Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - The reason why Chinese characters stay in the phonetic stage

The reason why Chinese characters stay in the phonetic stage

The reasons why Chinese characters stay in phonography for a long time are: the restriction of language characteristics, the vast living area of the Han nationality, the differences in dialects, and some of them can't speak. The Han nationality has a long cultural tradition and a large number of documents and classics recorded in Chinese characters.

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". It has developed from hieroglyphics (ideographs) to phonetic symbols with both sound and meaning, but the overall system is still ideographs.

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Chinese characters are an important tool to carry culture. At present, there are a large number of ancient books written in Chinese characters. Different dialects and even languages use Chinese characters as their writing system. In ancient Japan, Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, Ryukyu Islands, Lanfang and Borneo Republic, Chinese characters were all official documents of the country, so China culture played an important role in the spread and sharing of surrounding civilizations in history.

Because the relationship between Chinese characters and pronunciation is not very close, it is easy to be borrowed by other ethnic groups, such as Japan, the Korean peninsula and Vietnam. There was a historical stage when only Chinese characters were written and no Chinese was spoken. This feature of Chinese characters plays an important role in maintaining a cultural circle-a nation full of various dialect groups that cannot communicate.

Chinese characters have had a great influence on the cultures of neighboring countries, forming a cultural circle of Chinese characters. Such as Japan, Vietnam, Korean Peninsula and Ryukyu Islands.