What do six books mean? What are the main ones?

Scholars in the Han Dynasty divided the formation and usage of Chinese characters into six categories, collectively called Liushu [1]. Liushu theory is the earliest systematic theory about the construction of Chinese characters [2]. The physical structure of Chinese characters is divided into internal structure and external structure. Internal structure refers to the construction method of Chinese characters, or word formation method, which is traditionally called Liu Shu.

1 pictogram

Of things

3 understand

4-shaped sound

5 transfer bill

Step 6 borrow

The word-making and word-using methods mentioned in Liu Shu have a far-reaching impact on the formation of Chinese characters, enabling future generations to communicate with the existing set of characters. China has a vast territory and many dialects. Chinese characters have the function of communicating with different dialects, which shows its importance. Liu Shu's word formation also played a great role in learning Chinese characters for later generations.

Ideographic characters imitate things with images, and the glyph itself reflects the meaning of words, because it can know the meaning of words, reduce the chance of writing typos when learning Chinese characters, and also help to understand the meaning of words. In addition, we can get a glimpse of some phenomena in China ancient culture, such as the word "clothes", and Oracle Bone Inscriptions's coat with collar, sleeve and lapel, which is helpful to understand the ancient costume culture. Secondly, deixis is used to express abstract concepts and arbitrary symbols. Therefore, only by observing and analyzing their characteristics can we know their meaning accurately, otherwise it is easy to confuse the meaning. However, if we can understand the structure of glyphs, it will also help us to understand the characters and deepen our understanding of their meanings. Furthermore, cognitive words are new words composed of two or more independent symbols, which can express characteristics, nature, state and so on. Description objects, even some abstract concepts. Therefore, it not only helps to understand the meaning of words, but also helps to distinguish between ancient and modern meanings.