说“象形”字

On "Pictograph"

纵观人类文字的起源,大多发端于象形。其他的古老文字如苏美尔楔形文字、古埃及圣书字、中美洲的玛雅文字等,或消亡或改为表音文字,唯独汉字继续在象形的基础上通过不断地完善,终于成为一个完整的体系。汉字的象形字虽然只有360多个,也有其自身的局限性,但它在汉字的演变和发展中起着稳定的作用,是功不可没的。在象形字的探究中,关键注意的是象形字的分类以及与指事、会意、形声字之间的关系。

Although most of the origins of writings in the history of mankind are pictographs, such as Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Maya glyphs and Chinese characters, most of them have either been extinct or changed to phonographic systems. Only Chinese characters finally develop into a complete system on the basis of pictograph through continuous refinement. Though there are only 364 pictographs, they play a stable and important role in the evolvement and development of Chinese characters. This paper has a discussion of it from the perspective of the pictograph categories and the relations between self-explanatory, associative compound, and pictophonetic characters.