Where did Chinese characters originate? Where do Chinese characters originate?

The origin of Chinese characters can be traced back to ancient times. In the beginning, the ancients passed it mainly through oral transmission. Due to the limitations of oral transmission, it cannot be saved, and there will be errors when transmitting to third parties.

Ancient tribal leaders created "symbolic writing", which at first used different simple symbols to convey different messages, and then evolved into hieroglyphs, ushering in the early era of human writing.

From Cangjie to make words.

From the ancient legend to the discovery of the oracle bone inscription more than 100 years ago, generations of Chinese scholars have been working to unravel the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.

Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, there are various theories in ancient Chinese literature, such as "knotted rope", "gossip", "pictures", "book deeds", etc., and the Yellow Emperor is also generally recorded in ancient books.

The legend of the historian Cangjie making words. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by a single person, and if Cangjie really has someone, he should be the text collator or promulgator.

The earliest carved symbols date back more than 8,000 years.

In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has published a series of oracle bone inscriptions in the Yin Ruins.

Earlier excavated materials related to the origin of Chinese characters. These materials mainly refer to primitive societies.

Carved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late and early historical societies, as well as a small number of symbols inscribed on oracle bones, jade, stone tools, etc. It can be said that together they provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.

Through systematic investigation and comparison of the carved symbols on pottery shards unearthed in more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures throughout China, he is a doctoral supervisor of Zhengzhou University.

Wang Yunzhi believes that the earliest carved symbols in China appeared at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, which has a history of more than 8,000 years.

Legend of the origin of Chinese characters:Cangjie made characters, and Cangjie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, created words according to the shape of the sun and the moon, and the footprints of birds and beasts.

The evolution of Chinese characters:It is the process of gradual standardization and stabilization of Chinese character glyphs and fonts, and the small seal makes the number of strokes of each character fixed; Lishu formed a new pen-shaped system, and the glyphs gradually became flat squares; After the birth of regular script, the glyph font of Chinese characters was stabilized, and the basic strokes of "horizontal, vertical, apostrophe, point, pinch, pick, and fold" were determined, and the shape of the strokes was further standardized, and the number of strokes and stroke order of each character were also fixed.

For more than 1,000 years, regular script has been the standard character of Chinese characters, Chinese characters are based on pictographs, with morphophonic characters as the main body of the ideographic writing system, the total number is about 10,000, of which the most commonly used is about 3,000, these more than 3,000 Chinese characters can form an infinite number of phrases, and then form a variety of sentences, after the production of Chinese characters, has had a profound impact on the surrounding countries.

Oral knowledge before the invention of writing:

There are obvious shortcomings in the spread and accumulation of socks, primitive humans used the methods of knotting ropes, carving deeds, and drawings to assist in memorization, and later used characteristic graphics to simplify and replace pictures.

The original script is formed when the pictorial symbols are simplified to a certain extent and form a specific correspondence to the language. In his Introduction to Paleography, Tang Lan divided the ancient characters into four series: the Yin Shang system, the Western Zhou system, the Six Kingdoms system, and the Qin system.

From oracle bone inscriptions to small seals, Chinese characters have undergone a change from a way of depicting images in a meticulous way to simplifying them to being easy to record and depict, and the glyphs have gradually detached themselves from the concrete images of things. The Chinese characters of this period are also known as paleographies.

Origin of Chinese Characters: From the ancient legend of Cangjie to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions more than 1,000 years BC, Chinese scholars have been working to unravel the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, various schools have always had different opinions, among which the more influential ones are:

Knotted rope said, gossip said, carved clever deed said, Cangjie word making said, carved said and picture said.

In 1927, Mr. Shen Jianshi proposed the idea that Chinese characters originated from pictures of memorization, and believed that there was a stage of origin of "character painting" before ancient Chinese characters.

Shen Jianshi's "Derivation of Characters and Paintings Before the Six Books from the Recognition of Ancient Artifacts": "Before the cover of the Six Books of Writing, there should still be a stage, which is the source of the Six Books of Writing, and is now named 'Writing and Painting Period'." Character painting is a narrative picture that evolved into writing, which has the characteristics of both drawing and writing, and initially has the function of blindly confusing the legibility of written information.

Regarding the connection and difference between the pictures and the words, Mr. Shen Jianshi said particularly incisively: "Words and paintings are images that copy things, rather than symbols that represent words. ”

Influence of Chinese characters:

As an important tool for carrying culture, there are a large number of classics written in Chinese characters. Different dialects and even languages use Chinese characters as a common writing system. In ancient Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, the Ryukyu Islands, and the Republic of Lanfang in Borneo, Chinese characters were the official document system of the country, so Han culture played an important role in the spread and sharing of surrounding civilizations throughout history.

Because the relationship between Chinese characters and pronunciation is not very close, it is relatively easy to be borrowed by other ethnic groups, such as Japan, the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam, which have all had historical stages when they could not speak Chinese and simply wrote in Chinese characters. This characteristic of Chinese characters has played a major role in maintaining a cultural circle and a people full of various dialect groups that cannot communicate with each other.

Chinese characters have had a great influence on the cultural mills of neighboring countries, forming a Chinese character cultural circle that uses Chinese characters together, such as Japan, Vietnam, the Korean Peninsula, and the Ryukyu Islands.

1. The origin of Chinese characters.

Chinese characters have a long history. It is one of the oldest scripts in the world, and one of the only surviving square scripts. As early as more than 6,000 years ago, in the late stage of primitive society, the ancestors of the Han nationality carved symbols on various utensils to remember things, and then gradually evolved into Chinese characters.

Chinese characters are derived from pictures and are readable drawings called "character pictures" or "picture characters". Later, the drawings became more and more symbolic, and gradually detached from the pictures to form pictographic Chinese characters.

2. The basic context of the evolution of Chinese characters.

In the process of long-term evolution, Chinese characters have undergone a development process from oracle bone inscriptions to golden scripts, seal scripts, official scripts and regular scripts, and gradually formed modern Chinese characters. The emergence of Lishu was a watershed moment between ancient and modern writing.

3. The Evolution of Chinese Characters.

The general trend of the evolution of Chinese characters is from complex to simplified, and the glyphs and fonts of Chinese characters are gradually standardized and stabilized. The evolution of Chinese characters can be divided into two stages: ancient and modern characters. In the paleographic stage, the sequence of the evolution of Chinese characters is oracle bone inscription, Jin script, seal script, and Qin Li.

In the modern writing stage, the sequence of the evolution of Chinese characters is Lishu and Kaishu. Lishu was prevalent in the Han Dynasty. The Wei and Jin dynasties were the stage of passing through the Yinhuai crossing from the official script to the regular script.

Regular script prevailed in the Sui and Tang dynasties. Lishu and regular script are formal fonts. In today's writing stage, that is, the Likai stage, there are also auxiliary calligraphy styles - cursive and line script.

The small seal fixes the number of strokes and glyphs of each character. Lishu formed a new pen shape system, the glyph gradually changed from a circle to a square, and the strokes changed from curved to straight. After the birth of regular script, the glyph font of Chinese characters was stabilized, the shape of the pen was further standardized, and the number of strokes and stroke order of each character were also fixed.

With the advent of regular script and the requirement of neat writing of multiple lines of Chinese characters, the squares of Chinese characters have been stereotyped, and the length and thickness of the strokes of the Chinese characters have been constrained in the box, the parts and densities of the distribution of the strokes have also been restricted, and the structure of the characters has been balanced and symmetrical. For more than a thousand years, regular script has been the standard font for Chinese characters. This is the mainstream of the evolution of the Hanjing dongzi font.

The development of auxiliary fonts cursive and xingshu is a tributary of the evolution of Chinese character fonts.

From the ancient legend of Cangjie to the discovery of the oracle bone inscription more than 100 years ago, Chinese scholars have been committed to unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, there are various sayings in ancient Chinese literature, such as "knotted rope", "gossip", "pictures", "book deeds", etc., and the legend of the Yellow Emperor's historian Cangjie making characters is also widely recorded in ancient books. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be created entirely by a single person, and if Cangjie did have a person, he should be the compiler or promulgator of the Hengxiao Servants.

There are many theories about the origin of Chinese characters, and scholars throughout the ages have expressed their own opinions, including.

1. Chinese characters originate from knotted ropes. It is believed that writing was created under the inspiration of knotting ropes in ancient times.

2. Chinese characters begin with Bagua. It is believed that the text is derived from the hexagram of Yi, such as the dry hexagram is the sky, the kun hexagram is the earth, the kan hexagram is water, and the separation hexagram is fire.

3, Cangjie looks at the turtle as a book. It is believed that Cangjie was inspired by the spirit turtle to create the text.

4. Chinese characters and pictures have the same origin. It is believed that calligraphy and painting have different names and are the same, and in the early days of writing, calligraphy is also painting, and painting is also calligraphy.

5. Chinese characters are derived from pictures. It is believed that the two are not of the same origin, the picture comes first, the text comes later, and the text is produced on the basis of the picture.

6. Chinese characters originate from the social practice of the ancestors. It is believed that the production of writing is directly derived from the primitive method of memorization.

Command Quarrel 7, the Chinese word for the West. （**）

From the oracle bone inscriptions engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones in the Shang Dynasty, to the gold inscriptions carved on bronzes in the Zhou Dynasty, to the large seals that evolved in the later years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and then to the small seals that appeared in the writing reform after Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms.

Later, the small seal was gradually replaced by the more convenient and simplified Lishu Shoushu, which later evolved into cursive, and at the same time the regular script and cursive script that shouted for rent and cash. At this point, Chinese characters have been basically finalized, and they are presented in front of the world together with China's brilliant civilization.

Chinese characters are one of the oldest scripts in the world, and it is a symbol of Chinese cultural inheritance, and the Yinxu oracle bone inscription is more than 3,000 years old.