Posted by: Li Zujia Posted by: June 24, 2006
A brief history of Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese characters are the logical result of the evolution of Chinese characters. Chinese characters range from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions to seal script, and then to official script.
The general trend of regular script is from complexity to simplicity. Official script is the simplification of seal script, cursive script and running script are the simplification of official script.
Simplified characters are the simplification of regular script. Regular script began to appear in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, while simplified Chinese characters (4-) appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
The 6th century), to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, simplified characters gradually increased, which were quite common among the people and were called "vulgar characters".
"。 At this time, many simplified words we use today have appeared, such as "should", "guard", "gold", "enemy", "Zhu", "Zhuang", "Qi", "Yuan", "Lou" and "Gu".
, offering, exchanging, lights, graves, donkeys, and so on. In the Tang Dynasty, Yan's "The Book of Ganlu Zi" and "Japanese Drama" both included a large number of vulgar characters. After the Song Dynasty, there was printing.
With the invention of technology, simplified characters have been transferred from inscriptions and handwriting to block-printed books, thus expanding the popularization scope of simplified characters and greatly increasing the number. According to the Book of Folk Characters since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, there were as many as 6,240 simplified characters used in 12 folk engravings in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, which made up 1604 traditional Chinese characters, with an average of 3.9 different simplified characters for each traditional Chinese character. The simplified characters that are exactly the same as those used now are Shi, Bao, Listening, Wan, Li, Lao, Tong, Zhuang, Dream, Although, Medicine, Yang, Phoenix, Sound and Meaning.
1909, Lu Feikui published a paper "Common characters should be used in general education" in the first issue of Education magazine, which was the first time in history to publicly advocate simplified characters.
1922, Lu Feikui published a paper "Opinions on the Sorting of Chinese Characters", suggesting that simplified characters that have been popularized among the people should be adopted, and other characters with many strokes should also be simplified.
1922, Qian proposed "saving the current Chinese character stroke case" at the preparatory Committee for the unification of Mandarin, which was signed by, and. This is the first concrete plan about simplified Chinese characters in history, which advocates that simplified Chinese characters, which were only popular among the people in the past, should be the standard Chinese characters in all written languages. The eight methods of simplifying Chinese characters put forward by it are actually the basis of simplifying Chinese characters now, which has far-reaching influence.
1928, Hu published The Theory of Simplified Characters, which collected more than 300 simplified characters.
1930 The Institute of History and Linguistics of Academia Sinica published a list of commonly used characters since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, reflecting the development of simplified characters in the past thousand years.
1932, the Ministry of Education of the national government published the Common Phonetic Vocabulary compiled by the Preparatory Committee for Putonghua, which includes many simplified characters, and pointed out: "Now we should implement it (simplified characters) to make writing easier."
1934 China Library Service published Du Dingyou's Specification Table of Simplified Characters, and collected three simplified characters.
53. Xu Zemin published a list of 550 commonly used words in the semi-monthly Analects of Confucius. Qian is preparing for the unification of Putonghua.
The Committee put forward a case of collecting simplified characters that are inherently applicable.
1935, Qian presided over the compilation of Simplified Chinese Characters, and collected more than 2,400 simplified Chinese characters. In August of the same year, the Ministry of Education of the National Government adopted a part of the draft and published the "First Edition of Simplified Chinese Characters List".
A total of 324 words were recalled in order in February of the following year, but Bi was the first simplified word list published by go-vern-ment. That is, in this year, Shanghai cultural circles organized a "hand-holding word promotion meeting" and launched "hand-holding"
The first word (simplified word) "movement.
1936 10, Rong Geng Simplified Dictionary, 4445 words, basically cursive. In June of the same year 165438+ 10, Trn Quang Diu published a list of commonly used simplified characters, with 3 150 words, about half of which came from cursive script.
Half of the books come from vulgar characters.
1937, the font research society of Beiping Research Institute published the first simplified word list with 1700 words.
After the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the movement of simplified characters was forced to stop, but it continued to develop mainly in the areas ruled by communist party. After the * * * Party seized power, it immediately began to continue to promote simplified characters.
From 65438 to 0950, the Social Education Department of the Ministry of Education of the Central People's Government compiled the Registration Form of Commonly Used Simplified Characters.
195 1 year, on the basis of the above table, according to the principle of "words without deeds", the first batch of simplified word lists with a total of 555 words were drawn up.
On February 5th, 1952, the China Character Reform Research Committee was established.
At the end of 1954, on the basis of the first batch of simplified word lists, the Cultural Reform Commission drew up a simplified word scheme (draft), which abolished 798 words, 56 simplified words and 400 variant characters.
On February 2nd, 1955 "Simplified Chinese Character Scheme (Draft)" was published, and 26 1 was tried out in more than 50 newspapers and periodicals in China in three batches. In July of the same year, 13, the State Council established a trial scheme of simplified characters.
In the same year, in June+10, 5438, the National Conference on Character Reform was held, and the Simplified Chinese Character Scheme (Revised Draft) was discussed and adopted, with the number of characters received reduced to 5 15 and the number of simplified Chinese characters reduced to 54.
1October 28th, 65438+65438,0956 "Simplified Chinese Character Scheme" was revised by the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme Revision Committee, adopted by the 23rd plenary meeting in the State Council, officially published in People's Daily on1October 28th, and promoted nationwide.
All right. Later, this scheme was slightly changed according to the usage. 1In May 1996, the Cultural Reform Commission published a summary of simplified characters, which was divided into three tables: the first table was 352 simplified characters that were not used as radicals, and the second table was 132.
There are 14 simplified words, and so on. The third table is 1754 simplified words. * * * 2238 words (actually 2236 words because of the repetition of the words "sign" and "must"), which is the standard of using words in Chinese mainland today.
In other countries where Chinese characters are used, they are also simplifying Chinese characters.