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✍️ SYNOPSIS: A timeline overview of every major stage in the development of Chinese characters, from the earliest Oracle bone inscriptions (甲骨文) to the modern regular script (楷书).

📍TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 || Oracle Bone Inscription 甲骨文
0:55 || Bronze Script 金文
1:51 || Seal Script 篆书
3:45 || Surfshark VPN
4:51 || Clerical Script 隶书
5:38 || Grass Script 草书
6:15 || Running Script 行书
6:59 || Regular Script 楷书
7:44 || Story of Oracle Bone Characters
9:06 || Precursor to Chinese Writing
10:09 || Legend of Cangjie

▶️ Chinese Characters EXPLAINED: https://youtu.be/RNtBJMVCQhk
▶️ The TRUE Origins of Simplified Chinese: https://youtu.be/fojzNrwAAyI

📚 REFERENCES:
A Brief History of Chinese Characters: https://www.thechairmansbao.com/blog/brief-history-chinese-characters/
The Origin and Evolvement of Chinese Characters: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229246973.pdf
The History of Chinese Writing: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/blogs/chinese/the-history-of-chinese-writing-and-handwriting
从汉字形体的历史演变看汉字改革的趋势：https://www.ixueshu.com/document/c52eb7b044f9bfff2dad478cb8726ecf318947a18e7f9386.html
契刻符号中的“贾湖故事”：https://wwj.henan.gov.cn/2023/02-28/2698539.html
汉字故事: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb1nyz1sbnM

⚠️ NOTES:
1. Time ranges are conservative estimates of when each stage was dominant.
2. Historical examples and calligraphy examples are taken from https://www.zdic.net and https://shufa.hao86.com
3. One of the reasons we have so many examples of small seal script and not large seal script is because the first Chinese dictionary, 说文解字, used small seal script as the header for entries. This is despite being written somewhere around 100 AD, when seal script was already in decline.
4. In chronological order, Running script should be last after Regular script. I only shifted them for the sake of not ending on a cursive script that isn't used in daily life.
5. Simplified Chinese is not considered a separate stage in this video because it wasn’t a stylistic change. In other words, both traditional and simplified Chinese can be written in Regular script. And this is where the lines between “fonts” and “types” of characters become blurred. Every one of the stages we discussed were distinct because they had a different writing style as well as different fundamental strokes that made up each character. If the writing style is the same but the strokes are different, it’s merely another set of the same characters. If it’s a change in the writing style but the fundamental strokes are the same, then it should be classified as a different font. For example, Kaiti is the computer font that is based on regular script. Songti is a font that developed from ancient printing. And Heiti is a modern font that’s easy to read on small screens. Watch this video to learn more about Chinese fonts: https://youtu.be/v_e4Nhl2r5Y
6. There were many variant forms of characters in the period of oracle bone and bronze scripts. Variations came in 3 main varieties: 1. adding or subtracting strokes (i.e. no distinction between 木 and 术) 2. The placement of components could be swapped, and they would still mean the same thing. (i.e. 够 and 夠 would be the same character) 3. Adding components doesn’t change meaning (i.e. if 云, 运, and 雲 all meant “cloud”) Note: I’m using modern examples to illustrate; they are not historical examples!

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🖼️ MEDIA CREDIT:
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