The former junior high school Chinese teacher devoted a lot of his spare time to compiling an ancient Chinese dictionary. At that time, I could not understand his persistence. However, the "Shuowen Jiezi" introduced by our teacher made many students really curious about ancient Chinese. After so many years, seeing "Baiyu Jiezi" with the theme of "character recognition" again is not only refreshing, but also makes people recall and cherish the past. What was "refreshing" at the beginning was that the book's beautiful soft-pen manuscript printing style was novel, just like the thin gold writing on the blackboard in those days, which is unforgettable. As the pages of the book opened, and after seeing Mr. Liushahe’s decades of research on ancient Chinese characters, I slowly began to understand the persistence of the junior high school Chinese teacher.
It is helpful to open the book. I hope I can keep recording my learning process of "White Fish Jiezi" bit by bit.
001·One, Two, Three is the oldest
Cangjie’s method of making characters: “Get all things from near, and get all things from far away”. Example: The three oldest Chinese characters one, two and three are modeled after human fingers.
In ancient times, the pronunciation of the character "二" was lì, which has the same sound as Li. The word "Li" in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago is two deer, and the traditional Chinese word "Li" is written as "Li". In ancient times, two precious animal skins were given as gifts, which were called lippies.
Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" said that "弌" is an ancient Chinese character of "一", which can be broken down into the sounds of "一" and "弰". This makes it easier to remember the traditional Chinese character for "二", "二". Add one to "弌" to become "卍". Because it is used for accounting and involves money, "Bei" is added to prevent malicious modification by humans. Shells were used as currency in ancient times, so the word "shell" in ancient Chinese is mostly related to wealth.
The ancient pronunciation of the word "三" is shēn, which is the same as ginseng. Ginseng is Rigel among the seven constellations of the ancient White Tiger, which is the three stars in Orion. The "Three Stars in the House" in "The Book of Songs" refers to the appearance of Rigel in the sky due south on winter nights. Chinese folk proverb "When three stars are due south, it's time to celebrate the New Year."
Derived learning materials:
There are 88 constellations in the sky, but they are divided differently from astronomy and astrology.
Orion is a concept in astronomy. It is one of the equatorial constellations and one of the most gorgeous constellations among the eighty-eight constellations in the sky. It has a huge area and consists of many stars, including many bright stars. In spring, autumn and winter, there are many people Being able to find traces of it on the ground is a favored observation object by both the astronomical community and ordinary astronomy enthusiasts. The main body of Orion consists of four bright stars, including Betelgeuse and Rigel, forming a large quadrilateral.
Sagittarius is a concept in astrology. Sagittarius (or "Sagittarius") is a zodiac constellation. The six stars μ, λ, φ, σ, τ, and ζ in this constellation also form the shape of a spoon. The two stars ζ and τ at the front of the spoon are The lines connecting the stars point to Altair. In ancient my country, these six stars were called "South Dipper" and "Big Dipper Seven Stars and South Dipper Six". This has always been the formula for stargazers. "Nineteen Ancient Poems" says: "There is a fight in the south and in the north. The morning ox cannot bear the yoke. The good is not solid, so what is the use of a false name?"
If the handle of the fight is to the west, autumn will fall all over the world. Here Dou refers to "Beidou".
References:
1. The constellation Sagittarius that you must know/article/59618/
2. Stargazing tips to see the stars in the sky/content/19 /0518/15/27469941_836522265.shtml
002. Four, five and six are all borrowed characters
The four characters in ancient Chinese are two clear snot flowing down from the left and right holes, and were borrowed to express the number "four" . Another word "Si" was coined to represent the two dragons coming out of the cave.
The core of the ancient Chinese five-character is the cross of two bars, which means prohibition and is used to express the number "five". Another word "无" is created to indicate prohibition.
The six characters in the ancient Chinese text resemble the shape of a shed. After being borrowed as the number "six", the meaning of the shed was expressed by "Lu".
003·Qibajiu is also a borrowed word
Seven means to cut with a knife, and "cut" has seven sounds, which is a verb. Eight is the word "Pa". Nine is the character cubit.
Knowledge point: The pictograms in ancient Chinese are easy to understand, but there is one thing. The pictograms must be nouns and one thing. If a word in ancient Chinese expresses one thing vividly, it is a word referring to something. The characters that refer to things and the characters that mean things are commonly known as Xiangyi characters today.
Thinking: Why do numbers in ancient China need to borrow characters? Is it because the ancient Chinese were not good at mathematics?
004·Ten hundred thousand return to one
Originally, a vertical bar was used with a dot on the waist to represent ten; because it was laborious to carve dots, it was changed to a horizontal bar. .
White means strength in oracle bone inscriptions, ten to one hundred, which can be called strong and is compared to the thumb. A ten ten is a white, which is written as a hundred.
Thousands, from one, human voice. From 999 to 1000, it goes back to 1, so a thousand words start from one. The two characters "Qianren" in the ancient pronunciation have the same rhyme.
Since Bai means strength, the eldest brother is called Uncle, and the Five Hegemons of Spring and Autumn Period were originally called Fifth Uncle. Nowadays, when people say someone is respectable, they give him a thumbs up. The Shang people respected plain color (white), so white became a color name (rather than Xu Shen thinking that white was specially created to represent plain color). Bai and Qian represent centurions and thousands.
Ten
Hundred, Thousand
Thinking: The production of words is not rigorous, but we cannot help but not study seriously now. Therefore, creation is always the most valuable, because it is created from scratch; if you continue to learn, you must follow the rules, otherwise you will not be able to establish a basis for communication with other people.
005·Wan is a scorpion
The word "Wan" means a scorpion facing a battle. It raises its pincers and lifts its tail to sting, in a battle-ready posture.
People in North China are infected with scorpions, that is, poisonous insects called Wan, so having Wan under the eaves is considered very serious. This method of creating characters was formerly known as ideographic characters, but now it has been classified as xiangyi characters.
During the Zhou Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions declined and were replaced by gold inscriptions cast on bronze vessels and zhòuwén (zhòuwén) written on bamboo slips and wooden strips.
Four thousand years ago, the Xia Dynasty coined ten thousand characters to refer specifically to scorpions. In the Zhou Dynasty, scorpions were used to control ten thousand and one righteousness. If you borrow something for a long time but don't pay it back, it will be like a scorpion under the ten thousand words.
Why use ten thousand as ten thousand? It should be taken from the meaning of full. The ancients believed that ten thousand was already too much and was full.
The traditional Chinese form of scorpion is "scorpion", which means "scorpion". They used to be called pictophonetic characters, but now they are onomatopoeic characters. So far, there are three ways to create characters: pictographic, pictorial, and onomatopoeic. In Chinese, onomatopoeic characters are the most common, ideographic characters are second, and pictographic characters are the least.
Expanded materials: The representative of Zhouwen is the Shiguwen that exists today, which is named after the book written by Taishi Zhou during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty. He carried out reforms on the basis of the original writing, which was named after it was carved on a stone drum. It is the earliest stone-engraved writing that has been handed down to this day, and is the ancestor of stone carving. (Personal question: Is this writing or painting? Experts believe that the imagery is symbolic and there are many overlapping turns, so it should be more about writing new and complex characters, which is more suspected of showing off skills.)
006·Spring Summer, Autumn, and Winter
Spring means movement, and the original meaning of the word stupid is insect movement, not stupidity. An ancient poem goes: "The grass sprouts in spring."
Xia means big.
The word autumn obviously means cricket, and now Shanghai still calls crickets autumn insects.
The ancients did not think of winter as a season, but as a continuation of autumn. Oracle and bronze inscriptions have winter, but it is regarded as "end". ?
The character Xia was first seen in bronze inscriptions, and even earlier in oracle bone inscriptions, the character Xia had not yet been found, for some unknown reason.
"Erya·Explanation" "Xia means great time."
Explain the word: "Autumn means that crops and grains are ripe."
The ancients marked the beginning of autumn with the appearance of a great fire (Alpha Scorpii) due south.
007·Southeast and Northwest
Southeast and northwest are all borrowed characters.
Dong is borrowed from "搐". From the pictographic analysis of oracle bone inscriptions, the shape of the word "东" is similar to that of "搐", and the author determined that "东" is borrowed from "搐". For example, Japanese retains the ancient pronunciation, and Toshiba is still pronounced Toshiba. I have a question. In ancient times, was the word "东" pronounced "橐" instead of "东"? But Xu Shen moved to release the east. The sunrise broke the calm before dawn, and the east was the first place to move. Whether it was in the Han Dynasty or not, Dong has been read as dong. The formation of Japanese writing was closely related to the export of Chinese culture by Japanese envoys to the Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, pseudonyms common among women were formed, and the official language was classical Chinese. In 285 AD, Wang Ren, a Han doctor from Baekje, introduced it to Japan. So here comes the question. The Japanese pronounced "东" as "搐" tuo before Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty. When was this pronunciation introduced to Japan from the Central Plains mainland? Is it really Xu Fu? AD 285 corresponds to the sixth year of Taikang in the Western Jin Dynasty, which was after the Han Dynasty.
The meaning of the word "nan" is from the city, and the sound is from ? (sound ren). The tree canopy is most lush in the south.
The original meaning of the word "西" is bird's nest. Ancestors discovered that birds always built their nests in the west of the forest, taking advantage of the setting sun to illuminate their return journey. In the oracle's nest, three little birds stretched out their beaks to be fed. Look at the word "nest", the bottom tree, the middle nest, and there are three little birds on the top.
Human settlements face the sun for lighting and heating, and the north is the direction facing away. After North expressed the direction, the original meaning of "back" was forgotten, and another word "back" was created to supplement it. Below the word "mei" is the word "肉", which is shaped like a pig's leg and refers to all flesh. The character "肉" was changed to "月", and today it is often confused with the character "月".
Extended material: The difference between a bag and a bag.
A bag has a bottom and is tied at one end and is called a pouch; a bag has no bottom and is tied at both ends and is called a bag.