Information about Chinese characters. (Couplets; word puzzles; jokes; misspelled words; origin, evolution; calligraphic scripts; hiatus 。。。。。。) All

Chinese characters (pinyin: hàn zì, Zhuyin symbol: use ㄢ ㄗ), also known as Chinese characters, Chinese characters, and square characters, belong to the ideographs of the grapheme-syllable script. Chinese characters are the characters used for writing Chinese , and are also borrowed for writing Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other languages. It is a widely used script in the Chinese character culture circle, and is the only highly developed script still widely used in the world.

Broadly speaking, Chinese characters refer to characters ranging from oracle bone inscriptions, the Great Seal Script, the Golden Script, the Preliminary Seal Script, and the Small Seal Script to the Official Script, the Cursive Script, and the Regular Script (as well as the derived Running Script), while narrowly speaking, they refer to characters written in the standardized Shogun script, which is the modern Chinese character in common use today. Chinese characters were invented and improved by Han Chinese ancestors in ancient times, and their exact history can be traced back to about 1300 B.C., when they were written in the form of oracle bone inscriptions, seal scripts, and jin scripts during the Shang Dynasty. It was then developed into the Small Seal Script of the Qin Dynasty, and then into the Scribal Script of the Han Dynasty, and then into the Regular Script of the Tang Dynasty, which is the standard handwriting font used today.

Chinese characters have been in continuous use for the longest period of time, and are the only script that has been passed down from one of the major writing systems of the ancient times to the present day, and have been used as the main official script in China throughout the ages. In ancient times, Chinese characters were developed to such a high level of sophistication that they were not only used in China, but also for a long time served as the only script for international communication in East Asia, and until the 20th century they were the official written standardized script of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, the Ryukyus, and other countries, and all the East Asian countries created their own Chinese characters to a certain extent.

Origin

Archaeological Discoveries

The Chinese archaeological community has released a series of excavated materials related to the origin of the script that are older than the Yinxu oracle bone inscriptions. The Jiahu inscriptions were physically determined by carbon 14 and are about 7,762 (±128) years old; there are also the Shuangdun inscriptions from 7,000 years ago, the Hemipo pottery inscriptions from 6,000 years ago, the Qingdun site inscriptions from more than 5,000 years ago, the Zhuangqiao grave site inscriptions that are linked into a sentence, the Dawenkou pottery zun symbols, the Taosi site Zhuwen inscriptions from the Yao and Shun eras, and the Xiaxian market's Shuishu (water writing). The early bone inscriptions are the rich writing system, and the later ones belong to the preliminary stage of maturity. These archaeological discoveries may be important clues to the origins of Chinese characters and the different streams of the development of various scripts.

In the early 1980s, a more complete script was found on pottery unearthed at the Xia culture site in Dengfeng, Henan Province. This is the earliest writing confirmed by scholars to have a definite date in China so far.

From the ancient legend of Cangjie's creation of characters to the discovery of oracle bones more than 100 years ago, generations of Chinese scholars have been dedicated to unraveling the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. There are five old theories about the origin of Chinese characters, namely, the knot-rope theory, the bagua theory, the hetu-luoshu theory, the Cangjie character-making theory and the picture theory.

Knotting said: "Northern History - Wei Benji" said: Wei's predecessors in the Northern Dynasties, "shooting and hunting for the industry, simple for the custom, simple for the chemical; not for the written word, carving wood knotting rope only." Recorded some primitive social tribes, before the advent of writing, to knot the rope to keep track of events, such as wars, hunting, alliances, elections, celebrations, marriages, childbirth, diseases and disasters, and other large and small events recorded.

In the past, some scholars also according to the "Zhouyi-Series of Rhetoric", "the ancient times to rule by knotting the rope, the sages in the later generations to the book of deeds, the hundred officials to rule, the ten thousand people to investigate. The thesis, deduced that "the origin of writing in the rope".

"Yi - Department of Rhetoric": the river out of the map, Luo out of the book, the saints then. The River Map - Jade Plate: Cangjie for the emperor, the south patrol hunting, hair Yangxu of the mountains, the water in the Yuan Hu Luo, the spirit turtle negative book, Danjia Qingwen, to grant.

Unveiling the mystery of this said, it is not difficult to find, it is the real core of the number, can be compared to the "nine palace" algorithm. The so-called "nine palace", in the prophecy of the family, is the gossip plus the center, together as nine ("five" is located in the center, but also can be linked to the five elements); in the eyes of the art of counting, it is the number of horizontal, vertical, diagonal bias, and add the number of constant for 15. [2]

Cangjie create words: Legend has it that Cangjie was the historian of the Yellow Emperor, the Yellow Emperor was the leader of the ancient tribal alliance in the Central Plains, due to the society into the stage of larger-scale tribal alliance, the alliance between the increasingly frequent diplomatic affairs, so there is an urgent need to establish a set of alliance alliance *** enjoy the symbols of communication, so the collection and collation of *** enjoy the text of the work will be handed over in the hands of the historian Cangjie.

The theory that Cangjie created characters was already popular during the Warring States period. "Cangjie made the books, Houji made the crops," says the Lu Shi Chun Qiu (The Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu Shi). In the Qin and Han Dynasties, this legend became even more prevalent. Xu Shen's "Shuo Wen Jie Zi - Narrative" said, "Cang Jie's first book was based on the image of the class."

Modern scholars believe that systematic writing tools cannot be created entirely by a single person, and that Cangjie, if he did exist, would have been the organizer or promulgator of the script.

Pictures: Modern scholars believe that Chinese characters really originated from primitive pictures. It is very likely that the graphics engraved on some excavated artifacts are related to the script.

Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest engraved symbols in China were found at the Jiahu site in Maoyang, Henan Province, more than 8,000 years ago. To do a comprehensive organization of these original materials, so as to climb the comb compared to the Shang Dynasty text before the occurrence of Chinese characters, 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 has found more than 10 cases of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu pottery) of the small amount of material can be directly compared with the order of the Yinxu text, the other pre-Shanghai symbols are scattered, each other lack of ring more, most of the symbols and with the Shang Dynasty text is not in the right shape. There are also some symbols with heavy regional colors and complex backgrounds.

Wang Yunzhi argues that the formalization of the Chinese character system should have taken place in the Central Plains. Chinese characters are a writing system of independent origin, not dependent on any foreign script, but its origin is not a single one, and it has gone through a diversified and long period of integration. Around the time of the Xia Era, the ancestors creatively invented a system of characters and symbols used to record language on the basis of the experience of widely absorbing and utilizing the earlier symbols, and the system of Chinese characters matured relatively quickly in that era.

It is reported that, from the point of view of the excavated text data of the archaeological excavation, China has already had a formal text at least in the Yu Xia period, such as the archaeologists once in Shanxi Xiangfen Taosi site out of a flat ceramic pots, found in the brush Zhu Shu "Wen" character. These symbols belong to the basic form of the early writing system, but unfortunately, such excavated information is still scarce.

About 6,000 years ago, at the Half Slope site and other Yangshao culture sites, the outer wall of the pottery, there have been incised symbols, *** up to more than 50 kinds. They are neatly planned and have a certain regularity, with the characteristics of simple writing, which may be the germ of writing in China.

In the late Dawenkou culture site about four or five thousand years ago and Liangzhu culture site pottery, found on the more neat and regular graphic engraving, is an early graphic script.

Introduction

Chinese characters are one of the oldest scripts in the world, with a history of at least 4,000 years, and the earliest recognizable system of mature Chinese characters in existence is the oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty. Chinese characters have gradually changed in form from figures to strokes, from pictograms to symbols, from complexity to simplicity; and in the principle of character creation from ideograms, to ideology, to shape and sound. With very few exceptions, a Chinese character is a syllable.

Chinese characters are phonetic scripts, and a Chinese character usually represents a word or a morpheme in the Chinese language, which creates a unity of sound, shape and meaning. Chinese characters are square characters made up of strokes, so they are also called square characters. For example, "车", "上", "明", "车", "上", "明", and so on. "Ming" uses the form of the character to directly express the meaning of words in the language; "Q" can express both meaning and sound, "门" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound, "口" expresses sound. "口" means "mouth".

Chinese characters have evolved over thousands of years to form the "Seven Styles of Chinese Characters", namely: oracle bone script, golden script, seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script and running script.

Legend has it that Cangjie created Chinese characters. According to the Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Characters in Chinese), Cangjie was inspired by the footprints of birds and animals, classified them into different categories, collected them, organized them, and used them, which played an important role in the creation of Chinese characters, and he was honored as the "Sage of Chinese Character Creation".

During the Shang Dynasty, the earliest known mature Chinese characters, oracle bone inscriptions, appeared, and the Zhong Ding inscriptions that appeared later increased the number of characters, but there were no major changes in the shape of the characters.

During the Zhou Dynasty, because of the vast territory and the long period of vassalage, Chinese characters were clearly heterogeneous among the vassal states in the late Spring and Autumn period, and even more so during the Warring States period. In order to consolidate his rule after the unification of the Qin Dynasty, Emperor Qin Shihuang ordered his prime minister Li Si, Zhao Gao, and Hu Shaojing to organize the characters, and based on the Qin Big Seal Script, he formulated the Small Seal Script, which was used as the standard script for the whole country. A little later, a simpler script, the official script, was generally organized based on the popular scripts of the time, and was widely circulated throughout the country as the universal script.

Toward the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Regular Script appeared, and the evolution of Chinese characters was perfected. Not only that, the first calligraphy monograph, "Cursive Script", appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

In the past, it was often said that Chinese characters began with the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, but in fact, the oracle bone inscriptions were already a mature script, and before that, there should have been a period of development from the emergence of Chinese characters to their maturity, so some people argued that it was pushed back to the end of the Xia Dynasty, while others argued that it was pushed back to before the Xia Dynasty, and they all disagreed with each other. Guo Moruo pointed out in "The Dialectical Development of Ancient Writing" that: "When did Chinese characters originate? In my opinion, this can be indicated by the age of the ruins of Xi'an's Half-Po Village." "The Half-Po site is dated to about 6,000 years ago." "The Hanpo site is a typical example of the Yangshao culture of the Neolithic period." "The colored pottery of Hanpo is often marked with simple incisions that resemble characters, which are different from the patterns on the vessels." "Although the significance of the inscriptions has not yet been elucidated, they are undoubtedly symbols of a written nature." "It can be said with certainty to be the origin of Chinese writing, or the remnants of primitive Chinese writing." According to this statement, Chinese civilization should be counted as nearly six thousand years. When was the origin of Chinese writing? In what era were the oldest characters created? What do they mean? There is still no agreement on this, and a great deal of material is needed to explain it.

Evolution

The subsequent evolution of Chinese characters has taken thousands of years to complete, with oracle bone inscriptions, gold inscriptions, seal scripts, clerical scripts, regular scripts, cursive scripts, and running scripts, and the use of the regular scripts has been widespread to the present day, but not yet completely finalized.

Chinese characters in the ancient stage of writing, before the Han Dynasty. It is more figurative.

Warring States script: "The lords force politics, not united with the king, the evil rites and music of their own harm and all go to their canonical books." "The fields are different acres, the cars are different tracks, the laws are different, the clothes are different, the speech is different, the characters are different." It has a strong regional character. The Qin script is the mainstream of the development of Chinese characters. The scripts of the six states, with their great regional differences, do not reflect the trajectory of Chinese character development and are tributaries.

Oracle Bone Script

To refer to the Yinxu Oracle Bone Script, a script engraved (or written) on tortoise shells and animal bones used for divination and record-keeping by the royal family of China in the late Shang Dynasty (14th to 11th centuries BC).

There are about 150,000 oracle bones and more than 4,500 single characters found. The content of these oracle bones is extremely rich, involving many aspects of social life in the Shang Dynasty, including not only political, military, cultural and social customs, but also astronomy, calendar, medicine and other science and technology. From the oracle bone inscriptions have been recognized about 1500 single words, it has already had "pictograms, will be, form and sound, refers to the matter, turn note, false borrowing" method of making words, showing the unique charm of the Chinese characters. The documents of the Shang Dynasty and the early Western Zhou Dynasty (about 16th to 10th centuries B.C.) were made of tortoise shell and animal bone.

Jinwen

Jinwen refers to the writing cast and engraved on Yin and Zhou bronze vessels, also called Zhongdingwen. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were the era of bronze, and bronze ritual vessels were represented by tripods, and musical instruments were represented by bells, and "Zhong Ding" was synonymous with bronze. Therefore, Zhong Dingwen or Jinwen refers to the inscriptions cast or engraved on the bronzes.

The so-called bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the smelting of copper and the manufacture of bronze wares were very advanced. Because before the Zhou copper is also called gold, so the inscription on the bronze is called "Jinwen" or "Jijinwen"; and because of this type of bronze to the most number of words on the bell tripod, so in the past it was also called "Zhong Dingwen "

Jinwen or Jijinwen.

Jinwen was used since the early Shang Dynasty, down to the Qin Dynasty, about 1200 years. The number of characters in Jinwen, according to Rong Geng's "Jinwen Zhi", *** counts 3,722, of which 2,420 are recognizable.

The number of words in the inscriptions on bronze vessels varies. The contents of the inscriptions are also very different. Most of them glorify the achievements of ancestors and princes and lords, and also record major historical events. For example, the famous Mao Gong Ding has 497 characters, which are very broad and reflect the social life at that time.

Big Seal Script

Big Seal Script began in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and was popularized in Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The font is similar to the Qin seal script, but the shape of the characters overlap. It is represented by the Shi Gu Wen (石鼓文), which was written by Shi Zhou (太史籀) at the time of King Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty, and was named after him. He reformed the original script, which was named after the stone drums on which it was carved. It is the earliest stone-carved script that has been handed down to the present day, and is the ancestor of stone carvings.

Small Seal Script

The Small Seal Script is also known as the "Qin Seal Script". Li Si was appointed to standardize the writing system during the Qin Dynasty, and this writing system was called the Small Seal Script. It was popularized during the Qin Dynasty. It is long, round and neat, and is derived from the Big Seal Script. Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty, "Shuo Wen Jie Zi - Narrative" [2] said, "When Qin Shi Huang Di first took over the world ...... strike those who did not fit in with the Qin script." Li Si wrote Cangjie, Zhao Gao wrote Zunli, and Hu Shujing wrote Boxue, all of which were based on the seal script of the pre-Han period, or rather on the so-called "small seal script". Nowadays, the remaining stones of "Luangya Terrace Carved Stone" and "Taishan Carved Stone" are the representative works of the Small Seal Script. The Small Seal Script engraved on the Qin Dynasty is said to have been created by Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, after the unification of China by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who was responsible for implementing the policy of unifying weights and measures by simplifying the Big Seal Script (籀文), which was the original script of the Qin Dynasty, and by eliminating the variant scripts of the other six countries. It was popular in China until the end of the Western Han Dynasty, when it was gradually replaced by the official script. However, it was always favored by calligraphers because of its beautiful script. And because of its complex strokes, strange and ancient forms, and the ability to add twists and turns at will, seal engraving, especially official seals that need to prevent counterfeiting, has always used seal script until the overthrow of the feudal dynasty, and the emergence of new anti-counterfeiting technology in modern times. The Kangxi Dictionary still has notes on all characters written in small seal script.

Clerical Script

Clerical Script basically evolved from Seal Script, mainly changing the rounded strokes of Seal Script to square folds, which were faster to write, and it was difficult to draw the rounded strokes by writing with lacquer on wooden slips.

Clerical Script is also called "Clerical Characters" and "Ancient Script". It is based on the seal script, in order to adapt to the need for convenient writing of the script on the small seal script to simplify, and the small seal script even round lines into a straight and square strokes, easy to write, divided into the Qin Clerical Script (ancient Clerical Script) and the Han Clerical Script (today's Clerical Script). The emergence of the official script was a major change in ancient writing and calligraphy. LiShu is a solemn script commonly found in Chinese characters, with a slightly broader and flatter writing effect, longer horizontal strokes and shorter straight strokes, emphasizing "silkworm head, swallow tail" and "one wave and three twists". It originated in the Qin Dynasty and reached its peak in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and is known in the calligraphy circles as "Han Scribe and Tang Regular Script". It is also said that the official script originated in the Warring States period.

Li Shu is a term used in contrast to Seal Script, and the name Li Shu originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The emergence of the official script was another major reform of the Chinese script, which brought the art of Chinese calligraphy into a new realm and was a turning point in the history of the evolution of Chinese characters, laying the foundation for the regular script. The Regular Script is flat, neat and delicate. By the time of the Eastern Han Dynasty, points such as the apostrophe and the downward stroke were embellished to be upwardly picked up, with variations of lightness and heaviness, and with the beauty of calligraphic art. The style also tends to be diversified, highly appreciated value of art.

Clerical Script is said to have been organized by Cheng Miao in prison in the Qin Dynasty, and it was simplified and simplified, with the shape of the characters changing from round to square, and the strokes changing from curved to straight. Change "even pen" for "broken pen", from the line to the stroke, more convenient to write." The term "scribe" does not mean a prisoner, but a "xuxing", i.e., a minor official in charge of documents, so in ancient times, the official script was called "zoshu". The official script flourished during the Han Dynasty and became the main calligraphic style. The Qin Clerical Script, which was the first to be created, retained many of the meanings of the seal scripts, which were later developed and refined. It broke with the writing traditions since the Zhou and Qin Dynasties and gradually laid the foundation for the Regular Script. Under the ideological unification of "Dismissing the Hundred Schools and Exclusively Respecting the Confucians", the Official Script of the Han Dynasty was gradually developed and finalized, and became the dominant calligraphic style, at the same time, it gave rise to the Cursive Script, Regular Script, and Running Script, which laid the foundation for the art.

Regular Script

Regular Script, also known as Zhengshu, or True Script, began in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is characterized by its square shape and straight strokes, and can be used as a model, hence its name. There are many famous writers of Regular Script, creating many representative fonts, such as "Ou Style" (Tang Ouyang Xun), "Yu Style" (Tang Yu Shinan), "Yan Style" (Tang Yan Zhenqing), "Liu Style (Tang - Liu Gongquan), Zhao Style (Song and Yuan - Zhao Mengfu) and so on. The early Regular Script still has very few scribal strokes remaining, with slightly wider stylization, long horizontal strokes and short straight strokes. Among the Wei and Jin posters that have come down to us, such as Zhong Yao's "Declaration Table" and "Recommendation of Ji Zhi Table", and Wang Xizhi's "Le Yi Theory" and "Huangting Jing" can be taken as representative works. As Weng Fangzang said, "the wave painting of the clerical script is changed to point and peck, and the horizontal and straight lines of the ancient clerical script are still preserved".

After the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the north and south were divided, and calligraphy was also divided into two schools. The northern school of calligraphy, with the remains of the Han Clerical Script, the calligraphy is ancient and strong, and the style is simple and square, long in the list of books, which is said to be the Wei Bei. The southern school of calligraphy, more sparse and elegant, long in the shakuji. North and South Dynasties, because of regional differences, personal habits, book style is very different. North book is strong, south book is not, each to achieve its wonderful, no distinction between up and down, and bao shichen and kang youwei, but highly respected two dynasty book, especially the northern wei monumental. Kang cited ten beauty, to emphasize the merits of the Wei monument.

The Tang Dynasty Regular Script, as in the Tang Dynasty, the country's prosperous situation, so-called unprecedented. Calligraphy matured, and there were many calligraphers, in the Regular Script, Yu Shinan, Ouyang Xun, Chu Suiliang in the early Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing in the Middle Tang Dynasty, and Liu Gongquan in the Late Tang Dynasty, whose works in Regular Script were valued by the later generations and regarded as a model for character practice. The Regular Script is the standard commonly used in modern times.

Cursive Script

Cursive Script was formed in the Han Dynasty, and evolved on the basis of Clerical Script for the sake of simplicity of writing. It is divided into Zhang Cao, Jin Cao and Fan Cao. Cursive writing for the convenience of writing a font. It began in the early Han Dynasty. At that time, the common is "grass scribe", that is, the scribble of the official script, and later gradually developed, forming a kind of artistic value of "Zhang Cao". At the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhi changed "zhang cao" into "jin cao", and the momentum of the word was made in one stroke. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu and Huaisu developed the "Wild Cursive Script", which is characterized by continuous strokes and many changes in the shape of the characters. Cursive script is commonly used by calligraphers.

Chapters of cursive strokes to save change have chapter and verse to follow. Representative works, such as the Three Kingdoms period, Wu Huangxiang "rush to the chapter" of the Songjiang this.

The present grass is not bound by the rules and regulations, smooth strokes. Representative works, such as the Jin Dynasty Wang Xizhi, "the first month", "to show" and other posts.

Cursive appeared in the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu, Huaisu as a representative of the wild and unrestrained brush, become completely detached from the practical creation of art, from now on cursive is only a calligrapher copying the calligraphic works. Representative works such as Zhang Xu "bellyache post", Huaisu "self-reporting post".

Running Script

Shu was produced around the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is between the Regular Script, Cursive Script between a type of font, can be said to be the Regular Script of the Cursive or Cursive Script of the Regular. It was created to compensate for the slow writing speed of Regular Script and the difficulty of recognizing Cursive Script. The strokes are not as scribbly as in cursive, nor do they require the regular script to be as upright. The Regular Script is more than the Cursive Script and is called "Xing Kai". Those with more cursive than regular strokes are called "Xingcao". Representative characters: "Two Kings": Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi.

Characteristics

Chinese characters are one of the oldest scripts in the world, and have had a tremendous impact on the surrounding area, being the mother of all other scripts. It is a written symbol for recording events. In form, it gradually changed from a graphic to a square-shaped symbol made up of strokes, which is why Chinese characters are generally called "square characters". It has evolved from hieroglyphics (pictograms) to ideograms, which also express sound and meaning, but the overall system is still ideographic. Therefore, Chinese characters are characterized by the combination of image, sound and meaning. This characteristic is unique among the world's scripts, and therefore it has a unique charm. Chinese characters are the treasures of thousands of years of culture of the Han people, and they are also our lifelong mentors and friends,

everyone's spiritual home. Chinese characters can often cause us wonderful and bold associations, giving people the enjoyment of beauty.

Chinese characters are the bond of the soul of the nation. When you are making a living in a foreign country, Chinese characters are a kind of support, even if it's a plaque or a piece of paper, the square characters on it will attract you like a magnet and make you feel the kindness from the motherland. Because the Chinese sentiment has been condensed into the simplest horizontal, vertical, apostrophe. Every stroke is dipped in Chinese blood and written. Overseas, whether you are successful or wandering lost, as long as there is a square word accompanied, you will have a few solace a few trust, because whether it is hieroglyphic or refers to the matter, whether it will be or form of sound, each word has a far-reaching origins, each Chinese is that a one-handed and one-press, has become a square word of the soul.

Advantages Compared to Pinyin Characters

The characters used in the world are categorized into two main types, namely, non-pinyin characters (Chinese characters and Shuishu) and pinyin characters (other characters). Among the scripts used in the world today, Chinese characters and Shuishu belong to the category of non-phonetic scripts.

Of the scripts in use today, Chinese characters have been used since the Shang Dynasty and have evolved to the present day. Legend has it that the Sanskrit alphabet was created and granted to mankind by the God who created the universe, Mahatma Brahma (The Records of the Great Tang Dynasty and the Western Regions) Many of the other scripts borrowed from the four major alphabetic systems. The Brahmi series of letters, the Latin, Slavic, and Arabic alphabets are known as the four major alphabetic systems of the world. The Brahmi series of letters is used in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Tibet, China. English, French, Italian, etc. use the Latin alphabet; Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc. use the Kirillic (or Slavic) alphabet, which is a modification of the Greek alphabet; the Latin alphabet is also a modification of the Greek alphabet. The Aramaic, the ancestor of the Arabic alphabet, and the Canaanite, the ancestor of the Greek alphabet, were not created directly by their ancestors, but were borrowed from the Semites. It was borrowed from the Semites (the small square Semitic alphabet) and adapted. This alphabet was borrowed and adapted from the cuneiform script of the Sumerians (Sume). Cuneiform was created by the Sumerians, Sacred Script by the Egyptians, and Chinese characters by the Chinese, Shui Shu by the Chinese Water People, none of which are phonetic scripts. Of the four, only Chinese characters and Shuishu remain, the other two having died out.

Another peculiarity of the Chinese language is its super-dialectal and super-linguistic character. Linguists have divided the dialects of different parts of China into eight major dialect areas. Some say that without Chinese characters, China would have split into dozens of countries long ago. The differences between Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian in Europe are much smaller than the gaps between the Chinese dialects, but they are by no means willing to recognize their respective languages as different dialects of "Romance languages" because they are all separate countries.

Chinese characters have served as the parent characters for other later inventions in world history, such as Vietnam, Korea and Japan, which used them to record their languages. The Japanese still use a mixture of kanji and kana, using kanji, and another major invention, writing Chinese characters and reading Japanese words. Other countries could do the same if they wanted to. If they did, kanji would be an international linguistic symbol, like the math symbols, which are only ideographic, not phonetic.

Chinese characters are the most used script in the world. According to statistics, the number of people using Chinese characters and Chinese language reaches more than 1.6 billion.

In the early 20th century, with the introduction of Western culture, some people believed that Chinese characters were to blame for China's backwardness and advocated the abolition of Chinese characters. In the second half of the 20th century, when computer science developed dramatically, there were again some people who thought that Chinese characters hindered the development of science, and that square characters could not be entered into computers, and there was another agitation to abolish Chinese characters. Later, the problems in this area were solved and the skepticism dissipated.

Chinese characters are the oldest script still in use. The earliest Chinese characters that can now be seen and recognized are the oracle bones from more than 3,000 years ago. This is already quite a mature and systematic Chinese character. There is no other script in the world that has survived the vicissitudes of life and youth like the Chinese characters. The Sacred Script of Ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago was one of the earliest human scripts. But it later died out, and the documented ancient Egyptian culture was y buried. The Sumerian cuneiform script was also 5,000 years old. But it too died out after 330 AD. Other famous scripts that died out in history include Mayan, Borromean, and so on. But the Chinese characters not only flourished for a long time, standing alone in the forest of the world's writing, but also continue to be developed, the influence is also more and more big.