On Chinese Character

杨文娟

【Abstract】Just as the long history of our country， Chinese characters also have their long histories through thousands of years. There have been many great scientific works or documents studying on the origin of Chinese characters. From them， it can easily be found that each Chinese character has its own history. If we study on the history of a specific Chinese character， its motivation will be found.

【Key words】Chinese character； motivation； language phenomina

Chinese is our mother tongue. But nobody dares to say that he is familiar with each Chinese character. Besides those Chinese characters we use frequently in our daily life， there are still others we may never hear or use. For these Chinese characters， we may have trouble in understanding them or even reading them out. For example， when we see “幾”， it is difficult for us to read it out quickly and know its meaning accurately unless we look it up. However， if we encounter with an unfamiliar word in English or in French， it is much easier for us to know its pronunciation at least. For instance， if we dont know the word “thermodynamics”， we can get to know its pronunciation gradually because of English principles of pronunciation for there is no direct relationship between spelling and pronunciation of Chinese characters.

Each Chinese character has its own history and from a Chinese character， we can get some information about its meaning because Chinese characters are pictographs. For instance， when we talk about “吃”， just from the character itself， we can know there must be something related with our mouth. But when we say “eat” in English， we can hardly find something related with our mouth. So does French. In French， it is “manger” from which we can still find nothing related with our mouth. Chinese characters different from other languages have the exact meaning with themselves.

In Chinese， there are not many necessary principles to govern the use of Chinese language. In English， nouns can be divided into countable and uncountable nouns and there is a definite principle about singular and plural of nouns for countable nouns. For example， when we talk about two or more than two pears， we must add an “s” at the end of the word “pear”. But for Chinese character “梨”， we only just say “梨” for only one pear or for many pears. Except person pronouns， Chinese characters dont have the gender such as feminine and masculine. But in French， gender is a popular term. For example， “main” in French is a feminine word， but in Chinese， “手” does not occupy the characteristics of gender. Moreover， the part of speech of Chinese characters is not always stable. They have many different grammatical usages. For example， “得” can act not only as an adverb but also as a verb. Here is another example. In Chinese， “方便的时候我们一起吃饭”， “方便” is an adjective here， but in “方便一下”， it is used as a verb. Meanwhile， for Chinese characters， it is not easy to observe the part of speech， but for other words in other languages， it can be recognized quickly. For most cases， “ly” in English can be regarded as a stable sigh of an adverb. But in Chinese， there is no such sighs. When we come to the topic of the part of speech of Chinese characters， we have to talk about the syntactic function of Chinese characters. Compared with English， Chinese characters can always act as a sentence without emphasizing the subject， the predicate or the object. In many cases， only one Chinese character can still function as a sentence. However， in English， a word， especially a verb， can hardly act as a sentence， without considering those cases with definite contexts. For example， in Chinese， when we ask a person what he ate for lunch， he would reply us “吃的面”. Here， “吃” is a verb， but it can act as a sentence. However， in English， before a verb， there must be a nominal word or group and then according to some grammatical rules， they can just act as a sentence.

Chinese is a complex and special one among those many different languages in the world. Although there are many difficulties in studying on them， there are many valuable points totally different from other words in other languages. Just like the long history of our country， as one important part of our culture， Chinese characters are meaningful not only for language studying and language learning but also for culture presentation， perception and transmission.

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