The study of the origin of Chinese characters has a history of more than 2,5 years in China.
It is said that Cang Xie was the creator of Chinese characters in the pre-Qin Dynasty. Xunzi Jiemu records that "many people are good at writing, but Cang Xie is a unique writer." Lu Chunqiu records that "Xi Zhong made a car and Cang Xie made a book." It is said that Cang Xie was the historian of the Yellow Emperor and arranged the characters in ancient times. Xu Xu, a historian, thinks that the appearance of writing should be related to Cang Xie. At that time, writing was needed to make a calendar, and writing was also needed to make an Oracle. Therefore, Cang Xie should be from Zhuan Xu tribe. He was "born and buried in Sri Lanka", so there is Cang Xie Mausoleum in Taipei, where he wrote books. He lived in the 26th century BC. Based on this, it is speculated that Chinese writing was written four or five thousand years ago. While acknowledging Cang Xie, some people expanded the ranks of word-makers. For example, Mr. Lu Xun thinks that "in society, Cang Xie is not the only one. Some people carve a little picture on the hilt, and some draw some pictures on the portal. As a result, the words are more and more. As soon as the historians collect them, they can make perfunctory notes. I'm afraid the origin of China's words can't escape this example." Lu Xun. A foreign language. Of course, Chinese characters can't be created by Cang Xie alone, but are gradually enriched by many people like Cang Xie. Cang Xie is only more important and plays a bigger role among these people. What we pay attention to is not whether Chinese characters are made by Cang Xie or not, but the significance of word creation itself. The appearance of Chinese characters marks that the history of China has entered an era of written records, which is a major event in the long history. It also has an important influence on later generations.
Cang Xie, surnamed Hou Gang, was named Shi Huangshi, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, and the founder of Chinese characters. He was honored as the "sage of word-making". Today, in wucun, 35 miles northwest of Nanle County, there are Cangjieling, Cangjiemiao and a book-making platform. Historians believe that Cang Xie was born and buried there. Small things are summed up, and connected things are tied in a chain knot. Later, it developed to use a knife to carve symbols on wood and bamboo as a note. With the development of history, civilization is gradual, things are complicated, and there are many famous things. The method of knotting and carving wood is far from meeting the needs. This has an urgent need to create words. The Yellow Emperor was a period of many inventions in ancient times. At that time, not only sericulture was invented, but also boats, cars and bows were invented. Four eyes and heavy pupils, very clever. One year, Cang Xie visited the south, climbed a mountain with yang deficiency (now Luonan County, Shaanxi Province), and faced Xuanhuluo? Water, I suddenly saw a big turtle with many blue patterns on its back. Cang Xie was surprised to see it, so he took it and studied it carefully. He looked around and found that the patterns on the turtle's back were meaningful. He thought that patterns could not only express meaning, but if a rule was set, wouldn't everyone use them to convey their wishes and record things?
Cang Xie thought about it day and night, observed everywhere, and saw the distribution of stars in the sky, the appearance of mountains and rivers on the ground, the traces of birds, animals, insects and fish, and the shapes of plants and tools, and described and wrote different symbols, and set the meaning of each symbol. He pieced together several paragraphs with symbols according to his own wishes, showed them to people, and understood them clearly after his explanation. Cang Xie called this symbol. Because Cang Xie created words, which can be used to convey thoughts and record things, it is naturally worth celebrating. But why do ghosts cry? Some people say that, because of writing, people's wisdom is growing day by day, people's morality is growing day by day, which leads to deceit, cunning and fighting for killing. From then on, there will never be peace in the world, and even ghosts will not be at peace, so ghosts will cry.
There is another saying:
On one occasion, Cang Xie made a mistake in the historical facts provided to the Yellow Emperor from the history books recorded by these knots, which caused the Yellow Emperor to lose in the border negotiations with Yandi. A good way to record historical events. Three years later, he returned to his hometown, Yangwu Village, Baishui, and lived alone in a deep ditch. He collected all kinds of materials and created all kinds of symbols representing all things in the world. He gave these symbols a name, called Zi.
Cang Xie's words were all made according to the shape of all things. For example, Japanese characters are photos. The word "Moon" is drawn in imitation of the shape of a crescent moon. The herringbone is a study of people's silhouette paintings ... Cang Xie's first writing was later known by the Yellow Emperor, who was greatly moved, and gave Cang the surname. It means that a gentleman is superior to one person, and a man is superior to one. Later, God knew about this and rewarded Cang Xie with a millet rain. This is the origin of the Grain Rain Festival on Earth.
Starting from Baishui County, get off along the Wei (South) Qing (Jian) Highway. Then take the Bai (Shui)-Luo (Chuan) Highway. The jeep ran for about an hour between the ditches and forks on the plateau before it came to Shiguan Village, where the Cangjie Temple is located. The Cangjie Temple, which has a history of more than 1,8 years, has been officially listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit in the State Council.
Cangjie Ling is on the west side of wucun and west of Cangjie Temple. There is also a stone square with the word "Cang Xie" written on it. Cangjie Temple, the date of its construction is unknown. According to the existing inscriptions in the temple, "it has never been replaced since the Han and Tang Dynasties". Today, the Cangjie Temple is a building in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, covering an area of about 2,7 square meters, with a pair of stone pillars facing south and exquisite and elegant carving. The mountain gate and the second gate are all hard-mountain buildings, and the worship hall, the main hall and the sleeping pavilion are elegant and beautiful. There are also inscriptions by famous people in the Ming Dynasty and stone carvings by Cang Xie and his wife. There are many inscriptions in the temple, green pines and cypresses, willows and pavilions, and the whole building is magnificent.
It records the Chinese writing system and is still or used in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world. Broadly speaking, it is the same writing in the cultural circle of Chinese characters.
Chinese characters are the most basic unit of Chinese writing, and their use started at the latest in Shang Dynasty, and experienced various changes in writing styles such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Da Zhuan, Xiao Zhuan, Li Shu and Kai Shu (cursive script and running script). Qin Shihuang unified China, and Li Si sorted out Xiao Zhuan, and the history of "Shu Tongwen" began. However, the unification of writing system reduces the communication barriers caused by dialect differences.
In Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty summarized the structural rules of Chinese characters as "six books": pictograph, signifier, knowing, pictophonetic sound, transliteration and borrowing. Among them, pictograph, signifier, knowing and pictophonetic sound are the principles of word formation, which is the "word formation method"; While transliteration and borrowing are the rules of using Chinese characters, which is the "method of using Chinese characters".
Over the past 3, years, the writing style of Chinese characters has not changed much, enabling future generations to read ancient Chinese without hindrance. However, after modern western civilization entered East Asia, countries in the whole Chinese character cultural circle have set off the trend of learning from the West, among which giving up using Chinese characters is an important aspect of this movement. The argument of these movements is that compared with western pinyin characters, Chinese characters are cumbersome and clumsy. Many countries that use Chinese characters have simplified Chinese characters to varying degrees, and even tried to completely pinyin them. The Latin transliteration scheme of Japanese pseudonyms and the emergence of various Chinese pinyin schemes are all based on this idea. Chinese mainland simplified the strokes of Chinese characters by referring to the cursive script of the running script, and revised and passed the Summary of Simplified Chinese Characters on January 28, 1956. Since it was used in China and Singapore, traditional Chinese has been used in Taiwan Province.
Chinese characters are an important tool to carry culture, and there are a large number of ancient books written in Chinese characters. Different dialects use Chinese characters as the writing system of * * *, so Chinese characters have played an important role in the spread of Chinese civilization in history and become an internal link in the formation of Southeast Asian cultural circles. During the development of Chinese characters, a large number of cultures such as poems and couplets have been left behind. And formed a unique art of Chinese calligraphy.
A Chinese character generally has multiple meanings, and also has a strong ability to form words, and many Chinese characters can be independently formed into words. This leads to a very high "use efficiency" of Chinese characters, and about 2, commonly used words can cover more than 98% of written expressions. Coupled with the ideographic characteristics of Chinese characters, the reading efficiency of Chinese characters is very high. Chinese characters have higher information density than alphabetic characters, so on average, The Chinese expression of the same content is shorter than that of any other alphabetic language.
At present, in areas where Chinese is used, most of them use two standard Chinese characters, namely, traditional Chinese (traditional Chinese characters) and simplified Chinese (simplified Chinese characters). The former is used in Chinese communities in Taiwan Province, Hongkong, Macau and North America, while the latter is used in Chinese communities in Chinese mainland, Singapore and Southeast Asia. Generally speaking, although there are differences between the two Chinese writing systems, The individual difference of commonly used Chinese characters is less than 25%.
Because of the complexity of writing Chinese characters, the theory of "Chinese characters lag behind" has existed for a long time, and it is believed that Chinese characters are the bottleneck of education and informatization, and there is a push to "Latinize" or even abolish Chinese characters. Now it is generally believed that Chinese characters also have outstanding advantages. Although it is difficult to learn at first, there is no continuous learning problem similar to a large number of English words after mastering commonly used words, and their ideographic characteristics can fully mobilize the learning ability of the human brain.