Some writing systems have a special sign on which they are based, a hieroglyph. In some languages, it can denote a syllable or sound, in others - words, concepts and morphemes. In the latter case, the name “ideogram” is more common.
The picture below shows the ancient characters.
History of hieroglyphs
Translated from Greek, the name "hieroglyph" means "sacred letter." For the first time, drawings of such a plan appeared in Egypt before our era. At first, hieroglyphs denoted letters, that is, they were ideograms, a little later signs appeared that denoted words and syllables. Moreover, the fact that only consonants were represented by signs is interesting. The name comes from the Greek language, as they were the first to see letters incomprehensible to them on the stones. Judging by the Egyptian chronicles and some myths, the hieroglyphs were invented by the god Thoth. He formed them in order to preserve in writing some of the knowledge gained by the Atlanteans.
An interesting fact is that in Egypt, symbolic writing has appeared already fully formed. Everything that scientists and the government did only simplified it. For a long time, the hieroglyphs and their meaning were incomprehensible to the European people. Only in 1822, Chapollon was able to fully study the Egyptian signs on the Rosetta stone and find their decoding.
In the 50s of the XIX century, some artists working in the style of expressionism and Tashism were very passionate about the East. Thanks to this, they created a trend associated with the Asian sign system and calligraphy. In addition to the ancient Egyptian, Chinese characters and Japanese were common.
Hieroglyphic art
Thanks to the brush (an object used to write signs), it is possible to decorate hieroglyphs and give them a more elegant or official form. The art of owning beautiful writing is called calligraphy. It is common in Japan, Malaysia, South and North Korea, China, Vietnam. Residents of these countries affectionately call this art "music for the eyes." At the same time, exhibitions and contests devoted to beautiful writing are often held.
Hieroglyphs are not only a written system of some countries, but also a way to express themselves.
Ideographic writing
Ideographic writing is currently distributed only in China. Initially, it arose in order to simplify the spelling, to make it more accurate. But in this method, one minus was noticed: a similar writing system was not connected. Because of this, she gradually began to leave the everyday life of people. Now ideographic writing characterizes Chinese characters. And their significance is in many ways similar to the ancient. The only difference is only in the way of writing.
Chinese writing
Chinese writing is to write hieroglyphs that mean individual syllables and words, as mentioned above. It was formed in the II century BC. Currently there are more than 50 thousand characters, but only 5 thousand are used. In ancient times, such writing was used not only in China, but also in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, having a huge impact on the formation of their cultures. Chinese characters formed the basis of national sign systems. And still they are widely used.
The origin of Chinese characters
The development of Chinese writing not only affected the whole nation, but also had a huge impact on world art. In the XVI century BC, hieroglyphs formed. At that time, people wrote on the bones and shells of turtles. Thanks to excavations by archaeologists and well-preserved remains, it became easier for scientists to make out the ancient letter. More than 3 thousand characters were found, however, comments were only given regarding 1 thousand. This writing acquired its modern form only after the complete formation of oral speech. Chinese characters are an ideograph that means a word or syllable.
Japanese writing
The written language of Japan is based on syllabic and alphabetic characters. About 2 thousand hieroglyphs were borrowed from the Chinese peoples for the use of those parts of words that do not change. The rest are written using kan (syllabic alphabet). It is divided into two options: katakana and hiragana. The first is used for words that come from other languages, and the second is purely Japanese. This technique seemed the most suitable.
As a rule, Japanese characters on the letter are read from left to right, in the case of horizontal writing. Sometimes there is a direction from top to bottom, as well as from right to left.
The origin of Japanese characters
Japanese writing was formed by trial, error and simplification. It was difficult for the people to use only Chinese in the documents. Now the formation of the language is a matter of constant debate. Some scientists attribute it to the time of the conquest of the Japanese islands, while others to the Yayoi era. After the introduction of Chinese writing, the spoken language of the nation has undergone dramatic changes.
In the 90s of the XIX century, the government revised all the hieroglyphs that combined a combination of several types of writing at once, and allowed to use only 1800 pieces, when in fact there were much more. Now, due to the influence of American and other Western cultures, official speech has practically disappeared, slang is becoming more meaningful. Due to this, the difference between dialects has decreased.
The emergence of the writing system in Japan
When the Japanese government decided to create a language system, the first hieroglyphs (this is its main means) were taken from Chinese writing. This event was due to the fact that in ancient times, the Chinese islands often lived on the Japanese islands, who brought various things, objects, as well as books. It is not known how Japan’s own hieroglyphs developed at that time. Unfortunately, data on this subject has practically not been preserved.
The development of Buddhism in the country greatly affected writing. This religion came thanks to the Korean Embassy, which arrived in the state and brought various sculptures and texts of the Buddha. The first time after the complete introduction of Chinese writing in the life of Japan, people used foreign words to write. However, after a few years, discomfort appeared, since the nation’s own language was slightly different and simpler. Problems were also created when writing proper names, where Chinese characters would be used. This has long bothered the Japanese. The problem was this: in Chinese, there were no words and sounds that needed to be entered into the document.
The idea of breaking special Japanese words into several meaningful parts was completely unsuccessful. In this case, you had to forget about the correct reading. If one was not distracted by the meaning, then these parts of the word had to be distinguished so that the reader understood that he was dealing with words whose meaning could be neglected. This problem existed for a long time, and it was necessary to solve it without going beyond the boundaries of Chinese writing.
Over time, some scholars began to come up with special characters with which to read text written in Chinese in Japanese. Calligraphy implied that each character must be placed in a conditional square, so as not to violate the boundaries of the entire letter. The Japanese decided to divide it into several parts, each of which played its own functional role. Since that time, the hieroglyphs (Chinese) and their significance for Japan began to slowly go into oblivion.
Kukai is a person who (according to legend) created hiragana (the first Japanese script). Due to the development in the field of hieroglyphs, special writing systems based on phonetics were created. A little later, by simplifying the form of hieroglyphs, a katakana appeared, which became firmly in use.
At that time, Japan had borrowed ordered writing from China because of their territorial neighborhood. But developing and changing symbolic symbols for themselves, people began to come up with the first Japanese characters. The Japanese could not use the Chinese script in its original form, if only because there was no inflection in it. The development of the language did not stop there. When the nation became acquainted with other systems (based on hieroglyphs), it, taking their writing elements, made its language more unique.
The connection of hieroglyphs with the Russian language
Now very popular tattoos in the form of Japanese and Chinese characters. That is why it is necessary to find out the meaning of the hieroglyphs in Russian before stuffing them onto your body. It is best to use those that mean “well-being,” “happiness,” “love,” and so on. Before a visit to a tattoo master, it is best to check the meaning in several sources at once.
A parody of Asian characters is also popular in Russian-speaking countries. Russian characters do not exist officially, but only appear on the pages of social networks. They are created thanks to the huge imagination of Internet users. Basically, these signs do not carry a special semantic load and exist only for entertainment. Games have also been invented that are based on guessing which word is encrypted in a particular character.