Chinese characters (pinyin: hàn zì, phonetic notation: ㄢˋˋ), also known as Chinese characters and Chinese characters, are recorded symbols of Chinese and belong to morpheme syllables of ideographic characters. One of the oldest characters in the world has a history of more than 6000 years.
In form, it gradually changes from graphics to strokes, pictographs to symbols, and complex to simple; In the principle of word formation, from ideographic, ideographic to phonological. Except for a few Chinese characters (such as Zi, Zi, Zi, Chi and Zi), they are all one Chinese character and one syllable.
Modern Chinese characters refer to capitalized Chinese characters, including traditional characters and simplified characters.
Modern Chinese characters have developed from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal script and seal script to official script, cursive script, regular script and running script. Chinese characters were invented and improved by Han ancestors, which is an indispensable link to maintain the Han dialect area.
The earliest existing Chinese characters are Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty and later inscriptions on bronze in about 1300 BC, which evolved into seal script in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and then to seal script and official script in the Qin Dynasty, until the official script prevailed in the Han and Wei Dynasties, and the official script was changed to regular script at the end of the Han Dynasty. Regular script prevailed in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Chinese characters have been used for the longest time so far, and they are also the only inheritors of the ancient Otomachi system.
In China, Chinese characters are the main official characters in the past dynasties. In ancient times, Chinese characters were also the only international communication language in East Asia. Before the 20th century, it was still the official written standard language of Japan, Korean Peninsula, Vietnam and Ryukyu.
All East Asian countries have created their own Chinese characters to some extent. It should be noted that Japanese, Korean Peninsula, Vietnamese and other countries were deeply influenced by China culture in history, and even other languages borrowed Chinese characters.
In the non-Chinese character system, Japan has formulated a list of commonly used Chinese characters, and South Korea has also formulated basic Chinese characters for education, while Vietnam, North Korea and Mongolia, which used Chinese characters in history, have now given up Chinese characters.
From the ancient legend of Cangjie's word-making to the appearance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions more than 1000 years ago, China scholars have been trying to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. There are always different opinions about the origin of Chinese characters, among which the most influential ones are: knot rope theory, gossip theory, seal cutting theory, Cangjie word-making theory, description theory and picture theory.