The origin of Chinese characters
At the beginning of the human society, the productivity was extremely low, out of the need to survive, people had to unite and use primitive and simple production tools to fight with nature. In the struggle, in order to exchange ideas and convey information, language was born. But language is fleeting, it can not be saved, can not be transmitted to a farther place to go, and some need to be retained and spread to a farther place to go information, relying solely on the memory of the human brain is not. Therefore, the original method of remembering things - "knotting rope" and "deed carving" came into being.
The knotting of ropes
Before the creation of writing, people used a variety of methods to help memorize, of which the more widely used are the knotting of ropes and the carving of deeds. In ancient Chinese literature, there are many records about knotting ropes to remember things. In the book Zhouyi (Zhouyi - The Book of Rhetoric), which was written during the Warring States period in B.C., it is said, "In the ancient times, people ruled with knotted ropes, and in the later times, the sages changed it into a book and deed." Zheng Xuan, a native of the Han Dynasty, also said in his Notes on the Zhou Yi, "In ancient times, there was no writing, and they knotted ropes to make covenants; when things were big, they knotted their ropes in big ways; when things were small, they knotted their ropes in small ways." Li Dingzuo, "Zhou Yi Jiejie" quoted in the "Nine Yi" also said, "the ancient world has no text, there is a covenant and oaths, things are big, big rope, things are small, small rope, how many knots, along with the number of things, each stick to each other to test, but also enough to rule each other." This is about the knotting of ropes as a covenant, and it has been made quite clear and specific.
Yangshao period site of the bone deed graphic
Deeds engraved to record
Deeds engraved mainly for the purpose of recording the number. Liu Xi of the Han Dynasty said in "Interpretation of Names - Interpretation of Book Deeds", "Deeds, engraved also, engraved to recognize its number also." It is clear that a deed is an engraving, and the purpose of deed engraving is to help memorize the number. Because when people enter into a contractual relationship, the number is the most important and also the factor that is most likely to cause disputes. So, people will use the method of carving, the number of certain lines as a symbol, carved in bamboo or wood, as the two sides of the "contract". This is the ancient "deed". Later, people separated from the center of the deed, divided into two halves, each side of the half, in order to match the two as evidence. In ancient times, the number was engraved on the deed, which was mainly used as a proof of debt. The picture on the right is the Yangshao period sites unearthed in Xining County, Gansu Province, Zhoujiazhai bone deed graphic.
The use of knotted ropes, deeds, and other similar methods of record-keeping have been practiced by different peoples around the world. In China, until after the Song Dynasty, the South still used the knot rope to remember things. Peru in South America is especially famous for this. Some peoples, the use of rope color and knotting, can also accurately write down some things.
As a primitive way of remembering things, no matter it is a knot with a rope, or with more than one rope cross, in the final analysis, it is only a kind of representation and record of some simple concepts of the number or location, is a form of ideology, it can be regarded as a text before the emergence of a stage of gestation, but it can not be evolved into the text, and more than the text of the emergence of the text. Because it can only help people to memorize certain things, but not to communicate ideas, does not have the attributes of verbal communication and record. Therefore, the knotted rope to remember things can not be developed into writing.
Pictorial writing
Pictures of pictorial writing
Due to the insufficiency of knot-rope notation and carving, people had to use some other methods, such as drawing, to help memorize and express their thoughts, and drawing led to the creation of writing. Mr. Tanglan said in "Chinese Characteristics": "the production of words, this is very natural, tens of thousands of years ago, the Paleolithic mankind, already have a very good painting, these paintings are largely animals and human statues, which is the precursor to the written word." However, pictures functioned as words, and were transformed into words, only after "a more common and widespread language" became available. For example, if someone draws a tiger, people will call it "tiger" only when they see it; if they draw an elephant, people will call it "elephant" only when they see it. Over time, everyone agreed, similar to the above "tiger" and "elephant" such a picture, between the picture and the text, and used for a long time. With the passage of time, more and more such drawings, drawings are not so realistic. Such drawings gradually drifted toward the text, eventually leading to the separation of the text from the drawings. In this way, the pictures were separated into the original realistic pictures and pictographs which became written symbols. Pictorial writing further developed into hieroglyphics. As stated in "Chinese Characteristics", "Characters originated from pictures, and at first the characters were pictures that could be read, but the pictures were not always readable. Later on, the characters gradually diverged from the pictures, and the difference gradually became obvious, and the characters were no longer pictorial, but written. And the technique of writing did not require realistic depictions; it was enough to write out the features, which were roughly good, so that one could recognize them." This is the original writing.
2. Information about the origin of Chinese characters, to understand the origin of Chinese characters
The origin of Chinese characters, there are a variety of ancient Chinese literature, such as "knotting rope", "gossip", "picture", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book", "book" and "book".
The origin of the Chinese character has been described in ancient Chinese literature in various ways, such as "knotting rope", "gossip", "drawings", "deeds" and so on.
Modern scholars believe that systematic writing tools can not be created entirely by one person, Cangjie, if indeed there is a person, should be the text organizer or promulgator. In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of excavated materials that are older than the Yinxu oracle bones and related to the origin of Chinese characters.
These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on top of pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society, in addition to a small number of symbols engraved on top of oracle bones, jade, stone tools, and so on. Chinese characters have been developed for more than 3,000 years since the oracle bone inscriptions, and their forms have been simplified continuously. Along with the evolution of Chinese history, they have gone through the changes of character shapes of oracle bone inscriptions, gold inscriptions, big seal scripts, small seal scripts, official scripts, and regular scripts, and have become the scripts that we are using today.
The standardized simplified Chinese characters are usually used in mainland China. Extended information in the formation of Chinese characters, ideographs are the earliest in the history of the formation of the Chinese language, Chinese characters have gone through the ideographs, epigraphs and ideographs, and variant characters, three courses.
Among them, ideographs are words created according to the meaning of the content they summarize. In the initial stage of Chinese characters, there were no strokes, no letters, and they developed slowly from drawing pictures and remembering things in kind, so they naturally relied on the most meaning to be incorporated into the font in the first place. Hieroglyphic characters come from pictorial writing, but the pictorial nature is weakened and the symbolic nature is strengthened, and it is one of the most primitive methods of creating characters.
It is very limited because some physical and abstract things cannot be drawn. Therefore, after being based on hieroglyphics, Chinese characters developed into ideographs, adding other methods of character creation, such as hui yi, referring to things, and shaping sounds in the Six Books.
However, these new methods of character creation still had to be based on the original pictographs, which were used as the basis for combining, subtracting, or adding or deleting symbols. Baidu Encyclopedia - Chinese Characters.
3. A short story about Chinese characters, not more than 30 words
Once, the Huns in the north wanted to attack the Central Plains, and sent a "war table". The emperor opened a look, the original is "Tianxin take rice" four big words. Full of civil and military ministers, none of the copy to solve this riddle. The emperor can not think, only to open the list of recruitment. At this time, the palace bai a named He Detailed official said, he has the retreat plan, the emperor declared He Detailed on the temple.
He detailed pointing to the "war table" on the four words to the emperor, said: "the sky, my country; heart, the Central Plains also: rice, the saint also. The heart of the sky to take rice, is to take our country's mountains, take the throne of the king." The Emperor said anxiously, "What about DU?" He said, "No harm, I have my own way to retreat." Said, put a pen in his hand, added a stroke to each of the four characters, and the original letter was returned to the person who came zhi.
Xiong Nu's leading marshal, thought it was the Central Plains do not dare to respond to the war, but opened a look, suddenly shocked, ordered to retreat.
It turned out dao, He detailed in the "heart of the sky to take rice" four words after adding a stroke, became "may not dare to come".
4. Chinese Character Trivia
The Origin of Chinese Characters Legend has it that a long, long time ago, Cangjie was the emperor's historian, and he had the same face as a dragon, with four shining eyes.
He was especially fond of observing things around him and his surroundings, and he was also very fond of using his brain or thinking about problems. He looked up every day to observe the changes of the stars in the sky, to see the patterns on the turtle's back, the colors of the finch's feathers, and the looks and images of the mountains and rivers undulating, and often traced the shapes and features of things on his own hands.
In time, they created the Ting character. When Cangjie was creating the characters, he was afraid that people would patronize the writing process because of the corn that fell from the sky like fish dots.
In the future, people will go hungry. Ghosts cry secretly in the dark night, and dragons hide and hide because they are afraid that words will record their ugly behavior and make it known to the whole world, so that they will be stigmatized for years to come.
This is the origin of the text. A great Cangjie, whom I particularly admire.
History of writing The creation of Chinese writing - Chinese characters - is well documented, dating back to the late Yin and Shang dynasties of about the 14th century BC, when a preliminary stereotypical script, the oracle bone script, was formed. The oracle bones were both pictographs and epigraphs, and to this day, Chinese characters still contain some pictographs that are as vivid as pictures.
In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters evolved into the Big Seal Script. The development of the Big Seal resulted in two features: first, linealization, the early uneven lines became even and soft, and the lines they drew with the objects were very concise and vivid; second, standardization, the structure of the characters tended to be neat, and gradually left the original shape of the pictures, laying the foundation of the square characters.
Later, Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, simplified the Big Seal Script and changed it to the Small Seal Script. In addition to simplifying the shape of the Big Seal, the Small Seal was also standardized to a perfect degree, almost completely detached from the pictorial characters, and became a neat, harmonious and very beautiful basically rectangular square character.
But the small seal script also has its own fundamental shortcomings, that is, its lines with a pen to write up is very inconvenient, so almost at the same time also produced the form to the two sides to open up to become a flat square of the official script. By the Han Dynasty, the official script had reached a mature stage, and the legibility and writing speed of the characters were greatly improved.
After the official script evolved into zhangcao, then jincao, to the Tang Dynasty, there is the expression of the writer's feelings, sent to the pen end of the performance of the wild grass. Subsequently, the Regular Script (also known as Zhenshu), which is a combination of Clerical Script and Cursive Script, began to flourish in the Tang Dynasty.
The printed form we use today is a variation of the Regular Script. Between Regular Script and Cursive Script is the Running Script, which is a smooth, flexible writing style, rumored to have been produced by Liu Desheng in the Han Dynasty, and is still the font we are used to writing in today.
In the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing, engraved printing was widely used, and Chinese characters were further improved and developed, resulting in a new type of script - the Song printing font. After the invention of printing, the carving knife used for engraving had a profound impact on the shape of the Chinese characters, resulting in a horizontal, thin, vertical, thick, eye-catching and easy-to-read printing font, later known as Song Style.
At that time, there were two kinds of fonts, the fat ones imitated the Yan and Liu styles, and the thin ones imitated the Ou and Yu styles. Among them, the Yan and Liu styles have high pens, and already have some characteristics of horizontal and vertical thickness.
By the Ming Dynasty, Longqing, Wanli years, and evolved from the Song Dynasty, the strokes of the horizontal thin vertical thick, square character Ming style. It turned out that the popularity of a very thin horizontal strokes and vertical strokes, especially thick, flat character Hongwu style, such as the official's title plate, lanterns, notices, private boundaries of the Le Shi, ancestral halls in the Lord of the gods and so on are used in this type of font.
Later, some carving workers in the process of copying the Hongwu body carving to create a non-Yan and non-Ou skin contour body. Especially because of the horizontal and vertical pen shape of this font, it does feel easy to carve, it is different from the seal, official, true and cursive four styles, unique, fresh and pleasing to read, so it is increasingly widely used, and has become the 16th century until today's very popular main printing font, still known as the Song font, also known as the lead font.
The Origin of Chinese Characters From the ancient legend of Cangjie's creation of characters to the discovery of the oracle bone inscriptions more than 100 years ago, Chinese scholars through the ages have been dedicated to unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, there are all sorts of sayings in ancient Chinese literature, such as "knotting rope", "gossip", "drawing", "book deed", etc. The ancient books have been written in a variety of ways. "and so on, the ancient books are also commonly recorded in the Yellow Emperor historian Cang Jie create word legend.
Modern scholars believe that into a systematic text tool can not be created entirely by a person, Cang Jie if indeed there is a person, should be the text organizer or promulgator. The earliest engraved symbols more than 8,000 years ago In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of earlier than the Yinxu oracle bone inscriptions, and the origin of Chinese characters related to the excavated data.
These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on top of pottery in late primitive society and early historical society, and also include a small number of symbols engraved on top of oracle bones, jade, stone tools, and so on. It can be said that they *** together provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.
By systematically examining and comparing the inscribed symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures throughout China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest inscribed symbols in China appeared at the Jahu site in Maoyang, Henan Province, more than 8,000 years ago. As a professional worker, he tries to further organize these original materials through scientific ways, such as the comprehensive use of archaeology, paleography, comparative philology, scientific and technological archaeology, as well as high-tech means and other basic methods, so as to climb and compare the occurrence of Chinese characters before the Shang Dynasty script and the development of some of the clues.
However, the situation is not so simple, in addition to the Zhengzhou Mall site, small double bridge site (the site in recent years has found more than 10 cases of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu pottery text) of the small amount of material can be directly compared with the Yinxu text sequence, other pre-Shanghai symbols are scattered, each other missing ring more, most of the symbols and with the Shang Dynasty text is not the same shape. There are also some symbols with heavy regional colors and complex backgrounds.
The Chinese character system was officially formed in the Central Plains Wang Yunzhi argues that the Chinese character system was officially formed in the Central Plains. Chinese characters are a writing system of independent origin, not dependent on any foreign scripts, but its origin is not single, after multiple, long-term integration, probably at the time of the Xia Era, the ancestors creatively invented a system of writing symbols to record language based on the experience of widely absorbing and utilizing the earlier symbols, and the system of Chinese characters matured relatively quickly in that era.
5. Chinese Character Trivia
i. Character Puzzle
According to legend, during the Northern Song Dynasty, Su Dongpo, a famous poet and one of the "Eight Great Poets of Tang and Song Dynasty", visited his brother-in-law's house. The brother-in-law Qin Shaoyou organized a banquet, the banquet cup to toast, recited a poem in passing, in fact, this is a crossword puzzle: "I have a thing born of coincidence, half of the scales and armor half of the hair, half away from the water water can not live, half into the water life is difficult to protect." When Su Dongpo heard this, he smiled and said, "I have a thing with two sides, one side is delicious and the other side is fragrant, one side goes up the mountain to eat grass, and the other side goes into the sea to hide the body." At this time, the quick-witted Su Xiaomei blurted out, "I have a thing born strange, half of my body has two wings, half of my body has four hooves. Long hooves can't run fast, long wings can't fly." All three of them said the same word
The riddle is Fresh
II. Heteroglossic Words
The nephew plays a lantern ----- as usual
Breaking the casserole ------ Ask the question
Xiao onion mixes with tofu ----- I can make it clear that it is both clear and white>
Three. Origins of Chinese Characters
Chinese characters originated from the culture of fertility worship, were invented in the Taiji culture of coding yin lines and yang lines, and were created in painting, knotting, qi carving, and weaving shells.
Chinese characters are pictograms. In the process of its development and evolution, changes were made based on the relevant things, the way the characters were written and pronounced. And not just from pronunciation like most western scripts.
For example, "zi" first meant "nose". In the oracle bone script, "自" was written with a nose bridge and two nostrils, clearly resembling a human nose. Later, the bridge of the nose was shortened, the nostrils were brought closer together, the bottom of the nose became a horizontal stroke, and then, the character shape became more and more different from the nose. As a result of this change, the character slowly evolved to mean "oneself," "self," "family," "personally," etc., while the meaning "nose" was used less and less. Therefore, people added a consonant "畀" under "自" which was no longer like nose, and wrote "鼻".
IV. The origin of "sloppy":
During the Song Dynasty, there was a painter in the capital city who painted as he pleased, making people confused about what he was painting. Once, he just painted a good tiger head, happened to someone to ask him to paint the horse, he casually painted a horse's body after the tiger head. When the visitor asked him whether he was drawing a horse or a tiger, he replied, "Horse and sloppy!" When the visitor did not want it, he hung the painting in the hall. When his eldest son saw it, he asked him what was in the painting, and he said it was a tiger, while his second son asked him if it was a horse.
Soon after, when his eldest son went out hunting, he shot someone's horse to death as a tiger, and the painter had to pay money to the horse owner. His youngest son went out and met a tiger, but thought it was a horse and wanted to ride it, and was bitten to death by the tiger. The painter was so grieved that he burned the painting and wrote a poem to blame himself: "Horse and Tiger Picture, Horse and Tiger Picture, like a horse and like a tiger, the first son shot the horse to death according to the picture, and the second son fed the tiger according to the picture. Cao Tang burned down the horse and tiger figure, advise you not to learn my."
From then on, the word "sloppy" was spread.
6. Trivia about Chinese Characters
Knowledge about Chinese Characters
A History
The oracle Chinese characters are one of the three oldest writing systems in the world. Among them, the sacred script of ancient Egypt and the cuneiform script of the Sumerians in the Two River Valley have been lost, and only the Chinese characters are still in use today.
Legend has it that Chinese characters originated from Cangjie's creation of characters. Cangjie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, created Chinese characters based on the shape of the sun and moon, and the footprints of birds and animals, and when he did so, heaven and earth were shocked - "while the sky rained corn and the ghosts cried at night". From a historical point of view, the complex system of Chinese characters can not be invented by one person, Cangjie more likely in the collection of Chinese characters, organizing and unifying the outstanding contribution, so the "Xunzi - to solve the mask" recorded "good book of many, and Cangjie unique transmission of a person, a also.
There is a view that the eight trigrams in the Zhouyi had a greater impact on the formation of Chinese characters, but there are few supporters.
II Primitive writing
Oral knowledge before the invention of the written word in the dissemination and accumulation of obvious shortcomings, the primitive human beings used the knot rope, carve deeds, drawings to assist in remembering things, and later to use the characteristics of the graphic symbols to simplify, instead of drawings. When the graphic symbols are simplified to a certain extent, and form a specific correspondence with the language, the formation of primitive writing.
In 1994, a large number of pottery vessels were unearthed from the Daxi culture site in Yangjiwan, Hubei Province, on which some of the 170-odd symbols had greater similarities with the oracle bone inscriptions. This discovery puts the formation of primitive Chinese characters 6,000 years before the present. In addition, the hieroglyphic symbols on the pottery unearthed in Dawenkou, Shandong Province, and the geometric symbols on the Xi'an Half-slope colored pottery, etc., may be the manifestations of the different stages of the formation of primitive characters (or the formation of the former).
But are the Chinese characters after the Shang Dynasty and these geometric symbols in the same lineage? This question is still in dispute. Many scholars have suggested that these symbols are not necessarily the predecessors of Chinese characters, or even absolutely certain to be script symbols.
III From hieroglyphs to ideograms
From the oracle bone inscriptions to the small seal scripts, the Chinese characters have gone through a process of development from hieroglyphs to ideograms, with the character shapes gradually detached from the concrete images of things. The Chinese characters of this period are called ancient scripts.
The oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou periods were already a relatively complete writing system. Of the more than 4,500 oracle bone inscriptions found, nearly 2,000 characters are now recognized. During the same period with the oracle bone inscriptions, the text cast on bronze is called Jinwen or Zhongdingwen, and the Western Zhou period's "Scattered Plates" and "Mao Gong Ding" possess high historical and artistic value.
After the unification of China by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Li Si standardized and organized the Big Seal Script and the ancient scripts of the six kingdoms, and developed the Small Seal Script as the standard writing script of the Qin Dynasty, which unified the Chinese script. The Small Seal Script is rectangular in shape, with rounded and smooth strokes.
The small seal script solved the problem of a large number of different characters appearing in the scripts of different countries, and the history of "writing in the same language" started from then on. The unification of the scripts facilitated the spread of culture among nations and played an important role in the identification of the Chinese nation and the unification of China, which is rare in the history of the world's scripts.
The development of Chinese characters has gone through many different evolutions. In the early days, the Chinese character system had an insufficient number of characters, and a large number of things were represented by tongyongqi, which made the written expressions more ambiguous. In order to improve the clarity of expression, Chinese characters went through a stage of gradual complexity and a large increase in the number of characters. However, it is impossible to use a single character to represent a large number of things, and the excessive increase in the number of characters triggered the difficulty of learning the characters themselves, and the Chinese language gradually evolved from a single-character representation to a word-expression dominated by the meaning of words.
Four Character Creation and Composition
After the unification of Chinese characters by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the number of Chinese characters continued to increase, and many new characters appeared:
Yang Jian, the Emperor of the Sui Dynasty, was originally the Duke of Suiguo, but because the character for Suiguo was "辶" (walk), which means unstable, it was removed from the character for Suiguo. But because the character "辶" in "Sui" had the meaning of instability, he dropped "辶" and created the character "隋" as his state name.
During the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian created the character "曌" ("曌")(同 "照"), based on the meaning of "the sun and the moon are in the sky", as her name.
In the 5th century, Liu Yan created the word "Nano" in his name, based on the idea of "flying dragon in the sky".
In the modern era, many characters were created due to the influx of Western knowledge. For example, with the introduction of "Beer" into China, how to use Chinese characters to express is a problem, initially translated as leather wine, but later found it inappropriate, in about 1910, created the word "beer" - translated as "beer". The word "beer" was created around 1910 and translated as "啤酒". In order to express imperial units, some multi-syllabic characters were created, such as li (nautical mile), 嗧 (gallon), kilowatt (kilowatt), feet (foot), etc. However, these multi-syllabic characters are very difficult to use in 1971, as they are not very useful in the English system. However, these multi-syllabic words were eliminated on July 20, 1977, when the Chinese Character Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Standards and Metrology of the mainland issued the Notice on the Unification of the Names of Some Units of Measurement with Characters, which is no longer in use on the mainland, but can still be found in Taiwan and other places.
Currently, due to informatization and the standardization of the use of characters, Chinese characters are no longer arbitrarily added new characters. The only exceptions are the elements in the periodic table, such as "helium", "chlorine", "radon", "germanium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium", "chromium" and "chromium". Chromium", "Uranium" and so on. This method of characterization is still in use for the naming of new elements. Chemical elements of the law of word formation is detailed in the elements.
The Six Books, an analysis of the composition of Chinese characters, were mentioned in the Zhou Ritual, but the specifics were not stated. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen elaborated on the laws of Chinese character construction of the Six Books in his Shuo Wen Jie Zi (Explaining Characters in Chinese), which are: Xiang Xiang (象形), Zhu Yi (指事), Hu Yi (会意), Xing Yin (形声), Zhu Yin (转注), and Zhu Yi (假借). Among them, the four items of pictograms, references, huiyi and xingyi are the principles of character creation, which is the "method of character creation", while the rules of transliteration and pseudo-borrowing are the rules of character usage, which is the "method of character usage". However, it is important to note that the Six Books are the organization and classification of Chinese characters, not the law of character creation.
7. Trivia about Chinese Characters
1. Chinese characters are the longest continuously used characters, and the only ones that have been passed down from the ancient times to the present day, and they have been used as the main official scripts in China for many generations.
All the East Asian countries created their own characters to some extent. In non-Chinese systems, the Japanese simplified their own characters and developed a new Japanese script, while Vietnam, Korea, and Mongolia, where Chinese characters were historically used, have now abandoned them.
2. Scribing: Mr. Guo Moruo, based on a comparative study of the Half-slope Pottery Symbol and the Yin Shang Oracle Bone Inscriptions, believed that the early scripts could be structurally divided into two major systems of "scribing" and "drawing", and that the "scribing" system was a system of knotting ropes and cutting wood. The system is the evolution of the rope and wood, not many, from the half-slope and Jiangzhai found in the engraved symbols, some are numbers, some are single words. Many modern scholars believe that it has a fixed phonetic and morphological meaning, and is the source of Chinese characters.
3. Jinwen refers to the text on the cast bronze, also called Zhongdingwen, which began in the Yin and Shang dynasties. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were the era of bronze, and the bronze ritual vessels were represented by tripods, and the musical instruments were represented by bells, and "Zhong Ding" was the synonym of bronze. Therefore, Zhong Dingwen or Jinwen refers to the inscriptions cast or engraved on the bronze.
4. Chinese characters are a combination of "form, sound and meaning", and most of them are composed of form and sound. The six books are the basic principles of Chinese character construction. The six books are mentioned in the Zhou Rites,
but the details are not specified. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen, in his Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Characters in Chinese), elaborated on the principles of the Six Books: pictograms, referents, huiyi, huanyi, shaped sound, transliteration, and pseudo-borrowing.
5. Chinese characters are written characters in the Chinese language, and each character represents a syllable. Mainland China now uses Mandarin as the standard pronunciation, and the syllables in Mandarin are determined by a consonant, a rhyme, and a tone, and actually use more than 1,300 syllables.
Because of the large number of Chinese characters, there is a clear phenomenon of homophones; at the same time, there are also cases of multiple pronunciations of the same character, called polyphonic characters. This situation is common in the various dialects of Chinese.