Introduction to Chinese Character

Hsien-Chin Lin
One of the oldest writing systems

Chinese Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform Egyptian hieroglyphs

The region where use chinese
• Traditional Chinese: Taiwan, Hongkong
• Simplified Chinese: China
• Adapt Chinese: Japan, Korea*
Some difference between English
• Number of characters
• In English, there are only 26 characters
• In Chinese, there are thounds daily usage characters ( > 10,000 in dictionary)
• Space
• There is no space in a sentence, e.g. 我喜歡蘋果 (I like apples.)
• Pronunciation
• Each character has only one syllable
• Always end in vowel
Tang Poems
• 李白 靜夜思
• 床前明月光
疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月
低頭思故鄉
• LI Bai – A Homesick Night
• Before my bed floods moonlight,
It might be frost I thought to myself
I raise my head towards the moon shining ever so bright,
Only to bow to homesickness as I pine.
Oracle bone script 甲骨文
• From 1250 BC, in Shang dynasty, they write these words on animal
bones or turtle plastrons
Oracle bone script 甲骨文
• Some example
山 雨 鹿
mountain rain dear

• Actually, they are really hard to recognize

豕 (豬) 犬 (狗)
pig dog
How Chinese characters were created
• Pictograms
日 (sun): 人 (human):

• Simple ideograms
上 (up): 下 (down):

• compound conceptual characters

明 (bright) = 日 (sun) + 月 (moon)

• Phono-semantic compounds
河 (river) 氵 : water-related 可 : the sound of 河 is similar to 可
Evolution of Chinese character
• “Drawing” is not a proper way to record information
• Some example

• Dog:

• Forest (Lin):
Chinese calligraphy
• In ancient, it is one of the most import and essential skill
• What you need:
Brush Inkstick and Ink stone Paper
Eight principles of Yong ( 永 )
董陽孜 Grace Y. T. Tong (1942-)
• One of the most famous calligrapher
• Her works are very huge, emotional and creative
山雨欲來風滿樓
浩如烟海
overview
• Brief introduction of chinese character
• 四大古文字
• 一個字一個讀音 ( 注音符號 )
• 使用漢字的地區
• The history of chinese character
• 甲骨文 之類的
• How to make chinese character
• 象形 指示
• 會意 形聲
• calligraphy ( 書法 )
• 董陽孜