The mainstream of the evolution of Chinese character fonts:
In the late primitive society, the symbols carved on various utensils by the ancestors of the Han nation gradually evolved into Chinese characters. In the long process of evolution, Chinese characters It has developed from the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty in the Spring and Autumn Period, to the large seal script used in the early Qin Dynasty, to the small seal script used by Qin Shihuang to unify the national writing system, to the official script of the Han Dynasty, the regular script that became popular after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and It has been in use to this day. It is the mainstream of the evolution of Chinese character fonts.
2 Auxiliary fonts
The cursive script corresponding to Han Li is called Zhangcao, the cursive script corresponding to regular script is called Jicao, and Jincao is also Zhangcao. Evolution. In the Tang Dynasty, Kuangcao developed from Jincao. Xingshu is a font between regular script and cursive script. It adds the characteristics of cursive script to regular script and preserves many elements of regular script, so it is called Kaixing. ; Those that are closer to cursive script are called cursive script. The development process of auxiliary fonts cursive script and running script is a tributary of the evolution of Chinese character fonts.
3 Characteristics of the evolution process of Chinese characters:
Chinese characters The evolution process is characterized by the gradual standardization and stabilization of Chinese character fonts.
Xiaozhuan fixed the number of strokes of each character; official script formed a new stroke system, and the font gradually became a flat square; regular script After the birth of Chinese characters, the glyphs and fonts of Chinese characters were stabilized: the basic strokes of "horizontal, vertical, left, dot, 捺, pick, jun, and fold" were determined. The stroke shape was further standardized, and the number and order of strokes of each character were also determined. Fixed; the neat arrangement requirements generated by multi-line writing constrain the changes in glyphs, the length and thickness of strokes to be stretched within the box, and the location and density of stroke distribution are also restricted. The glyph structure pays attention to balance and symmetry. In short , the appearance of regular script, the square shape of Chinese characters was finalized, and the font of Chinese characters matured. For more than a thousand years, regular script has been the standard font of Chinese characters.
4 radicals:
According to According to the traditional theory of Chinese character structure, people call the constituent units of combined characters "radicals". Using the concept of "radicals" to explain "single" and "combined" means that the characters that cannot be distinguished from the radicals are single characters, which are composed of radicals and The combination of radicals is a combined character. For example: the radicals of "take" are "er" and "you"; the radicals of "cut" are "石" and "Qian". And "er", "you", "石" ", "owed" but cannot distinguish the radicals. "Radical" is a heading in the dictionary for classifying and arranging Chinese characters for inspection. Radicals and radicals have a certain relationship. Most radicals in the dictionary are composed of Chinese characters. Radicals with expressive functions in Chinese characters are used. For example, "cut" and "grind" belong to the "stone" part, while "locust" and "mo" belong to the "insect" part. But radicals and radicals are not the same thing after all. In the pictophonetic characters Radicals with phonetic functions are not used as radicals. For example, in the example above, the "Ma" in "Mo" and the "Huang" in "Locust" are used. For some characters whose radicals cannot be distinguished, their starting strokes are used. As radicals, such as: "下", "高", "年", and "主" are divided into four parts: "一", "|", "丿", and "," respectively.
Radicals are a name in the traditional Chinese character structure theory. They refer to the two components of the meaning and pictophonetic characters in the "Six Books", which represent meanings or sounds, such as "任" and "ge" in "Fa". , the components of "men" and "口" in "wen" are a concept in the modern Chinese character structure analysis system. It focuses on the glyph structure of all modern Chinese characters, not only the ideographic characters and pictophonetic characters in the Liushu Regulations, but also It does not only refer to the word-forming components that have the function of pronunciation and meaning, such as "er" and "厶" in "yun", and "刂", "you" and "tu" in "jian", they cannot all become radicals , but they are all components. Components are the basic structural units of Chinese characters, between strokes and whole characters. All components that can participate in character construction, whether they become radicals or not, are components.
Modern Chinese characters Pictophonetic characters account for the majority. Pictophonetic characters include two parts: signifier and musical note. The signifier is the ideographic part of the pictophonetic character, which has two functions: one is to indicate the morpheme meaning recorded by the word, and the other is to distinguish homophones and meanings. The limitation of symbol in meaning is that symbol can only represent a general and rough meaning category and cannot provide specific meaning information. Secondly, due to the evolution of word meaning and the widespread use of pretext, some picophonetic characters are now
The meaning of signifiers can no longer be seen to represent the meaning category. Thirdly, the selection of some pictophonetic characters and signifiers reflects the level of understanding at that time, and it seems unscientific now, which results in the inaccurate meaning of signifiers. Although signifiers It has the above limitations, but it still plays a role in helping people grasp the meaning of the word. The signifier is the phonetic part of the pictophonetic character, and its function is to indicate the pronunciation of the character, that is, to prompt that the pronunciation of the pictophonetic character is consistent with the pronunciation of the phonetic character. In this way, we You can use musical notes to identify characters, distinguish words with similar shapes, and derive pronunciations by analogy. Musical notes also have limitations. The accuracy of pronunciation shown in the pronunciation of the sounds is not high, and may even lead to mispronunciation. This is mainly due to the evolution of pronunciation that has caused differences in the pronunciation of Chinese characters in ancient and modern times. Different. Although the shape and phonetic characters of pictophonetic characters have the above limitations, when the meaning and notes are combined together. The amount of information provided by pictophonetic characters has greatly increased. The rationality of pictophonetic characters recording morphemes is one of the reasons why Chinese characters have existed for a long time.
5 Expressions of changes in the glyph structure of Chinese characters
1) The ancient characters were single characters, but now they look like they are combined, for example: "霜", "榜", "Quan", "It".
2) The ancient characters are combined, but now they look like they are combined. It is a single character, such as: "History", "Nian".
3) Some characters are divided according to the modern glyph structure, which cannot be consistent with the original word construction intention, such as: "Chong", From Rendong sound; "thief", from Geze sound.
4) Modern simplified characters change the original combined characters into single characters, for example: "书", pictophonetic, Congyuzhe sound, Simplified to "书", it becomes a single type; "Long", the voice next to "tong" is omitted as "Li", simplified to "龙", it becomes a single type.
Answer supplement 5) Some characters are simplified Finally, some elements in it do not express meaning or pronunciation. For example: "ㄨ" in "Diu, Zhao, Feng". "You" in "Chicken" and "Xi".
6 ) Some newly created characters do not adopt the method summarized in the "Six Books", for example: "ping, pong". Since the Chinese character glyphs show the above changes, it will obviously encounter many difficulties to analyze today's Chinese characters using the Six Books Regulations.
6 Summary:
The changes in Chinese characters must reflect the changes in social structure. Most of the evolution of Chinese characters is at the hands of the aristocrats. The disciples of the aristocrats followed the literary tradition , gradually evolved it. The common people accepted it and used it. When it started with oracle bone inscriptions, it was by the hands of ordinary people. Therefore, the evolution of these Chinese characters can roughly be seen that the social structure is gradually moving towards centralization.
In addition, the great wisdom of the Chinese nation can also be seen from the changes in Chinese characters. From the first pictographic characters, we can see the imagination and expressive ability of our Chinese people. In this regard, pictograms are found all over the world. Chinese characters.
Later, the world’s writing systems were divided into two systems, one with letters as the basic unit, and the other with Chinese characters. Chinese characters are also the oldest surviving writing system, and its evolution and use It reflects the wisdom of the Chinese nation to this day.
According to reports, Jurchen scribes continued to use Jurchen oracle bone inscriptions. This news can prove this point.