Six Ways of How the Chinese Characters were Created 六书 2021

Chinese is a pictorial language and is the only Language still in use which has no Alphabet. Chinese Characters were initially originated from picture. According legend, Cang Jie (仓颉) inspired by the trace of bird and animal, observing the nature such as Sun, moon, wood, created Chinese Characters or scripts, this is called pictograph or Pictogram, which was used in other ancient civilizations, such as Sumerian, Egyptian . As society developed, more methods were invented:
There are six ways of How the Chinese Characters were Created, called:
六书 Liù shū six ways or six writings
1 象形 Xiàng xíng Pictographs
2 指事 zhǐ shì Indicatives
3 会意 huì yì Ideographs
4 形声 xíng shēng Phonetic compounds
5 转注 zhuǎn zhù Mutual explanatories
6 假借 jiǎ jiè Phonetic loans

In more specific terms, the first four methods are the way of creating new Characters and the last two are the way of using Characters .

This book is not an academic book which only focus on the application for the purpose of expanding Chinese Vocab and improve Reading Skills. This is part of our reading skills series. We edit this section as a book with more details explanations.