001 Beginner Chinese characters lesson 1: 日(sun), 月(moon), 〇(zero), 一 (one), 二 (two)
Gradually, other Chinese people also applied such pictures when they wanted to express the sun. Later, people felt that it was a waste of time to draw so many sun beams, so they simplified it into a circle with a glow dot in the middle, like this.
Next, the Chinese continued to improve the way of drawing the sun. The pictorial nature gradually weakened and the symbolic nature gradually increased. Finally, it became the modern Chinese character, whose pronunciation is ri.
Long, long ago, there was a Chinese family who saw the moon in the sky rising and setting every day, and changing every month.
They thought it was very magical. So, they drew the moon.
Gradually, other Chinese people also used such pictures when they wanted to express the moon. Later, in order to distinguish the moon from other objects, people added a luminous body-like stroke in the middle of the moon.
Over time, the angle of the moon began to rotate for the convenience of writing. The moon in the sky slowly turned into today’s Chinese character month.
In this way, the Chinese drew whatever they saw, constantly improving the way they drew and wrote each object. Over time, the pictorial nature of the object slowly weakened, the symbolic nature gradually increased, and finally it became the appearance of modern Chinese characters.
Chinese call these lines or strokes that can express the appearance of objects pictographic characters. There are approximately 266 pictographic characters in Chinese characters. We will start from the most basic pictographic characters. Then, we will learn the combinations and transformations of these basic pictographic characters.
How did Chinese create numbers?
Chinese numbers are inseparable from the origin of the universe. The Chinese believe in the origin of the universe as chaos. Chaos refers to the misty state in which Qi, shape and quality are integrated and not separated before the formation of the universe. In chaos there is no sky, no earth, no matter that we are familiar with, only a specious and vague thing.
In ancient Greek mythology, the universe was originally chaotic. Chaos gave birth to the earth mother goddess Gaia, who gave birth to everything in the world and so on.
The same is true in Nordic mythology, but from a big crack in the chaos, Ymir, the ancestor of the Nordic giants, and so on were born.
In short, in world mythology, people are accustomed to calling the state before the birth of the world chaos.
How did the world origin chaos 〇 (ling-zero) produce 一 (yi-one)? 一 (yi-one) produce two? Please watch the video: How basic Chinese characters evolved and lesson one: 日(rì-sun), 月(yuè-moon), 〇(líng-zero), 一 (yī-one), 二 (èr-two)
In lesson one, we first talked about how basic Chinese characters evolved and how the Chinese numbers were created. Then there was an instruction for how to use each lesson’s worksheet to practice your writing. Here is the lesson one worksheet.