On Chinese Characters and English Letters

There is something wrong with the problem. How to compare Chinese characters with English letters? Chinese also has pinyin letters, including pinyin, initials and finals, while English is also composed of words, and words are composed of letters. How can a single English letter compare with Chinese characters?

Character is the symbol system of recording language and the * * * nature of all characters in the world. The nature of a particular character, such as Chinese characters, refers to the essential attribute that distinguishes this character from other characters.

Text is used to record language, so we should contact language to study the properties of text. The standard to determine the nature of a character is to see what kind of language unit is recorded in the basic unit of the character. Language is a hierarchical system: the lower layer is the phonetic layer, which is divided into two levels: phoneme and syllable; The upper layer is the language symbol layer combining sound and meaning, which is divided into four levels: the first level is morpheme, the second level is word, the third level is phrase, and the fourth level is sentence. There are thousands of roles in the world. Judging from the language units recorded in the basic unit of words, there are three main types: recording phoneme words, such as English; It is syllable words that record syllables, such as Japanese kana; Morphemes are recorded in morpheme words, such as Chinese characters. Phoneme and syllable words together are called phonetic symbols, also called pinyin. The basic unit of pictophonetic characters is letters, and the basic unit of morpheme writing is characters.

The number of phonemes in a language is limited, only dozens, so the basic unit of phoneme writing-letters is also limited, only dozens. For example, there are 26 English letters, 27 German letters and 33 Russian letters. The phoneme represented by a letter is the phonetic value of this letter, and each letter has a definite phonetic value, which is meaningless. When writing, write down the pronunciation of words according to the sound value of letters, and the words in the language become the words in writing; When reading, put the sound values of letters together and you will know which word it records.

The representative of morpheme words is Chinese characters. The language unit of Chinese character recording is Chinese morpheme, which is the smallest phonetic semantic combination. For example, "Guo, Zou, Da, hen and Ma" are morphemes in modern Chinese. As a morpheme, Chinese characters express different morphemes in different forms. It can distinguish morphemes with different pronunciations. For example, "buy" and "sell" are different morphemes and need to be written in different Chinese characters. It can also distinguish morphemes with the same pronunciations. For example, "yellow, spring and yellow" are different morphemes with different glyphs. We use Chinese characters to record morphemes in Chinese, and the sound and meaning of morphemes become the sound and meaning of related Chinese characters. The form of Chinese characters is closely combined with the sound and meaning of the morphemes they represent, so Chinese characters are the unity of form, sound and meaning. A few Chinese characters alone do not represent morphemes, such as "wandering, lingering, pipa, pipa, Portugal and grape", but only form and sound, without meaning, which is not the unity of form, sound and meaning. But the number of such characters is very small, which does not reflect the essence of Chinese characters. The existence of such words does not hinder the conclusion that Chinese characters are morphemes.

As morphemes, Chinese characters have the following characteristics:

The basic adaptation of (1) to Chinese. Chinese morphemes are mainly monosyllabic, and Chinese characters are monosyllabic words. It is basically appropriate to record monosyllabic Chinese morphemes with monosyllabic Chinese characters. The morphological changes of Indo-European languages are often expressed by phonemes. For example, the plural of English nouns is usually followed by -s, such as book→books, pilot→ pupils. This change is easy to express in letters, but difficult to express in monosyllabic Chinese characters. Chinese characters are basically adapted to Chinese, which is the fundamental reason for the vitality of Chinese characters. After thousands of years of use, Chinese characters are still full of vitality and can still serve various construction undertakings and people's lives. On the contrary, if Chinese characters do not adapt to the characteristics of Chinese and are very difficult to use, the ancestors of the Han nationality will not cling to a writing system that does not adapt to Chinese.

(2) It is the unity of form, sound and meaning. Pinyin letters only have shapes and sounds, while Chinese characters not only have shapes and sounds but also have meanings, which is the characteristic of Chinese characters. Although "clothing, medicine and dependence" are all pronounced as y:, their meanings are different. "Clothing" is the clothing of clothes, "medicine" is the doctor's doctor, and "dependence" is the basis, which is clear at a glance. I don't know what it means if it is written in Chinese pinyin y:. Because Chinese characters are ideographic characters, their forms can carry more cultural factors, which is also different from pinyin characters.

(3) It has a certain time and space. Modern British and American people see Chaucer (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340? -1400) is more difficult, a bit like foreign poetry. On the contrary, the Analects of Confucius and Mencius more than two thousand years ago were easier for Han people to understand. "If you learn from time to time, why not say it?" "Hey, it's a long way to go in Xiu Yuan, and it's also good for our country?" It's easy to read with a little guidance. This is because the change of Chinese morpheme meaning is slower than pronunciation, that is, the change of words is slower than pronunciation. This is the transcendence of Chinese characters. If Beijingers, Shanghainese, Fuzhou people and Guangzhou people don't speak Mandarin and learn from each other's dialects, they will have difficulties in language communication, but there is no difficulty in communication. They can read the same People's Daily. This is because there are small differences in morpheme meaning and big differences in pronunciation between dialects, that is to say, the words used in each dialect are roughly the same, but the pronunciation is different. This is the super dialect of Chinese characters.

(four) a large number, complex structure. A language has thousands or even tens of thousands of morphemes, so there must be thousands or even tens of thousands of morphemes. If you add alien and antique, it will be more. There are 7,000 commonly used characters in modern Chinese, while the Sea of Chinese Characters has a collection of 86,000 ancient and modern Chinese characters. In phonology, there are only dozens of letters, much less than the number of Chinese characters. Formally speaking, characters are all made up of different lines. Phonography uses fewer types of lines, but Chinese characters use more types of lines. The lines of Chinese characters become strokes and the strokes are combined into parts. There are many kinds of strokes and components in modern Chinese characters, including 560 basic components. There are many combinations of strokes and components, which make the structure of Chinese characters very complicated, much more complicated than phonetic notation. The huge number and complex structure of Chinese characters bring difficulties to learning and using.

(5) It is difficult to carry out international cultural exchanges. In today's world, economy and science and technology are developing very rapidly, and exchanges between countries are becoming more and more frequent. Language is an important communication tool. Latin alphabet is a worldwide alphabet, which is used by 100 countries in the world. It is very convenient to communicate with countries that use Latin letters. Technical terms can be transliterated, and names and places can also be transliterated, which is more convenient. It is not difficult to convert Slavic letters, Arabic letters, Greek letters and Latin letters. Chinese characters are different from pinyin letters, so it is very difficult to change Chinese characters into pinyin characters, and we can only rely on Chinese pinyin. For example, write "Beijing" as Beijing and "Deng Xiaoping" as Deng Xiaoping. Similarly, scientific and technological terms, names and place names in alphabetic writing are difficult to be translated into Chinese characters. Sometimes free translation, sometimes transliteration, is very complicated For example, writing "science" in science is a free translation, and writing "Sains" is a transliteration. Writing "Internet" on the net is a free translation, while writing "Internet" on the net is a transliteration. This complexity is not conducive to international cultural exchanges.

Everything in the world has advantages and disadvantages, and Chinese characters are no exception, with advantages and disadvantages. Of the five characteristics of Chinese characters mentioned above, the first three are advantages and the last two are disadvantages. We should give full play to the advantages of Chinese characters, and at the same time find ways to make up for the shortcomings of Chinese characters, so that Chinese characters can better serve various construction undertakings in China.

Since ancient times, there have been two written languages, namely, classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, and vernacular Chinese is divided into ancient vernacular Chinese and modern vernacular Chinese. Classical Chinese records ancient Chinese, ancient vernacular records modern Chinese, and modern vernacular records modern Chinese. Modern Chinese is not mentioned here, but there are many differences between ancient Chinese and modern Chinese. Because ancient Chinese is different from modern Chinese, so is the written language and the Chinese characters used. As far as words are concerned, they can be divided into three categories. The first category is commonly used words in ancient and modern times, such as "human hands and water rise beautifully and clearly"; The second category is the special words in classical Chinese, such as "sorry, sorry, sorry" and so on; The third category is the special words in modern vernacular Chinese, such as "jumping table beer pump agency generation point", which came into being in the last hundred years. In addition, some words are used in both classical Chinese and modern vernacular Chinese, but their pronunciation and meaning are different. For example, "listening" means laughing when reading yǐn in classical Chinese, and tóng in modern vernacular Chinese is a simplified word for "listening". Another example is "amine". In classical Chinese, it refers to meat rotting and stinking, and in modern vernacular Chinese, it refers to organic compounds.

Character is the symbol system of recording language, which should be studied in connection with language. Since there are many differences between classical Chinese and modern vernacular Chinese in terms of words, it is necessary for us to distinguish these two types of words. Based on modernity, it is called "modern Chinese characters" by combining the universal characters of ancient and modern times with the special characters of modern vernacular Chinese. Taking the special words in classical Chinese as a separate category, it is called "ancient Chinese words". Modern Chinese characters are modern Chinese characters, that is, modern vernacular Chinese; The archaism used in classical Chinese is a special word for ancient Chinese, that is, a special word for classical Chinese. We call the special characters of ancient Chinese classical Chinese characters rather than ancient Chinese characters, because people are used to calling Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, Xiao Zhuan and other fonts ancient Chinese characters. The use of Chinese characters in classical Chinese is based on the recorded language, while ancient Chinese characters are based on the characteristics of fonts, which are different. The writing part of modern Chinese course only studies modern Chinese characters, not ancient Chinese vocabulary.