The number of Chinese characters
Chinese characters are morpheme characters, and the total number is very large. How many Chinese characters are there in total? So far, I'm afraid no one can answer the precise number. Regarding the number of Chinese characters, its development can be seen based on records in ancient calligraphy books and Ci books.
The three chapters of "Cangjie", "Boxue" and "Yanli" in the Qin Dynasty have 3300 words each. The "Exuns and Compilations" written by Yang Xiong in the Han Dynasty has 5340 words. By the time Xu Shen wrote "Shuowen" "Jiezi" has 9353 characters. After the Jin and Song Dynasties, the number of characters became increasingly complex. According to the Tang Dynasty Feng Yan's "Wen Jian Ji·Zi Zi Pian", Jin Lu Chen wrote "Zi Lin" with 12,824 words, Yang Chengqing of the later Wei Dynasty wrote "Zi Tong" with 13,734 words, and Liang Guye Wang wrote "Yu Pian" There are 16917 words. "Yupian" written by Sun Qiangzeng of the Tang Dynasty has 22,561 words. By the Song Dynasty, Sima Guang's "Lei Pian" had 31,319 words, and by the Qing Dynasty, the "Kangxi Dictionary" had more than 47,000 words. The "Chinese Dictionary" written by Ouyang Bocun and others in 1915 has more than 48,000 words. In 1959, Japan's "Dahanwa Dictionary" by Morohashi Tetsuji contained 49,964 characters. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Zhang Qiyun in 1971 has 49,888 words.
With the passage of time, the number of words in dictionaries is increasing. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Xu Zhongshu in 1990 contained 54,678 words. In 1994, "Chinese Character Ocean" by Leng Yulong and others contained an astonishing number of words, as many as 85,000 words.
If learning and using Chinese characters really requires mastering the pronunciation, shape, and meaning of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be a language that no one in the world can and no one is willing to learn and use. Fortunately, most of the Chinese characters included in calligraphy books such as "Chinese Character Ocean" are "dead characters", that is, characters that existed in history but are no longer used in today's written language.
Some people have counted the Thirteen Classics (13 classics such as "Book of Changes", "Shang Shu", "Zuo Zhuan", "Gongyang Zhuan", "The Analects of Confucius", and "Mencius"), and the total number of words is There are 589283 words, of which the number of different single words is 6544. Therefore, in fact, there are only six to seven thousand Chinese characters used by people in daily life.
Reference materials: /gb/cn_zgwh/2004-06/28/content_51186.htm
On traditional Chinese characters and simplified characters! (A must-read for Chinese people!)
In the middle of the twentieth century, against the noisy background of excess of kitsch and lack of elegance, China launched a massive Chinese character simplification movement. After most of the complicated Chinese characters were hacked with axes, the flesh was gone and only the thin bones remained. Due to the large number of simplified Chinese characters, major stroke changes, and serious glyph distortion, it is almost equivalent to re-creating a writing system. Since then, mainland China has had two official sets of printed texts—traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters. One set is used, the other is mothballed. Taking the 1950s as a watershed, people born after that time only learned simplified Chinese characters and were alien to traditional Chinese characters. I have yet to read a convincing work that analyzes the motivations for simplifying Chinese characters. I believe that the original intention of simplifying Chinese characters is to facilitate calligraphy and information transmission, and to popularize popular culture. Even if this inference is established, what is the effect of promoting simplified Chinese characters for nearly half a century? I am afraid it can only be summed up in four words: "It backfires." Simplified characters bring us not only simplification, but also trouble. Simplified characters make information transmission unprecedentedly complicated. Simplified Chinese characters are like an insurmountable gap. Young people are blocked on this side of the gap. Looking at the other side is like looking at the underworld, longing for it but unable to get close.
The complexity lies in the fact that we can only use newly created simplified characters to write or record what is happening "now", but it is impossible to change the large amount of information that has been written or recorded in the "past". This will inevitably create a terrible situation: young people cannot interpret the large amount of traditional Chinese documents deposited in the "past". Documents written before the 1950s became "books from heaven".
Nowadays, the last batch of intellectuals who have learned traditional Chinese characters have reached the age of destiny. If traditional Chinese characters are not restored as soon as possible, in less than fifty years, except for experts, no one will be able to find them in China. There is no one who can read the Three Tombs and Five Classics and the Classics and History Collection (of course, you need to understand classical Chinese to read ancient books, but that is another issue). People who are familiar with traditional Chinese characters are becoming an endangered "species" little by little. This "species" is no less endangered than the panda. However, to this day, there are no calls for rescue.
We "Traditional Chinese" are getting old. Our next generation, faced with the vast ancient books left behind by their ancestors, as well as spiritual delicacies and thousand-year-old wines, will stop eating and throw chopsticks. The works of hundreds of schools of thought and the works of eight schools of thought in the Tang and Song dynasties can be used as food when you are hungry, and as clothing when you are cold. However, the lingering charm of Chinese characters for thousands of years was blocked by simplified characters and came to an abrupt end. The difference between the complexity of Chinese characters and the simplicity of one character is a huge difference. When faced with thousands of years of Hushan characters and calligraphy articles, young people can only look at them and sigh. The inheritance of the five thousand years of civilization of this great country is in danger of being interrupted. Is it something to worry about, or what to worry about?
Some people think that the problem is not so serious, and that it is enough to translate traditional Chinese literature into simplified Chinese text. There are so many traditional Chinese characters that it is not easy to translate and reprint them all.
According to calculations by relevant experts, if all traditional Chinese documents (that is, documents written before the mid-1950s) were translated into simplified Chinese versions, all the paper mills and printing plants around the world would be brought together, and the printing would not be completed in a hundred years. Not to mention that the meaning of some traditional Chinese characters has changed after being simplified and no longer has the previous meaning.
The traditional Chinese characters still used by the parents have become "ancient characters" by the next generation, and young people read them as if they were reading Hades. This is really a gray humor. However, when faced with humor, we cannot laugh.
Writing is a relatively conservative cultural form. Who would have thought that Chinese characters that had been circulating for thousands of years would suddenly pass away in forty or fifty years. People can't help but think like this: relatively conservative texts are so short-lived, what about those cultural forms that are already easy to mutate? They can't help but think of a lame metaphor: the impatient brewer sells the pot as soon as it is ready, and waits for it to be put into the cellar in a hurry. The quality of the wine will not be the best because of its nature and its quality.
Since Cangjie coined Chinese characters, Chinese characters have a long history and have undergone many changes. They were not achieved overnight. Just take the word "日" as an example. "日" was originally a circle. Later, a dot was added to the center of the circle, and then the dot in the center was changed to an open circle. Then the center of the circle was changed to a horizontal line, and finally it became an outer circle. The inner horizontal part of the square (the inner horizontal part intersects with the left and right vertical parts) becomes today's "sun". These changes all occurred one or two thousand years before Qin Chengmiao created the official script. Cheng Miao created the official script, especially after the official script evolved into regular script. After a long period of thinking and exploration, the Chinese character system was generally finalized. Although some characters disappeared, some characters were merged, and some newly created characters were introduced sparsely, but in general, there were very few changes. in a relatively stable state. China's power dynasty consists of one emperor and one courtier, and every emperor has to "change customs" and remove the old and introduce the new to show his unique talent. However, Chinese characters are used by each dynasty. Chinese characters are almost the only cultural form that can completely inherit the great unity of China. There are many people in history who are overjoyed at success, those who deliberately seek change, those who are impatient, those who are unconventional, and those who criticize and sweep away, but they have all failed to shake the foundation of Chinese characters. This is because Chinese characters have been tempered and baked in the furnace of history, and the moisture and impurities have been largely evaporated. What is left is almost pure, and it will never go away again, and it will never change again. What's more, as a general rule, words are just conventional phonetic and ideographic symbols. Once recognized by all, there is no need to constantly mutate and reshape them, let alone replace one with another. It is enough to maintain its authority.
Author: Roifor 2005-10-27 20:05 Reply to this statement
--------------------- -------------------------------------------------- --------
2 On traditional Chinese characters and simplified characters! (A must-read for Chinese people!)
As the pace of life accelerates, people want to simplify their writing and write quickly. This mentality is not unique to modern people. The ancients also thought of this problem, so they invented cursive style with sparse strokes and fast writing. Cursive style is not just for calligraphers, it is also widely used by ordinary people, so much so that it has formed the so-called "writing style" of Chinese characters. For example, "study" was written in the simplified Chinese characters when ancient people wrote it. The characters with complex strokes are printed as one body and written as one body, and the two bodies go hand in hand. In this regard, Chinese characters are similar to Western characters. In a sense, it can be considered that simplified characters are the integration of two characters into one, that is, the written character is completely equivalent to the printed character. Apart from China, there is no other experiment in the world that combines two bodies into one. The integration of the two bodies into one means discarding a considerable part of traditional Chinese characters, causing the Chinese character system to be completely changed and some Chinese characters to be placed in the dustbin of history. Ancient people all learned writing styles, so they were able to master both systems. People today are very different. In school, they can only learn simplified Chinese characters and rarely come into contact with traditional Chinese characters. Therefore, the two writing systems actually no longer exist.
From a vertical perspective, young people cannot read traditional Chinese documents written before the mid-1950s (except for a very small number of documents translated into simplified Chinese characters), and cannot consistently connect civilization from ancient times to the present. Causes a break in inheritance; from a horizontal perspective, the Chinese character culture circle around China also causes great inconvenience when communicating with China. They also use Chinese characters, one uses the traditional system, and the other uses the newly created system, which is difficult to smooth communicate. In order to make up for the shortcomings, traditional Chinese versions of things appear from time to time (for example, the subtitles of the movie "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" use traditional Chinese characters). This is convenient for audiences in the Chinese character culture circle around China, but it also makes it difficult for young audiences in mainland China. Without the connection with words, one can only understand the plot by relying on the indistinguishable local dialect. Focusing on one thing and missing the other will cause man-made chaos.
As the country becomes more open to the outside world, this kind of chaos will become more and more serious.
Simplifying Chinese characters in large quantities at one time changes the Chinese character system beyond recognition. The harm is not only the inconvenience of vertical and horizontal information exchange, but also the setting of a very terrible "precedent". No precedent can be set. Everything in the world may happen a second time if there is a first time. Moreover, the second time can rely on the inertia of the first time to be unfettered and do more harm than good. With the first large-scale movement to simplify Chinese characters, we have reason to worry that there will be even larger movements to simplify Chinese characters in the future. The Chinese character simplification movement has gone to extremes and can easily enter the track of Hanyu Pinyin. This is by no means alarmist.
Simplifying Chinese characters, to the end, will inevitably lead to the logical conclusion that "square characters" are inconvenient. Many people will think that Pinyin is so good. They don’t need to worry about it. As long as they spend one thousandth or one ten thousandth of the time and energy to learn square characters, they can master and apply it skillfully, and the error rate can be reduced to a very low level. Low (unlike the square characters that often make mistakes). In this case, why not do it? Once simplified characters gain a firm foothold, the soil for pinyinization will inevitably be created unknowingly. This doesn't take long. Compared with this evil consequence, disadvantages such as vertical or horizontal information isolation are simply insignificant and not worth mentioning.
The pinyinization of Chinese characters is equivalent to the destruction of Chinese characters.
The worry about the pinyinization of Chinese characters is by no means unfounded. This claim was made a century ago. In the mid-1950s, the specific plan for pinyinization was almost ready to be announced. At one time, Chinese characters were like a fish in a trap, in extremely dangerous situation. It can almost be said that the difference between Chinese characters is just one thought. If Chinese characters were really cancelled, it’s hard to imagine what kind of chaos it would cause.
Some people think that the West uses Pinyin script and that the West is at the forefront of world civilization, which fully demonstrates the superiority of Pinyin script. It is reasonable and imperative for China to follow suit.
This is absurd. That pinyin is not this pinyin.
If the tangerine exceeds the Huai River, it will become a tangerine. The embryo of Western characters is composed of letters or symbols equivalent to letters, while the embryo of Chinese characters is the original hieroglyphics. Chinese pinyin is spelled out one word at a time. The initial consonants and finals can only form pinyin symbols, but not pinyin-based words (this is very different from Western characters). In Chinese, no matter how closely related the words are, they have to be taken apart and spelled one by one when spelling. This is doomed that pinyin can only serve as a supplementary phonetic means for Chinese characters. When the East imitates the West, it is tantamount to imitating the East. It will begin with turmoil and end in silence. If a writing has only single characters but no vocabulary, it can only be regarded as a low-level writing, not a high-level writing. Reducing one's writing from a high level to a low level is such a stupid thing that a wise man would not do.
Needless to say Chinese, even Japanese, which is closer to Western languages ??than Chinese and has considerable pinyin content, cannot be fully pinyinized. There have been strong advocates of pinyinization in Japan. The good guys also tried to experiment with pinyin, replacing Chinese characters with kana (Japanese letters), but the result ended in failure. They found that after canceling Chinese characters and achieving complete pinyinization, the reading speed of Japanese was significantly reduced, and articles without Chinese characters were more difficult to understand than articles with Chinese characters. Some experts also believe that Japanese without Chinese characters does not look like Japanese. Now, retaining Chinese characters has become common sense in Japanese linguistic circles.