What characters?Where they are used, and how to understand them?Can you elaborate signs are somehow translated into a language understandable to us, to interpret and decipher?Of course you can.Among the characters there are the ancient, which is no longer used, and modern, are found in the letter of the set of Eastern cultures.The first, of course, difficult to decipher, and the latter can be transferred using "google".Because for everyone it was clear what it is and what it eats, we will explain in detail what the characters on which group they share and that means.
definition
In the conventional notion of the character - a unit of the letter, which is used by some people.It can mean either a single sound, syllable or letter, and the whole word.Sometimes the characters can send us a whole sentence or a particular phrase.The term has Greek roots.The name written characters oriental scientist gave Clement of Alexandria, who was involved in deciphering such texts and drew the generalized notion that such characters.Determining which he brought, made up of two words: "ieros", which translated from Greek means "sacred" and "glyph", which, respectively, translated as "cut".He gave these texts sacred significance, and therefore called them "the sacred carved letters."
where you can meet the characters
Now, to understand what the characters, just look at the writing of the Far East.However, in times past, few residents of the ancient world studied the culture of the peoples and their languages.Because the term is often used in relation to ieratike - ancient Egyptian writing.Texts deciphered the language in the era of ancient and medieval, and even now, many of them remain a mystery to historians.Today we meet the characters in the Chinese language and all its branches (Korean and Tangut), as well as all types of Japanese writing and dialects.
Ieratika and its features
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared along with the birth of the first dynasty of pharaohs.The very language of the ancient Egyptians in their phonetics has something in common with the Semitic dialects, but in the same way it is similar to the Cushitic and Berber-Libyan linguistic branches.Throughout the existence of ancient Egypt used only for writing characters.Previously, they were cut only on the stones, on the walls of temples and houses.Later, to write laws, other documents and simple letters began to be used papyrus.Interestingly, more than the old record, the easier it is to decrypt.This is due to the fact that most ancient Egyptian records created through a thumbnail image, which in the accuracy of the displayed objects and actions.Later they began to be used much more complex characters, which is engaged in the decipherment of both European and Asian scientists.Main discoverer in this field is considered to be a Frenchman Shapmolon.But in fact, far greater contribution to deciphering ancient Egyptian letters made Vahshiyya Persian Ibn al-alarm, which translated into Arabic hundreds of spells and government texts.
Japanese writing
modern language of the country of the Rising Sun is built in part on local dialects, which previously had no grammatical base, and partly on the Chinese writing.Because Japanese characters and their value is often resonate with the Chinese vocabulary, but in some cases find similarities can be very difficult.So Japanese is divided into three parts: kanji - it is the characters who have come here from China, hiragana and katakana - native Japanese alphabet.
Kanji
Chinese written symbols used to designate certain nouns, adjectives for the basics, as well as to write their own names.The value and type of reading kanji depends on which way he was in Japan.As a rule, it is still dependent on its place in the sentence, on the context.For many written signs there are more than ten types of reading.Reading, in turn, can use one of two systems.One is called onemi, and its essence lies in the fact that the character is read in the Chinese style.The second is called kunemi - pronunciation, in accordance with the rules of the native Japanese language.
Originally Hiragana Japanese characters and their meaning is transmitted by the Hiragana alphabet.It contains mostly vowels except for one consonant - «h».These written signs used to transform the nouns and adjectives borrowed from kanji.With hiragana attributed prefixes, suffixes, endings.Very often the characters of this alphabet heard in conversation and correspondence found in Japanese.Hiragana is also salvation for those who do not know the kanji.In it are many synonyms that could explain the meaning of unfamiliar to some people morphemes borrowed from the Chinese.
Katakana
This originally Japanese second alphabet is also used as an auxiliary.However, it does not intersect with kanji, unlike hiragana.If you do not know what the kanji in Japanese borrowed from other Asian (except China) language, you can use it to transfer the semantic one of the symbols relating to the Katakana.Also note that the written symbols of the alphabet are used only as a hint, and much less common in speech than hiragana.
Interesting facts
for every European man concept of what the characters as they read, and how to understand them, is very difficult.However, in the middle of the last century, a Charles K. Bliss attempted to create a unified whole world system of hieroglyphic writing and speaking to people from, say, France could communicate freely with the people of China.However, his attempts were unsuccessful.But in Japan, there is a certain kind of language, which is called Romaji.This is a record of words using the Latin alphabet, which immediately allows us to read the character and say it correctly.
