Chinese characters are a very important part of Chinese civilization. Chinese characters have evolved into what they are now after thousands of years of development since they were first created. In fact, Chinese characters are not only written in China, but also used for a long time in three other countries.
Nowadays, all three countries have implemented the policy of "removing Chinese characters", and one of them has completely westernized the characters, which can be said to be forgetting his ancestors. Which three countries are these?
Once a powerful country, it influenced its neighbors with culture.
China is one of the four ancient civilizations, and it is also the only country whose civilization has not disappeared so far. In the history of thousands of years in China, there have been periods of weakness and periods of strength.
During the prosperous period, China was a vast country, and its politics, economy and culture were far ahead of the world level. As early as thousands of years ago, there were many countries around China, but their territories were very small, and their development was far less than that of China.
Therefore, in order to promote the development of the country, or seek the protection of big countries, small neighboring countries have sent envoys to China, such as Japan, and some countries are willing to act as vassals of China, such as North Korea and Viet Nam.
At first, these countries didn't have their own writing. Later, in the communication with China, these countries used Chinese characters as their official languages. Slowly, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese and China gradually formed the Chinese character circle in East Asia.
Consistently "remove Chinese characters"
In Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, Chinese characters once existed as official characters for a long time, but now, these three countries not only have their own characters, but even many people don't know Chinese characters. The reason for this situation is that these three countries have "de-characterized Chinese characters" in unison.
Among these three countries, Japan is the first country to implement the policy of "removing Chinese characters". Around the Meiji Restoration, Japan proposed "abandoning the use of Chinese characters and creating Japanese characters." However, this process is very slow. During World War II, even many people in Japan continued to use Chinese characters.
After the end of World War II, Japan's official characters basically became Hiragana and Katakana. However, the elimination of Chinese characters in Japan is not very thorough, because so far, Japan still retains nearly 1800 commonly used Chinese characters.
North Korea was once a subordinate country of China, so Chinese has long been the official language of North Korea. However, Korea actually has its own written language, that is, proverbs, that is, Korean today.
It is said that this script was invented by a monarch in North Korea, but hundreds of years ago, although Korean was created, the official script used in North Korea was Chinese characters.
Later, South Korea was divided into two countries: North Korea and South Korea. Both countries have adopted the policy of removing Chinese characters. North Korea has a higher degree of Chinese character removal than South Korea.
Today, although Korean has become the official language of Korea, many words in Chinese vocabulary are very similar in pronunciation, which often makes people unable to hear clearly. Therefore, Korean identity cards are still engraved with the names of China people.
Among Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, Vietnam's "Chinese character removal" is the most thorough. In Vietnamese today, there is no trace of Chinese.
Because of this, there is a very serious fault in Vietnamese culture. Nowadays, a large number of people can't recognize the ancient books handed down from Vietnam, let alone understand what their ancestors left behind. To some extent, Vietnam has forgotten its ancestors.
Looking for the reason of "removing Chinese characters"
Perhaps many people will be curious: "Since these three countries have used Chinese characters for a long time, why do they suddenly want to' de-characterize Chinese characters'?" In fact, there are many reasons why these three countries choose to remove Chinese characters, and each country has its own different reasons.
Japan was the first country to choose "removing Chinese characters". During the Meiji Restoration, the American fleet knocked on Japan's door. In order to enrich Qiang Bing, Japan chose to learn from the West. At this time, China has been mired in the mud and can't keep up with the pace of the world.
Therefore, many senior Japanese officials think that China is backward and Chinese characters have become the characters of backward countries, so they advocate "removing Chinese characters" one after another. In this way, Chinese characters were expelled from Japan.
Japan is a pragmatic country. If something is beneficial to the development of their country, then Japan will choose to absorb it. In the last century, in order to create the so-called "Great East Asia Glory Circle" and protect Japanese ancient books, Japan also kept some Chinese characters.
The fundamental reason why South Korea chose to "remove Chinese characters" is to give Koreans cultural self-confidence. For Koreans, Chinese characters are proof that they were once a vassal state of China.
If Korean people know the history of Korea, they may feel inferior. Therefore, in order to avoid this situation, South Korean President park chung-hee directly chose "removing Chinese characters".