Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1514: Debate between Traditional and Simple

"Although I can write traditional Chinese characters, it does not mean that I am a fan of traditional Chinese characters." Zhou Zhi knew that today was an opportunity, and it happened that this issue should be discussed in detail, so he said: "Just because I can do both, Therefore, I have also studied their evolution and found that simplified characters have their own reasons and logic for simplification. However, this question takes a long time to talk about, and I don’t know if there is enough time..."

"We like to listen, don't be in a hurry today!" Some students shouted from the ground.

"If you have something to worry about, you can leave first. If you are interested, you can stay and listen." Zhou Zhi said with a smile.

Many students did leave at that time, and this was just the time. The vacated seats were immediately taken by people standing in the aisle, and there was another burst of excitement.

When the classroom became quiet again, Zhou Zhi said: "After the founding of New China, in view of the current situation that more than 80% of the country is illiterate, in order to learn knowledge and the urgent need to build the motherland, all walks of life, including the entire military , the whole society has launched a vigorous literacy campaign.”

"Traditional Chinese characters are too complex and difficult to spread quickly. Therefore, the country decided that in view of the urgent needs of the situation, the Chinese characters at that time must be simplified."

"But there are rules for how to simplify it. I can say that every simplified character was repeatedly discussed by the leading Chinese scholars and Chinese character experts at that time."

"This is a huge change related to China's millennium heritage. It is the result of careful consideration and is by no means a simple and crude barbaric act."

"There are many guiding ideas for the simplification of Chinese characters. The first is the reduction of strokes and components. This is the most commonly used simplification method. However, this simplification method is not done casually. Instead, it is mostly based on the variant characters in the surviving calligraphy of the past dynasties. Common characters are commonly used in the market. In other words, most of these reduction methods were used by ancient people and appeared in ancient books and ancient inscriptions.”

"The second is the restoration of ancient Chinese characters. Among them, the most used ones are the oracle bone inscriptions we are teaching today."

"For example, Zhongzi." Zhou Zhi turned around and began to write on the blackboard with chalk: "This character first appeared on oracle bone inscriptions. The glyph is a stack of three human characters. Later, bronze inscriptions also continued this writing method, and Qin Xiaozhuan's There was such a variation in time, and finally it became like this in the official script. After it was Kaihua, it became the traditional "Zhong". "

"So you see," Zhou Zhi finally wrote down the simplified word 'public': "This simplification is actually just returning to its original original form."

"In addition, there are regularization of cursive scripts, such as 'WE'; learning from ancient variant characters and common characters, using simple symbols to replace complex parts, such as 'Zao'; and using simpler phonetic phonetic characters to express the phonetic diaphragms of complex pictophonetic characters. , such as 'far'; and use homophone substitution methods without causing confusion in meaning, such as removing the radical of wheat for flour."

"There is also the understanding method, which is to combine multiple uncommon or special characters into one word; there is also the partial deletion method, which is to delete the characters to achieve a simplified effect while retaining the characteristics of the original characters."

"Since this question was raised by a classmate from Baodao," Zhou Zhi said with a smile, "then I will take the characters 'Tai' and 'Wan' as examples to talk about the evolution and simplification of Chinese characters."

"'Tai' itself is both a meaning and a phonetic character. This character began to appear in the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty. It was differentiated from Shangjia Si and has the same origin as Yi and Si."

"In the oracle bone inscriptions, this character represents the shape of a fetus with its head facing down. The Si added in the bronze inscriptions is called 'Yi Fu', which symbolizes the afterbirth and emphasizes the meaning of pregnancy."

"So 'Tai' is actually the original character of 'Fetus'. The seal script has changed a bit, with the "Fetus" being slightly more complex. After the change from official script to official script, "Tai" was written in regular script."

"So this word also means the succession of descendants, so Tai has the meaning of "heir". It also refers to 'unitary' and 'xuan'. The root of why we call the fourth generation descendants 'great-grandson' is here." " This word is derived from "厶" plus "厶", and "厶" means Yi. Therefore, it is commonly used in the Yin, Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties. It means 'yi' and is pronounced as 'yi'."

"Because the original word means pregnancy, that is, happiness, it also has another meaning, which evolved into the later 'Yue' and 'Yi'. This is how the pronunciation of 'Yi' is retained."

"Because the word '厶' means treacherous behavior in order to seek personal gain, this word later evolved into 'private', which is proof. And the word '厶' also means a region, so the word 'Taiwan' also evolved into People who dominate the territory with their own will.”

"Therefore, this word can also be used as the first person in "Poems" and "Books", meaning 'I' or 'my'. In Qin and Chu bamboo slips, it becomes 'beginning', 'governing' and 'extremely' Simplified variants of ' and other words."

"And the word "Tai" in Baodao is a knowing character that does not exist in oracle bone inscriptions. It only began to appear after the knotting method of characters developed into mature seal script."

"Explanation in "Shuowen Jiezi": Tai, Guan, the one with four directions and high. From to, from it, from high province."

"The upper part of the seal script is like the decoration on the top of the building on the platform, the middle is the omission of high, and the lower part is from to, indicating that it is a square, tall and flat building where people come to visit."

"The ancients piled earth to build a high platform to look out in all directions, so the original meaning of 'tai' is an observation tower, which refers to a tall and flat building built with earth into a square shape."

"The high platform does not need a roof, so the official script removed the word '亠' on the roof and replaced it with 'Shi', which means a man stands on a high place as a guard."

"In the Yuan Dynasty, in the application of common words, '台' was often simplified to '台'. For example, in "Taiping Yuefu", "Mulian Ji", and "Jin Ping Mei", this homophone substitution can be found."

"The Taiwan in Baodao was actually a 'mistake' because according to Lin Shaohao's research, the name may have evolved from the 'sieve' in the Hokkien word 'wind sieve'."

"So the "Taiwan County Chronicle" re-edited by Lu Dingmei says: "The cloud platform is the native people who saw hurricanes and rain coming from all directions, spinning and dancing in the air like a sieve, because it is called a wind sieve, and it is said that a hurricane sifts rain, and it is not called a typhoon. , the sound and sieve are on the same stage, and the wind is added to make the stage, and all the books bear the mistakes."

"So judging from this textual research, the island should not have been called 'Taiwan Island', but 'Taiwan Island', and this 'typhoon' is generally believed to have evolved from the Cantonese word 'big wind'."

"In the "General List of Simplified Chinese Characters" in 1956, it was finally decided to merge the characters '台', '台', and '台' into the character '台'. The context and logic of the merger was based on the above reasons. There is also a ' The same is true for the word "Tai'".

"Tai', 'Tai' merged, following the Yuan Dynasty's practice of merging common characters; 'Tai', 'Tai' added, is suitable for removing complex radicals and combining multiple different characters without affecting the confusion of word meanings. The principle of combining common words or special words into one word.”

(End of this chapter)