EVOLUTION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS漢字發展
Hieroglyphics Pictures of nature found on ceramics dating from this period. River is three wavy
~ 5000 B.C. lines; horse has mane and four legs. These pictures would later be a basis for the construction of more complex ideas. In fact, many modern characters still resemble their ancestral forms, thereby connecting China’s present to its past.
Preclassical Oracle bone divination introduced. Tortoise shells and oxen shoulder blades are
1500 to 500 B.C. engraved with important questions and their possible answers. Bones then heated by fire, and predictions made based on crack patterns. Divination process elevates Chinese characters and calligraphy to sacred status. Any paper with writing on it was not thrown away, but burned in a “Pagoda of Compassionating the Characters.”
Classical Transition from pictures to stylized symbols. Introduction of radicals to categorize words by
Bronze Age to Han pronunciation and/or meaning. Monosyllabic language becomes polysyllabic.
Postclassical Six Kinds of Characters * 90% of modern Chinese is meaning-sound compounds
200 AD to Present
Pictographs horse mă 馬, pity diào弔, shoot shè 射, omen zhăo 兆
Symbols up shàng上, down xià 下, one yī 一, sān 三, center zhōng 中
Sound-loans scorpion → ten-thousand wán萬
Meaning-sound* 魚 (fish, yǚ) + 包 (to wrap, bāo) = 鮑 (salted fish, bào)
言 (words, yán) + 青 (green/blue, qīng) = 請 (invite, qĭng)
至 (reach, zhì) + 刀 (knife, dāo) = 到 (to arrive, dào)
Meaning-meaning 羊 (sheep, yáng) + 大 (big, dà) = 美 (beautiful mĕi)
禾 (grain, hé) + 火 (fire, huò) = 秋 (autumn, qiū)
立 (stand, lì) + 女 (woman, nǚ) = 妾 (concubine, qiè)
mouth 口 + earth 一 + lance 戈 + surround 囗 = nation guó 國
More super neat ideograms: good好, hurry極, sleep睡, tired累, east東, lake 湖
Reclarified 廷 (tíng, front yard) → 庭(tíng, king’s front yard)
萬 (old scorpion char.) → 蠆 (chài, with bug radical)
Continue reading the article at : http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/chinese/handout.html