Request information and pictures of the evolution of Chinese characters from ancient times to the present day.

Chinese characters have been changing for more than 6,000 years, and the process of evolution is as follows:

Oracle bone script → Jin script → Small seal script → Layan script → Regular script → Running script

(Shang) (Zhou) (Qin) (Han) (Wei and Jin) Cursive script

The above seven scripts of the "A-jin, Seal script, Layan, Cursive, Regular, and Running" are called the "Seven Styles of Chinese characters"

Chinese writing - the Chinese character was created in about 14 BC. "

The creation of Chinese characters, the Chinese script, is well documented to have taken place in the late Yin and Shang dynasties in the 14th century B.C., when the initial stereotyped script, the oracle bone script, was formed. The oracle bone script was both pictograph and epigraph, and to this day the Chinese characters still contain some pictographs that are as vivid as the pictures.

Toward the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters evolved into the Big Seal Script. As a result of the development of the Big Seal, two features emerged: firstly, linearization, the early uneven lines became even and soft, and the lines they drew along with the objects were very concise and vivid; secondly, standardization, the structure of the characters tended to be neat and tidy, and gradually left the original shape of the drawings, laying down the foundation of the square characters.

Later, Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, simplified the Big Seal Script and changed it to the Small Seal Script. In addition to simplifying the shape of the Big Seal, the Small Seal has also perfected the lineation and standardization, almost completely breaking away from pictorial characters and becoming a neat, harmonious, and very beautiful basically rectangular square character. However, the small seal script also has its own fundamental disadvantage, that is, its lines are very inconvenient to write with a pen, so almost at the same time, also produced the form of the official script to the two sides to become a flat square.

By the Han Dynasty, the official script had reached a mature stage, and the legibility and writing speed of the characters were greatly improved. After the official script evolved into zhangcao, and then jincao, to the Tang Dynasty, there is the expression of the writer's feelings, sent to the end of the expression of the wild grass. Subsequently, the Regular Script (also known as Zhenshu), which is a combination of Clerical Script and Cursive Script, began to flourish in the Tang Dynasty. The printed form we use today is a variation of the Regular Script. Between the Regular Script and the Cursive Script is the Running Script, which is fluent and flexible, and is said to have been produced by Liu De Sheng in the Han Dynasty, and has been passed down to the present day, and is still the font we are accustomed to using in our daily writing.

During the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing, engraving was widely used, and the Chinese characters were further improved and developed, resulting in a new type of writing style, the Song Style printing font. After the invention of printing, the carving knife used for engraving had a profound impact on the shape of Chinese characters, resulting in a horizontal, thin, vertical and thick, eye-catching and easy-to-read printing font, later known as Song Style. At that time, there were two kinds of fonts, the fat ones imitating Yan and Liu styles, and the thin ones imitating Ou and Yu styles. Among them, Yan Style and Liu Style had a high pen, and already had some features of horizontal thinness and vertical coarseness. To the Ming dynasty, Longqing, Wanli years, and from the Song style evolved into the strokes of the horizontal thin vertical thick, square characters of the Ming style. It turned out that at that time the folk popularity of a very thin horizontal strokes and vertical strokes especially thick, flat character Hongwu style, such as the official's title plate, lanterns, notices, private boundaries of the Le Shi, ancestral halls in the Lord of the God's card and so on are used in this type of font. Later, some carving workers in the process of imitating the Hongwu body carving to create a non-Yan and non-Ou skin contour body. Especially because of the horizontal and vertical shape of the strokes of this font, it did feel easy to carve, and it was different from the four styles of seal scripts, official scripts, genuine scripts and cursive scripts, which were unique and fresh and pleasant to read, and therefore it was used more and more widely, and it became the main printing font that was very popular since the 16th century and until nowadays, which is still known as the Song style, or also called the lead font.

In Chinese writing, the various fonts formed in various historical periods have their own distinctive artistic characteristics. For example, Seal Script is simple and elegant, Clerical Script is static and decorative, Cursive Script is fast and compact, Regular Script is neat and beautiful, and Running Script is easy to recognize and easy to write, and is practical, with a variety of styles and different personalities.

The evolution of Chinese characters is from the pictograms to the symbols of the lines and the strokes adapted to the writing of brushes as well as the printing fonts which are easy to carve, and its evolution history provides us with rich inspirations for the Chinese font design. In text design, if we can give full play to the characteristics and elegance of various fonts of Chinese characters, use skillful and original ideas, we will be able to design exquisite works.

Since the unification of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Chinese characters have gradually embarked on the road of development, and the Chinese characters of each era have distinctive and unique connotations of ethnicity and folklore, and the history of Chinese characters is y engraved with the wisdom and diligence of the Chinese children everywhere. However, some people nowadays know very little about their own country's characters, while they are still half-trained in the languages and characters of other countries with great enthusiasm. Words are the soul of the country. In order to understand the changes of our country's words, the history of our country, and the soul of our country, we have chosen this topic.

The development of Chinese characters, after the unification of China by Qin, successive simplification and organization of Chinese characters, so that the Chinese characters gradually towards standardization. The development of Chinese characters can be roughly categorized into four stages of evolution, such as Guwen, Seal Script, Clerical Script and Regular Script. Among them, there are the Big Seal Script and the Small Seal Script, while the Official Script is divided into the Qin Clerical Script and the Han Clerical Script. From this, it can be seen that any new typeface in history is gradually formed through a long period of evolution. On the whole, after the formation of the Regular Script, the Chinese script has been basically finalized (Table I).

(Table 1: Evolution of Chinese Character Script)

1 Oracle Bone Script

Before the unification of the script by the Qin Dynasty, Chinese characters were still confusing, both in terms of font and application. In the broad sense of ancient script, its includes the scripts before the Little Seal, including the Big Seal; in the narrow sense, it refers to the scripts before the Big Seal in the history of Chinese writing. Here, the narrow concept of Guwen is adopted. Ancient script includes oracle bone script and gold script; among them, the former is regarded as the earliest stereotyped script in China.

Oracle Bone Script (甲骨文)：Written or engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones during the late Shang Dynasty, most of the scripts are "divinatory words", while a few of them are "narrative words". Most of the oracle bones conform to the principles of pictograms and ideograms, and only 20% of the characters are form-sounding. The characters were carved with knives, some were filled with vermilion sand, and some were directly written in vermilion and ink. Because the characters are mostly evolved from pictorial characters, the degree of pictograms is high, and one character has multiple bodies with indeterminate strokes. This indicates that Chinese writing was not yet unified during the Yin and Shang periods.

Yin Dynasty images of gold: pre-Qin called copper for gold, so the casting of the text engraved on the bronze is called gold, also known as the bell-cauldron text, Yi ware paragraph. Compared with the oracle bone text, the gold text is more hieroglyphic, showing a more ancient appearance of the text. The writing method of Jinwen makes the image vivid and realistic, thick and natural.

The oracle bone script is the common form of writing in the Shang Dynasty, and the gold script is the correct form, which shows that the correct form is more complicated, and the common form tends to be simpler (as shown in Table II).

(Table 2: Comparison Table of Oracle Bone and Golden Script)

Oracle Bone Script is mostly engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones by knives, therefore, its words are with hard strokes (such as Figure 3). This knife-carved brushwork has also been used in modern graphic design (Figure 4).

2Big Seal Script

In the history of Chinese writing, among the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, Shi Zhou is the most important in terms of its contribution to writing. Shi Zhou was the historian of King Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty, and he created a new style of writing for simplicity. The Big Seal Script is also known as the Preliminary Script, Preliminary Seal Script, Preliminary Script, and Historical Script. Because it was made by Shi Zhou, it is called "Precious Seal Script". The Big Seal Script is found in the Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Words and Characters) and in various bells, tripods and Yi vessels collected by later generations. Among them, the most famous is the stone drum script made by King Xuan of Zhou.

3Small Seal Character

Small Seal Character, also known as Qin Seal Character, is a standardized script compiled by Li Si, the prime minister of Qin Dynasty, and others. It was simplified from the Big Seal Script. It is also known as the Jade Tendon Seal Script, because of its meaning of strong and vigorous strokes. The structure of the Small Seal Script is regular and harmonious, the strokes are rounded and neat, and the radicals have been changed and merged. Compared with the Big Seal, there is no hieroglyphic character. The change from the Big Seal to the Small Seal is of great significance in the history of Chinese writing

4Classical Script

The first step in the evolution from the Small Seal to the Clerical Script is that the most obvious change is the change from curved strokes to straight strokes, and from the absence of corners to the presence of corners. Generally people think that the official script refers to the official script with wave-fell limbs and a long tail like a carving knife trailing from one horizontal stroke to another, which is only one kind of the official script. There are mainly Qin Clerical Script and Han Clerical Script. Qin Clerical Script is the early form of Clerical Script; Han Clerical Script is the mature script of Clerical Script. What is usually referred to as the official script is the "eight points" of the Han Clerical Script (Fig. 6). The "eight-point" is after the Qin Clerical Script, and the wave limbs are gradually born. The development of the official script to eight points is already a mature gesture. Because of its more square and thicker characters, the official script has a sense of seriousness (Fig. 7). Although Figure 8 is an English letter, its font with diamonds and corners has the 〃flavor〃 of the official script.

5Regular Script

Regular Script is also known as Zhenshu, Zhengshu, and Jinli. It is also known as the "true script", the "regular script" and the "modern scribe". Contains the ancient scribe of the square, eight points of the Thuja and Zhangcao simple and so on. This kind of font has been used until now, is regarded as the standard font and is loved by the world. The Regular Script has a sense of stability and serenity derived from it; the text is written in different styles of the same script depending on the individual's writing style and personality (Figures 9 and 10). Figure 11 and Song Huizong's Thin Gold Script also use thin lines to outline the text, but because the turns and turns are shown in a rounded way, it presents a very different visual sense from the Thin Gold Script.

6 Running Script

"Running Script" is a kind of free writing style between Regular Script and Cursive Script. Running Script is different from Clerical Script and Regular Script in that the degree of flow can be freely utilized by the writer. Running script expresses a romantic and aesthetic flavor (Figure 12).

(Figure 12)

7 Cursive Script

"Cursive Script", also known as Broken Cursive and Modern Cursive, is a variation of Seal Script, Bakufu, and Zhangcao, following a variety of ancient scripts. Cursive script is based on zhangcao, which has a strong scribal flavor, and is named for its use in shengzhang. Zhangcao further development and become "today's grass", that is, usually people used to call "a book". Most of the present cursive tends to be more concise than zhangcao and jingshu. Cursive writing gives the viewer a sense of boldness and fluidity (Figure 13, 14, 15).

8 Printing Fonts

After the invention of printing, in order to meet the needs of printing, especially the printing of books and magazines, the characters were gradually developed in the direction of being suitable for printing, and the horizontal, vertical and square printing font, Song Style, appeared. It originated in the Song Dynasty, the golden age of engraved printing, and was finalized in the Ming Dynasty, which is why the Japanese call it "Ming Dynasty Style". Because it is suitable for printing and engraving, and also suitable for people's visual requirements when reading, Song font is the main font used in publishing and printing.

9Computer fonts

With the development of culture and science and technology, and under the influence of the Western fonts, there appeared a variety of new fonts, such as bold, artistic fonts, such as posters (POP), variety of fonts, kanting flow, girls' fonts, and more Song deformations, such as imitation Song, flat Song, etc. And the use of various types of Chinese characters computerized, and the use of computerized fonts. And all kinds of Chinese characters are computerized and used in a wider range.

Such as the following picture (from left to right: Diyuan font, Zongyi font, Guyin font, Kanting font, and Poster font)

The origin of Chinese characters is an unsolved mystery. When it comes to Chinese characters, we have to mention the oracle bone inscriptions, supported by archaeology, which first appeared 3,300 years ago during the Shang Dynasty, which is nearly 2,000 years later than both the ancient Egyptian scripts and the Sumerian scripts of the Two River Basin. To date*** more than 5,000 individual oracle bone characters have been found, of which about 1,700 are recognizable. To a certain extent, there is no reason why China, also one of the four ancient civilizations, should lag so far behind! While thinking about it, we found that the earliest oracle bones already had a certain degree of ideographic and morphoacoustic components, in these oracle bones, "ideographic" less than 80%, morphoacoustic characters accounted for more than 20%. This is very different from other early hieroglyphic writings such as those of the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.

Some people believe that the level of technology in ancient China was far inferior to that of ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations. While the ancient Egyptians were already building grand pyramids out of huge stone blocks, China had only rammed earth buildings. While the ancient Egyptians were already carving exquisite hieroglyphic patterns on hard stones, China could only carve rough scratches on animal bones or tortoise shells. But look at the level of abstraction of the Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, which are far more abstract than the figurative shapes of ancient Egypt. It seems that the Chinese characters went directly beyond the early stage of early hieroglyphics to a higher level of abstraction. The hieroglyphic stage in the development of Chinese characters: The hieroglyphic stage in the ideographic-phonetic pathway was almost non-existent, and the so-called hieroglyphic characters were already highly abstracted at the oracle-bone stage. Later, as Chinese characters evolved, they became even less purely ideographic. When the Greeks built the exquisite sculptures of the Parthenon, and the Romans erected the massive domes of the Pantheon, China still had only the Great Wall of rammed earth and the terracotta terracotta warriors and horses of the Qin and Han dynasties, but the Small Seal Character of the Qin Dynasty was already a standardized script that was uniform throughout the country, and the Scribe's Script of the Han Dynasty was very close to the Chinese characters of today. Both the culture of writing that jumped ahead and the vast and complex system of linguistic symbols known as Chinese characters can be considered a miracle.

In the early days of writing, hieroglyphics could work fine. But as language grew richer, some of it could not be expressed in images. The ancient Egyptians and Sumerians began to create symbols that represented only sounds to record these languages. The Chinese chose a different solution:

Huiyi characters, such as "sun + moon = bright, woman + son = good";

Eponyms, such as "阿", which have no meaning and represent only one syllable;

Tongyi characters, such as "a", which have no meaning and represent only one syllable; and

Tongyi characters, such as "a", which represent only one syllable. Tongyong characters, such as "说-悦"; began to appear in Chinese characters.

The mention of the Chinese language inevitably brings to mind English, which also makes up a large part of the cultural curriculum. At the same time, we think a lot about it. The highest level of learning a language is to think in that language, just as one would think in one's mother tongue. However, it is the mother tongue that is the most creative in one's thinking, not to mention the fact that learning a "foreign language" requires a great deal of effort. The ancient Romans did not switch to Greek because they envied Greek civilization, even though the two languages were very close. The Arabs likewise had to translate Latin and Greek into Arabic, rather than switching to Latin or Greek. Similarly, the Europeans of the Renaissance did not convert to Arabic themselves, but translated Arabic into Latin. By the time of the Enlightenment, even further translations of the languages of the native peoples were made and popularized.

For an individual with a good command of a foreign language, it is no trouble at all to look directly at the original foreign language. But it is much less efficient for him to translate it. But for society as a whole, if everyone puts a lot of effort into learning a foreign language, it will be very inefficient. The most extreme case is - like those peoples in history who have lost their own language and writing, completely disappeared. The best option is to do what the Arabs did, or what the Europeans did during the Renaissance, which is to spread and popularize the language and writing of the people in their own language after a large amount of translation by a few people who are good at the language. Only in this way can more people in this nation think and innovate efficiently in their mother tongue.

The dilemma that the Chinese language is facing in front of the English language is that the civilization based on this language is at its peak -- not like the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations faced by the Arabs, which were static civilizations in the process of being lost; and not like the Islamic civilization faced by the Europeans during the Renaissance period, which is on the way to decline. Nowadays, a great deal of new scientific and technological achievements, new knowledge and new ideas are still being produced in the English-speaking world, and the success of English, as the de facto international social language of today's world, is unprecedented. In terms of the number of people who speak it, English is the second most widely spoken language in the world after Chinese, with more than 400 million speakers. However, the number of people who speak English as a second language, or who use it to a certain extent, is much larger than that, and can be said to be distributed in all corners of the world and among all nationalities. Therefore, nowadays it is not simply because learning English consumes a lot of students' time that they should not learn English. It is not enough to learn English well, and learning English for all does not indicate that it will improve quality, but it should not go to the other extreme either.

If you count from Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi's spread of Western Renaissance ideas to China, it's been hundreds of years; if you count from the Opium War and Lin Zexu's translation of Western books and newspapers, it's also been more than 160 years; and even if you count from the May Fourth Movement, it's been nearly a hundred years since then. Contemporary China should be at the turning point from "Renaissance" to "Enlightenment". It is time for China to learn English, along with translation, and, most importantly, to start thinking and innovating in its mother tongue. Improving the English proficiency of researchers and journalists should go hand in hand with popularizing basic education and advanced scientific and cultural thinking. English should not be turned into an "aristocratic language" in China, like Latin in medieval Europe or the Renaissance.

Writing is a trace of the history of a nation and a country, and the evolution of Chinese writing is jumpy, ornate and intriguing, just like the history of China. Chinese people create Chinese characters, and Chinese characters likewise guide Chinese people forward.

The word "six books" out of the "Zhouli": "Paul's palm admonishing the king of the evil, and raise the state son to the road, is to teach the six arts: one said the five rituals; two said the six music; three said the five shooting; four said the five harnesses; five said the six books; six said the nine numbers;". However, the "Rites of Zhou" only recorded the "six books" this term, but did not explain.

China's East Han scholar Xu Shen in the "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" recorded: "Zhou Li eight years old into elementary school, Paul's teach the state, the first six books. One said refers to things: refers to things, see and recognizable, and visible, 'on', 'under' is also. Second, the elephant-shaped: elephant-shaped, painted into its object, with the body stuttering, 'sun', 'moon' is also. Third, it is said that the shape and sound: the shape and sound of the thing for the name, take the analogy into, 'river', 'river' is also. Four said that will mean: will mean, than class and friendship, to see the finger? The 'wu', 'letter' is also. Five said that the note: the note, build a class, agree with each other, 'kao', 'old' is also. Sixth, false borrowing: false borrowing, there is no word, according to the sound of the thing, 'make', 'long' is also." Xu Shen's explanation is the first official record of the definition of the six books in history. Later interpretations of the Six Books still centered on Xu Yi.

[edit]Explanation of the six construction regulations

[edit]Pictograph

It belongs to the "solo character construction method". The lines or strokes of the characters are used to outline the shape and characteristics of the object to be expressed in a concrete way. For example, the character for "moon" is like the shape of a moon, the character for "turtle" is like the shape of the side of a turtle, the character for "horse" is a horse with a horse iguana and four legs, and the character for "fish" is the shape of a fish with four legs. The character "鱼" is a swimming fish with a head, body and tail, the character "艸" (the original character for grass) is two tufts of grass, and the character "门" (door) is in the shape of two doors on the left and right. The character for "sun" is like a circle with a point in the center, much like the shape we see when we look directly at the sun.

[edit]Referring to things

It belongs to the "monogramming method". The main difference from hieroglyphics is that the character 指事 contains something in the more abstract form of a painting. For example, the character "刃" (edge) has a point added to the sharpness of "刀" (knife) to mark it; the character "凶" (evil) has a cross symbol added to the trap; "上" (up) and "下" (down) have the same meaning as the characters "" and "" (down). The characters "上" and "下" are marked with symbols above or below the main body "一"; and "三" is represented by three crosses. These characters are outlined with a more abstract part.

[edit]Shaped-phonetic

This is a "merged character creation method". Shaped-sound characters are composed of two parts: the form radicals (also known as "meaning symbols") and the sound radicals (also known as "phonetic symbols"). The form side indicates the meaning or class of the character, while the sound side indicates the same or similar pronunciation of the character. For example, the character "樱", the form side is "木", which means that it is a kind of tree, and the sound side is "婴儿", which means that its pronunciation is the same as that of "婴儿". The character "篮", with "竹" as its side, means that it is a bamboo object, and "监" as its side, means that its pronunciation is the same as "嬰"; the character "篮", with "竹" as its side, means that it is a bamboo object, and "监" as its side. The lower part of the character "齿" is "形旁", which draws the shape of a tooth, and the upper part of the character "止" is "声旁", which means that the pronunciation of the character is similar to that of the character "监".

[edit]Huiyi

This is a "merged character creation method". Huiyi consists of two or more separate characters, which are combined to express the meaning of the character in the form or meaning of the characters they are composed of. For example, the character "酒" (wine) is made up of a bottle "You"(you) and a liquid "水"(liquid), which are used for brewing wine, and the character "解"(solution). The meaning of the character "解" is to separate "牛" and "角" with "刀"; "鸣" refers to the call of a bird, so the character "鳴" is used to describe the sound of a bird. The word "chirping" refers to the sound of a bird, so it was formed by using the words "mouth" and "bird".

[edit]Transcription

This is a "characterization method". Different regions have different names for the same thing due to differences in pronunciation and geographical divides. When these two characters are used to express the same thing and have the same meaning, they will have the same radicals or parts. For example, the words "kao" and "old" both mean elder; the words "颠" and "顶" both mean the top of the head; the word "窍" means the top of the head; the word "窍" means the top of the head; and the word "" means the top of the head. The two characters "窍" and "空" both mean "hole". These characters have the same radicals (or parts) and parsing, and are also related by phonetic transcription.

[edit]Use of the Six Books

In fact, the ancients did not create Chinese characters only after the Six Books were created. This is because Chinese characters had already developed quite systematically during the Shang Dynasty, and there was no record of the Six Books at that time. The six books were a system that was analyzed and summarized by later generations. However, after the system of "six books" was established, when people created new characters, they used this system as the basis. For example, "軚" and "锿" are form-sounding characters, and "凹" and "凸", "氹", "氹" and "ネネネネネル", are form-sounding characters, "氹" is an onomatopoeia, and "畑" and "奀" are ideograms.

In oracle bone and gold inscriptions, hieroglyphic characters make up the majority. This is because drawing things was one of the most direct ways to create characters. However, as the writing developed, more and more things had to be carefully divided up, such as "carp", "pangolin", "grass carp", "loach "It was difficult to draw out their characteristics and distinctions carefully by using the hieroglyphic method of character creation. Therefore, the morpho-sound character became the most convenient method, as long as the shape of the side "fish" can account for their class, and then use the similar pronunciation of the sound side to distinguish between these characters. By modern times, 80% of the Chinese characters were form-sound characters

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