There are various legends about the origin of Chinese characters. China ancient books said that Chinese characters were created by Cang Xie. It is said that Cang Xie saw a god with a strange appearance and a face that looks like a picture with words. Cang Xie described his image and created words. There is an old book that after Cang Xie created the characters, because the secret leaked, millet fell from the sky, and ghosts and gods cried every night. There is also a legend that Cang Xie observed the footprints of birds and animals printed on the soil, which inspired him to invent words. None of these legends are reliable. Writing is gradually enriched and developed by working people according to the needs of real life through long-term social practice.

1autumn of 954 to1summer of 957, Chinese archaeologists conducted many excavations on Banpo site (now north of banpo village in the eastern suburb of Xi), and found that as early as 6,000 years ago, Banpo people had created illegal symbols and works of art such as paintings, sculptures and decorations in their long-term life and production practice. Most of the carving symbols of Banpo people are preserved on painted pottery, which can be regarded as the original China characters.

In recent years, a number of tombs (more than 4,500 years ago) have been found in a site in the late Dawenkou culture of Lingyang River in Juxian County, Shandong Province, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed. Some ceramic statues are engraved with images and characters, and more than 10 characters are found. These characters are drawn according to the shape of the object, so they are called "pictographs". The structure of the font is very similar to the hieroglyphics in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but it is 1000 years earlier than that in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. So "Pictograph" is the earliest writing in China, which has the characteristics of writing.

There are three main ways to form Chinese characters:

hieroglyph

This is the earliest form of Chinese characters, so the most primitive characters, such as "day", "month", "water" and "cow", were produced. After gradual evolution, these hieroglyphs changed the shape of the original characters and became later square fonts. Some strokes were reduced, some strokes were added, and irregular fonts were changed into regular fonts.

Understanding method

Ideographic characters are easier to see the truth of word creation, but they can't express abstract meaning. The ancients created another method of word formation-the method of knowing. It is to use different symbols or borrow "pictographs" and add some symbols to express an abstract meaning. Example: The word "Ming" means "the sun" and "the moon" brings light. The word "Dan" is written, (meaning that the sun rises on the horizon.

Shape-sound method

No matter whether it is pictographic or knowing, you can see the meaning of the word from the shape, but you can't read the sound. Therefore, the pictophonetic method was created to create Chinese characters. Match the side representing sound with the side representing shape to form many new words. Example: the word "dad" is a combination of the phonetic word "ba" and the ideographic word "dad"; The word "Ba" is a combination of "Ba" and "++". In this way, more and more characters are created. According to statistics, pictophonetic characters account for about 90% of Chinese characters. The formation and development of Chinese characters have become an important tool for people to exchange ideas and meet the needs of human social life.