The History of Chinese Language
The Chinese language does not start with actual words, and instead, it starts with tying knots on ropes.
The first-ever form of language in Chinese was knots notes. It is not a written language. By tying knots in different sizes, styles, on different ropes, people used knots to distinguish what they were trying to record. However, it was tough for people to remember and recall the content of the knots. Thus, knots notes started to fade out of people’s lives.
The development of oracle bone scriptwriting helped people write and remember. In the Shang Dynasty, people used the oracle bone script as their language. The oracle bones and turtle plastrons were used as “paper” for people to write on. However, the bones are very hard and stiff; thus, people used knives to engrave characters on the bones. There are a total of 1,300 identified characters. The characters are not words, and they are mostly considered pictographic.
The bronze inscription was the evolved version of the oracle bone script. Instead of engraving on bones, bronze inscriptions were written by carving on bronze-ware. It was developed between the Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty. At the time, the nations were fighting wars, and they used tons of bronze-ware for weapon building. Therefore, they wrote characters on bronze-ware.
Towards the Chunqiu and Qin Dynasty, large and small seal scripts were developed. The characters are soft in shape and narrow in strokes, and they look a lot more like the words we are using today in Chinese.
The clerical script was an improved version of the seal script. It was developed in the Qin Dynasty and perfected in the Han Dynasty. It is the foundation of the characters we use today. The characters have straight and angled lines and are condensed in shape.
Today, we use Standard Chinese. It was adopted in the 1930s, and it is the official language/script of the People’s Republic of China. Its characters are based on the clerical script, and its language is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.
