Talk about the significance of Chinese characters in the world

The earliest mature writing discovered in China was once thought to be oracle bone inscriptions. As far as the written materials of the Yin and Shang Dynasties are concerned, there are many categories of text carriers. In addition to writing on slips with brushes, the other main means of writing at that time were inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones, pottery, jade, and pottery casting on bronzes. The written materials of the Shang Dynasty are mainly based on the oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels used for divination in the Yin Ruins. There are more than a thousand characters, which are only part of the Shang Dynasty writings. They are called oracle bone inscriptions and have a unique discipline - oracle bone science.

Influence on Japanese writing

Although the Japanese nation has an ancient culture, the creation of its own writing is quite late. For a long time, its people have used Chinese characters as a carrier to spread their thoughts and express their emotions, calling Chinese characters their "real names". In the early fifth century, phonetic symbols borrowed from Chinese characters called "kana" appeared in Japan. By the eighth century, the use of Chinese characters to mark Japanese pronunciation had become relatively stable, and its symbol was the compilation of the "Man'yoshu", so it was called "Man'yo Kana". It is the basis for pure Japanese phonetic characters. The final creation of Japanese characters was completed by Kibi Shinbe and Kobo Daishi (Kukai). Both of them had lived in Tang Dynasty China for a long time and had in-depth research on Chinese characters. The former creates Japanese "katakana" based on the phonetic radicals of Chinese characters in regular script, while the latter uses cursive Chinese characters to create Japanese "hiragana". Although kana writing has been prevalent in Japan since the tenth century, the use of kanji has not ceased. To this day, Japanese writing, which has occupied an important position in the world, still retains more than a thousand simplified Chinese characters. Among them, in the Japanese commonly used Chinese character list that was reformulated and published in 2010, 2136 Chinese characters were included. [5]

Influence on Korean (South Korean) writing

The ancient Chinese system and culture have always influenced North Korea, so North Korea calls its national writing Hangmun (informal writing) . The creation and application of proverbs was an important achievement of ancient Korean culture, but it was not widely used before the 20th century. In fact, Korea in the early days, like Japan, did not have its own written language and instead used Chinese characters. After the unification of Silla, there was a slight change. Xue Cong, a contemporary, created Lidu, which used Chinese characters to represent Korean particles and auxiliary verbs to assist in reading Chinese books. In the end, because the languages ????are different, it cannot be popularized. In the early Li Dynasty, the Proverb Bureau was established, and Zheng Linzhi, Cheng Sanwen and others were ordered to formulate proverb texts. They studied Korean phonetics based on Chinese phonology, created 11 vowel letters and 17 consonant letters, and announced the use of "Hunminjeongeum" in 1443 AD. North Korea had its own writing system from then on, but it was soon abolished again. After World War II, South Korea used it again due to its "de-Sinicization" policy, and so did North Korea. However, because there are too many words with the same sound in the Korean pinyin script, it is often difficult to distinguish them after writing, and the development of Hangul is challenged.

Influence on Vietnamese writing

Before the tenth century, Vietnam was a county in China. In the Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties, officials were all here to rule the area, so it was deeply influenced by Chinese culture. After Vietnam became independent, Chinese characters were used as a tool for communication among the upper class, as well as in school education and the creation of literary works. It wasn’t until the 13th century that Vietnam had its own language, the word Nan. The word Nom is a new word that expresses Vietnamese pronunciation created based on Chinese characters and using methods such as pictophonetics, pretense, and meaning. In the 15th century, the word Nan became popular throughout the country and completely replaced Chinese characters (a few people still use Chinese characters). However, modern Vietnamese writing is mostly influenced by Western writing and uses entirely pinyin writing.