What are the good ways to learn ancient Chinese characters?

Based on my own experience, I briefly talk about the methods of learning ancient Chinese characters for the reference of young comrades who are interested in ancient Chinese characters. For the convenience of writing, when referring to contemporary scholars, even the teachers and friends of the author do not add the names of Mr. and Comrade. Let me make a statement here first. ?

The name "ancient Chinese characters" refers to a wide range. The ancient Chinese characters mentioned in this paper mainly refer to the characters found in archaeological materials earlier than Biography. ?

Li Xueqin's article "Talking about Self-study of Ancient Chinese Characters" quoted a famous saying of the late ancient Chinese philologist Tang Lan-"The Kung Fu of Ancient Chinese Characters is not in Ancient Chinese Characters" (Knowledge of Literature and History 198 1, 6 issues, 5 pages). In other words, if you want to learn ancient Chinese characters well, you must master a lot of knowledge other than ancient Chinese characters. ?

According to my experience, among the knowledge that must be mastered, the most important is the knowledge of ancient Chinese. Ancient Chinese characters are records of ancient Chinese. If you are unfamiliar with ancient Chinese, it is impossible to learn it well. ?

The main way to be familiar with ancient Chinese is to read ancient books. Our conditions are different from those of scholars in feudal times. We can't spend as much time reading ancient books as they do, but at least we should try our best to focus on desecrating an important ancient book with moderate length. For those who study ancient Chinese characters, the most suitable ancient book for intensive reading may be Zuo Zhuan. There are several annotated versions of Zuo Zhuan. I advocate reading the Notes on Zuo Zhuan in the Spring and Autumn Annals (Du Zhuyun, Kong Zhu). Not only the text of Zuo Zhuan, but also the notes and annotations should be read word for word. This not only helps to understand this article, but also helps to master the style of ancient annotations. After reading this annotation, it will be more convenient to use other annotations in the future. When reading Zuo Zhuan Zhu Shu, Yang Bojun's Zuo Zhuan Zhu Shu in the Spring and Autumn Period is a reference book. Reading Zuo Zhuan can not only make you familiar with the pre-Qin language, but also gain a lot of flesh-and-blood knowledge about the pre-Qin history, society, classics, customs and thoughts. This knowledge is very useful for studying and studying ancient Chinese characters. ?

Of course, we should also read the ancient books other than Zuo Zhuan, but I'm afraid I can only have a cursory look because of the time limit. Li Xueqin said in "Talking about Self-study of Ancient Chinese Characters": "When reading ancient Chinese characters, it is best to compare them with contemporary literature. For example, learning the inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty and reading the works of the Western Zhou Dynasty in Shangshu, Yizhoushu and Shijing will certainly achieve the best of both worlds. " (Page 6) This is very reasonable. If you are interested in the Warring States script, you should read the Warring States Policy, Historical Records and other books. Most of the written materials of the Warring States period that can be seen now are antique (such as inscriptions on some stone carvings) and extremely simple (such as seals and coins). Therefore, for those who study and study the Warring States script, the historical value of books such as Warring States Policy and Historical Records exceeds the value as language materials. ?

While reading ancient books, you'd better read some books about ancient Chinese grammar and vocabulary, so that your knowledge of ancient Chinese can be organized. Beginners can read the general theory in "Ancient Chinese" edited by Wang Li, and the relevant parts in the second and second volumes of Wang Li's "Chinese Historical Manuscripts". It is best to read a book on exegetics. Beginners can read Hong Cheng's exegetics (published by Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House 1984). Familiarity with ancient Chinese depends mainly on reading ancient books in a down-to-earth manner. If the reading of ancient books is not practical enough, reading more general works on ancient books will not solve the problem. If beginners can't read the general theory works well, they will be confused and even go astray. ?

Some people who study ancient Chinese characters, in order to make clear the meaning of ancient Chinese materials, do not hesitate to fabricate the meaning of words that have never appeared in ancient books or misinterpret ancient Chinese exegesis, ignoring the general rules and grammatical rules of word collocation in ancient Chinese, making ancient Chinese recorded in ancient Chinese a special language that is very different from ancient Chinese in ancient books. If we are familiar with ancient Chinese, we will not be deceived by this wrong statement. You can avoid making similar mistakes when you do your own research in the future, unless you know that this is because you lack a realistic attitude. ?

There is a special knowledge in ancient Chinese, which is extremely important for those who study and study ancient Chinese characters, and that is the knowledge of ancient phonology. ?

In ancient Chinese characters, commonly used words (also called interchangeable words) are very common. If the same word can be represented by different words, then these different words are commonly used. Except for a few special cases, the original pronunciations of two commonly used words must be exactly the same or very close. Some people think that as long as the initials or finals of two words are the same or similar, they can be used universally. This statement is not credible. Words with the same initial but obviously different vowels, or words with the same initial but obviously different vowels, read obviously differently. How could the ancients use them as common words? Pronunciation has been changing since ancient times. Now two words with the same sound may have very different pronunciations in ancient times. Two words with very different pronunciations at present may have similar pronunciations or even identical pronunciations in ancient times. If you don't know the ancient pronunciation, you can't judge whether a word in ancient Chinese materials is a common word in ancient books. Some ancient Chinese materials are rhyming, and it is impossible to interpret and understand such materials without the knowledge of ancient phonology. Pictophonetic characters are often caused by using different phonetic symbols. The knowledge of ancient phonology is also needed to determine whether the two different pictophonetic characters found next to ancient Chinese characters and ancient books are different from each other. In addition, when studying and interpreting ancient Chinese characters, we will encounter other situations that require the knowledge of ancient phonology. Even if you don't do your own research, you should learn ancient sounds, so as to judge whether the conclusions related to ancient sounds made by others in the study of ancient characters are correct. ?

When it comes to ancient phonology, young comrades often turn pale with fear. Indeed, it is not easy to master ancient phonology and it takes a lot of time. But if you just want to study and study China ancient literature, you don't need very advanced knowledge of ancient phonology. My knowledge of ancient phonology is superficial. Beginners will not make big mistakes if they can carefully read Wang Li's Chinese Phonology (a booklet published by Zhonghua Book Company) and the first volume of Chinese History Draft, master some of the most important phonological terms, the general situation of the initials and finals of ancient sounds and their subsequent evolution, and often consult reference books when encountering problems related to ancient sounds. ?

The reference book of ancient sound dictionary is Tang Zuofan's Manual of Ancient Sound, which has been used well in recent years. (Editor's Note: 1986 Peking University Publishing House published Guo Xiliang's Handbook of Ancient Characters, which is also very useful. ) Dong Tonghe's Gu Yin Biao and Zhou Fagao's Gu Yin Biao are important tools in ancient phonology, but they are hard to find. If you really can't find the book mentioned above, when you need to know the ancient initials of a word, you can first find out the ancient initials of this word in the Manual of Comparison of Ancient and Modern Phonetics or the new edition of Etymology, and then convert them into ancient initials according to the law of phonetic evolution (in general, you only need to point out whether the initials of a word are the same or similar in ancient times according to the law of phonetic evolution, and the problem can be solved); When you need to know the ancient rhyme of a word, you can look it up in Zhu's dictionary Shuo Wen Tong Xun (hereinafter referred to as "Ding Sheng"). A photocopy of this book has been published recently. However, the rhyming names of Ding Sheng are all taken from the names of sixty-four hexagrams, which are different from the general names of ancient rhymes. If you want to know the corresponding relationship between the two, you can look at the "Similarities and Differences Table of Ancient Rhymes" in Wang Li's article (Wang Li's Collection of Dragon Insect Carving Zhai, vol. 1, pp. 77-79). There are some mistakes in the attribution of a few numbers in Ding Sheng, such as "Xi" and "Xi" in the branch strayed into the fat part, and "Zao" in the secluded part strayed into the back part. (Ding Sheng means support, fat, seclusion, to be solved, performance, happiness and need), so pay attention to it when using it. ?

Ding Sheng uses Xiao Zhuan as the standard font. It not only accepts characters according to the ancient rhyme, but also arranges pictophonetic characters according to the sound side in each department, and all words with a certain sound side are arranged after this word. In addition, there is a loan word to explain the meaning of these words in Ding Sheng. Under this word, various loan word usages of these words are listed. These characteristics make it a dictionary suitable for people who study and study ancient Chinese characters. However, the analysis of the pictophonetic structure of Ding Sheng is not completely correct; Because the relationship between words with similar sounds and meanings is often confused with the relationship between words and loanwords, their loanwords are often problematic. These are all things that should be paid attention to when using this book.