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History chinese characters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| guiguixx1 Octoglot Senior Member Belgium guillaumelp.wordpres Joined 3888 days ago 163 posts - 207 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 8 08 July 2014 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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hi all :)
I begin learning Chinese and am trying to find a book where I could find more about the ethymology and why symbols were thought the way they are drawn, so I am just trying to find how they were thought to be drawn and where they come from, to memorize them more easily. And it's still more interesting to learn about the history and culture of the language :) thanks in advance 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3688 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 2 of 8 08 July 2014 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://zhongwen.com/
This site explains the actual etymology the best, unfortunately (but understandably) only traditional characters. There's also a good book kind of explaining this (kind of, because it's made up, but makes sense): Cracking the Chinese Puzzles by TK Ann http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/16261-crackin g-the-chinese-puzzles-by-tk-ann/ Edited by day1 on 08 July 2014 at 4:42pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4240 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 8 08 July 2014 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
The earliest time Chinese characters were in use was about 3000 years ago with inscriptions on turtle shells. There may have been more than 1 set of characters in use until after 259 BCE when the king of the Qin kingdom conquered the other rivals and declared himself the Emperor of all China. Money and writing became standardized. Simplified characters did not come into existence until the 1950s because the communist government in Beijing wanted to improve literacy by making characters easier to write. There are many classic books sitting in museums and libraries that were printed in Traditional characters. Don't forget the Koreans also used Chinese characters in their writing until the 19th century when they started mixing their alphabet symbols Hangeul with Chinese and eventually eliminated the use of Chinese characters altogether. The Vietnamese also used a subset of Chinese characters until the French took over Indochina in the 1880s and gradually replace the writing with the Latin alphabet. One cannot learn the history of Chinese characters without knowing Traditional characters which came before the Simplified used on the Mainland after 1949. Found a document online published by Yale Press on the history of Chinese characters: The History of Chinese Characters 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5756 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 4 of 8 08 July 2014 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Not quite. You still come across Chinese characters here and there in Korean writing. Here are some examples from today's news: 朴대통령이 고급 天蔘(천삼) 선물하자 시진핑은 保守의 원칙과 용기 상실한 박근혜·새누리 8道 100味… 전국의 재래시장에서 찾은 '2014 맛집여지도' 檢 "유병언, 현금 20억원 갖고 전남지역 은신 정황 포착" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 5 of 8 08 July 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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For those interested, here's a freely downloadable book on various aspects of early Chinese writing and the evolution/standardization of the characers:
http://idp.bl.uk/downloads/GI_Orthography_2008-06-22.pdf 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5129 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 8 08 July 2014 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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On this topic, I'd like the recomend the site http://chineseetymology.org/ , http://images.gg-art.com/dictionary/dcontent.php?word=%D6%D0 , and the book 高岛谦一 甲骨文字字释综览 which can be found on pdf.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4264 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 7 of 8 08 July 2014 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've read a couple of months ago that pictographic or ideographic characters are less maybe than 5% of the characters. So, even if it could help memorizing some of them, it could be an inefficient study. I remember learning about 40 characters from this book when I still watched Anime: The Easy Way to Learn 400 Practical Kanji
You can check the book inside, I really liked how he explained the evolution of differenct ideas step by step. Edited by drygramul on 08 July 2014 at 8:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5129 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 8 of 8 09 July 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Another link anyone interested in oracle bone script should not miss:
http://kanji-database.sourceforge.net/fonts/koukotsu/koukots u-charts.html 1 person has voted this message useful |
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