The Origin of Chinese Characters in China

Legend has it that Cang Xie was the historian of the Yellow Emperor, who was the leader of the tribal alliance in ancient Central Plains. With the society entering the stage of large-scale tribal alliances, the external affairs between alliances are becoming more and more frequent, and it is urgent to establish a set of communication symbols enjoyed by all alliances, so the work of collecting and sorting out * * * was handed over to historian Cang Xie.

Chinese characters in a broad sense refer to characters from stone carvings, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Da Zhuan, inscriptions on bronze, calligraphy, Xiao Zhuan, official script, cursive script, regular script and running script. In a narrow sense, they refer to Chinese characters whose standard writing method is block letters, and they are also widely used in modern Chinese characters.

Chinese characters were invented and improved by the ancestors of the Chinese nation in ancient times. At present, the exact history can be traced back to ancient stone inscriptions and Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Zhang Wen and Jin Wen of Shang Dynasty about 1300 BC. Then it went to the seal script of Qin Dynasty, developed into the official script of Han Dynasty, and became the standard of handwritten font used today in Tang Dynasty-block letters.

Extended information Chinese character is one of the oldest characters in the world, which has 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.

Chinese characters are the most widely used characters in the world. According to statistics, the number of people who use Chinese characters and Chinese has reached more than 654.38+06 billion.

At the beginning of the 20th century, with the introduction of western culture, some people thought that Chinese characters were the chief culprit of China's backwardness and advocated the abolition of Chinese characters. In the second half of the 20th century, computer science developed rapidly. Some people thought that Chinese characters hindered the development of science, and Chinese characters could not be input into computers, which led to the upsurge of abolishing Chinese characters. Later, when the problem was solved, the doubts dissipated.

Chinese characters are the oldest characters still in use. The earliest Chinese characters that can be seen and read now are Oracle Bone Inscriptions more than 3,000 years ago. This is a fairly mature system of Chinese characters. There is no writing in the world that has gone through many vicissitudes like Chinese characters and is still young. The sacred script of ancient Egypt 5000 years ago is one of the earliest scripts of human beings.

But then it died out, and the recorded ancient Egyptian culture was buried deep. Sumerian cuneiform also has a history of 5000 years. But after 330 AD, it also died out. Famous figures who have declined in history include Maya and Boulami. Chinese characters not only have a long history, but also have a growing influence.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Chinese Characters