Basic introduction
Generally speaking, the methods of creating Chinese characters are pictographic method, indicating method, knowing method and pictophonetic method. In ancient China, there were "six books" about word-making methods, including the above four kinds, including annotation and borrowing. But strictly speaking, these two methods should belong to the use of words.
With regard to the method of creating Chinese characters, since the Han Dynasty, there has been a saying of "six books" along the border. The first of the six books is hieroglyphics.
[Edit this paragraph] Font type
1. Some so-called pictographs and hieroglyphs are not directly used to represent specific objects, but are used to represent concepts related to objects. For example, the word "big" used to look like a person standing upright on the front. Hands and feet spread out, indicating "big". This word-formation method from nouns to adjectives was later developed. Although hieroglyphics have the earliest origin, they are the least in number. Because there are many things in the universe, it is impossible to make a pictogram according to the characteristics of all things, and many abstract concepts can't be drawn at all, and even if they can be drawn, this kind of word-making method is too stupid. Later, in order to overcome the limitations of hieroglyphics and meet the needs of social development, another word-formation method-point-object method was invented.
2. The so-called pointillism is a word-making method that uses symbolic symbols or adds indicative symbols to graphics to express meaning. This word formation method can be roughly divided into two categories: one is simple symbols, that is, symbols that are not graphics (if they are graphics, they are pictographs). The other is the symbol attached to the graph.
Creating Chinese characters with reference to things is the first step in the development of Chinese characters from pictographic characters to ideographic characters. However, this method can not be widely used in many things, and it is not easy to distinguish points and horizontal lines as symbols from other strokes, so our ancestors came up with a way to combine several pictures to express a meaning, that is, understanding.
3. The so-called knowing method is a word-making method that combines two or more words according to their meanings to express a new meaning.
With the development of Chinese characters, it can no longer meet the needs of expression. Because some mean that drawing three or four pictures can't solve the problem. If drawing five or six or seven or eight pictures can solve the problem, it is not like a word, but like a New Year picture. If so, how troublesome it is for us to write today. Writing a short essay is equivalent to compiling a thick comic book. Our ancestors had infinite wisdom. They think that words record words, and words are related to sound. So can words record sound? So he invented pictophonetic characters.
4. The so-called pictophonetic method is a word-making method consisting of pictophonetic characters and phonological characters. Pictophonetic characters are produced on the basis of pictograph, reference and understanding. Although it still belongs to ideographic characters, it has broken through the shackles of Chinese characters and communicated the connection between Chinese characters and pronunciation. This is a major development of Chinese characters from ideographic to phonetic, and has become the mainstream of Chinese character development. More than 80% of the Chinese characters we use today are pictophonetic characters. It is very convenient to use pictophonetic characters to create characters. Words related to Jin Mu's fire and water, birds, animals, insects and fish, as well as exclamations and onomatopoeia are almost all pictophonetic words. This word formation method can continue to create new words until today. For example, the recently discovered chemical elements "americium, curium and technetium" are all named after newly created pictophonetic characters. For simplified Chinese characters, pictophonetic characters are also given priority, such as "excellent" and "loud" and so on.
In addition to the four word-forming methods mentioned above, there are two kinds of "Liushu": transliteration and borrowing.
5. In the past, there were many sayings about the so-called transfer note method, and the more popular saying was a word-making method adapted to dialect differences and phonetic development. For example, the word "Lao" originally meant old, but because of the difference of time and region, it is also useful to use the sound "k m 4 o" to express old, so a word "Kao" with the same radical, similar pronunciation and the same meaning was produced. But next to the word "test" is "?" , the voice is "?" Therefore, the word "Kao" is also a pictophonetic word in terms of its word formation method.
6. The so-called borrowing method is a way to express new meanings by using homophones ("false" also refers to borrowing). For example, "Ru" is a water name and is borrowed as a second person pronoun. At first, this borrowing phenomenon was mostly replaced by homophones because there was no such word, but it has been used and borrowed for a long time. The meaning of some words themselves, but later found another way to land. For example, "Ran" originally meant to burn, and the following four points were already on fire, but after being borrowed by "Ran No", I had to add a fire beside it and turn it into a word "burn".
It can be seen that neither the transfer method nor the borrowing method created new words. There are four ways to make Chinese characters: pictograph, ideograph, ideograph and pictophonetic.
[Edit this paragraph] Structural features
Interpretation of six structural rules
hieroglyph
It belongs to the "single word-making method". Outline the shape characteristics of the object to be expressed with lines or strokes of words. For example, the word "moon" looks like the curved moon, the word "turtle" looks like the side shape of a turtle, the word "horse" is a horse with four legs, the word "fish" is a swimming fish with a head, a body and a tail, and the word "snake" (the original word of grass) is two sokcho and the word "door". The word "sun" is like a circle with a little bit in the middle, much like the shape we see when we look directly at the sun.
Ideographic characters come from picture characters, but they weaken the nature of pictures and enhance the symbolism. Is the most primitive word formation. It has great limitations, because what is written cannot be drawn.
Self-evident character
It belongs to the "single word-making method". The main difference from hieroglyphics is that signifiers contain more abstract things in painting. For example, the word "blade" is marked by adding a point to the sharpness of "knife"; The word "fierce" is to add a cross symbol to the trap; "Up" and "Down" are symbols painted above or below the subject "I"; "Three" is indicated by three horizontal lines. The sketches of these characters all have more abstract parts.
Pictophonetic method of word formation
It belongs to the "combined word-making method". Pictophonetic characters are composed of pictophonetic characters (also called "semantic symbols") and notes (also called "notes"). The shape side indicates the meaning or category of words, and the sound side indicates that the pronunciation of words is the same or similar. For example, the word "Sakura" has a "wood" beside its shape, indicating that it is a kind of tree, and the word "baby" beside its sound indicates that its pronunciation is the same as that of the word "baby"; The word "bamboo" next to the "basket" means bamboo products, and the word "prison" next to the sound means that its pronunciation is similar to the word "prison"; Below the word "tooth" is the shape side, drawing the shape of the tooth, and the word "stop" above is the sound side, indicating that the pronunciation of the word is similar.
Associative compound
It belongs to the "combined word-making method". A cognitive word is composed of two or more independent words, which are combined to express the meaning of the word with form or meaning. For example, combine the word "wine" with liquid "water" to express meaning; The split of the word "solution" means to separate the "cow" from the "horn" with a knife. Song refers to the sound of birds, so it is composed of mouth and bird.
Characters that explain/are synonymous with each other
It belongs to "using Chinese characters". Different regions have different names for the same thing because of different pronunciations and geographical barriers. These two words are used to mean the same thing, and when they have the same meaning, they will have the same radicals or components. For example, the original meaning of the words "Kao" and "Lao" are elders; "Top" and "top" both mean the top of the head; The original meaning of "Qiao" and "Kong" is Kong. These words have the same radical (or component) and analysis, and also have phonetic relations in pronunciation.
use
Borrowing is homophonic substitution. Some words in spoken English have no corresponding words. So I found a homophone with the same pronunciation to express his meaning. For example, "Zi" was originally an ideographic character of "nose", and was later borrowed as "Zi" of "Zi".