Learn the history of Chinese characters from oracle bones, bronze inscriptions, and seal script to clerical and regular script. Explore the cultural and political shifts that shaped Chinese written language, enhancing character recognition and historical understanding.
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Chinese is a vast language family with thousands of years of written records and spoken evolution. This brief overview highlights key periods and forms to give you a sense of its development.
The earliest inscriptions date to the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) and were found on oracle bones used for divination. This archaic script is the ancestor of later Chinese writing.
Classical Chinese (文言文 wényánwén) became the literary standard from the Zhou dynasty through the Han (c. 500 BCE–200 CE). It is concise and relies on shared cultural knowledge, differing significantly from spoken dialects.
Middle Chinese refers to the language of the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (7th–12th centuries). It is reconstructed from rhyme dictionaries and poetry and forms the basis for many regional pronunciations and Sino-Vietnamese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Japanese readings.
Vernacular Chinese
从元朝和明朝开始，白话文逐渐流行，更贴近口语表达。现代书写标准最终源自北方方言。
From the Yuan and Ming periods onward, vernacular writing (báihuà 白话) gained popularity, reflecting spoken language more closely. The modern written standard eventually emerged from northern dialects.
Modern Standard Chinese
普通话基于北京话，在20世纪被推广为国家官方语言。中国大陆使用简体字，台湾和香港则采用繁体字。
Modern Standard Chinese (普通话 pǔtōnghuà) is based on the Beijing dialect and was promoted in the 20th century as the national language. It uses simplified characters in mainland China and traditional characters in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
现代汉语的标准语是(common speech).
The standard form of modern Chinese is Putonghua.
The national standard promoted in the 20th century is called ___ (common speech).
"Chinese" includes many regional languages such as Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hokkien, and others, which can be mutually unintelligible. These dialects preserve different features of historical Chinese and serve local communities.
Chinese characters (汉字 hànzì) have evolved over time but remain a logographic system where each character represents meaning and sound. Simplification and reform have standardized forms for education and printing.
汉(character) 有形声两部分。
Chinese characters often have semantic and phonetic components.
A Chinese ___ (character) represents meaning and sound.
Classical Chinese was the lingua franca of East Asia for centuries, influencing Korea, Japan, and Vietnam in writing, literature, and administration. Each adopted and adapted Chinese characters to their own languages.
Summary
汉语拥有深厚的历史层次，从甲骨文到现代汉语。其地区方言和书写传统体现了数千年的文化和语言变迁。
Chinese has deep historical layers from oracle bone script to modern Standard Chinese. Its regional dialects and writing traditions reflect millennia of cultural and linguistic change.
All content was written by our AI and may contain a few mistakes. We may earn commissions on some links. Last updated: Mon Dec 8, 2025, 6:25 AM
