27 March 2016

The evolution of Chinese characters

(Scroll down for the article in English)

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今天要讲一讲文字的演变。

大家应该知道我刻印的字体多分繁体和小篆两种,不知道的话赶快去看一下!但上下五千年的历史长河中,中文字的演变其实是精彩而丰富的。

图片来源

这里可以明显看到文字演变主要分成两个阶段,前面三种弯曲线条较多的是古文字时代。这里要特别提到第三种:小篆。这种文字为什么重要?因为它是秦始皇统一文字时所采用的字体。有看《芈月传》的人应该知道吧!所以不要再说我浪费时间追看电视剧了。

秦始皇。
这种网络游戏真好,把我看书时的所有想象都画出来了。历史人物就应该要这样啊,无论好人坏人都必须是俊男美女。
无奈世事大多事与愿违,他大概真是长这个样子的。
小篆之后就是隶书啦。这个转变的过程很特别,有名字的,史称“隶变”。如果我没记错的话,好像是当时人们开始在竹简上刻字,因为曲线不好刻,所以都改成了直线。于是从今往后,中文字都变成了四四方方的“方块字”了。

竹简
说到竹简就不得不提一下“杀青”一词。竹子是绿色的嘛,为什么用竹子制成的竹简却不是绿色的呢?因为在制作竹简的过程有“杀青”这一个工序。基本上就是把竹简放到火上烤,好让刻字的过程更容易,同时也让竹简变得更耐。后来,因为字义的衍生,“杀青”现在只用于形容拍摄电视电影完结。

再下来也没什么好说的了,反正就是一个简化又简化的过程。虽然在新加坡学的是简体字,但只要不用我写,我想我还是更喜欢繁体字多一点的。刻在印章上也比较好看。

你看看,笔画多的时候是不是更好看。这是我刻的!

写到这里也差不多了,要不然我翻译时会死掉的。 就这样,要做印章/橡皮章记得到我店里看一看。如果你是历史/文字达人,发现上面有什么资料写错了,请悄悄地告诉我,我会从善如流的!

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If you've been following me online for some time now you should probably know that I offer 2 types of font styles for my custom stone seals -- the modern traditional chinese and the ancient seal script. In reality there are a lot more variations in the evolution of Chinese characters, some of which I'd like to share today for their interesting history.

Image source

It is pretty obvious in the image above that the evolution of Chinese characters can be categorized into 2 main stages. Lines 1, 2 and 3 are the ancient fonts in which they are much more curved and round. The ancient seal script (line 3) is especially important, because it was the main form used by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to standardize writing, and I really like it, so it's one of the font styles available for my custom Chinese seals.


An artist impression of the Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China

And this was probably how he really looked like, I guess we'll never find out.

In line 4 after the ancient seal script is a writing know as "Li Shu". If you scrutinize both writings (Seal script and Li Shu) in detail you'd realize they're quite different, because the "Li Shu" had done away with the curved and rounded lines. This was to ease the process of carving on bamboo slips (picture below), which people began to do at that time.



The Chinese used to carve words on bamboo, and the strips would be bound together


Finally there's the difference between traditional Chinese characters, and simplified Chinese characters. Personally I would prefer the traditional one, it tells you a lot more information about the word, and looks better aesthetically.


You might have noticed that the more strokes there are in a Chinese character, the more balanced it looks on a stone seal. 

And that's about it! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or would just like to discuss further! And if I've made any mistakes in this post please let me know too!

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