■Information 1:
When the concept that alphabetic characters only represent sounds and not pictograms is used to study the structure of characters, it does not require understanding of the origin and development process of characters, which makes some people feel Relievedly convenient. In fact, since the ancestor of alphabetic writing is pictographic writing, the existing alphabetic writing more or less retains pictographic elements. Therefore, this book attempts to "explain and explain" English characters in the form of six Chinese characters, in the hope of using traditional Chinese academics to conduct a fundamental discussion of hieroglyphs.
Explanation:
bed, bed. b represents something big on one end and small on the other, the backrest of the bed; d represents an object without height, the other end of the bed; e represents the bed board.
Out, outside, out. The sun o rises from the valley u and the trees t.
Eye, eyes. The two eyes e are on both sides of the nose y.
Live, life, fresh and abundant. The seedlings get water, branches and leaves.
Stand, stand. st+and. The body shape is like a tree, which means upright, and. Original meaning
Stand with...
The English letter "O" is the pictogram of "sun"; the letter "C" is the pictogram of "moon"; the English word Mount is composed of the macro outline M representing the mountain and the table stone (o) valley ( u) hole (n) tree (t) composed of several elements...
At least three English words are pictographic:
One is eye "eye", and the structure of the word itself is like The two eyes are on both sides of the nose;
The second one is "bed", and the structure of the word itself is like a bed built up by two bed frames;
The third one is "bed". It is "broom", that is, b is the pictogram of a broom, and its function is to clean the house.
Take the pictographic letters as an example, O is "day" and C is "month"
Taking the radical affix of the pictographic radical as an example, cl is the stick in the hand, which means to hold on tightly.
gl: Drawing an l on the leg or foot means slipping.
Taking pictograms—words as an example, eye, noon, and bud can all be included in this column.
Take referring strokes—letters as an example. Ff means weapon, and Tt means weapon. Tree.
Take the root affix of the radical as an example, sp: facing, facing.
pro: sun o shines r. The face p? means in front and above.
Take the word referring to something as an example, link=line+k——the line end can be opened to bite.
rear=r+ea+r. Behind the two ears.
Kneel=knee+l——The knees are in a line on the ground (l)
Take the strokes of the knowing letter as an example, Ii means "water." ”, where I is the straight line of rain between heaven and earth;
i is the line of dripping water, and the spring of spring is the river.
Take the radical affix of the root of the word as an example, co: the sun and the moon mean the same thing.
ex: seeing the light shining from the darkness means "coming out".
Borrowing word: en→in: en=e. Window + n door = a room i + house n → in.
sub → supo person s drinks water and goes down to the abdomen b, p and becomes full → below..., after...
■Information 2:
The origin of the alphabet
Before the invention of alphabetic writing, the technology of writing was mainly owned by monks and professional scribes in Egypt during the Old Kingdom. The principle of representing a single sound (either a vowel or a consonant) by a symbol was discovered. Due to the strong conservatism of the ancient Egyptians, they did not fully use it. Therefore, Dillinger believes that the ancient Egyptians' method of writing single sounds was not. Alphabetical, for if they had practiced alphabetic rules they would have abandoned that cumbersome hieroglyphic system for which they were so fond. Gardner, on the other hand, did not hesitate to call this representation singular. The symbol table for pronunciation is the "alphabet". Although the Egyptians did not fully realize the full potential of this method of using a single symbol to represent a single pronunciation, it cannot be denied that they used it. Although early forms of alphabetic writing originated in Egyptian writing, as some believe, Egypt cannot be considered the true birthplace of the alphabet. Of the various theories about the origin of the alphabet, the most likely seems to be that it was invented by a branch of the Semites associated with the Egyptians around the early second millennium B.C. and later developed in Palestine. , and probably ultimately completed by the Phoenicians.
Some inscriptions unearthed during excavations in the Sinai Peninsula and (more recently) Palestine are thought to be precursors to the alphabet. The Sinai inscriptions consist of poorly drawn linear symbols, most of which were apparently borrowed from or based on Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols (fig. 556). It is generally accepted that these symbols are alphabetic, and various attempts have been made to translate them. The most recent and perhaps most successful is Albright's interpretation.
He believed that this was the common alphabetical Canaanite language of the early 15th century BC, which he called "vulgar" Canaanite, and that it had dialectal characteristics that distinguished it from the language of contemporary inscriptions from Byblos. The latter, together with some short inscriptions from Gezer, Lekki and Shechem, may be considered other precursors of the first true alphabet.
We must now examine the two earliest representatives of truly alphabetic scripts, Ugaritic and Phoenician, the latter of which spread and provided a strong foundation for the subsequent development of alphabets. .
Ugarit In 1928, a French expedition led by Claude Schaeffer began to excavate the ancient city of Ugarit - the modern Ras Shamra. It is located on the coast of northern Syria, opposite to the east of Cyprus. The port has a continuous history dating back to the period when Syria was first settled, but its most prosperous period was between 1800 and 1200 BC. The people spoke a dialect that was very similar to Phoenician and Hebrew but had phonetic features. In the library of a temple, the expedition found a large number of clay tablets. Many were written in ordinary cuneiform and were easy to read, but about 600 were written in a script different from any known cuneiform system. (Plate 30 B). The limited number of symbols in them suggests that the script was alphabetic. It was soon discovered that they belonged to an alphabet composed of cuneiform symbols specially invented to represent phonemes (margin 87) unique to the Semitic dialect of Ugarit. In 1949, Schaefer discovered a clay tablet in Ugarit that contained the Ugaritic alphabet, which was written in alphabetical order (as we now call its symbols). It is immediately noticed that, except for the eight additional letters of the inserted Ugaritic alphabet, the order corresponds to that of the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets. The eight additional letters represent sounds that are not or cannot be represented in Phoenician and Hebrew. The Ugaritic alphabet's distinction between palatals, dental sounds, and sibilant sounds is also apparently similar to Arabic.
Scholars have looked for the origin of the Ugaritic alphabet from different directions. Consideration of its relationship to cuneiform, Egyptian, ancient Sinaitic, and southern Semitic scripts does not provide a satisfactory explanation. Experiments with alphabetic tendencies were made between the middle and the end of the second millennium B.C., but the experiments with Ugaritic were doomed to fail, mainly because Phoenician was already in common use, but also because clay was Palestine is not a natural writing material. In addition, the destruction of Ugaritic civilization caused by the invasion of the Sea Peoples in the 13th century BC led to the disappearance of their unique writing.
Phoenician The earliest evidence of this type of linear writing, commonly known as Phoenician, appears in a group of inscriptions belonging to the kings of Byblos. The first of these inscriptions is Shaft Baal, which is believed to be between the 17th and 15th centuries BC. The next, and most famous, is Ahiram (Plate 31 A), whose sarcophagus has been dated to about the 13th century BC (Dillinger) and the 10th century BC (Albright) between. It shows a group of crudely carved linear symbols that are clearly related to Sinaitic and early Semitic written records on the one hand, and to the later, more perfect inscriptions on the Pillars of Mesha and the Aqueduct of Siloam on the other. The alphabet provided by this Northern Semitic inscription has 22 letters and is written from right to left. They represent only consonants, but like Hebrew some of them must be used as vowels. It is difficult to explain the consonant restrictions of the various Semitic alphabet systems, but it should be noted that the structure of all Semitic languages ??is based on two- and three-consonant roots. This gives the basic concept of words. Vowels are only used to express relationships, conditions, moods, emotions, etc.
■Information 3:
The origin of English letters
A
Just like Chinese characters originated from pictograms, each of the English letters Letters began as pictures depicting the shape of an animal or object, and these pictures eventually evolved into symbols. But these symbols bear little resemblance to the shapes of the actual objects that were originally traced. No one is sure what these hieroglyphic letters originally stood for. Our explanations can only be educated guesses made by scholars based on historical data. It is generally believed that the Greek alphabet is the ancestor of all Western alphabets, including the Latin alphabet. In fact, the Greek alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians. About 3,000 years ago, the letter A in the Phoenician alphabet was pronounced like aleph, and was written like the letter V, with a horizontal line in the middle to represent a bull's head or horns. Later, the Greeks wrote it upside down. For the ancient Phoenicians, cattle meant wealth and were indispensable for food, clothing, and farming. This may be why A is listed as the first letter.
B
Like the letter A, the letter B can also be traced back to ancient Phoenicia. In the Phoenician alphabet, B is pronounced beth, which represents house. In Hebrew, B is also called beth, which also means house. The letter B originally resembled a two-room house in primitive society, and the lowercase letter B later evolved from the uppercase letter B. There is a Jewish and Christian holy place in the West Bank today called Bethlehem, and the word still contains the element beth.
The reason why B is ranked second in the alphabet may be because shelter is second only to food and clothing in importance to human survival. (See A)
C
The letter C is called gimel in Phoenician writing, which represents camel. Its order in the alphabet is the same as the Greek letter Γ (gamma), and its glyph actually evolved from the latter. C means 100 in Roman numerals. (See A, G)
D
D was a pictographic symbol that traced the shape of an arch or door in ancient times. It was called in ancient Phoenician and Hebrew Daleth means "door" and is equivalent to the Greek letter Δ (delta). (See A)
E
E is the most commonly used letter in English. In Phoenician and Hebrew, E is the pictogram representing a window, called he, which is equivalent to the Greek letter E (epsilon). (See A)
F
F is the sixth letter in the English alphabet, derived from the sixth hieroglyphic letter of Phoenician, which is similar to today's English The letter Y stands for wooden peg or peg, and its name in Phoenician and Hebrew is waw. Felons in the Middle Ages were often marked with an F on their left cheeks as a form of punishment. (See A, V)
G
In the ancient Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets, G is a pictographic letter that traces the outline of a camel's head and neck. , whose name is gimel. Later, the Greeks borrowed this symbol and called it Γ (gamma). In fact, the letters G and C are derived from the same Phoenician alphabet. There is no letter G in the original Latin alphabet, and words containing the g sound and the k sound are represented by the letter C. After the third century AD, the ancient Romans created G based on C. Since then, C has represented the sound k and G has represented the sound g. (See A, C)
H
Like other letters, H can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet through the Latin alphabet and the Greek alphabet. In Phoenician, the letter corresponding to H has two horizontal bars, representing a hedge or fence, and the letter name is heth or cheth. (See A)
I
The ninth letter I in English is derived from the hieroglyphic letter called yod / yodh in Phoenician, which is considered to represent the human finger. Initially, the lowercase letter i did not have a dot. The dot above the i was only added by scribes after the 11th century to distinguish double i letters (such as filii) from the letter u. Furthermore, before the 19th century, the written or printed forms of i and j were interchangeable, and dictionaries did not treat them as two different letters. For example, in the "English Dictionary" compiled by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), iambic is ranked in the middle of jamb and jangle. The English I is equivalent to the Greek Ι (iota).
J
The letter J was created in the post-Shakespearean times, around 1630, and is called the youngest letter in the English alphabet together with V. The King James Version of the Bible issued in 1611 by King James I of England does not contain the letter J or j. Just as G is based on C, J is derived from I, that is, adding a tail to I. However, until the 19th century, the written or printed forms of I and J were interchangeable and were not completely separated. (See A, I)
K
The roots of the letter K can also be traced back to ancient Phoenician. In the Phoenician alphabet, K is a hieroglyph representing the human hand. In Hebrew, it is called kaph, which means "hand (palm)". It was borrowed from Greek and made Κ (kappa). In ancient Rome, those who committed slander were marked with a K on their foreheads. K stood for kalumnia, which is equivalent to the English calumny (slander). (See A)
L
In the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets, L is called lamed / lamedh, which is a pictographic symbol representing an oxgoad or whip. The corresponding letter in Greek is ∧ (lambda). (See A)
M
Like other letters, M can be traced back to ancient Phoenician. The Phoenicians were adventurous and famous for their maritime trade, sailing as far as the coast of Spain. M is a pictographic symbol representing the shape of a wave in the Phoenician alphabet. In Hebrew, it is called mem, which means "water". The corresponding letter in Greek is M (mu). In the Middle Ages, those who committed murder (manslaughter) were often branded with an M on their left thumb. M stands for 1000 in Roman numerals (mille in Latin). (See A)
N
The letter N is wavy in Egyptian hieroglyphs, called nun in Phoenician, meaning "fish", and the corresponding Greek The letter is N (nu). (See A, M)
O
Many languages ??have letters similar to O, and they all represent human eyes. In some ancient alphabets, a dot is added to the O to represent the pupil. In Phoenician, O is called cayin, which means "eye", and in Old English, O is called oedel, which means "home".
(See A)
P
The sixteenth letter P of the English alphabet was called pe by the ancient Phoenicians and Hebrews, meaning "mouth". The corresponding letter in Greek is ∏ (pi). In the 16th century, a Dominican friar named Placentius wrote a poem entitled Pugna Porcorum, which consists of 253 hexameter lines. Each word in the poem begins with p. , which is probably unique in history and in the present. (See A)
Q
The letter Q evolved from the nineteenth hieroglyphic letter of Phoenician and Hebrew. The shape of Q is a bit like a monkey with its tail hanging down. No wonder the Phoenician language called this letter qoph, which means "monkey". In English, Q is almost always followed by U, and it rarely appears at the end of a word unless it is a foreign word. (See A)
R
The eighteenth letter R of the English alphabet evolved from the twentieth hieroglyphic letter of Phoenician and Hebrew. The Phoenicians called it resh, meaning "head." Since ancient Roman times, R has been called dog’s letter or snarling letter, because the pronunciation of R resembles the sound of a dog’s howl, r-r-r-r or gr-r-r-r. The English playwright and poet Ben Johnson (1572-1637) wrote this in his book English Grammar Made for the Benefit of All Strangers in 1636: "R is the dog's letter, and hurrieth in the sound; the tongue striking the inner palate, with a trembling about the teeth." In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet's nanny said to Romeo about his last name, Romeo and rosemary (Rosemary), a flower often associated with weddings, both begin with the letter R, and R is called dog-name. (See A)
S
In Phoenician and Hebrew, S is called shin/sin, which means "teeth". The shape of the letter is quite like today's W. The current glyph gradually evolved after it entered Latin. The corresponding letter in Greek is ∑ (sigma). (See A)
T
Today’s letter T is a variation of the Phoenician hieroglyphic letter. The early glyph was similar to today's letter X, called taw, which means "mark". The corresponding Greek letter formed based on this symbol is Τ (tau). (See A)
U
The letter U is derived from the letter V. For hundreds of years before the 19th century, these two letters, like I and J, could always be used interchangeably and were not distinguished in English dictionaries. For example, in books published in the 16th and 17th centuries, upon was often spelled vpon, and have was often spelled haue. Even in 1847, A Dictionary of the English Language (A Dictionary of the English Language) published by Henry Washbourne Company in London was still using this practice. (See A, V)
V
V is one of the two youngest letters in the English alphabet (the other is J). It was created after Shakespeare's time, about 1630 Appeared in the year. But V is also the ancestor of three letters such as U, W, and Y. Even F can be said to be derived from V. V is derived from the sixth hieroglyphic letter in the Phoenician alphabet around 1000 BC. This letter is similar to today's English letter Y, called waw, which means "wood bolt" or "wooden nail". After 900 BC, the Greeks borrowed this letter and derived two letters from it. One later evolved into the English letter F, and the other evolved into V and Y. Before the 19th century, the two letters V and U were originally indistinguishable and interchangeable. V means 5 in the Roman alphabet. (Add A, F, U, W, Y)
W
Same as U and Y, W is also derived from V. In fact, W is composed of double V. It should be pronounced double V. The reason why W is pronounced as double U is because for several centuries before the 19th century, U and V were indistinguishable and could be interchanged. V is the symbol for both V and U. Even if it is pronounced like U, it is often written as V, and when pronounced like upon, it is often spelled vpon. The letter W in French is pronounced as double V. (See A, U, W)
X
The twenty-fourth letter X of the English alphabet is equivalent to the twenty-second letter X of the Greek alphabet (chi ), in fact, the former is borrowed from the latter, and the latter is derived from a hieroglyphic letter representing "fish" in Phoenician, pronounced like samekh. X represents 10 in Roman numerals; in algebra and mathematics, X is often used to represent unknown numbers.
When contemporary mathematics was introduced to Europe from Arabia, the Arabic word shei, which means "unknown number", was translated into xei, so the initial letter X became a common code for unknown numbers. As for the origin of the letter X, there is another theory: This explanation may come from folk etymology. (See A)
Y
Y can be said to be derived from V, and its roots can be traced back to the Greek alphabet known as the Pythagorean alphabet (the Υ (upsilon) of letter of Pythagoras. In algebra, Y is often used to represent the second unknown. (See A, V)
Z
Z is pronounced as zed in British English and zee in American English, but in Old English it is pronounced as izzard. Z is derived from the sixth letter of Greek, Ζ (zeta), which was borrowed from Phoenician. Some people may ask, why is Ζ the sixth letter in Greek, but the twenty-sixth letter in English, which is the last letter. In fact, this was not always the case. When the Romans borrowed Z from the Greek, they thought Z would have no use, so they removed the Z. Later, it was discovered that Z was still useful, but at this time Z had lost its original status, so he had to settle for last place. In fact, Z is also considered useless by many writers in English.
Shakespeare once wrote: "Thou whoreson Zed! Thou unnecessary letter!" (King Lear, II, ii)