Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Amazing Chinese characters (214) Right - 右

The shell bone script of character Right is

which is a right hand. 

We learn character Hand in big seal script


The difference is that the hand in character Right is a moving hand, but the hand in character Hand is a static hand, no moving. Character with the former hand means catching, hitting, moving, holding, etc. Character with the latter means something related to hand.

The big seal script of character Right is


There is a Mouth under the hand.  Ancient Chinese put the right hand in front of mouth to pray. But it evolved to pure Right later on.

The small seal script of Right is

which is similar to the corresponding big seal script.

The clerical script of Right is


The top changed a lot. The half circle in old scripts become less curved, and the middle horizontal turning to downward line becomes pure horizontal line, which is easy to write, but less pictography.

The song type face is


The Pinyin for character Right is You4.



Thursday, October 4, 2018

Amazing Chinese Characters (213) Sparrow - 雀

The shell bone script of Sparrow is

The top three dots is character Small. The bottom is a bird.

Its big seal script is

The top is character Small, and the bottom one is bird. We can see its similarity to shell bone script.

We learnt character Bird, which big seal script is

which means all birds, the character Sparrow normally means small birds.


The small seal script of character Sparrow is


which is similar to its big seal script.

The clerical script of character Sparrow is
which is still similar to older scripts.

Its pinyin is Que4