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> A project manager called Li Si makes an exhaustive list of all the characters used in the six unified Kingdoms. Gathered, sorted, filtered, this set is the fi
by ginko 10y ago
> A project manager called Li Si makes an exhaustive list of all the characters used in the six unified Kingdoms. Gathered, sorted, filtered, this set is the first official Chinese writing system.
How could a "list" of Chinese characters have worked? They're logograms. How would anyone reading the list know what the meaning of the character is without knowing the character in the first place?
- wrwills 10y agoCharacters can be grouped according to the stroke count of their radical and phonetic components. This allows one to have a list of characters, and enables one to look up characters that one hasn't encountered before (although nowadays you can also use a Chinese ocr app for that purpose).
- ginko 10y agoYes, I know there's systems for looking up characters. But once you've found your character in your dictionary, what can you do with it if you don't know the meaning or pronounciation? Nowadays there's of course pronounciation guides(through a phonetic script) but I would imagine in the 3rd century BC this didn't exist?
- monocasa 10y agoThey had pronunciation guides back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanqie
- emodendroket 10y agoIt seems like the purpose is more like saying "here are all the characters; don't use other ones"
- xenadu02 10y agoThe same way a dictionary explains the meaning of words in alphabetic languages: using simpler symbols and explanatory phrases. It has the same bootstrap requirement. You need to already know some basics for it to be useful.