Sitting alongside a riverbank,

坐在河岸邊

Cangjie noticed the imagery that surrounded him.

倉頡注意到了他周圍的意象。

From this, he created the first Chinese characters.

由此，他創造了第一個漢字。

And that night, the sky rained millet while ghosts cried, fearing their actions may now be condemned by the written word.

那一夜，天空下起了小米雨，鬼魂們在哭泣，他們害怕自己的行為會受到文字的譴責。

We can't say for sure whether this story is true, but the earliest artifacts containing Chinese characters date to the Shang Dynasty, around 1250 to 1050 BCE, still making it one of the earliest forms of written language.

我們無法確定這個故事是否屬實，但最早包含漢字的文物可以追溯到商朝，大約在公元前 1250 到 1050 年之間，這仍然是最早的書面語言形式之一。

Characters etched on ox bones and turtle shells show Shang king's writings to their ancestors, discussing everything from agriculture to the origins of a toothache.

刻在牛骨和龜甲上的文字顯示了商王寫給他們祖先的文字，從農業到牙痛的起源，無所不包。

And as the legend suggests, these ancient characters were mainly pictograms, or symbols, that resemble what they're meant to represent.

正如傳說所言，這些古代文字主要是象形文字或符號，與它們所要代表的事物非常相似。

Even today, some of the most foundational Chinese characters remain pictographic, like rén, which means person, and mù, which means wood or tree.

時至今日，一些最基本的漢字仍然是象形字，如 "人"（rén）和 "木"（mù）。

Some characters are ideograms, or symbols that represent abstract concepts, like the numbers yī, èr, and sēn.

有些字元是表意文字，或代表抽象概念的符號，如數字 yī、èr 和 sēn。

Others are compound ideograms, which combine two or more pictograms, or ideograms.

還有一些是複合表意文字，由兩個或多個象形文字或表意文字組合而成。

For example, xiū places the character for person next to the character for tree, and means to rest.

例如，xiū 將 "人 "字放在 "樹 "字旁邊，表示休息。

However, most modern-day characters are known as logograms, and are constructed of two components— a radical component, which gestures at the meaning of the character, and a sound component, which hints at its pronunciation.

不過，大多數現代漢字都被稱為 "邏各斯"（logograms），由兩個部分組成：一個是部首部分，表示漢字的含義；另一個是聲部部分，提示漢字的發音。

And all characters are built from a variety of strokes, which are often simplified to eight basic types.

而所有的漢字都是由各種筆畫構成的，這些筆畫通常被簡化為八種基本類型。

There are 214 radicals, each with its own definition.

共有 214 個部首，每個部首都有自己的定義。

Some can stand alone, while others cannot.

有些可以獨立存在，有些則不能。

For instance, the radical rì, written on its own, means sun.

例如，部首 rì 單獨書寫時表示太陽。

It's also used in characters with sun-related definitions, such as xiǎo, meaning dawn.

它還用於與太陽有關的字中，如 xiǎo，意為黎明。

The radical cǎo, on the other hand, never stands alone, but can be found within characters related to grass and plants, like huā, meaning flower.

另一方面，偏旁部首 cǎo 從不單獨出現，而是出現在與草和植物有關的字中，如 huā，意為花。

And the radical shuǐ, meaning water, always stands alone, but has a variant that is used when it's part of more complex characters, like hé, meaning river.

偏旁部首shuǐ的意思是水，它總是單獨存在，但有一個變體，當它是更復雜的字元（如hé，意思是河流）的一部分時才會使用。

Radicals can appear in different positions— to the left, to the right, above, below, or even surrounding the rest of the character.

部首可以出現在不同的位置--左邊、右邊、上面、下面，甚至圍繞著字元的其他部分。

There are many more sound components than radicals, with estimates ranging in the thousands.

聲音成分比激元多得多，估計有數千種之多。

Similar-sounding words often share the same sound component, and their radicals help shed light on their meanings.

發音相似的單詞往往具有相同的發音成分，其偏旁部首有助於揭示其含義。

Take fēng and fēng.

以 fēng 和 fēng 為例。

The radical shān means mountain, which hints at the first character's definition, summit.

偏旁部首 shān 的意思是山，暗示了第一個字的定義--頂峰。

The radical in the second character, chóng, means insect, and together with the sound component means bee.

第二個字中的部首 chóng 是昆蟲的意思，加上聲旁就是蜜蜂的意思。

While many words in Chinese sound similar, just like in other languages, context or tonality helps clarify their meaning.

與其他語言一樣，中文中的許多詞語聽起來都很相似，但上下文或聲調有助於明確其含義。

Yet how each character is pronounced depends on dialect, which varies across the country.

然而，每個字元的發音取決於方言，而全國各地的方言又不盡相同。

So conversations in Chengdu may sound vastly different than in Nanjing, but in both places, the written language is the same.

是以，成都人的對話聽起來可能與南京人大相徑庭，但在這兩個地方，書面語言是一樣的。

And unlike the Romance languages,

與羅曼語不同的是

Chinese has no gendered nouns or verb conjugations.

中文沒有性別名詞或動詞變位。

So the character chī, meaning to eat, remains unchanged whether the subject is yourself, a co-worker, or a lesion of fearful ghosts.

是以，"chī "這個意為 "吃 "的字，無論對象是自己、同事還是可怕的鬼魂，都不會改變。

To indicate the past, a marker like lè can be added.

為了表示過去，可以加上 lè 這樣的標記。

So I eat bread becomes I ate bread.

所以我吃麵包就變成了我吃麵包。

Over the years, the Chinese writing system has undergone many changes.

多年來，漢字書寫系統經歷了許多變化。

As characters went from being etched in bone to cast in bronze to brushed on paper, their script has evolved along the way.

隨著角色從刻骨到鑄銅再到刷在紙上，他們的劇本也在不斷演變。

In the 1950s and 60s, the Chinese Communist Party introduced new simplified versions of the traditional characters, which are now standard in China, though traditional characters remain in use in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

20 世紀 50 和 60 年代，中國共產黨推出了新的繁體字簡化版本，目前已成為中國的標準字體，但香港和臺灣仍在使用繁體字。

And while the Chinese character system may seem unique, its development greatly influenced the spoken languages and writing systems of its neighbors.

雖然漢字系統看似獨特，但它的發展卻極大地影響了周邊國家的口語和書寫系統。

For example, around 60% of Japanese dictionary entries are kanji, characters that originated in Chinese or were created from its elements.

例如，約 60% 的日語詞典條目都是漢字，即源於中文或由中文元素創造的字元。

With a 3,000-year history,

擁有 3000 年的歷史、

Chinese characters have and will continue to leave their mark.

漢字已經並將繼續留下自己的印記。

Transcription by ESO. Translation by —

轉錄：ESO.翻譯