1 Structure

Index

  Chinese characters look like certain mysterious symbols to those who don't know much about China. A lot of people have no idea of the structure and the meaning of these fancy characters. Basic and clear explanation for the structure of Chinese characters is available here to everyone who is interested in it.

  As a system of writing, Chinese characters can't be invented by one person in a short time as it is said in an ancient legend in China. ( Click here to see the background information ) The process of making characters must have been lasting for generations and changing all the time. Some characters were discarded while some others were used more and more.

  Approximately，most of the early characters were made from 4000 B.C. to 700 B.C. After the Qin Dynasty(221 B.C.~~ 206 B.C.), people only do some changes on calligraphy style, but not rebuild the structures. In order to make it easy to understand, the earliest character style will be shown in the explanations.

  How these characters were created at first? People keep on wondering since the ancient time. In the Han Dynasty, a famous scholar called Xu Shen analyzed the structure of the characters and wrote a great book named " Origin of Chinese characters" , with a theory called "Six categories of Chinese characters". He advanced that there are six types of characters in terms of their composition:

1 Pictographs: When a person think about the sun, he will draw a circle...

2 Ideographs: Imagine that a man is leaning against a tree. It means he is relaxing himself...

3 Indications: Pointing out "above" and "below" is not an easy job...

4 Phonograms: meaning + pronunciation...

5 Mutual explanatories: the most dubious concept in this theory...

6 Phonetic loans: "borrow" a new meaning on the basis of its pronunciation...

  Actually, only the first four refer to the ways to make Chinese characters while the last two are concerned with the ways to use them. Therefore, it's not so accurate. However, people recognize "Six categories of Chinese characters" a summary of composing characters, because this theory is basicly correct in revealing the general pattern in the creation and development of Chinese characters and their original meanings. So we'll still introduce this theory here.