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Chinese Characters

As the signs to record the Chinese language,Chinese characters originated from
pictographs.Ancient Chinese people created Chinese characters by means of
depicing the images and on this basis invented thousands of characters with more
methods.The Kangxi Dictionary in the 55th year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi
includes 47,035 Chinese characters and the Sea of Chinese Characters in 1994
includes 85,568 Chinese characters.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty(25-220),Xu Shen summarized in An Analytical
Dictionary of Characters the word-formation and application methods,which
are the famous six categories of Chinese characters pictographs,selfexplanatory
characters,associative compounds,pictophonetic characters,mutually explanatory
characters and loan characters.The latter two application methods while the
former four are real word-formation methods which embody deep meanings and
interesting stories.
As being a kind of pictographs,this means that Chinese characters describe the
shapes of things.For example,the upper part of “鱼”(fish) is the head,the middle
part is the body and the bottom part is the tail.Pictographs originated from pictures
and gradually became more symbolic with less picture characteristcs.For instance,
”电”(electrivity) is a picgraph describing the lightning flashing across the sky.Since
it always appears in the rain,Chinese bronze inscription add a “雨”(rain) to it and
turn it into”電”.”People always use the lightning to describe the rapid action because
of its fast speed.The First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty had seven horses,one of
which was called ‘catching up with the lightning’,implying that the horse runs so fast
that it can catch up with the lightning.The Emperor Wen of the Western Han Dynasty
also had nine horses,amongst which a red one ran like lightning and was called
‘red lightning’”.At the sight of pictographs,Chinese people will think about the
corresponding pictures.
Self-explanatory characters mean forming characters with symbolic signs.For instance,
”刃”(knifes-edge)is to add a point to the edge of the “刀”(knife);”上”(above) and
“下”(below) means to be above or below the main body “一”；”本” and “末” refer to
tree root and treetop.Compared with pictographs,certain parts of these characters
were abstract in word-formation.
Associative compounds indicate that the meaning of the whole character is the
combination of the meanings of different parts.For example,”酒”(wine) express its
meaning by combing the crock used to brew wine “酉” with the liquid “水”;”信” combines
“人”(human) with “言”(word) to imply that people keep their words.While explaining
associative compounds,dictionaries always use the form of “从……从……”.For example,
”鸣”从口从鸟,会鸟叫之意。[‘鸣’ combines ‘口’(mouth) with “鸟”(bird) and means the
sound of bird].
Pictophonetic characters refer to characters formed on the basis of images and
pronunciations.The radical and the phonetic part is related to the pronunciation.For
instance,the left part of “榕” refers to its image and the right part indicates its
pronunciation.The upper part of “齿” shows its pronunciation and the bottom part show
its image.

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