Five years ago I published an article in the journal

Five years ago I published an article in the journal "Intellectual Forum" - at their request, wrote a great text about hieroglyphics history and current status of hieroglyphic writing. This article was published, but now I have decided to publish it again. Using Unicode means that LJ can now give examples of original graphics that I do. This (and the absence of restrictions on volume), in turn, made it possible to add something to the old text, so it is slightly flv to increased. This article is written for the layman, so some simplification is unavoidable, but their number is minimal. The article is divided into two parts.
Extended flv to and revised version. The initial version was published in the journal flv to "Intellectual Forum , 13 (2003) first coherent texts written hieroglyphics archaic dialect of ancient Chinese language, dating from the XII-XIII centuries. BC. E. This means that the Chinese hieroglyphic writing about three and a half thousand years. She - a yearling so-called "writing Sinai," which became the ancestor of almost all alphabetic writing flv to systems that exist now, she is far longer than any modern system of writing. In this affects the stability of hieroglyphics. Competent Chinese effortlessly reads the text's two thousand years ago. The general meaning of the phrase it usually does not understand (unless, of course, not specifically studied ancient Chinese grammar), but easy to recognize and pronounce - in modern pronunciation - almost flv to all the characters, which meets in the text. In spite of considerable age, hieroglyphics, probably exist for a long time - in spite of the seemingly obvious advantages in learning a simple alphabetic writing flv to systems. What is the reason for the Chinese affection (and some of neighboring nations) to hieroglyphics, why it exists almost unchanged for so long, what is its role in the cultural past and present? Myths and napivmify hieroglyphics However, before you try to answer those questions, it is necessary to dwell on certain myths of mass consciousness associated with hieroglyphics. More precisely, it is not so much myths as napivmify - all of them, along with errors and contain some element of truth. Napivmif. Chinese character represents a word. This is untrue about three thousand years ago. When only hieroglyphics were ongoing, the Chinese language was monosylabichnoyu, that all words were monosyllabic. So first there was a clear line "character = word = composition." But then the situation changed. Somewhere in the I millennium BC. f k ytayska it began to change, it appeared the multi-word. With the passage of time these words became more and more and in most simple words formed by merging ancient Chinese monosyllabic. For example, flv to modern 战争 Zhan-cheng" - "War" was created by the merger of two ancient Chinese syllables: 战 Chan" ("fight, fight") and 争 cheng" ("conflict, fight"), the modern word "pho -jiao "(" Buddhism ") drawn from the ancient Chinese word" flv to pho "(Buddha) and" jiao "(doctrine). Such examples are numerous. Of course, for writing multi-word needs a few characters - as much as a word syllables. Therefore, the character does not mean the word as such, but something like a warehouse-root (or the official word). Hereinafter, for convenience story I violate customary practice, and will be in Ukrainian transcription warehouses separate characters from each dash.
Multi-words flv to were about fifteen hundred years ago, but in the last century began to arise a large number of them. When in the middle of the XIX century, the nations of East Asia began to meet new for them "Western" devices and institutions, it appears that for them the "hieroglyphic" languages are no deadlines. Due to various reasons, which are described is not possible, the language of East Asia, borrowing own objects and ideas, not borrowed from their Western names. Instead, the new phenomena began to create new names. In fact, these names are briefly described objects, using the ancient Chinese roots keyword. For example, a phone called the "electric conversation - 电 话 Dian-hua" (hereinafter - severokitaysky pronunciation, in other dialects of Chinese as well as Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese pronounce words differently, but they were recorded by the same characters) . "Democracy" was translated long 民 主 主 义 Ming Zhu Zhu th" - "[teaching] that's the main idea - the rule of the people" and the University flv to was named in short: 大 学 Da Xue" - "big school". Tank named 战 车 Chan-che" ("Martial