Chinese characters:
Chinese characters (pinyin: hànzì, phonetic notation: ?ㄢˋˋ), also known as Chinese characters, are recorded symbols in Chinese and belong to morpheme syllables of ideographic characters.
One of the oldest characters in the world has a history of more than 6000 years. In form, it gradually changes from graphics to strokes, pictographs to symbols, and complex to simple; In the principle of word formation, from ideographic, ideographic to phonological. Except for a few Chinese characters (such as Zi, Zi, Zi, Chi and Zi), they are all one Chinese character and one syllable.
Modern Chinese characters refer to capitalized Chinese characters, including traditional characters and simplified characters. Modern Chinese characters have developed from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal script and seal script to official script, cursive script, regular script and running script.
Chinese characters were invented and improved by Han ancestors, which is an indispensable link to maintain the Han dialect area.
The earliest existing Chinese characters are Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty and later inscriptions on bronze in about 1300 BC, which evolved into seal script in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and then to seal script and official script in the Qin Dynasty, until the official script prevailed in the Han and Wei Dynasties, and the official script was changed to regular script at the end of the Han Dynasty. Regular script prevailed in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Chinese characters have been used for the longest time so far, and they are also the only inheritors of the ancient Otomachi system. Chinese characters have always been the main official language in China.
In ancient times, Chinese characters were also used as the only international communication language in East Asia. Before the 20th century, they were still the official written standard characters of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam and Ryukyu, and all East Asian countries created their own Chinese characters to some extent.
It should be noted that Japanese, Korean Peninsula, Vietnamese and other countries were deeply influenced by China culture in history, and even other languages borrowed Chinese characters.
In the non-Chinese character system, Japan has formulated a list of commonly used Chinese characters, and South Korea has also formulated basic Chinese characters for education, while Vietnam, North Korea and Mongolia, which used Chinese characters in history, have now given up Chinese characters.
Chinese characters mainly come from recordable pictographs, which are the basis of the formation and development of Chinese character system. Later, it evolved for thousands of years, including Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal script, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. Regular script is used, but it has not been fully finalized.