The Formation of Chinese Characters

Chinese characters were created in accordance with a certain model or prescribled patterns. In China’s first dictionary, “shuowen jiezi” (“Explaining and Analyzing Chinese Characters”), there were character-formation methods. Chinese characters can be classified into four main categories: pictographic characters, self-explanatory characters, associative compounds and pictophoentic characters.

1. Pictographic Characters

Many people, who have studied Chinese, feel that Chinese characters, especially ancient characters are just like paintings. The characters directly depict the shape of things. This kind of characters is known as the pictographic characters. Most of these characters denote concrete things that exist in the natural world or in real life. They form the basis of all Chinese characters. For example, “人” (ren, people). At first, the oracle script of the character looks like the side profile of a person. The “person” is bending down and his arms extended as if he is performing labor. The character “人” was incorporated into the logo of each individual event at the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing. The basic form of each logo adopted the strokes of the seal character for “人”.

These logos integrate the pictographic charm of the oracle script with the simplified features of modern graphics, embodying the beauty of sports and possessing rich cultural connotations. When Chinese characters were simplified, some of them changed a lot, but some are still pictographic. For example, the character “飞” (fei, to fly) still resembles the side profile of a bird spreading its wings; the character “龟” (gui, tortoise) still depicts a tortoise shaking hits head and wagging its tail; and the character “伞” still resembles an umbrella in open position.

Study Chinese. If you want to study Chinese or take a Chinese language course in a professional Chinese language school, then Keats School is for you. We have various courses for different learning goals, such as focusing on speaking, listening, reading of Chinese characters.