Chinese characters unite China into a political and cultural community

Chinese characters, which transcend language, are an important cultural carrier for promoting and consolidating China's unification. The picture shows a citizen reading a newspaper with a magnifying glass on the streets of Guangzhou. (Southern Weekend reporter Feng Fei/photo)

Europe uses pinyin script, the language of many countries is actually very close to the relationship, but reflected in the text is the language of different countries, especially the various languages within the same language family, a person is easy to learn, such as English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, etc. in the Germanic language family, speaking of "foreign languages" in different countries, but in fact, it is closer to the various dialects that Chinese understand.

The dialects of China vary greatly. Some southern dialects, such as Wu, are internationally coded, while Wenzhou is rumored to have been used as a secret communication tool for the Chinese army during the War of Resistance. If wenzhou dialect is spelled in Latin alphabet according to some people's "Chinese character Latinization" scheme, people in other parts of the country will hardly understand it. Thankfully, Chinese characters have not been abolished and replaced by Latinization, and through the writing and use of Chinese characters, people across China can still achieve barrier-free communication. It can be said that Chinese characters that transcend language are important cultural carriers for promoting and consolidating China's reunification.

At least since the Shang Dynasty, the evolution and development of Chinese characters, that is, the "Qin script" represented by oracle bones, jin scripts, and small seals, has not been interrupted. In the Longshan cultural period more than 4,000 years ago, the earliest prototypes of Chinese characters have appeared, such as the "Wen" character written in cinnabar at the site of Xiangfen Tao Temple, the word "Gong" on the pottery tablets of Dengfeng Wangchenggang Ash Pit, and the five-line eleven-character writing has even been found on the pottery tablets of the Gonglongshan City Site in Zouping, Shandong.

At present, the earliest oracle bones that can be seen should be the two pieces of character bones excavated from the Erligang period excavated in Zhengzhou Shangcheng, and the oracle bones of the Yin Ruins period after that mark the mature evolution of Chinese characters. Since the Shang Zhou Dynasty, although there are different dialects in various countries and regions, the standard sound "Yayan" has been used at the level of liturgical music, that is, the "Ziso Yayan, poetry and book ceremony, and all Yayan" as stated in the Analects, and in the text, the "Qin script" inherited by the Shang Dynasty is commonly used, which is characterized by relatively standardized and stable, and the evolutionary law can be followed, which has evolved into a small seal, and then subordinated to the traditional characters that we are familiar with.

Of course, in the composition of early Chinese characters, the phonetic part is also very important, not the "hieroglyphs" that ordinary people imagine. If you can't understand this, it's easy to misunderstand the meaning of the text. For example, the "Ren" character of the Warring States script is composed of a "heart" below the upper "body", this "body" is a phonetic symbol, the ancient sound on the body is the true part of the book mother, the ren is the true part of the Japanese mother, and the ancient sound is very close, which is just a table sound symbol.

Another example is "surname", many people look at the meaning of the text, saying that this is "originally from the matriarchal society", in fact, the surname of the ancient pronunciation in the heart mother farming department, born in the birth mother farming department, the ancient pronunciation is also very close, "sheng" is just a phonetic symbol. Another example is "woman", a female broom, since the "Shuowen" many people say that the female broom to do housework, but in fact, the female ancient voice is in the ministry of the mother, the broom is in the zhangmu youbu, the vowel lip sound, the tongue sound is similar, the rhyme is quiet, the rhyme is very common, the ancient sound "broom" is the "woman" of the phonetic symbol, the oracle bone bu ci, a large number of female nobles "women" write "broom", have their own territory, the people, the force, is not the image of the broom all day long.

Since the early Chinese characters were reprosented, then after the collapse of the Zhou Dynasty, the local culture of the princely states rose, and there was indeed a stage in which chinese characters appeared to be "decentralized", that is, the Warring States script period represented by the Six Kingdoms of the East. The "Yan Family Training And Phonetic Words" says, "The people of Kyushu have different words, and the people have come, and they are always there." "Since ancient times, the world of differences in dialects has been the norm.

During the Warring States period, the Chinese and speeches varied greatly, and the "Book of Rites and The Royal System" said that the Warring States and the early Han Dynasty were "the people of the five directions, and the language was not comprehensible." At that time, the six kingdoms developed on the basis of the Chinese dialect of the various countries were very different from each other, and they completely did not abide by the rules of the orthodox "Yayan" of the Central Plains, such as the fat part and the micro part in the Qi script, and the three parts of the branch, the fat and the three parts could also be alternated (Wang Qiming: "Study of the Qi Language of the Pre-Qin and Han Dynasties"), and in the Chu script, the Ye and Ji er, or the Yubu, Hou, Dong and Yang characters can be transferred. The unique language and cultural psychology of each princely state caused all kinds of unique Chinese characters in the Six Kingdoms region during the Warring States period, many of which were very incredible, such as "number" writing double head holding a mouth under the horn, "victory" is multiplied by a force, "old" is a heart, "thick" is a stone plus a master and so on.

Qin has a contribution in terms of writing, that is, to abolish the Six Kingdoms script and return to the "Qin script" since the Yin Zhou Dynasty, that is, the orthodox small seal and Lishu evolved from the Great Seal, which became the future Chinese character system. In a sense, the qin abolition of the Six Kingdoms script is a return to the state of the Western Zhou Dynasty in the evolution of Chinese characters. From the Central Dynasty to the various princely states, the Western Zhou Dynasty unified the use of the Great Seal, surpassing the dialects of the princely states, and politically and culturally transforming China into a community. The Western Zhou Dynasty was feudal and local autonomy, but it did not hinder the great unification, according to the Song Confucian Hu Hongzhi, the use of Tianzi Zhengshuo Dynasty Lile is the great unification. Since then, the relationship between Chinese characters and phonetics has not become as close as in the early days, and the function of phonetic pronunciation has weakened, and no matter how the language changes, the writing of Chinese characters does not change.

Therefore, people in regions with completely different languages and dialects can also communicate effectively through Chinese character writing. Since then, dialects throughout China have continued to evolve, such as Minnan, that is, Wu language in the Wei and Jin Southern Dynasties, whose language bottom is very different from luoyang in the Central Plains, the bottom of Hakka dialect is in the Tang Dynasty Anshi Chaos, and the bottom of modern Wu and Cantonese was formed in the Southern Song Dynasty. Although the different eras and phonetics vary greatly, they do not hinder the writing, reading and communication of Chinese characters, but as a different local branch of Chinese culture.

Chinese characters play an important role in condensing China into a political and cultural community.

(The author is a university teacher and historian)

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Li Jingheng