Chinese Character Classification: 象形 (pictograms) & 指事 (simple ideograms) Video Script
Hi! I’m Hsinju Chen, welcome to my channel. Today, we’re going to talk about how Chinese characters work.
Last video, we already know a little bit about the phonetic system in Taiwan. Now, we are inspecting on a more general scale: the classification of characters.
As some of you might know, Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese, and so does Hong Kong. In China, they use simplified Chinese. Thousands of years ago, Chinese ancestors used traditional Chinese, so in order to truly understand the character and classifications, we are going to talk about them with traditional Chinese.
There are six categories, 象形, 指事, 會意, 形聲, 轉注, 假借. In this video, I am going to briefly introduce the first 2 categories 象形 and 指事, which are methods of the basic character formation.
象形
As Egyptian hieroglyphs, we know that the letters were basically simplified figures of something. In Chinese, that is exactly what 象形 is. It means pictograms, and some of the most useful characters are in this category.
口 means mouth, and from oracle bone script, we can see it looked a lot like a mouth in doodles. Other typical examples are 山, 木, 刀, 馬, 鳥, 牛, 羊, 龜; their regular script and oracle bone scripts are shown.
指事
A lot of ideas could not be conveyed by pictograms, so simple ideograms are another way to form characters. Abstract ideas, such as up and down are ideograms in Chinese. By indicating above the line or below the line, we have 上 and 下. There are also numerical characters that follow the rule, as in 一, 二, 三. Other examples are 本, which highlighted the root of 木, as opposed to 末. Also, 刃 and 亦.
Hopefully, you now have a bit of understanding about character formation! In the future, I will also explain what the other 4 categories mean.
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and if you have any questions or suggestions, leave your comment below. Till next time, Bye!