A classical starting from the Shang, Chinese characters have 3000 years of continuous history of 3000 years of Chinese characters, the meaning of words shaped the changes are continuous｡ with most other languages is different is that the development of Chinese characters has experienced a pictographic - ideographic - ways to shape the sound of｡ this road had two main effects: first, with the continuous development of civilization, the concept of language to express the growing, making Chinese characters have a huge number of character sets (although no longer used in modern Chinese increase the character to express new concepts, but to create new words, which to some extent reduced the use of words)｡ large Chinese character set that makes it appear very complicated: difficult to learn, difficult to remember, difficult to use; second, in the history of Chinese characters as ideographs (ideograph), there is no direct relationship between text and voice, no matter in what language or dialect to read, meaning there is no change for thousands of years｡ This is the differentiation of a variety of oral changes in cross-fused, while the character has served as a The text is all kinds of uniform agree because｡ an advantage even when it is reflected in the other language borrowed time: even if people do not understand Japanese can read half of the meaning of bar｡ with different characters so that the person spoken exchange possible, while the divide is a major obstacle to a unified｡
Later, with the evolution of Chinese characters, Chinese characters are no longer purely ideographic, Xu Shen Shuo Wen Jie Zi The 9353 words in here, “pictophonetic word” accounted for more than 80%, “knowing the word” less than 20% , while Oracle only in shape and sound of the word more than 20%｡ especially in recent years the proportion of multi-syllable word sharp increase in the direction of Chinese characters has phonography｡ (on “pictophonetic word”, “knowing the word,” followed should also mention the ｡)
Leo Peng