1. Chapter One The origin and forms of Chinese characters

2. Ⅰ. Ways the ancient characters convey meaning ： Q1: How do Chinese characters express their meaning? OR: What are the basic ways of creating characters?

3. An ancient character

4. 鹿

5. The oldest characters in Shang Dynasty 3000 years ago

6. 1 、 To convey meaning through shape ： （ 1 ） one shape one meaning (pictographic characters) 鸟（鳥）

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17. （ 2 ） two shapes one meaning (associative characters) 林 森 从 休 看

18. （ 3 ） to convey the meaning with a symbol (indicative characters) 上 下

20. （ 4 ） to convey the meaning with a symbol and a shape (indicative characters) 本 末

23. Q2: could that way make enough characters?

24. 2 、 To convey meaning through shape and pronunciation: Phonogram 青 清 晴 睛

25. Notes: Most original characters were made in the way to convey meaning with the shape. That’s mean, the shape of the characters represent the original meaning of the characters, not the common used meaning now.

26. Some characters’ common used meaning came from their original meaning 自 : oneself Some characters’ writing form were borrowed to represent the other meaning, and their meaning were represent by a new character:

27. 莫 暮 sun set nobody

28. Q3: Who found those ways ? At Han Dynasty(2000 years ago) Some people conclude those ways. But they’re explained clearly in ShuoWenJieZi——the oldest dictionary in China which was written by XUSHEN.

32. Ⅲ. The historical trend of the ways in which characters convey meaning ： Phonogram takes up larger part than others: 75% of characters in Shang Dynasty are pictographic characters ： But 90% of modern characters are Phonograms.

33. In fact, all of writing form of languages were created through shape, but the alphabetic writing turned to another way: The ancient Egyptian letters had their meaning, but modern letters which came from them just represent pronunciation.