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Chinese Character Decoder
As legend goes, the Chinese writing system was invented by Cang Ji, a minister of the Emperor Huang Di, after he noticed the distinct footprints of different animals. Thus inspired, he drew stylized pictures of the footprints to represent the animals themselves. These pictographs, like Egyptian hieroglyphics, are the ancient equivalent of drawings one might tattoo on one's arm or scribble in bathroom stalls. Over time, these "realistic" pictures were simplified to only a few lines.
To express more abstract thoughts, the Chinese developed "ideographs," additional symbols which --when combined with pictographs -- result in a new word. Using this combination of existing words and modifiers, literate Chinese could express in writing those concepts for which no pictures existed -- like "heaven," or "eternity."
But as life became more complicated, ideographs and pictographs could no longer record spoken Chinese in a reliable way. Although the existing writing system was flexible enough to accommodate new words, there was no phonetic relationship between written characters and the meanings they represented. If a reader didn't know the word intended by the author, he or she could not sound it out.
So between the later Yin dynasty (1384 B.C -- 1112 B.C.) and the Han dynasty (206 B.C. -- 220 A.D.), the Chinese invented a type of script called "xing sheng." These characters combined a "determinative" symbol, indicating the sense of the word, with a "phonetic" symbol, indicating its pronunciation.
The xing sheng system was not only flexible, it also enabled China's written language to perfectly represent the spoken language. It's probably for this reason that all but five percent of the characters in the Chinese language today are of the determinative-phonetic variety.
Character Development
Although the origin of written Chinese is shrouded in myth, studies show a clear development from extremely representative pictograms through various stages of simplification to abstract ideograms. Below are some simple animations showing the evolution of four common Chinese characters over the past 5,000 years.
NU-WOMAN
The original character for woman depicted her in a servile, bowing position. This then changed to a kneeling position and later to the modern character, which resembles a woman taking long, bold strides.
ZI-BABY
The first character for baby portrayed a child with arms and legs stretched out. Over time, it evolved to resemble a baby with legs wrapped together in cloth.
RI-SUN
The earliest pictograph for sun resembled an eye, or a circle with rays shooting in all directions. The character was simplified, then eventually squared to signify a day punctuated by sunrise and sunset.
CHI-TEETH
The original teeth pictograph displayed a mouth filled with teeth. Later changes depicted only the front teeth. The modern simplified character has only one sharp tooth, topped by a phonetic symbol.
