How did Chinese characters evolve in China?

The evolution process of Chinese characters is from Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Shang Dynasty)-bronze inscription (Western Zhou Dynasty)-seal script {Dazhuan-Xiaozhuan} (Western Zhou Dynasty-Qin Dynasty)-regular script (Eastern Han Dynasty)-cursive script (Han Dynasty)-running script (late Eastern Han Dynasty). The Chinese regular script we commonly use today is the Eastern Han regular script.

1, Oracle Bone Inscriptions refers to the characters carved on tortoise shells and animal bones in Shang Dynasty. Its content is mainly the records of the Yin royal family carved on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination, so people usually call it "Oracle Bone Inscriptions". Most of the lines in the font are slightly thicker in the middle, slightly thinner at both ends, thin and strong, straight and refreshing, and full of three-dimensional sense.

2. Bronze inscriptions refer to words cast or engraved on bronzes, whose contents mainly record who the owner of bronzes is and whose contributions, sacrifices and rewards come from. Jinwen was developed from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is simpler in strokes and structure than Oracle Bone Inscriptions. It is characterized by thick and natural lines, neat glyphs, irregular fonts and various ways of writing a word.

3. The big seal script is the script used in the Zhou Dynasty, which was originally "Shi Guwen". Its content is to record hunting, written in verse, which is different from the ancient prose of Yin and Zhou Dynasties in font. The characteristics of big seal script are that the lines are relatively complete, uniform and soft; The structure is relatively neat, which lays the foundation of square Chinese characters; But the disadvantage is that the strokes are complicated and the writing is not convenient enough.

4. The structure of Xiao Zhuan is harmonious, the strokes are round and neat, and the radicals have also changed and merged. Compared with Dazhuan, it has no pictographs. The change of characters from "Dazhuan" to "Xiaozhuan" is of great significance in the history of China characters.

5. After Li Shu, it evolved into Cao Zhang. Now, in the Tang Dynasty, there is a wild grass, which expresses the feelings of writers and expresses their feelings in their works. The cursive script originated in Cao Zhang, and Cao Zhang has a strong taste of official script, so it is named because it is mostly used for memorials. Today's cursive script is mostly simpler than Cao Zhang's and running script. The cursive script gives the viewer a bold and fluent feeling.

6. "Regular script" is also called original script, official script and official script. It includes the founder of ancient Li, the beauty of eight points and the simplicity. This font has been used to this day and is regarded as a standard font, which is deeply loved by the world. Regular script has a sense of stability and tranquility; Characters have different styles of the same font because of their different personal writing styles and personalities.

7. "Running script" is a kind of calligraphy (character) which is between regular script and cursive script and has free pen movement. Running script is different from official script and official script, and its fluidity can be freely used by writers. Running script presents a romantic and aesthetic atmosphere.

Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world and have a great influence on the surrounding areas. They are letters of other characters. It is a written symbol for recording events. Formally, it has gradually changed from a figure to a square symbol composed of strokes, so Chinese characters are generally called "square characters".

Extended data

With regard to the number of Chinese characters, according to the records of ancient dictionaries, we can see their development.

Cang Xie has 3,300 words and is well-read. The Qin Dynasty had a calendar. In Han Dynasty, Yang Xiong's Xun Bian has 5340 words, and Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi has 9353 words. According to the seal cutting performance of Moon Hee in Tang Dynasty, Jin wrote Zilin 12824 and Wei Yang Chengqing wrote Zitong 13734.

According to records, the jade tablets written by Gu in the Southern Dynasties received the word 169 17, and the jade tablets in Daguangyihui revised on this basis are said to have 22,726 words. Jade Piece is a supplement to Sun Qiang in Tang Dynasty, with 225,665,438+0 words. There are as many as 365,438+0365,438+09 words in Lei Pian edited by Sima Guang in Song Dynasty, and 53,525 words in Ji Yun edited by officials in Song Dynasty, which was once the book with the largest number of words.

Kangxi dictionary in Qing Dynasty has more than 47,000 words. 19 15 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Ouyang Bocun has more than 48,000 words; 1959 the dictionary of dahanhe, edited by tsuji Hashimoto of Japan, has 49,964 words; 197 1 year, The Chinese Dictionary edited by Zhang Qiyun has 49,888 words. 1990 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Xu Zhongshu has 54,678 words.

1994 The Sea of Chinese Characters edited by Leng Yulong has 85,000 words. The fifth edition of the Dictionary of Variant Characters compiled by the education authorities of Taiwan Province Province contains both regular characters and variant characters, with a total of *** 106230 words, which is the dictionary with the largest number of Chinese characters.

There are more than 80,000 Chinese characters in history, most of which are variant characters and rare words. The vast majority of variants and uncommon words have been standardized, except for ancient Chinese, which generally only occasionally appears in names and places. In addition, after the first batch of simplified characters, there are a number of "two simplified characters", which have been abolished, but a few numbers are still popular in society.

If learning and using Chinese characters really need to master the sounds, shapes and meanings of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be the characters that no one in the world can and will not learn and use. However, most of the Chinese characters included in the Chinese Dictionary are "dead words", that is, words that have existed in history and are abandoned in today's written language.

According to statistics, the total number of words in the Thirteen Classics is 589,283, of which 6,544 are variant characters. Therefore, in fact, people only use more than 6 thousand Chinese characters every day.

In the computer coding standard of Chinese characters, the largest Chinese character coding is CNS 1 1643 in Taiwan Province Province, and the full-character database of version 5.0 can query 87,047 Chinese characters, 1077 1 pinyin word, with 894 symbols.

The big five codes commonly used in Taiwan Province and Hongkong include 13053 traditional Chinese characters. GB 18030 is the latest internal code character set in People's Republic of China (PRC). GBK contains simplified characters, traditional characters and 209 12, while earlier GB23 12 contains 6763 simplified characters. Unicode's unified ideographic basic character set for China, Japan and Korea contains 20,902 Chinese characters, totaling more than 70,000 characters.

In the early Chinese character system, the number of words was insufficient, and many things were represented by interchangeable words, which caused the ambiguity of text expression. In order to improve the clarity of expression, Chinese characters have gone through a stage of gradual complexity and a large number of words. The excessive increase in the number of Chinese characters makes it difficult to learn Chinese characters, and the meaning that a single Chinese character can express is limited.

Therefore, many single Chinese meanings are expressed by Chinese words, such as common disyllabic words. The development of Chinese characters tends to create new words instead of new words.

The materials related to the origin of Chinese characters unearthed in Oracle Bone Inscriptions and earlier in Yin Ruins mainly refer to the carved or painted symbols appearing on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society, and also include a few symbols carved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions, jade and stone tools. It can be said that they provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Chinese Characters