The origin of Chinese characters can be traced back to two kinds of symbols about 8000 years ago: the evolution of Chinese characters is an abstract, square folded symbol, represented by carvings on painted pottery at Dadiwan site in Gansu Province; The second is the symbol of Xiao Sheng, represented by Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the site of Jiahu in Henan. The former evolved into a series of carved symbols on Jiangzhai Village in Lintong, Xi 'an Banpo. The latter developed into images on Dawenkou pottery. By the end of Longshan culture, the patriarchal society was basically established, and groups of inscriptions appeared on jade articles of Liangzhu culture during this period. Some of these inscriptions are the same as or similar to Dawenkou pottery images, and some are similar to those in Xi 'an and other places. These inscriptions may be one of the most basic pre-Chinese character systems at that time. It is worth noting that Liangzhu culture is on the eve of the birth of a centralized slave country in China, and the Xia Dynasty should be the most critical period for the formation of a formal Chinese character system. Then, the question comes: Why did Chinese characters appear so late? According to the research of archaeology and genetics, language was born hundreds of thousands of years ago, but the real Chinese character system was not formed until about 5000 years ago.

trend

Many changes have taken place in Chinese characters since Oracle Bone Inscriptions. According to historical facts, these changes can be roughly divided into two categories: reform and natural evolution. The reform of Chinese characters refers to the process of people consciously and actively managing Chinese characters, and the natural evolution of Chinese characters refers to the natural change process of Chinese characters. The reform of Chinese characters is generally discontinuous, intense and completed in a short time; The natural evolution of Chinese characters is continuous, slow and long-term. The natural evolution of Chinese characters has both time and geographical factors, which makes the form, sound and meaning of Chinese characters diversified, leading to more and more variant characters, different pronunciations and changes in meaning, leading to disunity and nonstandard Chinese characters. Therefore, after a period of natural evolution, people must reform Chinese characters to make them standardized and unified. In addition, Chinese characters cannot be perfect as soon as they are produced, and can meet the needs of the development of productive forces in various periods. Therefore, with the progress of the times, people will actively transform Chinese characters to meet the needs of the continuous development of productive forces. When the reform measures were popularized, Chinese characters began a new round of natural evolution. The evolution of Chinese characters is like the change of roads. The road is made by people; After the road comes out, people have to repair it every once in a while; After the repair, the road gradually changes, such as widening, straightening, damage, or new branches, which need to be repaired again. In addition, with the development of the times, the previous roads can no longer meet the needs of the development of the times, and new roads need to be built, such as railways and highways. Road construction is equivalent to the reform of Chinese characters, and the road is gradually widened, straightened, damaged and naturally branched, which is equivalent to the natural evolution of Chinese characters. These two changes have different properties, trends, laws and functions, so in the past, we generally discussed the historical evolution of Chinese characters together and drew some conclusions, such as "the development trend of Chinese characters is from complexity to simplicity", which is inevitably ambiguous and specious!

The Evolution of Chinese Characters —— From Ancient Chinese Characters to Xiao Zhuan

In this book, ancient characters refer to the characters before Xiao Zhuan, including Da Zhuan, including Jinwen, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Da Zhuan. Bronze inscriptions on Chinese characters: In ancient times, copper was called gold, so the words cast on bronzes were called bronze inscriptions, also known as Zhong Dingwen and inscriptions. Bronze inscriptions were first discovered in Erligang of Shang Dynasty, but only a few bronzes were found in Erligang of Shang Dynasty. There are many bronze inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, inscriptions on bronzes became more common. Most of the inscriptions on bronze in Shang Dynasty are hieroglyphs and interchangeable characters synthesized from hieroglyphs. These words are picturesque, vivid, vigorous and natural, while others are ups and downs. Oracle Bone Inscriptions: Ancient writing or engraving on tortoise shells or animal bones. At present, the earliest discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions is Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Pan Geng period of Shang Dynasty, and most of its contents are "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" and a few are "notes". Oracle Bone Inscriptions is mostly pictographic or knowing characters, and pictographic characters only account for about 20%. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is very pictographic, with many characters and uncertain strokes. This shows that China's writing was not unified in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. Dazhuan: Legend has it that it was created by Shu, a historian of Zhou Dynasty, so it is also called Wen Shu, Shu Zhuan, Shu Shu and so on. Shicheng is a historian in Zhou Xuanwang. Dazhuan can be found in Shuowen Jiezi and various Zhong Ding artworks collected by later generations, among which Shi Guwen by Zhou Xuanwang is the most famous. Dazhuan is a kind of Chinese character font that changes from ancient Chinese characters to Xiaozhuan. Xiaozhuan: Xiaozhuan is simplified from Dazhuan. Compared with the big seal, the small seal has a simple, regular and harmonious body structure, even and neat strokes, and the radicals have also changed and merged to some extent. Compared with the big seal script, the image of the small seal script is greatly weakened, and the structure of each word is relatively fixed. Legend has it that Biography was compiled by Li Si, Prime Minister of Qin State during the Warring States Period. If Xiao Zhuan was really sorted out in a short time, Qin must have a reform process of actively advocating Xiao Zhuan and actively rejecting ancient Chinese characters including Da Zhuan. The scripts used by countries outside Qin are collectively referred to as "six-country scripts". Six-country characters belong to the category of ancient Chinese characters, which are graphic, uncertain in shape and difficult to identify. In 22 1 year BC, the king of Qin attacked Linzi, the capital of Qi State, and died. At this point, Qin unified the six countries. Ying Zheng, King of Qin, became the first emperor in the history of feudal society in China, calling himself "the first emperor". Qin Shihuang carried out a series of major reforms in politics, economy, society and culture in order to strengthen and promote the rule of the landlord class he represented throughout the country. Text reform is one of them. In 22 1 BC, Qin Shihuang ordered the implementation of Xiao Zhuan as a unified character throughout the country, "prohibiting all kinds of characters that are not in harmony with Qin". In order to popularize Biography, Qin Shihuang ordered Li Si, Zhao Gao and others to compile books and articles such as Cang Xie, Ji Li and erudition as standard text models. Due to the emperor's great attention and the great influence of imperial power, Xiao Zhuan was quickly popularized throughout the country, and the complicated "six-country characters" immediately withdrew from the historical stage.

Evolution of Chinese Characters —— From Xiao Zhuan to Li Kai

Shortly after the popularity of Biography, folks created a new book style that was simpler and more stereotyped than Biography. This is the official script. At the beginning of official script, it was a kind of irregular seal script. By the time Qin Shihuang unified the characters, the official script had formed a fixed and standardized font. Li Shu changed the lines of seal script into square strokes, which complied with the social demand for convenient and standardized writing. Chinese characters have evolved from generation to generation. In prison, a prisoner named Cheng Miao sorted out a popular official script of 3,000 words and gave it to Qin Shihuang. Qin Shihuang greatly appreciated this, made an exception and promoted Cheng Miao to the position of censor, and allowed his words to be used among the people in early Lebanon. Since then, official script has not only been widely popular among the people in Qin Dynasty, but also government official documents are generally written in official script, but important imperial edicts are still written in small seal script, so official script is also called "auxiliary script" in Qin Dynasty. The appearance of official script is an important milestone in the development history of Chinese characters. Before the official script, Chinese characters were written with lines, but after the official script, Chinese characters were composed of left and right strokes. After the appearance of Lishu, the structure of Chinese characters was basically fixed, and there was basically no big change until the founding of New China. With the collapse of the Qin Dynasty, Xiao Zhuan quickly withdrew from the historical stage, and Lishu became the primary writing method and calligraphy model in society. Shortly thereafter, a more standardized regular script font appeared. After the Han Dynasty, regular script occupied an orthodox position.

Evolution of Chinese Characters —— Traditional Chinese Characters to Simplified Chinese Characters

Let's talk in detail about the reform process of Chinese character structure at this stage. Since ancient times, many Chinese characters have been written in various ways, some with more strokes and some with fewer strokes. More strokes are called traditional Chinese characters, and fewer strokes are called simplified Chinese characters. When official script and regular script stepped onto the historical stage, all kinds of traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters in the form of small seal script were naturally eliminated. However, for some Chinese characters in official script and regular script, people have gradually created new writing forms, some with more strokes and some with fewer strokes. Generally speaking, there are few strokes. These writing forms with few strokes are called simplified Chinese characters, and those with many strokes are called traditional Chinese characters. Simplified characters are generally not recognized by the government, but only popular among the people, so they are also called vulgar characters. By the way, after we carried out the simplified Chinese characters movement in the last century, some simplified or vulgar characters replaced the traditional Chinese characters that occupied the orthodox position and became orthodox characters. These simplified words are called simplified words. It can be seen that "simplified characters" and "simplified characters" are two related but different concepts. 1909 Lu feikui published the article "common words should be used in general education" in Education magazine, which explained the advantages of simplified characters to Chinese people for the first time, indicating that simplified characters themselves are not ugly. This article is regarded as the beginning of the movement of simplified Chinese characters in modern times. 1922, the National Language and Character Unified Planning Committee of the Ministry of Education of the Kuomintang government established the Chinese Character Provincial Committee to formally organize and lead the research on simplified Chinese characters. Through Qian's case of saving the strokes of current Chinese characters, this case first illustrates the importance of saving the strokes of Chinese characters, and points out that although Pinyin is the fundamental solution and saving the strokes of Chinese characters is the palliative solution, the disadvantages of Chinese characters at that time are becoming increasingly obvious, and there is no fundamental solution at that time, so the strokes are saved. The case also tells several ways to save strokes, all of which have a certain mass base and a history of folk use. From 65438 to 0935, after more than ten years of academic discussion and preparation, the Kuomintang government issued an order to popularize the first list of simplified characters throughout the country. However, the implementation of watches was quickly opposed by some conservatives. 1936, under the order of the Executive Yuan, the Ministry of Education officially issued the instruction of "suspending the implementation of simplified Chinese characters", which marked the premature death of the simplified Chinese character movement in the Republic of China. However, the movement of simplified Chinese characters is still going on among the people, especially in the liberated areas of the Red Army, where simplified Chinese characters can be seen everywhere. They appear in people's manuscripts and various printed materials, and people call them "liberation words". With the expansion of the liberated areas, the word "liberation" has spread all over the country, laying a good foundation for the new China to carry out the movement of simplifying Chinese characters among the masses. After the founding of New China, simplification of Chinese characters was quickly put on the agenda. 1949 10 June10, China Character Reform Association was formally established, and Wu was elected as its president. 65438-0952 China Character Reform Research Committee was established, with Ma Xulun as the chairman, and there were Pinyin Scheme Group, Chinese Character Arrangement Group, Teaching Experiment Group, Editing and Publishing Group and Secretariat. 1954 10 The Committee submitted the draft Simplified List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters, which was studied and discussed by many parties and revised four times, to the Central Committee for approval, and distributed it to all localities for further examination and preliminary test. In the same year, 10, the China Character Reform Committee was established, which is subordinate to the units directly under the State Council. 1956, the State Council adopted the Simplified Chinese Characters Program and the Resolution on Publishing (Simplified Chinese Characters Program), and began to formally implement the Simplified Chinese Characters Program. Evolution of Chinese Characters According to the resolution of the State Council, the simplified scheme of Chinese characters is divided into four batches. 1February, 956, the first batch of 260 simplified words were implemented, including 230 simplified words outside the scheme and 30 radical analogies; 1June, 956, the second batch of 95 simplified characters was implemented; 1958, implementing the third batch of 70 simplified characters; 1959 There are 92 simplified characters in the fourth batch, and 54 simplified character radicals are added. There are 5 17 simplified characters in four batches, of which 30 are radical analogies outside the Chinese character simplification scheme and 28 are not implemented in the Chinese character simplification scheme. 1964, the cultural reform commission compiled a summary of simplified characters, which is divided into three tables. The first table contains 352 simplified words without radicals, and the second table contains 132 simplified words with radicals and 14 simplified words. The third table contains 1754 simplified characters, which is based on the simplified characters and simplified radicals in the second table, and simplifies the 8000 Chinese characters basically included in Xinhua Dictionary by analogy. Besides the general table, there are two important appendices: one is the list of variant characters that are regarded as simplified characters, and the other is the list of characters that are not commonly used in place names approved by the State Council. The compilation of the Summary of Simplified Chinese Characters shows that the first movement of simplified Chinese characters in China was finally successful. The first simplified Chinese character movement has outstanding effects: ① It is much more convenient to learn and write by reducing 2235 Chinese characters from average 16.03 strokes to 10.3 strokes; (2) a number of variant characters have been eliminated; ③ The structure is more reasonable. For example, the word "compensation" is easy to pronounce as "sh m 4 ng", and it will not be misunderstood if it becomes "compensation" in simplified Chinese; ④ It is more beautiful in structure, and the differences between glyphs are more prominent. The author once showed Chinese newspapers with traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters to Germans and Thais who didn't know Chinese characters, making them look better than those Chinese characters. As a result, most of them think simplified Chinese characters are beautiful. In the literacy experiment, the efficiency of simplified Chinese character literacy is about 20% higher than that of traditional Chinese character literacy. There are also some problems in simplifying the first movement of Chinese characters: ① some words are unreasonable to simplify; ② Some traditional Chinese characters should be simplified rather than simplified. These problems are secondary to the above beneficial effects. Everything has a certain inertia, and the movement of simplified characters is no exception. After the success of the first simplified Chinese characters, some people were thinking about how to further simplify Chinese characters, so they started the second simplified Chinese characters movement. The general process is as follows: from 1966 to 197 1 year, Chinese character simplification is at a standstill. 1972 In March, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the Cultural Reform Office, and the cultural reform work began to resume. In July of that year, the Office of Character Reform began to draw up the second simplified scheme of Chinese characters, and extensively collected simplified characters that the masses loved. 1973 the State Council agreed to restore the name of "China Language Reform Committee" and put it under the management of the State Council Science and Education Group. 1975, the cultural reform commission drew up the second simplified Chinese character scheme (draft) (hereinafter referred to as the second simplified Chinese character). From 65438 to 0977, the Cultural Reform Commission drew up the revised version of the second simplified Chinese character scheme (draft), which contained 853 simplified characters. On February 20th, 1977 1977, People's Daily published an editorial "Speeding up the pace of writing reform", and the next day, it began to try out 248 simplified characters in "two constructions and one table". 1978 In March, the Ministry of Education informed that all textbooks compiled in the country should try out the first word of "Second Construction" and begin to implement "Second Construction". However, there are many unreasonable places in Erjian: ① some words are simplified and irregular; (2) unreasonable annexation of some Chinese characters, such as combining "tune" and "carving" into one word. In addition, the overall situation of Chinese characters has just returned to calm after the impact of "one Jane", and has been impacted by "two Jane", resulting in some confusion. Therefore, since 1978, people's voices against the two slips have become louder and louder. 1in August, 978, newspapers and periodicals all over the country stopped trying out the simplified characters of "two constructions and one table". The evolution of Chinese characters began in 1980, and relevant institutions began to revise the two bamboo slips until 1985. However, when it seemed to be revised and perfected, it was abolished by the government: 1985 12, and the Cultural Reform Commission was renamed the State Language Commission; 1On June 24, 1986, the State Council approved the Request of the State Language Committee on Abolishing the Second Construction Project and Correcting the Confusion of Chinese Characters in Society, and clearly pointed out in the notice that "1977, the Second Edition Simplified Chinese Characters Scheme (Draft) ceased to be implemented as of the date of this notice." This notice declared the failure of the second simplified Chinese character movement. Why did the second simplified Chinese character movement fail? The author believes that the fundamental reason is that the benefits brought by the second simplified Chinese character movement are very limited. The first simplified Chinese character movement changed the structure of Chinese characters so much that the efficiency of simplified Chinese character literacy was only about 20% higher than that of traditional Chinese character literacy in the literacy experiment. The scale of the second simplified Chinese character movement is far less than that of the first simplified Chinese character movement, the mass base can't catch up with the first simplified Chinese character movement, and the rationality is not as good as that of the first simplified Chinese character movement, so its benefits will not be much. Although the second simplified Chinese character movement failed, it left us with many problems worth thinking about and lessons worth learning. One of the key points is "unfamiliar." Therefore, the "Notice of the State Council on Approving the Request of the State Language Committee for Instructions on Current Language and Writing Work" 1992+065438 issued by the State Council on June 6 further clearly pointed out that the simplification of Chinese characters should be treated with caution in the future, so as to keep Chinese characters stable and facilitate social application.

Evolution of Chinese Characters-Natural Evolution

(1) The natural evolution of Chinese character structure at least includes the following aspects: ① There are more and more variant characters, that is to say, there are more and more different writing forms of the same word; ② There are more and more patterns of strokes; ③ There are more and more writing methods. When Chinese characters originated, they were actually realistic pictures. Each tribe or even individual may write these words or draw these pictures in different ways, so there are many ways to write each word. This phenomenon is still very obvious in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty. For example, there are at least 20 ways to write the word "Zun" and at least 45 ways to write the word "Yang" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Various ways of writing a word are called variants. In the process of structural transformation of Chinese characters, new fonts have replaced old fonts, and various writing methods in the old fonts are often abolished at the same time, that is, many variant characters have been eliminated. As for new fonts, through natural evolution, there are phenomena, requirements and trends of simplification, cursive writing, quick writing and essays among the people. Because there are no uniform rules for simplified characters, cursive scripts, sketches and essays in various places, times and nationalities, and the state has not formulated the norms for writing Chinese characters, a Chinese character has produced many ways of writing and new variants have appeared. In addition, because people's understanding of society and nature is growing, the existing words are often not enough. Therefore, some new words will be created, because all kinds of artificial words in different periods often spread without the examination of special institutions, and some words actually have the same meaning, which increases the probability of variant forms. In terms of fonts, Chinese characters have also undergone great changes. For example, shortly after Lishu entered the historical stage, its strokes naturally changed, forming regular script. Printing was invented in the Song Dynasty. In order to meet the needs of printing, especially the printing of books and periodicals, the strokes naturally changed further, and a horizontal, vertical and square printing font-Song Style appeared. With the development of culture, science and technology, under the influence of western fonts, many new fonts have appeared in Chinese characters, such as bold and artistic fonts, such as poster style, comprehensive artistic style, pavilion style, girl style, imitation song style and flat song style. These fonts are generally written by computers instead of by hand, so they can be collectively called "computer fonts" now. In addition, for the convenience of writing and the development of calligraphy art, people have also created various writing methods such as running script and cursive script. The structure of running script is basically similar to regular script. Although the structure of cursive script is far from regular script, cursive script is generally only used as a kind of calligraphy or as a shorthand method, which is rarely used in information exchange and is often rejected. (2) The natural evolution of the number of Chinese characters In the process of natural evolution, the number of Chinese characters is gradually increasing, because in this long historical process, people constantly create some new characters to meet the needs of production and life. In addition, the natural increase of variant characters is also one of the reasons for the increase in the number of Chinese characters. (3) Natural changes in the pronunciation of Chinese characters Since ancient times, the pronunciation of Chinese characters has undergone certain natural changes. For example, in ancient times, some disyllables have disappeared from Chinese. In addition, there are some obvious changes in tone. For a long time, there is no standard phonetic notation tool for Chinese characters, which is one of the important reasons for the natural change of Chinese pronunciation. (4) Natural changes in the meaning of Chinese characters Since ancient times, the meaning of some Chinese characters has changed greatly. For example, before the Han dynasty, "low" only meant "hanging your head"; After the Han Dynasty, "low" is the antonym of "high", including "short", "low-lying", "low voice" and "poor degree". (5) Standardization of Chinese Characters The natural evolution of the above Chinese characters, if not restrained, standardized and cleaned up, will bring serious confusion. Cang Xie, the legendary creator of Chinese characters, may be a great Chinese character organizer in ancient times. Shi Cheng, a historian of the Zhou Dynasty, may also be an outstanding Chinese character classifier. Shi Shuan Pian, a textbook for children's literacy compiled by him, objectively played a role in standardizing Chinese characters. The Qin Dynasty unified China Chinese characters with Xiao Zhuan, which was also a vigorous movement to standardize Chinese characters. Shortly thereafter, the appearance of official script further standardized and simplified Chinese characters. Since then, Xu Shen in the Han Dynasty, Yan in the Tang Dynasty and Guo Zhongshu and He in the Song Dynasty have all done some work to correct their mistakes. In addition, the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which started at the end of the Han Dynasty, reversed Chinese phonetic notation and rhyme calligraphy, which also made great contributions to the unification of Chinese pronunciation. The May 4th New Culture Movement is also a large-scale process of sorting out and standardizing Chinese characters. In terms of word meaning, with the popularization of the vernacular movement during the May 4th New Culture Movement, that is, advocating writing articles in spoken language and opposing writing articles in classical Chinese, the unique meaning of many Chinese characters in classical Chinese has been abandoned, and the number of commonly used Chinese characters has at least decreased a lot. After the founding of New China, the movement of simplifying Chinese characters was carried out, and at the same time, the movement of standardizing Chinese characters was attached great importance, which was mainly manifested in: ① cleaning up and abolishing variant characters; (2) Unify and standardize the font, strokes and stroke order of Chinese characters; ③ Unify and standardize the pronunciation of Chinese characters. For the history of this aspect, readers can refer to the book "Current Standardization of Chinese Characters" written by Mr. Gao Gengsheng. After the founding of New China, especially after the reform and opening-up, the mobility of social population has increased rapidly, culture, education, radio and television have flourished, and the people's Putonghua level has improved rapidly. Although many elderly people in remote villages cannot speak Mandarin, they can understand it. This shows that the people of China have entered a new period of development by unifying and standardizing the pronunciation of Chinese characters. From the development history of Chinese characters, we can draw two inspirations: (1) The structure of Chinese characters can change greatly in a very short time, which is reflected in the transformation from big seal to small seal, from small seal to official script, and from traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters. (2) The reform of Chinese characters corresponds to the great development of productive forces. This is reflected in the fact that the two active periods of Chinese character reform (Qin Dynasty and 20th century) both occurred in the period of great development of productive forces. This phenomenon can be explained by Marx's historical materialism: Chinese characters are essentially a production tool, and the great development of productive forces provides a technical and humanistic basis for the innovation of production tools, which will promote the improvement of production efficiency, thus meeting the requirements of further development of productive forces. In addition, the great development of productive forces and the reform of Chinese characters require China to be in a relatively unified and stable political situation. This is also one of the reasons.

evolutionary process