the war ic3
changing in
ne
Language 15
The earliest forms
inscriptions iating from the
ND A GRAIHA
.39 Sen
二 Josan 1.
Whinese
(riting
thentur“
J.
C
cle-boug
From about 1000 9.0.
more abstract and closer to the
to 200 B.. icture WIL
form of modern characters. The
number of Chinese characters 15 about 16.000, but the Runde
everyday use is about 3000, and a working vocabulary, adequate for, say, reading a newspaper, is 7000 characters.
Most other languages are written in letters which
express the sounds of speech, but the characters in Chinese writing are in the form of picture symbols.
The Chinese also have their "alphabetic" way of writing, by classifying their characters "numerically", under 214 radicals,
for the major objects and functions common in daily life, such as
eye, eat
speak. They serve as roots from
man
人
食
which all other characters are derived.
THE FORMATION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
In the main, Chinese characters can be classified into six categories, according to
according to their formation. They are, in the order of evolution, PICTORIAL, INDICATIONAL, RADICAL, CONNOTATIONAL, BORROWING and TRANSFERRED.
PICTORIAL - characters formed from pictures. Most
Chinese characters are of this type.
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