There was no phonetic notation in ancient China. Do you know how the ancients distinguished characters?

Chinese characters, with a history of more than 6,000 years, are very mature ideographic characters, which are composed of graphic symbols and only represent morphemes. Even if some Chinese characters don't know the pronunciation, they can judge the meaning according to the font and word-making method, which is helpful to improve readers' understanding of the text. Judging from the development history of Chinese phonetic symbols, more than ten phonetic symbols have been born in thousands of years. To some extent, it helps learners to master the pronunciation of Chinese characters and promote the development of Chinese philology.

First, the pronunciation method

During the Qin and Han dynasties, Chinese characters evolved from seal script to official script, commonly known as "official script", which can be said to be a transformation of Chinese characters. After the official script, Chinese characters and glyphs tend to be stable, and there is little difference between them in structure and modern Chinese characters, which is conducive to rapid writing and of great significance to the popularization of culture. By the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen, a famous scholar, had spent many years compiling the earliest dictionary Shuo Wen Jie Zi in China. In Dictionary, he put forward the first pronunciation method of Chinese characters, which is called "Pronunciation as Method".

Second, the direct sound method

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, some scholars created the direct tone method on the basis of pronunciation method. This is a remarkable improvement, at least eliminating some problems that lead to confusion. "Pronunciation" means to annotate unknown Chinese characters with another Chinese character with the same pronunciation. For example, the word "loss" is not commonly used, and many people don't know it. This problem can be solved if the commonly used word "year" is pronounced by the side. However, the "direct reading method" also has its disadvantages. It is still difficult to label only one sound or a word corresponding to one sound accurately. In addition, to correctly master the "direct reading method", we must master a common word in each pronunciation, so that we can effectively use the direct reading method, otherwise it will cause confusion in pronunciation.

Third, the backcutting method

After decades of "direct tone", some scholars gradually invented the "anti-tangent method". After more than 300 years of birth, the "reverse order method" gradually improved in the Sui and Tang Dynasties and became the most important Chinese phonetic notation method in ancient China. 1500 has been used for more than 500 years, but it was gradually eliminated in modern times, which had a far-reaching impact on the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The "backcutting method" is to cut the pronunciation of two Chinese characters in half. The first word uses the first letter and the last word uses the last letter and tone. Then, put them together to form the sound of another word.