This is information. Chinese characters are the most widely used characters in the world and the longest-lived characters.
It is difficult to determine the time when Chinese characters began to appear. The oldest characters we can see today are those carved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions and cast on bronzes in Shang Dynasty. The written language of Shang Dynasty has been very developed, and the earliest time of writing must be far before Shang Dynasty, that is, Xia Dynasty or earlier. About four or five thousand years ago, it should be the Neolithic Age.
In the pottery symbols unearthed from Erlitou culture and Dawenkou culture, we can see many pictures and characters similar to the real thing. On this basis, the ideograms in these pictures and pottery patterns have evolved into mnemonics. Chinese characters are gradually accumulated by scattered and individual characters, and after reaching a certain number, they become a writing system through artificial standardization. According to textual research, it took nearly 2600 years for the original Chinese characters to come into being in the middle of the Neolithic Age and develop into a preliminary writing system. Origin: one kind is abstract and square symbols, represented by carved symbols on painted pottery at Dadiwan site in Gansu Province; The other is the hieroglyphic symbol of the zodiac represented by Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the site of Jiahu, Henan. The former evolved into a series of carved symbols on Jiangzhai Village in Lintong, Xi 'an Banpo. The latter developed into images on Dawenkou pottery. By the end of Longshan culture, the patriarchal society was basically established, and groups of inscriptions appeared on jade articles of Liangzhu culture during this period. Some of these inscriptions are the same as or similar to Dawenkou pottery images, and some are similar to those in Xi 'an and other places. These inscriptions may be one of the most basic pre-Chinese character systems at that time. It is worth noting that Liangzhu culture is on the eve of the birth of a centralized slave country in China, and the Xia Dynasty should be the most critical period for the formation of a formal Chinese character system. It has greatly promoted the development of Chinese characters. Chinese characters may also be made in Cang Xie. It was adapted by Cang Xie according to the footprints of birds, animals and insects. But this is just a legend. The great world has made countless ranges since its division.
Number of Chinese characters
Chinese characters are morphemes, and the total number is large. How many characters are there in Chinese characters? So far, I'm afraid no one can answer the exact figures. With regard to the number of Chinese characters, according to the records of ancient dictionaries, we can see their development.
There are 3,300 words in Cang Xie, erudition and calendar in Qin Dynasty, 5,340 words in Xun Bian written by Yang Xiong in Han Dynasty, and 9,353 words in Shuo Wen Jie Zi written in Xu Shen. After Jin and Song Dynasties, the characters became more and more complicated. According to the seal cutting performance of Moon Hee in Tang Dynasty, Jin wrote 12824, Wei Yang Chengqing wrote Zitong 13734 and Gu Liang wrote 169 17. Jade Piece is a supplement to Sun Qiang in Tang Dynasty, with 225,665,438+0 words. In Song Dynasty, there were as many as 3 1 and 3 19 words in Lei Pian by Sima Guangxiu, and in Qing Dynasty, there were more than 47,000 words in Kangxi Dictionary. 19 15 The Chinese Dictionary written by Ouyang Bocun and others has more than 48,000 words. 1959 The Yamato Dictionary compiled by various bridges in Japan has 49,964 words. The Chinese Dictionary edited by Zhang Qiyun in 197 1 has 49,888 words.
As time goes by, more and more words are included in the dictionary. 1990 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Xu Zhongshu has 54,678 words. 1994 The Sea of Chinese Characters by Leng Yulong et al. The number of words received is even more amazing, reaching as many as 85,000 words.
If learning and using Chinese characters really need to master the sounds, shapes and meanings of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be the characters that no one in the world can and will not learn and use. Fortunately, most of the Chinese characters included in Chinese character books are "dead characters", that is, words that have existed in history and are abandoned in today's written language.
Someone has counted thirteen classics (13 classics such as Yijing, Shangshu, Zuo Zhuan, Gongyang Zhuan, Analects of Confucius, Mencius, etc. ), the total number of words is 589,283, of which 6,544 are different words. Therefore, in fact, people only use six or seven thousand Chinese characters in their daily lives.
Chinese character trend
Many changes have taken place in Chinese characters since Oracle Bone Inscriptions. According to historical facts, these changes can be roughly divided into two categories: reform and natural evolution. The reform of Chinese characters refers to the process of people consciously and actively managing Chinese characters, and the natural evolution of Chinese characters refers to the natural change process of Chinese characters. The reform of Chinese characters is generally discontinuous, intense and completed in a short time; The natural evolution of Chinese characters is continuous, slow and long-term. The natural evolution of Chinese characters has both time and geographical factors, which makes the form, sound and meaning of Chinese characters diversified, leading to more and more variant characters, different pronunciations and changes in meaning, leading to disunity and nonstandard Chinese characters. Therefore, after a period of natural evolution, people must reform Chinese characters to make them standardized and unified. In addition, Chinese characters cannot be perfect as soon as they are produced, and can meet the needs of the development of productive forces in various periods. Therefore, with the progress of the times, people will actively transform Chinese characters to meet the needs of the continuous development of productive forces. When the reform measures were popularized, Chinese characters began a new round of natural evolution.
The change of Chinese characters is like the change of roads. The road is made by people; After the road comes out, people have to repair it every once in a while; After the repair, the road gradually changes, such as widening, straightening, damage, or new branches, which need to be repaired again. In addition, with the development of the times, the previous roads can no longer meet the needs of the development of the times, and new roads need to be built, such as railways and highways. Road construction is equivalent to the reform of Chinese characters, and the road is gradually widened, straightened, damaged and naturally branched, which is equivalent to the natural evolution of Chinese characters. These two changes have different properties, trends, laws and functions, so in the past, we generally discussed the historical evolution of Chinese characters together and drew some conclusions, such as "the development trend of Chinese characters is from complexity to simplicity", which is inevitably ambiguous and specious!
From ancient Chinese characters to seal script
In this book, ancient characters refer to the characters before Xiao Zhuan, including Da Zhuan, including Jinwen, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Da Zhuan.
oracle bone script
In ancient times, written or carved words were left on tortoise shells and animal bones. At present, the earliest discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions is Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Pan Geng period of Shang Dynasty, and most of its contents are "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" and a few are "notes". Oracle Bone Inscriptions is mostly pictographic or knowing characters, and pictographic characters only account for about 20%. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is very pictographic, with many characters and uncertain strokes. This shows that China's writing was not unified in the Yin and Shang Dynasties.
Ancient bronze inscriptions
In ancient times, copper was called gold, so the words carved on bronzes were called inscriptions, also known as Zhong Dingwen and inscriptions. Bronze inscriptions were first discovered in Erligang of Shang Dynasty, but only a few bronzes were found in Erligang of Shang Dynasty. There are many bronze inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, inscriptions on bronzes became more common. Most of the inscriptions on bronze in Shang Dynasty are hieroglyphs and interchangeable characters synthesized from hieroglyphs. These words are picturesque, vivid, vigorous and natural, while others are ups and downs.
big seal character
According to legend, it was created by the history of Shu in the Zhou Dynasty, so it is also called Wen Shu, Shu Chuan and Shu Shu. Shicheng is a historian in Zhou Xuanwang. Dazhuan can be found in Shuowen Jiezi and various Zhong Ding artworks collected by later generations, among which Shi Guwen by Zhou Xuanwang is the most famous. Dazhuan is a kind of Chinese character font that changes from ancient Chinese characters to Xiaozhuan.
Small/small seal characters
Small seal script is simplified from big seal script. Compared with the big seal, the small seal has a simple, regular and harmonious body structure, even and neat strokes, and the radicals have also changed and merged to some extent. Compared with the big seal script, the image of the small seal script is greatly weakened, and the structure of each word is relatively fixed.
Legend has it that Biography was compiled by Li Si, Prime Minister of Qin State during the Warring States Period. If Xiao Zhuan was really sorted out in a short time, Qin must have a reform process of actively advocating Xiao Zhuan and actively rejecting ancient Chinese characters including Da Zhuan. [ 1]
Six-country script
The scripts used by countries outside Qin are collectively referred to as "six-country scripts". Six-country characters belong to the category of ancient Chinese characters, which are graphic, uncertain in shape and difficult to identify.
In 22 1 year BC, the king of Qin attacked Linzi, the capital of Qi State, and died. At this point, Qin unified the six countries. Ying Zheng, King of Qin, became the first emperor in the history of feudal society in China, calling himself "the first emperor". Qin Shihuang carried out a series of major reforms in politics, economy, society and culture in order to strengthen and promote the rule of the landlord class he represented over the whole country. Text reform is one of them.
In 22 1 BC, Qin Shihuang ordered the implementation of Xiao Zhuan as a unified character throughout the country, "prohibiting all kinds of characters that are not in harmony with Qin". In order to popularize Biography, Qin Shihuang ordered Li Si, Zhao Gao and others to compile books and articles such as Cang Xie, Ji Li and erudition as standard text models. Due to the emperor's great attention and the great influence of imperial power, Xiao Zhuan was quickly popularized throughout the country, and the complicated "six-country characters" immediately withdrew from the historical stage.
From Xiao Zhuan to Li Kai
Shortly after the popularity of Biography, folks created a new book style that was simpler and more stereotyped than Biography. This is the official script. At the beginning of official script, it was a kind of irregular seal script. By the time Qin Shihuang unified the characters, the official script had formed a fixed and standardized font. Li Shu changed the lines of seal script into square strokes, which complied with the social demand for convenient and standardized writing.
According to legend, a prisoner named Cheng Miao compiled a popular official script of 3,000 words in prison and passed it on to Qin Shihuang. Qin Shihuang greatly appreciated this, made an exception and promoted Cheng Miao to the position of censor, and allowed his words to be used among the people in early Lebanon. Since then, official script has not only been widely popular among the people in Qin Dynasty, but also government official documents are generally written in official script, but important imperial edicts are still written in small seal script, so official script is also called "auxiliary script" in Qin Dynasty.
The appearance of official script is an important milestone in the development history of Chinese characters. Before the official script, Chinese characters were written with lines, but after the official script, Chinese characters were composed of left and right strokes. After the appearance of Lishu, the structure of Chinese characters was basically fixed, and there was basically no big change until the founding of New China.
With the collapse of the Qin Dynasty, Xiao Zhuan quickly withdrew from the historical stage, and Lishu became the primary writing method and calligraphy model in society. Shortly thereafter, a more standardized regular script font appeared. After the Han Dynasty, regular script occupied an orthodox position.
Traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters
Let's talk in detail about the reform process of Chinese character structure at this stage.
Since ancient times, many Chinese characters have been written in various ways, some with more strokes and some with fewer strokes. More strokes are called traditional Chinese characters, and fewer strokes are called simplified Chinese characters.
When official script and regular script stepped onto the historical stage, all kinds of complicated and simplified characters in the form of small seal script were naturally eliminated, but for some Chinese characters in the form of official script and regular script, people gradually created new writing forms, some with more strokes and some with fewer strokes. Generally, those with few strokes account for the majority. These writing forms with few strokes are called simplified Chinese characters, and those with many strokes are called traditional Chinese characters. Simplified characters are generally not recognized by the government, but only popular among the people, so they are also called vulgar characters. By the way, after we carried out the simplified Chinese characters movement in the last century, some simplified or vulgar characters replaced the traditional Chinese characters that occupied the orthodox position and became orthodox characters. These simplified words are called simplified words. It can be seen that "simplified characters" and "simplified characters" are two related but different concepts.
1909 Lu feikui published the article "common characters should be used in general education" in Education magazine, which explained the advantages of simplified characters to Chinese people for the first time, indicating that simplified characters themselves are not ugly. This article is regarded as the beginning of the movement of simplified Chinese characters in modern times.
1922, the National Language and Character Unified Planning Committee of the Ministry of Education of the Kuomintang government established the Chinese Character Provincial Committee to formally organize and lead the research on simplified Chinese characters. Through Qian's case of preserving the strokes of current Chinese characters, this case first illustrates the importance of preserving the strokes of Chinese characters, and points out that although Pinyin was used as a radical cure and the strokes of Chinese characters were used as a palliative cure, the disadvantages of Chinese characters became increasingly obvious at that time, and the radical cure could not be taken out for a while, so the strokes were preserved. This case also tells several ways to preserve strokes, all of which have a certain mass base and a history of folk use.
From 65438 to 0935, after more than ten years of academic discussion and preparation, the Kuomintang government issued an order to popularize the first list of simplified characters throughout the country. However, the implementation of watches was quickly opposed by some conservatives. 1936, under the order of the Executive Yuan, the Ministry of Education officially issued the instruction of "suspending the implementation of simplified Chinese characters", which marked the premature death of the simplified Chinese character movement in the Republic of China.
However, the movement of simplified Chinese characters is still going on among the people, especially in the liberated areas of the Red Army, where simplified Chinese characters can be seen everywhere. They appear in people's manuscripts and various printed materials, and people call them "liberation words". With the expansion of the liberated areas, the word "liberation" has also spread all over the country, laying a good foundation for the new China to carry out the Chinese character simplification movement among the masses.
After the founding of New China, simplification of Chinese characters was quickly put on the agenda. 1949 10 June10, China Character Reform Association was formally established, and Wu was elected as its president. 65438-0952 China Character Reform Research Committee was established, with Ma Xulun as the chairman, and there were Pinyin Scheme Group, Chinese Character Arrangement Group, Teaching Experiment Group, Editing and Publishing Group and Secretariat. 1954 10 The Committee submitted the draft Simplified List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters, which was studied and discussed by many parties and revised four times, to the Central Committee for approval, and distributed it to all localities for further examination and preliminary test. In the same year, 10, the China Character Reform Committee was established, which is subordinate to the units directly under the State Council. 1956, the State Council adopted the Simplified Chinese Characters Program and the Resolution on Publishing (Simplified Chinese Characters Program), and began to formally implement the Simplified Chinese Characters Program.
According to the resolution of the State Council, the simplified Chinese character scheme is implemented in four batches. 1February, 956, the first batch of 260 simplified words were implemented, including 230 simplified words outside the scheme and 30 radical analogies; 1June, 956, the second batch of 95 simplified characters was implemented; 1958, implementing the third batch of 70 simplified characters; 1959 There are 92 simplified characters in the fourth batch, and 54 simplified character radicals are added. There are 5 17 simplified characters in four batches, of which 30 are radical analogies outside the Chinese character simplification scheme and 28 are not implemented in the Chinese character simplification scheme. 1964, the cultural reform commission compiled a summary of simplified characters, which is divided into three tables. The first table contains 352 simplified words without radicals, and the second table contains 132 simplified words with radicals and 14 simplified words. The third table contains 1754 simplified characters, which is based on the simplified characters and simplified radicals in the second table, and simplifies the 8000 Chinese characters basically included in Xinhua Dictionary by analogy. Besides the general table, there are two important appendices: one is the list of variant characters that are regarded as simplified characters, and the other is the list of characters that are not commonly used in place names approved by the State Council. The compilation of the Summary of Simplified Chinese Characters shows that the first movement of simplified Chinese characters in China was finally successful.
The first simplified Chinese character movement has outstanding effects: ① It is much more convenient to learn and write by reducing 2235 Chinese characters from average 16.03 strokes to 10.3 strokes; (2) a number of variant characters have been eliminated; ③ The structure is more reasonable. For example, the word "compensation" is easy to pronounce as "sh m 4 ng", and it will not be misunderstood if it becomes "compensation" in simplified Chinese; ④ It is more beautiful in structure, and the differences between glyphs are more prominent. The author once showed Chinese newspapers with traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters to Germans and Thais who didn't know Chinese characters, making them look better than those Chinese characters. As a result, most of them think simplified Chinese characters are beautiful.
In the literacy experiment, the efficiency of simplified Chinese character literacy is about 20% higher than that of traditional Chinese character literacy.
There are also some problems in simplifying the first movement of Chinese characters: ① some words are unreasonable to simplify; ② Some traditional Chinese characters should be simplified rather than simplified. These problems are secondary to the above beneficial effects.
Everything has a certain inertia, and the movement of simplified characters is no exception. After the success of the first simplified Chinese characters, some people were thinking about how to further simplify Chinese characters, so they started the second simplified Chinese characters movement. The general process is as follows:
From 1966 to 197 1, Chinese character simplification is at a standstill. 1972 In March, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the Cultural Reform Office, and the cultural reform work began to resume. In July of that year, the Office of Character Reform began to draw up the second simplified scheme of Chinese characters, and extensively collected simplified characters that the masses loved. 1973 the State Council agreed to restore the name of "China Language Reform Committee" and put it under the management of the State Council Science and Education Group. 1975, the cultural reform commission drew up the second simplified Chinese character scheme (draft) (hereinafter referred to as the second simplified Chinese character). From 65438 to 0977, the Cultural Reform Commission drew up the revised version of the second simplified Chinese character scheme (draft), which contained 853 simplified characters.
On February 20th, 1977 1977, People's Daily published an editorial "Speeding up the pace of writing reform", and the next day, it began to try out 248 simplified characters in "two constructions and one table". 1978 In March, the Ministry of Education informed that all textbooks compiled in the country should try out the first word of "Second Construction" and begin to implement "Second Construction".
However, there are many unreasonable places in Erjian: ① some words are simplified and irregular; (2) unreasonable annexation of some Chinese characters, such as combining "tune" and "carving" into one word. In addition, the overall situation of Chinese characters has just returned to calm after the impact of "one Jane", and has been impacted by "two Jane", resulting in some confusion. Therefore, since 1978, people's voices against the two slips have become louder and louder. 1in August, 978, the national newspapers and periodicals stopped trying out the simplified characters of "two constructions and one table".
Chinese characters
From 1980, relevant institutions began to revise the two bamboo slips until 1985. However, when it seemed to be revised and perfected, it was abolished by the government: 1985 12, and the Cultural Reform Commission was renamed the State Language Commission; 1On June 24, 1986, the State Council approved the Request of the State Language Committee on Abolishing the Second Construction Project and Correcting the Confusion of Chinese Characters in Society, and clearly pointed out in the notice that "1977, the Second Edition Simplified Chinese Characters Scheme (Draft) ceased to be implemented as of the date of this notice." This notice declared the failure of the second simplified Chinese character movement.
Why did the second simplified Chinese character movement fail? The author believes that the fundamental reason is that the benefits brought by the second simplified Chinese character movement are very limited. The first simplified Chinese character movement changed the structure of Chinese characters so much that the efficiency of simplified Chinese character literacy was only about 20% higher than that of traditional Chinese character literacy in the literacy experiment. The scale of the second simplified Chinese character movement is far less than that of the first simplified Chinese character movement, the mass base can't catch up with the first simplified Chinese character movement, and the rationality is not as good as that of the first simplified Chinese character movement, so its benefits will not be much.
Although the second simplified Chinese character movement failed, it left us with many problems worth thinking about and lessons worth learning. One of the key points is "unfamiliar." Therefore, the "Notice of the State Council on Approving the Request of the State Language Committee for Instructions on Current Language and Writing Work" 1992+065438 issued by the State Council on June 6 further clearly pointed out that the simplification of Chinese characters should be treated with caution in the future, so as to keep Chinese characters stable and facilitate social application.