The development stage and direction of Chinese characters

The final result of the national social science planning project undertaken by Professor Liu Youxin of Southwest Normal University is the Outline of the Development History of Chinese Characters. This achievement puts forward some new ideas worthy of attention.

In the development history of Chinese characters, there are different stages of development. The traditional staging is based on the change of Chinese font, that is, it is divided into four stages according to the standards of big seal script, small seal script, official script and regular script. This achievement puts forward that font change is not an essential change in the development of Chinese characters, and it cannot explain the historical development law of Chinese characters, but should explain the essential change of Chinese characters from the change of Chinese character construction methods. On the basis of this understanding, this achievement further puts forward the three-stage theory of the development of Chinese characters, that is, the first stage is the picture writing stage, and the characters before Shang Dynasty should belong to this stage. The second stage is the phonography stage with phonography as the main body, and the characters from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Qin Dynasty belong to this stage. The third stage is the pictophonetic writing stage with pictophonetic characters as the main body, and some pictophonetic characters and pictophonetic characters are still preserved, which belongs to this stage from Qin and Han dynasties to modern Chinese characters.

At present, there are two kinds of popular characters in the world: one is phonography who records the pronunciation of words with dozens of letters; The second is Chinese characters with both phonetic and tabular forms. Both of these two types of writing systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, and we can’t say which one is absolutely good and which one is absolutely bad. Some scholars in Europe believe that phonetic characters are the most advanced characters, while Chinese characters are a kind of backward characters. This prejudice is accepted by some domestic scholars. When they talk about Chinese characters in books and periodicals, they seldom talk about their advantages, which is one-sided.

1. Advantages of Chinese characters. The greatest advantage of Chinese characters is their super-dialect. China is a country with vast territory and complicated dialects. In ancient times, it was impossible to standardize the language. Even now, the promotion of Putonghua cannot be completed in a short time. However, Chinese characters are a popular written language communication tool in China. Different languages, writing words with pen instead of mouth, are exactly the same. If the words are pinyin, Cantonese, Minnan, Shanghai and Beijing will appear, which will hinder people’s exchange of ideas. Another advantage of Chinese characters is their rationality. Character is a symbol system, which can be divided into rational characters and irrational characters. Irrationality refers to pure phonography, such as loanwords, syllables, alphabets, etc. This kind of writing is purely a symbol and has no direct connection with the things to be expressed. The so-called rational characters, such as Chinese characters, not only represent the pronunciation of words, but also represent the signs of things. For example, the word "water" evolved from the shape of hieroglyphic water. It has two functions: pictographic and phonological.

2. The shortcomings of Chinese characters in phonetic notation. A small part of the ideographic characters of Chinese characters have long been used as loanwords, which are ideographic characters in Chinese characters. Because its number is not large, it is mostly commonly used words, so you can leave it alone. Here, only the phonetic function of pictophonetic characters is discussed. The phonetic symbols of pictophonetic characters are mostly pictophonetic characters that can be used alone, which are not as accurate as alphabet sounds. There are many shortcomings in the phonetic function of Chinese characters, which are mainly as follows: (1) The phonetic symbols of pictophonetic characters can’t distinguish the differences of tones, and the same phonetic symbol often indicates different tone categories. For example, the word "Hu" is a rising tone, but the confused word "paste" is pronounced as rising tone, and the confused word "paste" is pronounced as voiceless. (2) Phonetic symbols of pictophonetic characters often lose or weaken their phonetic function because of phonetic changes. For example, "Shang" is pronounced shàng, but "If" and "Lie" with "Shang" as the phonetic symbol are pronounced t m ng, "dǎng" is pronounced d m ng, "Xi" and "chǎng" are pronounced cháng, and "Open" is pronounced ch m ng. (3) The stress phenomenon of reading more than one word in Chinese characters. For example, the word "ginseng", "participation" and "visit" are pronounced with cān, "ginseng" with shēn, and "uneven" with cē n. There are three stresses.

In 1956, the simplified scheme of Chinese characters was announced, and in 1964, the scope and number of simplified characters were expanded, which was the first large-scale Chinese character reform in more than two thousand years. After more than forty years of practice, it has played a great role in popularizing education and writing. On the other hand, simplified characters are not entirely beyond discussion. Such as Deng, Huan, Nan, Shu, Xi, and Equivalence, its component "You" replaces the phonetic symbols with different sounds, such as "Deng". Some cursive scripts are written in a kaishu style that is different from the structure of regular scripts, and some homonyms can be substituted for words. The second is to reform and make Chinese characters a better communication tool according to their own development laws. With the improvement of China’s international status and economic development, more and more people are learning Chinese characters.

It was once thought that all written symbols of human language should go to the road of pinyin, and all words that do not meet this standard are regarded as backward. This is a prejudice without scientific basis. Chinese characters are one of the excellent cultures created by the Chinese nation. They are not only the cultural carrier of China for thousands of years, but also the common communication tool for the people of the whole country and the Chinese people abroad. Now more and more foreign people of insight have realized the superiority of Chinese characters, and it is impossible and unnecessary for this writing system to take the road of pinyin writing again.