说人 On Ren

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说人 On Ren

文／黄德宽 译／国华 Huang Dekuan Trans.Guo Hua

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2008年北京奥运会的会徽是一个中国印，印上面的文字像一个奔跑的“人”形，又像一个变形的“文”字，同时也像一个“舞动”的北京的“京”字。古老的汉字使会徽的设计者获得了创作的灵感。印文巧妙地表达了北京奥运会的“人文奥运”精神。

中国古人造字是从描摹自身和自己所能观察到的事物的形状开始的，这就是“象形”的方法。“人文”的“人”字，古代文字就是一个侧面站着的人的样子。 请看插图中甲骨文和商（前1600年—前1046年）周（前1046年—前256年）金文“人”字，向下斜出的是“人”的手臂，剩下的是“人”的头部和身体部分，古人用两条简单而形象的线条，就将一个“人”画出来了，所以我们说“人”是个象形字。经过不断发展变化，现在“人”字写成一撇（“丿”）一捺（“ ”），已经不太像“人”了。“文”有人说它也是一个“人”的形象，只是这个“人”是正面的，身上刺有纹饰。



“人”是一个独体字，还可以用它来做造字的“基本单位”（或叫做“字根”“部件”），这样就可以造出许多新的合体字。比如，一个“人”字后面跟着另一个“人”字，就是“从”字，“随从”“听从”“服从”等词，用的就是这个“从”字。如果把三个“人”字放在一起，那就表示人很多，这就是“大众”“群众”的“众”字。“从”“众”这些字，都是用“人”字这个基本单位组合造出来的，这种造字的方法古人叫做“会意”，也就是根据字根的意义关系来组合构成新字的方法。

在合体字中，“人”字作为造字的偏旁（“亻”）常常在字的左边，人们把它叫做“单立人儿”。带“单立人儿”的字，一般都表示这个字和“人”有关系。如“人”字在“木”字（树）的旁边，表示“人”在树荫下“休息”，这就是“休息”的“休”字；“人”字旁边一个“呆”字，就是“保”字，这个字古代的写法是，一个人背上背着一个小孩儿，所以这个字有“保护”“保养”等意思；“人”字在“衣”字旁是一个“依”字，表示“人”有所“依靠”“依赖”的“依”，“衣”字表示读音，“人”字表示意义。像“人”字和“衣”字组合成“依”字的这种造字方法叫做“形声”法，用这种造字法造出的字就叫“形声字”。顺便说一句，在汉字这个大家庭中，形声字最多，占90%以上呢！



The emblem of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games is a Chinese seal. The character on the seal looks like a human figure running. It also looks like a distorted wen (文) “letter, literature” or a dancing jing (京) “capital”, which is the same as the jing (京) in Beijing (北京). The ancient Chinese characters gave inspiration to the designers of the emblem and the character on the seal cleverly expresses the spirit of the “People’s Olympics” (人文奥运) advocated by the organizers of the Beijing Olympics.

The ancient Chinese began creating their writing system by drawing pictures of themselves and what they observed. This is called the xiɑngxing (象形) “formal resemblance” method. The character ren (人) in renwen (人文) “humanistic” in its earliest form depicted a human figure standing sideways. Please look at the character in the oracle-bone script and the bronze script of the Shang dynasty (1600 BC—1046 BC) and Zhou dynasty (1046 BC—256 BC) in the illustrations. The shorter stroke slanting downward represents the arms of a human figure while the longer stroke represents the head and the body. By means of just two simple lines the ancients drew a vivid picture of a human figure. Because of this, we say that the character 人 is a xiangxing zi “pictograph”. Through continual development and change, the character is now written 人, which consists of one left falling stroke丿and one right falling stroke . As a result, it doesn’t quite look like a human figure anymore. The character 文, according to some scholars, also represents a human figure, only it is a frontal figure with tattoos on the body.

人 is a simple graph, which can be used as a basic component unit (zigen “character root” or pianpang “radical”) for character creation. In this way many new compound graphs can be created. For example, when one 人 follows another 人, the character cong (从) “follow” is created, which is used in words like suicong (随从) “entourage”, tingcong (听从) “listen and obey”, fucong (服从) “obey”, etc. When three 人 are put together, they form the character zhong (众), which means “many people’’. This character is used in words like dɑzhong (大众) “populace” and qunzhong (群众) “the masses”. The way characters like 从 and 众 were created was termed huiyi (会意) “sense conjunction” by the ancients. The term means that a new character is formed by combining the senses of two component parts or root characters.

In compound characters, the graph 亻as a component piɑnpɑng (偏旁) “radical’ is often placed to the left and is termed dɑnlirenr (单立人) “single standing human”. Characters that have this component usually have something to do with humans. For example, 亻standing by the side of a mu (木) “tree”forms the character xiu (休) in xiuxi (休息) “rest”, which indicates “a human taking a rest under a tree”. If we add the character dai (呆) to 亻, we get the character bɑo (保), which in ancient times was written as a human carrying a baby on his back, so this character means “protect, maintain”. 亻placed by the side of yi (衣) forms the character yi (依) in words like yikɑo (依靠) and yilɑi (依赖), which means “(a human) leaning against (something), depending on (something)”. In this character, the component 衣 indicates the pronunciation of the character while the radical 亻gives a rough indication of its meaning. Characters that are created in the same way as 依 are called xingsheng zi (形声字) “signific-phonetic compound characters”. Incidentally, in the big family of Chinese characters, signific-phonetic compounds exceed all other types of characters in number, accounting over 90% of all characters.



Can you think of some other characters that have the single-human radical as a component and explain their relationship with humans?