Chinese Characters and Chinese Culture.ppt

Chinese Characters andthe Chinese Culture Ms. Shang Tuo from Southwest Jiaotong University of China §1 The Origin and the Development of Chinese characters §1.1 The Origin of Chinese characters Written language is a symbolic visual system which is based on spoken language– the function of the characters is therefore to convert language from its spoken form to its written form. As with many character-based languages in the world, the Chinese character system records the Chinese language from the time of its origin. How do Chinese characters record the Chinese language? Chinese characters represent the speech constituent of Chinese in its written form--it has three elements: visual form, sound and meaning. Perhaps the correspondence between the Chinese character units and their speech constituent might create confusion: in some cases one unit represents a Chinese word, in other cases it represents a morpheme, and even in some cases it represents a syllable.link.1.doc The Chinese character system has survived from age to age. Of all current character-based languages, Chinese has had the longest history; other antiquated character systems in the world, such as Hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt or Cuneiform in Mesopotamia etc., have ceased to be used for a long time. When did Chinese characters originate? It is difficult to reach a conclusion with certainty at present. According to archaeological evidence, the rudiment of the Chinese characters originated in the late primitive society. The Chinese archaeologists found four pictographic symbols on Dawenkou relics in Shandong province in 1974. Comparing the symbols with the inscriptions on bones, shells and bronze, the experts finally confirmed the kindred relation between them. Since the Dawenkou relics are more than four thousand years old. we know for certain that Chinese characters have a very long history. §1.2 The Development of Chinese characters From primitive tim