“转注”新释

A New Interpretation for "the Mutually Explanatory Characters

"六书"中的"象形"、"指事"、"会意"、"形声"是造字法,"假借"是解决语言与文字矛盾的办法;"转注"则是解决文字之间关系的办法,是古人用字造字的指导思想,是后人用字解字和用字编字的办法,是一个历史的复合概念。

In the six categories of Chinese characters, the 'pictographs', 'self-explanatory characters','associative compounds' and 'pictophonetic characters' are the coinage methods. 'Phonetic loan characters' is the method in resolving the contradictions between spoken and written languages, while 'the mutually explanatory characters' is the method in resolving the relationship among characters. It was the guiding ideology for the ancients to use characters to coin new words and it is the method for the later generations to use characters to explain or compile other characters. So it is a historical compound comception.