The Chinese characters are extremely complicated comparing
with other characters of the world. The first Chinese started sometime
between 2800B.C. and 2700B.C. These ancient characters were first written
on backbones of turtles (Oracle Bone Inscriptions / 甲骨文); later, they were
transcribed on metallic
containers (Bronze Inscriptions / 古文). Bronze Inscriptions, in the past,
had been recognized as the earliest form of Chinese, because Oracle Bone
Inscriptions were only discovered approximately one-hundred years ago.
Besides, Oracle Bone Inscriptions were not sophisticated enough to contain many
words. ronze Inscriptions in the Dynasty of
Zhou developed into 留文, also called 大篆, which entailed many more characters than
古文 and phonetic origins of words are utilized more and more. When China was unified in Qin, a scholar (李斯) of the First Emperor (始皇) reorganized Chinese and simplified
the unnecessary parts of many characters. Although the simplification of
Chinese aided the proliferation of the Chinese language, many etymological roots
hat are contained in every word disappeared. In the late Dynasty of Han, 楷體
emerged and remained as the official form of Chinese from 1800 years ago to the
present.
The Chinese written characters originated from six different
categories. The first category contains words with pictographic 象形
origins. This category is the most wide-spread yet the least prominent,
because many compounded pictographs are also present in other categories.
Therefore, one often disregards the importance of pictographs. The second
category is ideographic 指事. The third category forms based on the
ideographic category, therefore is named to be compounded ideagraphic 會意.
The fourth category is the most well-known, because of the enormous number of
words that it consists of. This category is phonetic 形聲. Despite its
name, the words in this category not only are phonetic, but also convey their
meanings through their pictographic origins, which are called radicals.
The fifth category contains characters that are assigned a new written form to
better reflect a changed pronunciation 轉註. The last category is rarely
seen in the modern world, but in the past, people often use characters to
represent a homophone or near-homophone. These words are called 假借; they
need not relate in meaning to the new word they represent.
In Chinese, radicals are similar to the roots in English. However, a radical represents a general classification, while a combination of roots may convey a meaning. The classification was invented based upon key characteristics that the words with the same radical share. The total number of radicals in Chinese is 214. Some radicals contain more words, such as the radical "wood" 木 and the radical "water" 水, while other radicals contain far fewer words, such as the radical "turtle" 龜 and the radical "dragon" 龍. Most radicals look similar to their real-word counterparts. For example, the radical "speech" 言 is a character of its own. However, a few radicals are indiscernible if to a less educated person. For instance, the radical "fire" can be written as 火, and can also be written as four dots at the bottom of a word.
Although most scholars
believe that the Chinese writing started approximately five-thousand years ago,
they cannot corroborate their hypothesis with real evidence. Their
evidence exists only in historical records, some part of which might be spurious
because of the authors' imagination or assumptions. The earliest evidence
of Chinese writing date to the late years of the Shang period (around 3200 years
ago), which is frequently named Yin because of the dynasty's capital.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions were found at the site of Yin (the present Anyang).
The discovery of Oracle Bone Inscrptions is attributed to a
scholar, who needed to buy "dragon bones (a type of Chinese medicine)" to cure
his illness. "Dragon bones" are mainly from fossils of deceased animals
that died a long time ago. This scholar found carvings on the back of the
bones that he had purchased from the pharmacy. After his discovery,
archaeologists have found an enormous amount of these artifacts from Anyang.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions were already a developed language by
1200 BC, though many complicated words, especially those of phonetic origins,
lacked radicals, since Oracle Bone Inscrpitions antedated most, if not all,
radicals. However, the written language was already more advanced than
China's contemporaries, such as India and Babylon. The main purpose of
Oracle Bone Inscriptions was divination. Shamans put fire on backbones of
turtles to, and construed the fissures on the backbones to tell the future.
In the end, their interpretations were recorded on the backbones.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions, in merely a few decades, advanced to its next stage, Bronze Inscrptions, which were usually transcribed upon bronze vessels at the time. Usually, these bronze vessels were either enormous food containers with which emperors' cooks prepared food, or gigantic drinking instruments from which emperors imbibed. Bronze Inscriptions were the dominant form of writing in the late Zhou dynasty. The words that were carved upon the vessels mainly served the purpose of recording ceremonies, commemorations of emperors, etc. The calligraphic style of these words were rigid, similar to that of Oracle Bones.
Long after Bronze Inscriptions, people carved upon bamboo strips, and sometimes wood strips, with knives. Strips must be chained with strings to form a roll and were cumbersome. The bamboo strips contained the earliest philosophical texts, such as Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu and the Analects of Confucius. The written language at that time was quite chaotic because of the system of feudalism. Each separate state in China had its own written language and spoken language. The First Emperor of Qin, after unifying the separated states, proposed that Chinese be unified as well. His scholar, Lisze, removed the deviations, although understandable, from the Chinese language. The calligraphic style at that time resembles that of today; even an average person can understand the words written during the Qin dynasty, which took place more than 2200 years ago.