EVOLUTION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS 漢字發展
Hieroglyphics
~ 5000 B.C.
Pictures of nature found on ceramics dating from this period. River is three wavy
lines; horse has mane and four legs. These pictures would later be a basis for the
construction of more complex ideas. In fact, many modern characters still
resemble their ancestral forms, thereby connecting China's present to its past.
Preclassical
1500 to 500 B.C.
Oracle bone divination introduced. Tortoise shells and oxen shoulder blades are
engraved with important questions and their possible answers. Bones then heated
by fire, and predictions made based on crack patterns. Divination process elevates
Chinese characters and calligraphy to sacred status. Any paper with writing on it
was not thrown away, but burned in a “Pagoda of Compassionating the Characters.”
Classical
Bronze Age to Han
Transition from pictures to stylized symbols. Introduction of radicals to categorize words by
pronunciation and/or meaning. Monosyllabic language becomes polysyllabic.
Postclassical
200 AD to Present
Six Kinds of Characters
* 90% of modern Chinese is meaning-sound compounds
Pictographs
horse mă 馬, pity diào 弔, shoot shè 射, omen zhăo 兆
Symbols
up shàng 上, down xià 下, one yī 一, sān 三, center zhōng 中
Sound-loans
scorpion → ten-thousand wán 萬
Meaning-sound*
魚 (fish, yǚ) + 包 (to wrap, bāo) = 鮑 (salted fish, bào)
言 (words, yán) + 青 (green/blue, qīng) = 請 (invite, qĭng)
至 (reach, zhì) + 刀 (knife, dāo) = 到 (to arrive, dào)
Meaning-meaning 羊 (sheep, yáng) + 大 (big, dà) = 美 (beautiful mĕi)
禾 (grain, hé) + 火 (fire, huò) = 秋 (autumn, qiū)
立 (stand, lì) + 女 (woman, nǚ) = 妾 (concubine, qiè)
mouth
口 + earth 一 + lance 戈 + surround 囗 = nation guó 國
More super neat ideograms: good 好, hurry 極, sleep 睡, tired 累, east 東, lake
Reclarified
湖
廷 (tíng, front yard) → 庭(tíng, king’s front yard)
萬 (old scorpion char.) → 蠆 (chài, with bug radical)
RECENT EVOLUTIONS
● Simplification: There are about thirteen very different Chinese dialects. If a speaker of one dialect
were to write a sentence, a speaker of any other dialect will immediately understand it. Yet if the
two tried to communicate orally, they wouldn't understand a thing! (So the Chinese writing system
actually allows you to communicate simultaneously in 13 different languages!) To eliminate such
illiteracy, a reform movement arose during the early 20th century, resulting in simplified characters,
Pinyin, and the adoption of the Beijing dialect as a pronunciation standard.
● Influence on Western Thinking: The poetic elegance of Chinese ideograms has inspired many great
Western thinkers, from Eisenstein on montage to Leibniz on Calculus. (Leibniz developed much math
notation, such as “d/dx”.) Also, after WWII, there was a proposal to have traffic signs worldwide prepared
like Chinese. We can see this effect today everywhere: railroad crossing, men working, loose gravel,
slippery when wet, danger of falling rocks. Computer icons are also a modern form of ideography.
William Wu / 20 February 2002 / Chinese 1B Section 4
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
REFERENCES
Aria, Barbara. The Nature of the Chinese Character. New York: Simon, 1991.
Hu, Jixuan; Pangaro, Paul, and Xiaoyun Sun. “How Do We Mean?” Online. Internet. Pangaro Inc..
http://www.pangaro.com/published/AGFA-26/AGFA-26.html
“Mandarin Profile.” Online. Internet. UCLA Language Materials Project. http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profm02.htm
“The Written Language.” May 2001. Online. Internet. The Republic of China Yearbook 2001.
http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook/chpt03-2.htm
Ying, Li, and William McNaughton. Reading and Writing Chinese. Boston: Turtle, 1999.
William Wu / 20 February 2002 / Chinese 1B Section 4