Chinese language characters — looking for an epigraphic of each character

[David W]

It is often the case that sacred languages have iconographic or pictographic root characters that their later matured alphabet script evolved from. Evaluating how the individual characters come together to make a visual sequence of images that illustrates the full word can yield insight into its’ original semantic intent.

 

I’m assuming pretty much everybody is familiar with that, however I personally just don’t know how to do it with the ancient script of say the DDJ or other significant texts. Also I am unsure what to search for on these forums related this topic to see if related answers have been given in the past.
 

Could someone share what sort of analysis you’ve done on the characters themselves and how perhaps to combine them to arrive at an accumulative illustrated intent of the word? (My apologies for the cringy photo)

[SQC]

That what I can find, it is probably not exactly what you want

 

01-漢字 - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxWCAnaKjds&t=214s

http://www.chinese-linguipedia.org/audio.html

[Nintendao]

I started working on something similar to that in my PPD before.

https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/48381-lg00-logographic-glossary-introduction-大天人-da-tian-ren-the-great-day-man/

 

My main source of information is http://zhongwen.com/ which does a great job linking together the individual pieces that make up a whole word. It doesn't show the ancient scripts versions. I look those up on Wiktionary.

[David W]

@SQC Thank you so much for the effort in sharing those videos! I did watch them and will say I love the animated cartoon! It is fascinating how much stuff is put into children’s material these days. I found it to be insightful actually. 
 

@Nintendao Read the PPD, it is was great! I am always so impressed with the elixir field reference and I think that alone is strong evidence that it is possible the entire language was originally pictographically semantic. Have we taken any inquiry into this topic that far? Cheers! 

[awaken]

甲骨文也是演化過的文字，最初的文字來自於古埃及文。

http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1783503983

 

 

以上圖片來自於 http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6a4e1c6f0102yizo.html

[Nintendao]

https://www.silkstory.net/ (Chou Meizai)

has a nice little collection, with illustrations.

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/ABCsOfChinese

for a deeper look into how characters are built.

 

You might be able to dig up some interesting threads by using Google instead of the forum search, for example 

https://www.google.com/search?q=character+etymology+site%3Athedaobums.com

it can't see PPDs though.

 

Actually I recall @Harmen once going on for an hour about single character! 

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by Nintendao