The Formation Of Chinese Character - Self-explanatory Characters

Self-explanatory characters are single characters whose abstract meanings are expressed by the combination of their strokes. These characters are often derived from pictographs or ideographs that visually represent the concept they denote.  For example, the character for "sun" (日) resembles a simplified depiction of the sun itself, while the character for "tree" (木) clearly resembles the shape of a tree.

Such characters are considered self-explanatory because their visual representation directly corresponds to the meaning they convey, making them intuitive to understand even without prior knowledge of the language.  This feature highlights the unique and fascinating aspect of Chinese characters, where form and meaning intertwine to create a visually expressive writing system.

They may be classified into two types.

• One type of them is purely symbolic, for example:

一种是纯符号性的，如：

一 (yī, one)

二 (èr, two)

四 (sì, four)

八 (bā, eight)

• Another type is of pictographic scripts with an explanatory symbol. For example, 本, běn, roots of a tree, is composed by adding a symbolic "一"to the lower end of 木. Similarly 刀 (dāo, knife), with a symbolic dot becomes 刃 (rèn, edge of a knife).

另一种是在象形字的基础上增加一个指事性符号，如在“木”上加“一”是“末”表示树的末梢；在木的下面加“一”是“本”表示树的根。这里的”一“是一个符号。又如，在“刀”上加“、”表示刀刃。这里的“、”也只是一个指示符号。

Self-explanatory characters constitute only a small number of the total chinese characters.

在汉字的造字方法中，指事字的数量最少。

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