep, Difficult, Near, Mine, Qian, Zhou, Wei, Su, Ji, Bei, Half, Do, Qing, Province, Lie, Xi, Xiang, Yue, Zhi, General, Shi, Gan, Lao, Jian, Tuan, Go, Suan, Li, Shi, Ke, He, Chu, Xiao, Structure, Fu, Cheng, Tai, Zhun, Jing, Value, number, rate, family, dimension, draw, select, standard, write, save, wait, hair, close, fast, effect, Si, courtyard, check, river, type, eye, king, press, grid, raise, Yi, Zhi, Pai, Layer, Piece, Shi, But, Zhuan, Zhuang, Yu, Chang, Jing, Shi, Shi, Bei, Yuan, Bao, Huo, Zhu, Tiao, Man, County, Bureau, Zhao, Shen, Red, fine, Yin, Ting, Gai, Iron, Price, Yan, Long, Fei.

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Origins

From the creation of Chinese characters by Cangjie to the oracle bone inscriptions discovered by Wang Yirong during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese scholars of all ages have been working hard to uncover The oracle bone inscriptions on the origin of Chinese characters

Mystery. Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, there are various theories in ancient Chinese literature, such as "Story", "Knotting", "Bagua", "Pictures", "Book Deed", etc. Ancient books also generally record the creation of characters by Cangjie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person. If Cangjie does exist, he should be the organizer or promulgator of writing. In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials that are earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions at Yin Ruins in Anyang and related to the origin of Chinese characters.

These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society. They also include a small amount of symbols engraved on oracle bones, jades, stone tools, etc. It can be said that they all provide new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters. By systematically examining and comparing the engraved symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures across China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest engraved symbols in China appeared at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan. , with a history of more than 8,000 years. Make a comprehensive sorting of these original materials, and then sort out some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before the writing of the Shang Dynasty. However, the situation is not that simple. In addition to the small materials from the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and the Xiaoshuangqiao site (more than 10 examples of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu and pottery inscriptions have been discovered at this site in recent years), which can be directly compared with the Yin Ruins inscriptions, other Symbols before the Shang Dynasty are scattered and scattered, with many missing links from each other. Most of the symbols are not consistent with the characters of the Shang Dynasty. There are also some symbols with strong regional colors and complex backgrounds. It was formally formed in the Central Plains region. Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains region. Chinese characters are a writing system with independent origin. It does not depend on any foreign characters for its existence. However, its origin is not single. It has gone through multiple and long-term development. About the time of entering the Xia Dynasty, the ancestors began to write Chinese characters. Based on the extensive experience of absorbing and using early symbols, he creatively invented a text symbol system for recording language. At that time, the Chinese character system matured relatively quickly. It is reported that judging from the written materials unearthed from archaeological excavations, China already had formal writing at least in the Yuxia period. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have discovered on a flat pottery pot unearthed from the Tao Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. The word "文" in calligraphy written with a brush. These symbols all belong to the basic configuration of early writing systems. Unfortunately, such unearthed writing information is still scarce. There are more than 50 kinds of inscribed symbols on the outer walls of pottery at Yangshao cultural sites such as the Banpo site that dates back about 6,000 years. They are neatly planned, have certain regularity, and have the characteristics of simple writing. They may be the germination of Chinese writing. On the pottery from the late Dahankou Culture Site and Liangjin Culture Site, about four to five thousand years ago, more neat and regular graphic carvings were found, which are early graphic characters. In the early 1980s, more complete writing was discovered on pottery excavated from the Xia cultural site in Dengfeng, Henan. This is the earliest written text of a definite era in our country that has been confirmed by scholars so far. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the commonly used writing was oracle bone inscriptions. This is a mature and systematic writing that laid the foundation for the development of Chinese characters in later generations. Although the number of characters in the later popular bronze inscriptions (golden inscriptions) increased, the shape did not change significantly. After the Spring and Autumn Period, due to the separatist rule among the princes, "writing became alienated". After the unification of the Qin Dynasty, in order to consolidate the rule, the First Emperor ordered Prime Minister Li Si, Zhongche Fu Ling Zhao Gao, Taishi Ling Hu Wujing and others to organize the writing, and based on the original Qin characters, Xiaozhuan was formulated as a standard font for use throughout the country. Later, Cheng Ben compiled a simpler clerical script based on the popular fonts at the time, and it was widely circulated across the country as a daily script. During the Cao Wei Dynasty, Zhong Yao founded Zhenshu (regular script). So far, the evolution of Chinese characters has been perfected. Not only that, but since the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the writing of Chinese characters has become a specialized art, namely calligraphy. At present, a common saying in Chinese history circles is that the origin of Chinese characters began in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. In fact, the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties are already very mature. Before that, there should be a process from emergence, development to gradual maturity. Therefore, some people advocate pushing it to the end of summer; others advocate pushing it to before Xia, each holding their own opinions. Guo Moruo pointed out in "The Dialectical Development of Ancient Characters": "When did the origin of Chinese characters begin? I think this can be indexed from the age of the Banpo Village site in Xi'an." "The age of the Banpo site is about About six thousand years ago. "The Banpo site is a typical example of Yangshao culture in the Neolithic Age." "There are often simple carvings similar to words on the Banpo painted pottery, which are completely different from the patterns on the vessels." "Although the meaning of the carvings is very different. It has not yet been clarified, but it is undoubtedly a symbol of a literal nature. "It can be said with certainty that it is the origin of Chinese writing, or the remnant of Chinese original writing." According to this, Chinese civilization should be counted as nearly six years old. millennium.

When did the Chinese writing originate? When did the oldest writing come into being? What do they mean? It is still being debated by hundreds of schools of thought. It seems that a lot of materials are needed to prove it! It is currently recognized as the earliest writing in the world. Writing is cuneiform writing that appeared in the ancient Middle East, dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. However, some symbols engraved on tortoise shells found in Jiahu, Henan, date back to 8,000 years ago [2].

Liu Shu

Liu Shu is the basic principle of Chinese character construction. The Six Books are mentioned in "Zhou Rites", but the specific contents are not explained. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen elaborated on the structural principles of the "Six Books" in "Shuowen Jiezi": pictograms, referents, understandings, pictophonetics, transfers, and borrowings. Pictogram: This method of making characters is to describe the object according to its appearance characteristics. This is the so-called "drawing the object and then interpreting it according to the body". The four characters such as sun, moon, mountain, and water were originally used to depict the sun, moon, mountain, and water, and later gradually evolved into the current shape. Melon is a pictographic character. In the word "gua", the two left strokes represent the vine, the vertical hook in the middle represents the melon, and the 捺 represents the leaf. "The collective name for Cucurbitaceae plants" is the original meaning of "melon". "Shaped like a melon". In real life, there are many things that are like a melon. For example, a "melon-skin hat" is a type of hat; a "melon-skin boat" is a type of boat. "Like cutting a melon", the fate of the melon is to be cut, and this meaning is derived from this. People use "carve up" to mean division or distribution. It also refers to the alliance of several powerful countries to divide the land of weak or underdeveloped countries. "Fool" means not smart. This word comes from the ancient "Guazi tribe". People surnamed Jiang who lived in Guazhou (Dunhuang, Gansu) during the Spring and Autumn Period were called the "Guazi tribe". They were very hard-working and would always be employed when they were hired. They work non-stop, but some people regard their honest custom as "stupid", so they become "fools". Referring to things: This refers to the method of expressing abstract things, using symbolic symbols, or adding symbols to hieroglyphics to represent a certain word. The so-called "everyone refers to his own thing and thinks so" is the same. For example, people write "upper" on it, "lower" or "blade" below it. Adding a point on the edge of the knife means that it is the sharpest here, which is the edge of the knife, etc. Phonophone: a specific shape (root) representing a unique sound in a text. For example Hu. This character can also be a root. Combined with different attribute roots, it can be synthesized into: Butterfly, Butterfly, Lake, Gourd, Hu, Hu, etc., and with the same pronunciation (some only have the same initial consonant), they express different meanings. thing. Phonograms are the most common method and charm of Chinese characters. Arrogant means "stinky", "rich" means people with land, "poor" means working with "strength", and the traditional form of "mean" is "mean", the two on the right "Ge", fighting for money, is naturally "cheap". There are three combinations of the phonograms and phonetic characters: Left phonogram and right phonogram: finger, poem, estimate, case. Left phonogram and right phonogram: rescue, apology, sword, qin. The upper shape and the lower tone: empty, dew, flower, brand. Sound form: 盛, 物, marry, ji