General Literary Chinese from Scratch/What are Chinese characters, anyway?

In this lesson, we will be using what we learned before to classify characters. There are several systems for this, and they are useful for remembering your first few. We will be working off the traditional liushu (zh 六書) "six writings" system, as it still sees use in academia in some capacity, and is commonly cited by ancient scholars in traditional dictionaries. We will go over three of the six types in this lesson, as they are most applicable to you starting out. We will go over the next three once you know more characters. Why care about this? This will be a bit of a dry explanation, but I will try to keep this interesting for you with cultural tidbits. The main reason for learning this is so you can build a working understanding of how characters work whilst gaining a roadmap of characters to learn later on. These classifications can help you guess the meanings of the most basic characters and navigate historical dictionaries, most notably Shuowen Jiezi (zh 説文解字), whilst being able to follow the logic of the writer. Historical dictionaries typically use very formulaic language, and will reinforce the first grammar term you will understand later. Pictograms When you looked at Lesson 1, you were, essentially, reading pictures. Indeed, most of the characters you have learnt so far are what linguists call pictograms or pictographs (zh 象形). We can take the zh 象 I used just now as an example, meaning "elephant": On some signs in China today, you may see the trunk stylised like the elephant it was based on! There is also a game called xiangqi (zh 象棋) "elephant chess" that you can play online, which can teach you a few military terms whilst enjoying a much more frantic version of the chess you know in the west! When you look at zh 大，人，木，日，川, these are all pictograms! 大 and 人 are pictograms of people, 木 is a tree, 日 is the sun, and 川 is a river between two banks. For a list of pictograms, you can view Wiktionary's Category:Han pictograms to view them all. Many of these are extremely useful, though some have fallen out of usage. Ideograms Let's look at ideograms or indicatives (zh 指事) now. zh 三 is the clearest example of this that you know right now: It is three strokes, so it is three. Two very useful characters to consider from this category are zh 上 "above" and zh 下 "below." If you stare at them enough, you will see that they are pointing up and down. When there is a line above the heng (zh ㇐), we know we're looking above. When there is a line below the heng, we know we're looking below. These characters are very, very literal. The most common metaphor for representing time in Literary Chinese is the idea of time flowing "upstream" from now, and what is "below" is yet to come. zh 上旬 would be the past ten days, and zh 下旬 would be the next ten days. Traditional timelines in Chinese are often represented vertically because of this principle as well. You will see these two directions a lot! zh 本 "root" is also seen a lot, most notably in the name for Japan (zh 日本) nihon. What do you think it means, then? Like pictograms, these have a category on Wiktionary: Category:Han ideograms. Loangraphs Loangraphs or rebus characters (zh 假借) are a useful type to learn early on. zh 來 is a classic example of this, having once meant "wheat" (now zh 麥) but because "to come" had a very similar sound in the language of the time, it began being used for that meaning instead. This is most common in super-ancient Chinese, and relics of it became standard later on. zh 來日 "come-day," for example, is a very common way to express "the next day." This is where strictly working from pictograms may trick you! On Wiktionary, these are in Category:Han jiajie. There are only 35 cases in that category, and I would advise you to remember most of them, as they are all used extremely often (true to their nature). Think of them like irregular verbs in English ("go" -> "went"). Conclusion You now know the first three categories of the Six Writings. The next few lessons will focus vocabulary from these categories, bringing you towards being able to type these characters for yourself. The last three categories are for more complex compounds, which is why we are not going over those yet! Should you hunger to know them now, though, you can check out this Wikipedia page for a brief summary. Cangjie codes 六: 卜金 (YC) 書: 中土日 (LGA) 説: 卜口金口山 (YRCRU) 文: 卜大 (YK) 解: 弓月尸竹手 (NBSHQ) 字: 十弓木 (JND) 象: 弓日心人 (NAPO) 形: 一廿竹竹竹 (MTHHH) 棋: 木廿一金 (DTMC) 川: 中中中 (LLL) 指: 手心日 (QPA) 事: 十中中弓 (JLLN) 三: 一一一 (MMM) 上: 卜一 (YM) 下: 一卜 (MY) 旬: 心日 (PA) 本: 木一 (DM) 假: 人口卜水 (ORYE) 借: 人廿日 (OTA) 來: 木人人 (DOO) 麥: 十人弓戈 (JONI) 说: 戈女金口山 (IVCRU) 二: 一一 (MM) 讲: 戈女廿廿 (IVTT) 中: 中 (L) 华: 人心十 (OPJ) 书: 戈木尸 (IDS) 局: 尸尸口 (SSR) 說: 卜口金口山 (YRCRU) 注: 水卜土 (EYG) 鳳: 竹弓一日火 (HNMAF) 凰: 竹弓竹日土 (HNHAG) 出: 山山 (UU) 版: 中中竹水 (LLHE) 社: 戈火土 (IFG) 永: 戈弓水 (INE) 八: 竹人 (HO) 法: 水土戈 (EGI) 艺: 廿弓 (TN) 术: 戈木 (ID) 义: 戈大 (IK) 广: 難戈 (XI) 西: 一金田 (MCW) 师: 中中一月 (LLMB) 范: 廿水尸山 (TESU) 学: 火月弓木 (FBND) References Wan, X., Liu, H., & Lu, Z. (2019). 说文解字十二讲 [12 Lectures of Shuowen Jiezi] (1st ed.). 中华书局 [Zhonghua Book Company]. Xu, S. (2015). 說文解字注 [Shuowen Jiezi Zhu] (Y. Duan & W. Xu, Eds; 1st ed.). 鳳凰出版社 [Phoenix Media]. Zhou, R. (2021). 永字八法: 书法艺术讲义 [yǒngzìbāfǎ shūfǎ yìshù jiǎngyì] (L. Zhou, Ed.; 4th corrected ed.). 广西师范大学出版社 [Guangxi Normal University Press]. Category:Book:General Literary Chinese from Scratch