This is "自", so what does the earliest glyph look like? Oracle bone inscriptions look like this. We say it is a pictographic character. According to the current saying, it is eye, which refers to the eye. This word seems to be Eyebrows, in fact, when we look at this after knowing the ancient glyphs, they don’t match up at all. I guess with some life experience, people with keen observation will find that what it actually looks like is a human nose. When we look at our "self", why does it use a nose to symbolize itself? What is the reason for this? In fact, When our ancients coined this word, they already had a lot of thoughts implicit in it. For example, our ancestors knew that the most fundamental thing about a person is Qi, and what is a nose? It is the organ of breathing. In fact, the respiratory organs also include the lungs and the trachea, but what appears on the outside is the nose. Some of us now know from watching movies and TV that when a person's life or death is unknown, we put our hands on his nostrils to see if he has breath. Therefore, we can infer that when the ancients used their noses to symbolize themselves, Let’s see, to this day, there are still people who point to their noses, which means that they are alive, alive, and alive. It can be seen that the excavation of oracle bone inscriptions and the excavation of ancient characters have indeed built a bridge between us today and the ancients, allowing us to go into the hearts of the ancients and explore what they were thinking.
Let’s look at this character again. This is "beat", which means "beat" to hit someone. Currently, it is found that the earliest glyph is Xiaozhuan. Xiaozhuan is similar to the current regular script. One hand has a ding, and the other hand has a ding. What does the combination of "ding" and "ding" mean? We know that today's "Da" has 26 meanings in the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" and 29 meanings in the "Chinese Dictionary". There is a linguist named Chen Yuan who wrote an article called "Magical" "Fight", why is it so magical? Let's see, when I meet my enemy, I punch him. This is a conflict with him. However, we say to hit him, but we still use hitting in this way. , Lao Li and I got along well. This being together does not mean that I fought with him and got along well, but it means that I have a very good relationship with him. This is also fighting. Also, we are going out now. Many of our friends are here today. Why are we raising our hands? We didn’t go to take a taxi. Why is it called a taxi? Besides, there are many lesbians here. Now most people I don’t play this anymore, but in the past, lesbians would knit it by themselves. At that time, it wasn’t called knitting sweaters, it was called “sweatering.” We pick up the phone and call it "making a phone call", and then we recall that when we were young, we went to buy soy sauce, vinegar, and wine, which was called "making wine". What does these meanings have to do with this glyph? Each hand has a ding. , so Chen Yuan said something like this: "Chinese characters are magical. Just such a glyph contains so many meanings, but they are not necessarily unified." Then we need to study the ancients who created this character, and what they relied on. What can lead to so many meanings? Of course we can say that after the Chinese character is created, it is like a truck. As it gets closer to us, it carries more and more weight, but we It cannot be denied that when it was first created, it already carried some cargo, that is, information. This is the most fundamental and primitive. So I put a lot of effort into understanding the word "fight". It turned out that I didn't attach much importance to this word. It's just that I had a friend who taught at Renmin University. He was teaching to foreigners, Canadians, Indians, and British people. I speak Chinese. He said that these foreign friends couldn’t understand the word “beat”, and they couldn’t understand why this single glyph could have so many conflicting meanings. He asked me to explain it, so I studied it. Well, one of the ways I study Chinese characters is to restore it. This glyph is composed of two parts, one hand and one ding. Restore it to the most ancient times. We imagine what our ancestors used this to symbolize. Of course, this must have a certain degree. state, then after entering the state, I thought about it, that is to say, our ancestors used something to hold a nail. Of course, the nails in the past were not necessarily made of metal. They might have been made of wood or stone. , pull it into an object, such as trees or soil. In this case, all the meanings just mentioned can be restored through this action. We can see that according to the current action, if you take an When a hammer hits a nail, the first action is to lift, the second is to swing, the third is to hit, and the fourth is to enter.
So let's think about typing, which is just four human movements, and we summarize it into this glyph. If you don't restore it, you don't know that there are these four movements. Of course, you have to break them down. How could you know that "typing" can What does it mean to break down so many things? So now let’s see, what we just said about “beating” can be broken down into these four actions. What does beating a sweater mean? Entering; beating wine and vinegar are now hydraulic. Of course, even hydraulics are now used. It doesn’t have to be in a barrel, it’s an entry; to mingle with someone is to enter; in the beginning, making a phone call was followed by a telegram, and telegraphing is equivalent to tapping with your hands. In other words, we understand this Chinese character, the earliest glyph and the earliest meaning. How about we, we understand that the 29 meanings, or the 26 meanings mentioned in the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" are all based on evidence.
Let's take another example. This word is "and", and this word is "and". We know that there are at least four semantics, but two are the most important. The first What is seed? It is progression. For example, everyone here may know the first sentence of Confucius's "The Analects of Confucius". What is it called? "Learn and practice from time to time", then this "er" plays a progressive role, and the second one is a turning point. Of course, this progression and turning point in modern Chinese are not content words, but function words, but this function word Where did this semantics come from? It is also related to this glyph. It was also verified by predecessors. Such a glyph was found on the oracle bone fragments excavated in the Yin Ruins. After that, I compared it with Xu Shen's explanation of the word and found that this is what we have today. and". What kind of pictogram is this? It's the pictogram of a human beard. Let's see if it looks similar. Of course, there are many kinds of this glyph. Let’s take a look. I won’t write this character. There is a Chinese character for “play”. The word “play” means “female” at the top and “female” at the bottom. So in ancient times, men had to grow beards, and this character reflects a kind of contrast. Disrespect of women, teasing women with beards, shouting. There is also a word for "one" and this side is "inch", and some are "standing swords". Why? Because in ancient China, if you did not make a particularly big mistake, your beard would be shaved off. This is affordable, so it is called "Patience". But what does this “and” have to do with progression and transition? I have been thinking about this word for a long time, but I still can't figure it out. Of course, you can simply compare it to "attached". The beard is soft and easy to turn. What about progression? Often when I encounter this situation, I don't think about it hard, put it aside, and read other books. One day I suddenly found in Wang Fuzhi's "Shuowen Guangyi" (also known as Wang Chuanshan) that he explained the word "and", This record is too precious, because I have not found it anywhere else except what he recorded. In other words, our ancestors not only called people's beards "er", they also called fish fins "er". We know that fish have pelvic fins, dorsal fins, pectoral fins and caudal fins, which look like small wings. This one really looks like a beard. So our ancestors also called this fish "er", but many dictionaries and dictionaries do not have this explanation. , so now we can figure it out, what should we do when the fish wants to move forward, and prick its fins hard? What about when the fish turns a corner, prick its tail fin, such a "and" turning The meaning of "progressive" becomes clear. It turns out to be related to the fins of fish.
Let’s look at another word. We all know that it is the “乐” of music. So what does this glyph have to do with the music we listen to today? This word also has a pronunciation. What is it called? It’s called music. What does it have to do with our happiness today? We can understand it when we see the oldest glyph. This is the glyph of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. It is a pictographic character. What does it resemble? It looks like a musical instrument, some say it's various drums on a stand, some say it's a broken string on a wooden stand, it doesn't matter, but be sure what it looks like, it looks like a musical instrument, then now I understand , so what is the earliest word "乐" in this musical instrument? The pictogram of a musical instrument, so what is its name? Calling music, what does it bring to us when it makes a sound? Happy, how about it? This glyph contains three meanings, all of them. If you don’t know the glyph, you can’t understand it just by looking at it.