Monday, April 5, 2021

Amazing Chinese Characters (360) Obtain - 得

 The shell bone script of character Obtain is


The middle one 


is Shell - 贝 (Post 194), which was the currency in ancient time. The left is street, or road, the right is a hand. A person walks to beach to pick up shells, which means Obtain (currency). Normally it is very far to get to beach, in the ancient time people didn't have good transportation tools, not easy to obtain shells. 

The bronze script of the character is

similar to shell bone script.

The big shell script of the character is

still very similar.

The small seal script of the character is

The left is street or road, the right bottom is hand, the right top is character Meet - 见, looks similar to Shell - 贝.


which is Shell.

which is Meet.

Mr. Li Si, the minister of Qin Dynasty who was in charged of unifying characters to small seal script, made mistake.

The clerical script of the character is 


The left is Double Person Radical, meaning street or road, the right bottom 寸 is hand, the right top is 旦 -  Sunrise (Post 100), not shell. 

which is Sunrise.

which is Shell.

People made mistake too because they didn't pay attention to the original pictography of the character, or didn't know the pictography of shell bone script. 

The song typeface of the character is

Very similar to its clerical script.

Its Pinyin is De2.



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