Chinese characters are an indispensable part of Chinese civilization. They not only carry our history for thousands of years, but are also an important means of communication for people from ancient times to the present. The art of calligraphy derived from Chinese characters is more It is a treasure of Chinese civilization. But how were Chinese characters created?
Studying the origin of Chinese characters has a history of more than 2,500 years in China.
According to legend in the Pre-Qin Dynasty, Cangjie was the creator of calligraphy. "Xunzi·Jieye" records: "There are many good calligraphers, but Cangjie is the only one who passed down the calligraphy." "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" records: "Xi Zhong made chariots, and Cangjie made books." According to legend, Cangjie was the historian of the Yellow Emperor and a representative person in organizing writing in ancient times. "Shuowen Jiezi" records: Cangjie was the historian who created characters during the Yellow Emperor's period and was revered as the "Sage of Writing". Historian Xu Xu believes that the creation of characters The appearance should be related to Cangjie. At that time, the formulation of the calendar required written records, and the formulation of the oracle also required writing. Therefore, Cangjie should be a member of the Zhuanxu tribe. He was "born here and buried here", so there is a mausoleum of Cangjie in Taipei. He lived in about the 26th century BC. Based on this, it is speculated that our country's writing was relatively mature four or five thousand years ago.
In modern times, some people recognized Cangjie and at the same time expanded the scope of his creation. The team of calligraphers. For example, Mr. Lu Xun, he believed that "In society, Cangjie is not the same. Some carve a few pictures on the hilts, some draw some pictures on the door. They are in harmony with each other and pass on word of mouth, so there are more words. Once the historian collects it, he can just record the incident perfunctorily. I am afraid that the origin of Chinese characters cannot escape this example." "Lu Xun. In other words, Chinese characters cannot of course be created by Cangjie alone, but are gradually enriched by many people like Cangjie. Cangjie is just more important and prominent among these people. The role of Chinese characters is relatively large. What we pay attention to is not whether Cangjie created the Chinese characters, but the meaning of the creation of the characters themselves. The emergence of Chinese characters marks that Chinese history has entered the era of written records and is the long history of history. A major event in the Chinese history, it also had an important impact on later generations.
Cangjie created Chinese characters
Cangjie, surnamed Hou Gang, nicknamed Shihuang, was an official historian during the reign of the Yellow Emperor and the founder of Chinese characters. He is revered as the "Sage of Inventing Characters". There are Cangjie Mausoleum, Cangjie Temple and Bookmaking Platform in Wu Village, 35 miles northwest of present-day Nanle County. Historians believe that Cangjie was born and buried here.
According to legend, Cangjie "Begin to make written deeds instead of knotting ropes." Before that, people knotted ropes to remember events, that is, tying big knots in one big knot, small knots in small knots, and connected knots in a series of knots. Later, it developed to using knives to mark wood and bamboo. Symbols are used to record events. With the development of history, civilization has gradually become more complex, and the methods of knotting and carving wood are far from being able to meet the needs. Therefore, there is an urgent need to create writing. In the time of the Yellow Emperor, it was an ancient invention. It was a period when there were many inventions. At that time, not only silkworm breeding was invented, but also boats, carts, bows and slaves, mirrors, pots and steamers for cooking, etc. Under the influence of these inventions, Cangjie also determined to create a kind of writing. .
It is said that Cangjie had four double-pupiled eyes and was very smart. One year, Cangjie went on a hunting tour in the south and climbed a Yangxu Mountain (now Luonan County, Shaanxi Province). He came to Xuanhuluo? In the water, he suddenly saw a large turtle with many blue patterns on its back. Cangjie found it strange, so he took it and studied it carefully. He looked around and found that the patterns on the turtle's back were actually meaningful. . He thought that since patterns could represent meanings, if a rule was set, wouldn't everyone be able to use them to express their feelings and record things?
Cangjie thought about it day and night, observing everywhere and seeing all the stars in the sky. He traced the distribution of animals, the appearance of mountains and rivers on the ground, the traces of birds, animals, insects and fish, and the shapes of vegetation and utensils, and created various symbols, and determined the meaning of each symbol. He followed his own wishes Use symbols to piece together several paragraphs and show them to others. After his explanation, they can understand clearly. Cangjie called this symbol "zi".
Cangjie succeeded in making characters, but something strange happened. One day it rained like millet during the day, and at night I heard ghosts crying and howling. Why did it rain like millet? Because Cangjie created writing, which can be used to convey feelings and record things, which is certainly worthy of celebration. But why do ghosts cry? Some people say , because of the writing, the people's wisdom is becoming more and more popular, and the people's morality is getting worse and worse. They are cheating, cunning, fighting and killing.
Killing was born from this, and the world will never have peace from now on, and even ghosts will have no peace, so ghosts will cry.
There is another saying:
Once, Cangjie was The historical books recorded in these knots provided the Yellow Emperor with historical facts that were wrong, causing the Yellow Emperor to fail in the border negotiations with Emperor Yan. Afterwards, Cangjie resigned in shame and traveled around the world, visiting and recording historical events. Three years later, he Returning to his hometown of Yangwu Village, Baishui, he lived alone in a deep ditch to "observe the circular curves of Kuixing and observe the traces of hooves and claws of birds and beasts." He sorted out various materials and created various symbols representing all things in the world. He gave these symbols After giving a name, it’s called a character.
Cangjie’s characters are all made according to the shapes of all things. For example: the character “日” is drawn in the shape of the red and round sun; the character “月” is drawn in imitation of the shape of the sun. It was drawn with the shape of a crescent moon; the human character was drawn by looking at the silhouette of a person... Later Huangdi found out that Cangjie was the first to create writing. He was greatly moved and gave him the surname Cang. Its meaning is that one person is superior to the emperor, and others are superior to others. Yijun. Later, God knew about this and rewarded Cangjie with a rain of millet. This is the origin of the Grain Rain Festival in the world.
Starting from Baishui County, along the Wei (South) Qing ( Jian) ??Highway to Luohe River, and then changed to Bai (Shui) Luo (Sichuan) Highway. The jeep ran through the ravines of the plateau for about an hour before arriving at Shiguan Village where Cangjie Temple is located. This temple has a history of more than 1,800 years. The historical Cangjie Temple has been officially listed as a national key cultural relic protection unit by the State Council.
Cangjie Mausoleum is located on the west side of Wucun, facing the Cangjie Temple to the west and east. It is a large mound five meters high. Below the mausoleum are ancient cultural relics from the Yangshao to Longshan periods. In front of the mausoleum, there are Weng Zhong, stone lions, and a stone square with the word "Cangjie" written on it. The Cangjie Temple was built in an unknown year. According to the existing inscriptions in the temple, "Historical It has not been replaced since the Han and Tang Dynasties." The Cangjie Temple we see today is a building from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It covers an area of ??about 2,700 square meters. It faces south from the north and has a pair of stone pillars with exquisite and elegant carvings; the mountain gate and the second gate are both It is a hard-mountain-style building. The worship hall, main hall and sleeping pavilion are generous and beautiful. There are also seal couplets on the foreheads of celebrities in the Ming Dynasty and stone carvings of Cangjie and his wife. There are many inscriptions in the temple, with green pines and cypresses, willows and rows of towers and pavilions. The whole building is majestic.
The writing system that records Chinese and is still or was used in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Chinese characters are one of the oldest writing systems in the world, with a history of more than 4,500 years. In a narrow sense, It is a Chinese character; broadly speaking, it is the most unique character in the cultural circle of Chinese characters.
Chinese characters are the most basic unit of Chinese writing. Its use began in the Shang Dynasty at the latest, and has gone through Oracle, Various styles of calligraphy have changed: large seal script, small seal script, official script, regular script (cursive script, running script). Qin Shihuang unified China, Li Si organized the small seal script, and the history of "scripts with the same text" began. Although the pronunciation of Chinese dialects is very different, the unification of the writing system has been reduced Communication barriers caused by dialect differences.
In "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen summarized the structure rules of Chinese characters as "six books": pictograms, referring to things, understanding, pictophonetics, transfers, and borrowings. Among them , the four items of pictography, reference, understanding, and pictophonetic sound are the principles of character creation, which are the "methods of creating characters"; while transfers and borrowings are the rules of word usage, which are the "methods of using characters".
More than three thousand Over the years, the way of writing Chinese characters has changed little, allowing future generations to read ancient texts without being hindered. However, after modern Western civilization entered East Asia, various countries in the entire Chinese character culture circle have set off a trend of learning from the West. Among them, the use of Chinese characters has been abandoned. It is an important aspect of this movement. The argument of these movements is that compared with Western pinyin writing, Chinese characters are cumbersome and clumsy. Many countries that use Chinese characters have simplified Chinese characters to varying degrees, and even attempted to completely pinyinize them. The Latin transliteration scheme of Japanese kana and the emergence of various Chinese pinyin schemes are all based on this idea. Mainland China simplified the strokes of Chinese characters by referring to running script and cursive script, and reviewed and approved the "Simplified Character List" on January 28, 1956. It is still used in China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese has always been used in Taiwan.
Chinese characters are an important tool for carrying culture. There are currently a large number of classics written in Chinese characters. Different dialects use Chinese characters as their synonyms. Writing system, Chinese characters have played an important role in the spread of Chinese civilization in history, and have become an intrinsic link in the formation of the Southeast Asian cultural circle.
Belt. In the process of the development of Chinese characters, a large number of poems, couplets and other cultures have been left behind, and a unique art of Chinese calligraphy has been formed.
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 results in the extremely high "usage efficiency" of Chinese characters. About 2,000 commonly used characters can cover more than 98 written expressions. Coupled with the characteristics of Chinese ideograms, the reading efficiency of Chinese characters is very high. Chinese characters It has a higher information density than alphabetic characters. Therefore, on average, Chinese expressions of the same content are shorter than characters in any other alphabetic language.
Currently, in areas where Chinese is spoken, most of the two standardized Chinese characters are used , respectively Traditional Chinese (traditional characters) and Simplified Chinese (simplified characters). The former is used in Chinese communities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and North America, and the latter is used in Chinese communities in mainland China, Singapore and Southeast Asia. Generally speaking, the two Although there are differences among the various Chinese character writing systems, the individual differences of commonly used Chinese characters are less than 25%.
Due to the complexity of writing Chinese characters, the "theory of backward Chinese characters" has existed for a long time. It is believed that Chinese characters are important for education and information technology. bottleneck, and there is a push to "Latinize Chinese characters" or even abolish them. Nowadays, it is generally believed that Chinese characters also have outstanding advantages. Although the initial learning is difficult, after mastering common characters, there is no problem of continuing to learn similar to the massive English words, and its ideographic characteristics It can also fully mobilize the learning ability of the human brain. After the computer input problem has been basically solved, the "theory of backwardness of Chinese characters" and "the Latinization of Chinese characters" have actually been gradually abandoned by most people.
Word puzzle: half cloth Spring and Autumn - Qin crossword puzzle: Yinchuan - Quan crossword puzzle: Come again and again - Ran crossword puzzle: Gatekeeper - flash crossword puzzle: Someone stole the car - lose crossword puzzle: Fragrance the next day after brewing wine crossword puzzle: half green and half purple - plain crossword puzzle: myself ——Physical word riddle: The scholar has a cocked tail——bald
1. A woman is too worried (guess a word) Angry
2. Mouth out a sad cry and sew it into her clothes. (play a word puzzle) One word puzzle) mourn
3. The Chinese character is caught in the clothes. (Play one word puzzle) Zhong
4. No need to add points, just dig in the grass. (Play one word puzzle) Rabbit
5. The woman said that we should work together. (Make a word puzzle) Forgive
1. Word puzzle: The emperor’s new clothes - attack
2. Word puzzle: First-class level - Huai
3. Word puzzle: Shi Dakai—Yan
4. Word puzzle: Getting started with Gongzhu—邂
5. Word puzzle: Extraordinarily generous—Hui
6. Word puzzle: Get acquainted with people out of purdah - Jia
7. Word puzzle: One Thousand and One Nights - J
8. Word puzzle: Seventy-Two Hours - Jing
9. Word puzzle: A black dog, neither barking nor roaring - Mo
10. Word puzzle (type one word) Around dusk---- Xi
11. Word puzzle (guess one word) One arrow pierces the heart---- must
12. Word puzzle: Come from all sides to cooperate and contribute more--qi
13. Word puzzle: A little change before greed will lead to poverty - poverty
14. Word puzzle: Banbu Chunqiu - Qin
15. Word puzzle: Yinchuan - Spring
16. Word puzzle: Come again and again - Ran
17. Word puzzle: Goalkeeper - flash
18. Word puzzle: Someone steals the car - lose
19. Word puzzle: The fragrance will be fragrant the next day after making wine
20. Word puzzle: Half green and half purple - Su
21. Word puzzle: Self - body
22. Word puzzle: The scholar has a cocked tail - bald
23. Word puzzle: Focus on supporting the northwest - head
24. Word puzzle: The body is disabled but the mind is not disabled. --Xi
p>25. Word puzzle: Eighteen times six - school
26. Word puzzle: One hook, heart, moon and three stars - heart
27. Word puzzle: One stroke and one Stand up a little - press
28. Word puzzle: Eight-character head - learn