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Origin of Chinese characters

Characters originated in the Shang Dynasty

By 张聪聪Published 3 years ago 3 min read

It is said that a long time ago, Cangjie was the historian of the emperor. He had the same face as the dragon. He especially likes to observe the things around him, and he also likes to use his brain or think about problems. He looked up every day to observe the changes of the stars in the sky, to see the patterns on the turtle's back, the colors of birds' feathers, and the ups and downs of mountains and rivers. He often painted the shapes and characteristics of things on his hands. Over time, Ding characters were created. When Cangjie created words, the world began to have corn like fish, afraid that people would patronize writing. People will be hungry in the future. Ghosts secretly cry in the dark, and Dragons hide because they are afraid that words will record their ugly behaviors and make them infamous for thousands of years. From the ancient legend of Cangjie's creation of characters to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions more than 100 years ago, Chinese scholars of all dynasties have been committed to solving the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. The origin, evolution and development history of Chinese characters. As for the origin of Chinese characters, there are various statements in ancient Chinese documents, such as rope tying, eight trigrams, pictures, deeds, etc. The Legend of Cangjie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, who created characters is also widely recorded in ancient books. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person. If Cangjie really exists, he should be a word organizer or publisher. [the origin, evolution, origin and development history of Chinese characters. In recent decades, Chinese archaeologists have released a series of unearthed materials related to the origin of Chinese characters earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions in Yin Ruins. These materials mainly refer to the late primitive society and history. Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains. Chinese characters are a character system of independent origin, which does not depend on any foreign language, but its origin It's not single. After multiple and long-term running in, about the time of entering the summer era, the ancestors creatively invented the character symbol system for recording language on the basis of widely absorbing and using the experience of early symbols. At that time, the Chinese character system matured rapidly.

It is reported that according to the unearthed written materials of archaeological excavations, China had official written language at least in the Yu Xia period. For example, in recent years, archaeologists once found the words with brush and Zhu calligraphy on a flat pottery pot from the pottery Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi Province. These symbols belong to the basic configuration of the early character system. Unfortunately, such unearthed character information is still scarce so far.

Characters first matured in the Shang Dynasty: as far as the written materials of yin and Shang Dynasties are known and seen, there are many categories of text carriers. At that time, in addition to writing on the pamphlet with a brush, the other main means was to engrave on tortoise shells, animal bones, pottery, jade and pottery on bronze. The written materials of Shang Dynasty, with oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels in Yin Ruins as the main carriers, are the earliest mature characters found in China so far. The Shang Dynasty characters reflected in the Yin Ruins period are not only reflected in the large number of characters and rich materials, but also highlight that the current character creation method has formed its own characteristics and laws. The structural characteristics of the basic characters of the Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: Taking the physical characteristics of the human body and a part of the human body as the basis for the formation of characters; Taking labor creation and labor object as the basis of word formation; Take the images of animals and livestock as the basis of word formation; Take natural images as the basis of word formation. From the perspective of the cultural connotation of the formation, the objects of these mature and early glyphs are quite close to the social life of the ancestors at the beginning, and have strong realistic characteristics. At the same time, the content described by these glyphs involves all levels of human and nature, so they also have the characteristics of extensive sources of configuration. After more than 6000 years of changes, the evolution of Chinese characters is: Oracle rarr; Jinwen rarr; Small seal rarr; Official script rarr; Regular script rarr; The running script and the Jia, Jin, Zhuan, Li, Cao, Kai lines above the cursive script are called Chinese characters seven body, which is the origin of Chinese characters.

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张聪聪

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