1 Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Shang) 2 inscriptions on bronze (Zhou) 3 seal script (Qin) 4 official script (Han) 5 regular script (Wei and Jin dynasties) 6 running scripts (cursive script)
From the earliest batch of written materials we can see at present, the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells in Shang Dynasty, Chinese characters are in the middle. Because Oracle characters are quite mature writing system, we can infer that the occurrence of Chinese characters must be as far away as 3 years ago. The development of Chinese characters can be divided into two major stages. It is a stage from Oracle characters to seal script; From the official script of Qin and Han dynasties, there is another stage. The former belongs to the category of ancient Chinese characters, while the latter belongs to the category of modern Chinese characters. Generally speaking, there is not much change in the form of modern Chinese characters from Lishu to today.
From the relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese, Chinese characters are a kind of morpheme characters. From the structure of Chinese characters themselves, Chinese characters are a writing system composed of ideographic, phonetic radicals (pictographic and phonetic radicals) and symbols that neither ideographic nor phonetic.
Chinese characters originated from pictures. In the early stage of Chinese characters, the shape of pictographic characters is directly related to the meaning of morphemes it represents. Although each word has its own fixed pronunciation, the glyph itself is not a phonetic symbol, which is different from the letters of pinyin. The pronunciation of pictographic characters is passed on to it by the morphemes it represents. With the evolution of glyphs, pictographs become less and less pictographic. As a result, the glyph has lost its original connection with the morpheme it represents. At this time, the glyph itself is neither phonetic nor semantic, and becomes an abstract symbol. If all the morphemes in Chinese are represented by this kind of sign that neither expresses sound nor meaning, then Chinese characters can be said to be pure sign characters. But this is not the case. Chinese characters have the difference between single characters and combined characters. Only monograms are pure symbolic characters. Combined characters are caused by the combination of single characters. Structurally speaking, combined characters are one level higher than single characters. Because the single character that constitutes the combined character itself is also a symbol, when it is a component of the combined character, it participates as a "word" with sound and meaning. Compound characters can be divided into the following three categories:
① pictophonetic characters. Pictophonetic characters are composed of two parts: the pictophonetic character representing meaning and the phonetic character representing pronunciation. For the pictophonetic characters with the simplest structure, both the pictophonetic characters and the homophonic characters are used as characters. As an integral part of pictophonetic characters, these monograms are all phonetic and meaningful characters. However, the shape only takes its meaning, not its sound, such as "bird" beside the word "dove"; Beside the sound, only the sound is taken, but not its meaning, for example, the radical "nine" of the word "dove" Due to the evolution of word meaning and pronunciation, some pictophonetic characters have lost their function of expressing meaning or pronunciation. For example, "ball" was originally the name of a jade, so it was shaped by "jade". Now the word "ball" no longer refers to jade, and this shape has no function. Another example is that the word "sea" originally used "every" as the sound. Due to the change of pronunciation, the pronunciation of "hai" and "mei" is far from each other now, and the "mei" beside the sound doesn't work. Sometimes, the shape and sound have lost their original functions, such as "give, wait, short". This kind of words can no longer be regarded as pictophonetic words
② The combination of words can understand words. The ancients said, "stop fighting for military power" and "people's words are believed." This explanation is wrong for the words "Wu" and "Xin". However, there are indeed words created in this way in the Chinese character system, such as "incorrect is crooked" and "bad is bad". The characteristic of this kind of characters is to combine the meaning of radicals to express the meaning of the whole combined character. There are few such words, only a few examples.
There is no clear boundary between pictophonetic characters and non-pictophonetic characters. At the beginning of word-making, pictophonetic characters and their pronunciation beside the sound are not necessarily close. With the development of modern Chinese characters, the discrepancy is even greater. Some people take more than 75 modern Chinese characters for statistics. As far as the pronunciation of Putonghua is concerned, less than 5% of the compound characters are completely homophonic with the phonetic side (initials, finals and tones are all the same). About 1% have the same initials and finals but different tones. Only one vowel is the same, accounting for about 2% If we only regard the first two categories as pictophonetic characters, then pictophonetic characters only account for about 15% of the popular Chinese characters. If all the above three categories are regarded as pictophonetic characters, pictophonetic characters will probably account for 35% of the popular Chinese characters. If the standard is relaxed or the pictophonetic characters are determined completely according to their origins, the percentage of pictophonetic characters in popular characters will be much higher. Legend has it that Cangjie created characters, and Wen Tao in primitive times was the prototype of China characters. Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty was the real character of China. Later, there was a bronze inscription (also called Zhong Dingwen). In the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, Shi Guwen compiled a small script in Qin and Han Dynasties. At the end of Qin Dynasty, official scripts became popular in official prisons.