Chinese characters—–中国汉字 历史

The Chinese characters constitute one of mankind’s oldest systems of writing with the most users in the world. There are many Chinese characters, totaling about 60,000, with about 6,000 basic ones.

Chinese characters have a long history. The oldest Chinese characters discovered till now are 甲骨文 (ancient Chinese characters carved on tortoise shells or animal bones), dating back 3,400 years, which were already mature characters. As scientists estimate, Chinese characters have a history of about 5,000 years. Chinese characters originate from pictures for keeping records. From ancient to modern times, the form and structure of Chinese characters have changed a lot, evolving from 甲骨文(jiǎ gǔ wén), 金文(jīn wén) (the ancient language used in inscriptions on ancient bronze objects), 小篆(xiǎo zhuàn) (small seal character), 隶书(lì shū) (official script), and 楷书(kǎi shū) (regular script). The current script of Chinese characters is 楷书 (regular script).

In history, Chinese characters were borrowed by Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, thereby promoting international communication.
In modern times, Chinese people have already solved the problem of inputting Chinese characters into computers to serve information processing. It has been borne out that Chinese characters are of vigorous vitality.