Six and three books.

Chinese characters are ideographic characters with close relationship between form and meaning. I remember when I was a child, I learned Chinese characters, and when I met people I didn't know, I often got it right, which had a lot to do with the ideographic nature of Chinese characters.

Chinese characters are really the most beautiful symbols in my mind!

About the structure of Chinese characters, the traditional view is six books. Six books are also one of the six arts. Ban Gu Han Shu? Evian: "The ancients entered primary school at the age of eight, so Zhou raised the family and taught six books, namely, image number, image, image, sound, note and argument." Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi? "Xu" thinks that the six books refer to things, pictographs, sounds, knowledge, annotation and borrowing. Now we use Xu Shen's name as the six books, and Ban Gu's name as the order.

In Shuowen, Xu Shen interpreted the six books as:

Ideographic characters, painted into objects, go with you, the sun and the moon also;

Pointer, see and know, view and see, up and down is also;

What do you mean by knowing people who are friendlier than others? Wu Xin is also;

Voice, in the name of things, examples complement each other, rivers also;

Those who pass notes and build classes agree to accept each other and keep taking exams;

Under the guise of people, this book does not have a word, but also distinguishes things by sound.

Word-making is by no means based on the principle of the six scripts, but an objective analysis and summary based on the actual situation of Chinese characters, so the learning of Chinese characters is inevitable. We analyze a Chinese character mainly to grasp the relationship between its form, sound and meaning, which can be well understood and mastered according to the theory of six books.

However, the six books are not all word-forming methods, only pictographic characters, signifier characters, knowing characters and pictophonetic characters belong to word-forming methods, and transliteration and borrowing belong to word-forming methods. In the word-making method, the two most important items can be taken out: pictographic characters and pictophonetic characters. In fact, simplifying six books can only leave: pictographic characters, pictographic characters and borrowing books.

Which belongs to the single word-making method. Although Shuo Wen Jie Zi has only 654 pictographs, accounting for 1% of the 9353 Chinese characters in the book, its position cannot but be valued. Hieroglyphics are the basis of word-making. Many literacy and fingering are based on pictographs.

(1) and: catch also, follow people-Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

Draw (again) a person and a hand, as if to catch up.

2 occupation: look at the signs and ask questions. Never Reaching the Mouth —— Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

3 from: listen to each other. From Two People —— Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

Draw two people, like walking with each other.

4 books: Japanese books under the wood. From the wood, there is one below it-Shuo Wen Jie Zi.

Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

The picture below the word shows where the root is.

⑤ Blade: The knife is very firm. Like a knife with a blade-Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

The picture to the left of the word blade indicates the position of the blade.

6 fierce: evil. Image Crossing the Earth and Falling into the Earth —— Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

The trap was full of sharp thorns.

There are many examples like the above, so I won't list them one by one. This is enough to show that Chinese characters are based on pictographs, and we can think that ancient Chinese characters are basically pictographs. In fact, pictophonetic characters can also be a combination of two pictophonetic characters, but because of their productivity, they should be explained separately.

There are about 7697 pictophonetic characters in Shuo Wen Jie Zi, accounting for more than 80% of the whole book. When we open Shuo Wen Jie Zi at will, we can find that all we can see are pictophonetic characters.

1. Male: The animal father also. The Voice from the Cow and the Earth —— Shuo Wen Jie Zi

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

A male beast.

② Segments: vertebral body. Reviving the dead and saving the sound —— Shuo Wen Jie Zi

The inscriptions on bronze and seal script are written like this:

Hit an object with a mallet.

Ke: Kenye. From the mouth, ?also's voice-explaining the text and explaining the words

Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Xiao Zhuan wrote this:

Kench. From the mouth, know ?also sounds.

There are so many pictophonetic characters that it is impossible to list them one by one.

Another situation is that a pictophonetic word continues to form a new word as a component of another pictophonetic word, so I won't list them one by one here, but I can make a textual research in Shuo Wen Jie Zi.

Loanwords and loanwords are not the same concept. Borrowing means "there are no words in it, depending on the sound." This word didn't exist originally. Find an original word with the same or similar pronunciation to record the language. Pass is to use the same or similar words to record the language, which can be said to be "variant characters" to some extent.

In ancient times, because the number of Chinese characters was not rich enough, some languages did not have corresponding Chinese characters, so there appeared the use of existing characters combined with similar pronunciation to record languages, that is, borrowing.

Therefore, borrowing plays a very important role: it expands the scope of Chinese characters and meets the needs of the recording language at that time.

Give an example to prove:

As we all know, the ancients used tortoise shells for divination, and there was a record of "weather forecast": it rained from the west.

This is guessing where the rain came from. Among these five words, its, self, west and future are all loanwords, and only rain is an pictograph.

Its original intention is also. Under the guise of modal particles expressing speculation, probably.

Since: the original nose is also. Under the guise of coming from ... ...

Lucy: The bird is on the nest. Under the guise of living in the west for Japan, we think things are western.

Rinaldo: Zhou's original intention was that Remy would come here. Under the guise of "going".

However, under the guise of borrowing, there will still be long-term borrowing, and only a new word can be created to express the original intention.

First, this is a dustpan, and only one can be added? To show the original intention. China is like this, so is the West, and so is the West, which makes it more difficult for us to recognize and use Chinese characters later. In addition, it is difficult to find the connection between a word and this word, so it will be quite difficult to analyze it.

The charm of Chinese characters is endless, and the mystery can only be discovered by careful consideration.

Go deeper!