Chinese Character Classification - Traditional Classification

Traditional Classification

Traditional Chinese lexicography divided characters into six categories (六書 liùshū "Six Writings"), which are described below. This classification is often attributed to Xu Shen's second century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, but it has been dated earlier. The first mention is in the work Zhou Li of the late Zhou dynasty, and the six types are listed in the Hanshu of the first century CE, and in Zheng Zhong (鄭眾) quoted by Zheng Xuan (鄭玄) in his first-century commentary of Zhou Li, although the details vary. The traditional classification is still taught but is no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice. Some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage. For this reason, some modern scholars view them as six principles of character formation rather than six types of characters.

The earliest significant, extant corpus of Chinese characters is found on turtle shells and the bones of livestock, chiefly the scapula of oxen, for use in pyromancy, a form of divination. These ancient characters are called oracle bone script. Roughly a quarter of these characters are pictograms while the rest are either phono-semantic compounds or compound ideograms. Despite millennia of change in shape, usage and meaning, a few of these characters remain recognizable to the modern reader of Chinese.

At present, more than 90% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds, constructed out of elements intended to provide clues to both the meaning and the pronunciation. However, as both the meanings and pronunciations of the characters have changed over time, these components are no longer reliable guides to either meaning or pronunciation. The failure to recognize the historical and etymological role of these components often leads to misclassification and folk etymology. A study of the earliest sources (the oracle bones script and the Zhou-dynasty bronze script) is often necessary for an understanding of the true composition and etymology of any particular character. Reconstructing Middle and Old Chinese phonology from the clues present in characters is part of Chinese historical linguistics. In Chinese, it is called Yinyunxue (音韻學 "Studies of sounds and rimes").