Do you know the history of Chinese characters? An article with pictures and texts to take you to understand

Regarding the origin of the text, it is now generally believed to be a tangled note over a period of time. In fact, this point of view has been regressed through some primitive tribal conditions. After all, the rope doesn't last very long.

Have our chinese alphabet experienced knotting and remembering things?

It's hard to tell now.

In ancient Chinese legends, the origin of Chinese characters has always been recognized. It was created by a historian named Cangjie of the Yellow Emperor who was inspired by the footprints of birds and beasts.

This is recorded in the "Wan Xing Tong Pu" in the Ming Dynasty:

(Cangjie) The original text of the bird-watching and insect-watching text.

So, what kind of inspiration did Cangjie get from the footprints of birds and animals? How did you make Chinese characters?

line drawing

The so-called "line drawing" is to use simple lines to draw what you see. This is the original pictograph.

The roots of Chinese characters are pictographs.

For example, when the ancients saw water flow in the river, we drew it according to its shape; when we saw Chinese trees, we drew it according to different shapes... In short, it is one word: painting! As long as it exists in reality, it is outlined with lines.

comprehension

One flaw with hieroglyphs is that some can be built in reality, but if not, how to build them? Like the word "think"?

Cang Jie thought of a way to combine words related to this meaning.

That's what we're talking about now.

This is how the word "thinking" came into being: a person leaning against a tree with his eyes downcast, thinking about something.

emphatically

Sometimes, our country needs to emphatically pass some things, how should we express them in words?

For example, in ancient times, people needed to dig traps to catch prey. But traps don't just trap animals, they trap people too! How are we going to write it down?

Therefore, put a warning sign next to it and write the word "fierce" on it.

Such words are now called reference words.

In addition, there are pictophonetic characters and foreign words, so I won’t go into details here. In short, our Chinese characters are created in this way. Of course, such a huge task could not be done by Cang Jie alone.

Just like what Xunzi said in "Uncovering":

There are many good books, but only Sister Cang.

In other words, before Cangjie, our clever and hardworking ancestors had already started to create words. All Cangjie did was collect these words and then standardize them.

In fact, after Cangjie, many Chinese characters were created.

Isn’t the entire Chinese culture created and summarized from generation to generation, passed on from generation to generation, and finally passed down?