History of Chinese Characters, Part 1: the Shapes

Рет қаралды 5,261

9 ай бұрын

Chinese characters have had many different forms over the years.
Check out my Patreon: patreon.com/Schwar
Bibliography.
Handel, Zev. Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script. BRILL, 2019.
Li, Yu. The Chinese Writing System in Asia : An Interdisciplinary Perspective. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
Norman, Jerry. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
裘錫圭. Xigui Qiu, Gilbert Louis, and Jerry Norman. Chinese Writing / Chinese Writing. Berkeley, California: Society For The Study Of Early China And The Institute Of East Asian Studies, University Of California, 2000.
Taylor, Insup, and M Martin Taylor. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014.
Yang, Lihui, Deming An, and Jessica Anderson Turner. Handbook of Chinese Mythology. Oxford [U.A.] Oxford University Press, 2008.

Пікірлер: 27

@pedrosampaio7349 9 ай бұрын

Grass script/căoshū goes really hard, you can still kinda see the relationship with standard characters if you look and think a bit

@andrew3939 9 ай бұрын

Really interesting to hear more about the Zhou standardisation. Great video, looking forward very much to part 2!

@paiwanhan 9 ай бұрын

@6:36 the character on the top, 為, meaning capable and achievement, is a depiction of a hand reining in an elephant. The character on the bottom, 角, is the depiction of a horn.

@haidancheng5199 9 ай бұрын

1:38 Chinese people are different from others, they even have 4 eyes!

@samuelr007ruiz9 9 ай бұрын

I absolutely love this writing system, thank you!

@I_Love_Learning 7 ай бұрын

Wait, you only have 3k subs, that's crazy, I'll need to share you with some friends.

@JS-ih7lu 6 ай бұрын

0:16 There’s no such thing as “Taiwanese Traditional”. This is the same traditional Chinese that’s used in non-Mainland places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, or by overseas Chinese who left (or their ancestors left) China before 1949. It is also used in mainland China today for calligraphy and art, just not standard communication.

@jonny6720 6 ай бұрын

TRUE!!!

@freemanol 5 ай бұрын

That's the problem with westerners making educational videos before they fully grasp the context. At least they could have put a disclaimer saying how long they've studied the subject so we can properly gauge our faith in the content. The western narrative today is Taiwan is a society and culture which is separate from the chinese, which is just straightforward falsehood. There's not that much difference between mainland chinese, SE asian chinese and other chinese overseas. It's the same culture.

@ChristianJiang 7 күн бұрын

Taiwan’s national standard is different from that of mainland China, and I’m only speaking about Traditional Characters. That of Hong Kong also differs from both. You can see it in certain details… For instance, the character 臟: in Taiwan, the 月 radical doesn’t use two horizontal strokes in the middle, but two dots instead. This isn’t true for the standard in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Basically, Taiwan distinguishes 月 when it stands for “moon”, and when it stands for 肉, “meat”. So yeah, even within traditional Chinese, you can have local fonts, such as those optimised for Taiwan, those for HK, Mainland China and even Korea!

@nicheva417 6 ай бұрын

If you do an in depth series on this - I’d watch it.

@TrueSchwar 6 ай бұрын

Part 2 releases Wednesday, going over their function.

@user-sk7wc4ez5f 6 ай бұрын

so next topic is kentum und satem lets go!!!

@weirdofromhalo 5 ай бұрын

As scholars have pointed out, translating 草书 as grass script is entirely wrong. It's better to think of it as "messy" or "flowing" script.

@jasonjayalap 6 ай бұрын

1:25 Would you include Cherokee?

@TrueSchwar 6 ай бұрын

I, and most other linguists, would not as these four instances were ex nihilo, which means each of these areas created writing on their own without outside influence. Cherokee was created by a guy who knew writing existed, and had a basic idea about its function and usage. You can see the influence in many of the letter shapes, as the creator used Latin Script as a basis.

@jasonjayalap 6 ай бұрын

Thank you. I agree that Cherokee/Sequoyah belong to another category since he had the advantage of knowing it was possible (which is huge). However, I think his use wild use of Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Glagolitic letters as symbols for his syllabary (among other things he tried) -- mixed with illiteracy! -- is evidence of how little he knew what he was doing. (We're not talking about Korean scholars, experts in Chinese here). I wonder if there are other examples odd limbo, knowing that language is possible and knowing it's purpose but developing one despite being a clueless illiterate. Well, maybe sumer from egpyt (hence 1a 1b)?