Friday, January 31, 2020
Traditional Chinese History Essay Example for Free
Traditional Chinese History Essay Abstract            It is not a secret that the Chinese written language is one of the most ancient languages on the Earth planet. In fact, hieroglyphs are considered to be the most significant part of the traditional Chinese history and the most important signs of the Chinese civilization.            In general, the Chinese language includes about 50 thousands of hieroglyphs, but only   5-8 thousands are practically used and as it is known about 3-4 thousands of hieroglyphs are enough for reading the modern literature.  Also, it continues to unite many ethnic groups. But, why? It is a very interesting question †¦ Traditional Chinese History            The Chinese written language is suggested to be an amazing phenomenon among the modern writing systems. It is important to know that other hieroglyphic languages, which took place in the Near East, South Asia, China, Central America disappeared long time ago and became just the objects of the ancient history. As to the Chinese written language, it managed to adapt to all changing conditions during the long development process of Chinese civilization and to become the most reasonable tool for writing in China in the end.            According to the archeological data, early history of the Chinese written language began from the inscriptions on the ceramic vessels of the Neolithic period of time. It should be pointed out that all inscriptions were elementary by their forms. It was obvious that the forms of inscriptions were changed depending on various Neolithic cultures of that time. At the same time, some simple signs, revealed on the vessels, were total for several cultures (Origins of Chinese writing, 2006, p.1).            In fact, the historians consider these inscriptions as the ancient signs of the Chinese written language. The differences, which were demonstrated in graphical forms of signs, in some degree, could mean that each Neolithic culture had its own written language.            The point is that, the special conditions (both graphical and technical) are required for creating the written language. For instance, the material on which various signs were cut had to have the special surface, which could correspond to the possibilities of the tool chosen for writing. In China, like in the other civilization centers the first writing tool was some sharpened object, which could be used for cutting thin lines and therefore, the material had to possess soft surface.                       Coming back to the history we can see that ceramic industry was very popular in China. So, Chinese craftsmen knew various ways of covering ornament and other images on the raw and burnt materials. That’s why both crude and burnt clay were regarded to be the most available material chosen for writing (p.1).            It should be emphasized that the uncommonness of the Chinese written language continues to attract the attention of many specialists and amateurs. There is even the special literature, which describes this uncommonness in detail, but the scientific studying of its history began only at the end of the 19-th century after some ancient evidences of the Chinese written language were found. The discovery of the oracle bones took place in China in1899, when a scholar from Peking was prescribed the special remedy, which had to contain so-called dragon bones for his illness: the fact is that dragon bones were widely used in Chinese medicine at that time and usually referred to fossils of dead animals. The scholar also managed to notice several very interesting carvings that looked like some kind of writing language on the bones he acquired from the local pharmacy (p.1).            People often have the impression that Chinese characters are extremely difficult to learn. In fact, if you were to attempt to learn how to write Chinese characters, you would find that they are not nearly as difficult as you may have imagined. And they certainly qualify as forming one of the most fascinating, beautiful, logical, and scientifically constructed writing systems in the world (Chinese written language, 2006, p.1).            Comparing with alphabetic language, hieroglyphic language has more difficult graphical structure of its symbols and includes several thousand signs. For example, the latest Chinese language includes about 50 thousand signs. No other famous hieroglyphic language had such a great number. This example demonstrates how many symbols hieroglyphic language can contain during a long period of time.            The main feature of phonemic and syllabic written languages shows that the linguistic units themselves don’t have the certain meaning. In fact, hieroglyphic writing demonstrates such important linguistic units as words and morphemes. In other words, it transmits the content plan of the certain linguistic units. It is clear that alphabetic writing is intended for some special state of one language. In other words, it can’t be used by another language without some special changes. So that, the main feature of hieroglyphic writing is universality. As we can see, this splendid feature allowed the modern Chinese written language to unite many ethnic groups in a single whole (p.1).            Theoretically, hieroglyphs can be used for writing by other languages. The history of the Chinese written language and a huge experience of applying hieroglyphs by Vietnamese and some Thai languages can prove the given fact. As the experience of applying the Chinese hieroglyphs by the Japanese and Korean languages showed – the successful usage of hieroglyphs for agglutinant languages can be very successful and effective if the alphabetic writing is used at the same time.            There is also another advantage of the Chinese written language – each symbol is independent on its reading. The fact is that each symbol of hieroglyphic writing can be read differently depending on the number of languages, which are usually used by the given writing. So that, we can say the Chinese hieroglyphs have not only one meaning, in fact, it can be also read and understood by such languages as Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese. It should be also said that each hieroglyph has both the â€Å"national†meanings and many dialectical. At the same time, in the South China one hieroglyph can have two completely different meanings – spoken and literary. As usual, the second meaning is widely used for reading written texts and pronouncing the scientific and cultural terms (Origins of Chinese writing, 2006, p.1).            The independence from the real pronunciation of linguistic units allows hieroglyphic writing also to have some so-called â€Å"timeless†properties. It means that if a reader knows the grammatical structure of the language, so the text of hieroglyphic writing can be completely understood despite the date it was written and its symbols can be read by the help of any convenient way.            It is known, that today, the ancient hieroglyphic texts can be differently understood by the help of the national reading of hieroglyphs, any dialectic readings, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese readings despite the fact they could have another meaning at the moment of their creation.            All these properties of the Chinese hieroglyphic writing played a very important role in the development of the Chinese national culture and history and allowed the Chinese written language to live so long in spite of all difficulties it had to face. In addition, due to its originality this language managed to become one of the most wide-spread languages among the people all over the World.   Taking into consideration all these historical data we can come to the following conclusion – the Chinese written language is considered to be a unique phenomenon among the other written languages, which also took place in the World history. So, it is unique hieroglyphic language which is very interesting for studying. Chinese is the only major writing system of the world that continued its pictograph-based development without interruption, and that is still in general modern use (Chinese written        language, 2006, p.1).            Coming back to the history of the Chinese written language we can emphasize that the given hieroglyphic writing has managed to go through several stages of its development. Having made a great deal of attempts to change it reformers manage to make the Chinese written language more available for people.            Nevertheless, the main principles and feature of the modern Chinese writing continue to be unchanged during several thousand years. So, that’s why in order to understand the Chinese culture, the traditional Chinese history, the Chinese civilization and if it is possible the Chinese traditional ideology – both the Chinese written language and its history should be studied in detail. References Chinese written language. Retrieved August 10, 2006, from www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese_written_language.htm Origins of Chinese writing. Retrieved August 10, 2006, from http://www.logoi.com/notes/chinese_origins.html
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