Etymology of Chinese Characters
By Matthieu on Wednesday, July 27 2016, 12:16 - Permalink
Like other written languages, Chinese has built a system of connections between meaning, sound, and shapes. Its partly ideographic nature enables some direct links between meaning and shapes.
It has been proposed in one of the earliest Chinese dictionary (Shuowen 說文解字) that Chinese characters are created following 6 methods (LST 六書通). Here I'm proposing 3 more!
Comments
Very interesting article (as always for such topics!).
I think that it can be interesting to illustrate how this applies to the latest big evolutionary blow directed at Chinese characters, which is the simplification of the traditional writing in mainland China.
I have some examples in mind that are interesting in that respect, for instance with the case of 麵 becoming 面 in the sense of "flour", while this part etymologically represents the face and acted as a phonetic part in the original character. I think it can be seen as a good example for your 5th category, but it is interesting to see how that process caused certain characters to suddenly change their position in the "tree".
Of course, there are many others examples to consider
!
damn I wrote a whole answer, sent it, only to realize few days later that it must have been simply a preview mode and now lost...
Anyways, let's try to remember:
When a 4形声字 like 麵 loses its semantic part to become 面, it would indeed look like a 5假借字, except that the same character is used for both the meaning of defunct 麵 and the original 面. 面 is not given a 肉 key to mean "face" or "surface".
Sometimes the simplification reverted a family of 63变意字 semantic variation characters back to their mother form. E.g.: 复, abandoning the nuance between 復: "the dynamic repetition" and ，複: "the structural repetition".
Actually the recent simplification didn't hurt etymology as much as the one operated during the Qin empire. The normalization of Chinese characters back then caused many shape merging and disappearance, suggesting incorrect kinship. e.g. 方 and 旅,施,旗,etc. 王 and 主.
This is well described in the book from Dr. Wieger which I've shared recently.
Enjoy!