课程 → Level 7 · 语法之门 → 课 8
Level 7 · Lesson 8 《说文解字》
The Shuowen Jiezi
东汉的许慎第一次认真地问：汉字为什么这么写？
Xu Shen, 121 CE: the first analysis of the Chinese character, and the first dictionary arranged by component.
读 · Read
差不多两千年前，有一个人第一次认真地问：汉字为什么长成这个样子？他叫许慎，是东汉的学者。他花了很多年，把当时能见到的九千三百多个汉字收在一起，一个一个地解释：这个字是什么意思，它是哪几块写成的。公元一百二十一年，他的儿子把这本书送给了皇帝。书名叫《说文解字》。它是中国第一本用部首给汉字分类的字典，也是第一本回答“汉字为什么这么写”的书。
Nearly two thousand years ago, one man asked the question seriously for the first time: why does a Chinese character look the way it looks? His name was Xu Shen, a scholar of the Eastern Han. He spent years gathering the 9,353 characters that could be found in his day and explaining each one in turn — what it means, and which blocks it is written from. In 121 CE his son presented the book to the emperor. It is called the 说文解字, and it is both the first Chinese dictionary to file characters by their components and the first book to answer the question you have just started asking.
讲解 · Explanation
先说一个词：字典。字典收的是字，一个一个的汉字；词典收的是词，包括“朋友”“电脑”这样两个字的词。《说文解字》是字典。许慎发现，很多字有同一个偏旁，而这个偏旁常常告诉你这个字跟什么有关系。于是他立了五百四十个部：跟水有关的放进“水”部，跟木有关的放进“木”部，跟女有关的放进“女”部。今天的字典还在用这个办法，只是部首少多了，大概两百来个。
One word first: 字典. A 字典 collects 字, single characters; a 词典 collects 词, words, including two-character words like 朋友 and 电脑. The Shuowen is a 字典. Xu Shen noticed that many characters share a component, and that the shared component usually says something about what the character means. So he set up 540 sections and dropped every character into one of them: water things into the 水 section, tree things into the 木 section, woman things into the 女 section. Dictionaries still work this way. Only the number has shrunk — about two hundred sections today rather than 540.
《说文》解释一个字，先说意思，再说字形。比如“河”字，许慎说它是一条水，然后加一句：“从水，可声。”这四个字讲的是写法：左边的“水”跟意思有关，右边的“可”跟读音有关。汉字里这样的字最多。今天“可”和“河”听起来已经不太像了——两千年里读音变了，这件事第二部分会讲。
A Shuowen entry gives the meaning first and the shape second. For 河 it says the character is a watercourse, and then adds four words: 从水，可声 — 'from 水, with 可 as the sound.' That is the analysis: the 水 on the left has to do with the meaning, the 可 on the right has to do with the pronunciation. Characters built this way are by far the largest group. 可 and 河 no longer sound much alike, because pronunciation has moved a long way in two thousand years; Arc B takes that up in detail.
书名也值得解释一下。古人把不能再拆的字叫“文”，把拆得开的字叫“字”；所以“说文解字”的意思就是：讲清楚“文”，拆开“字”。这正是许慎的做法，也正是我们这几课一直在做的事——先看清楚一个东西有哪几块，再看每一块做什么。第二部分讲汉字的时候，用的还是这本书打下的底子。
The title itself repays a moment. The ancients called a character that cannot be taken apart a 文, and one that can be taken apart a 字. So 说文解字 means: explain the simple graphs, take the compound ones apart. That is exactly Xu Shen's method — and exactly what these lessons have been doing with sentences. First see how many blocks a thing has, then ask what each block does. When Arc B turns to characters, it is still building on this book.
规则 · The rules
生词 · Vocabulary
| 词 | Meaning | 注 · Note |
|---|---|---|
| 说文解字 | the Shuowen Jiezi | 第一本用部首分类的字典 |
| 许慎 | Xu Shen, its author | 东汉学者 |
| 东汉 | the Eastern Han dynasty | 公元二五年到二二〇年 |
| 字典 | character dictionary | 字典收字，词典收词 |
| 解释 | to explain; an explanation | 解释一个字的意思 |
| 学者 | scholar |
练习 · Practice
用一用 · Use it
找一本字典，随便翻到一页，看三个字。每个字问自己三个问题：它的部首是哪一块？这个部首跟它的意思有关系吗？剩下的那一块，会不会跟读音有关系？答不上来也没关系——许慎两千年前问的就是这三个问题，答案要用后面很多课来讲。
Open a dictionary at random and pick three characters. Ask each one three questions: which block is its 部首? Does that block have anything to do with its meaning? And could the remaining block have anything to do with its sound? If you cannot answer, that is fine — those are precisely the three questions Xu Shen asked, and the answers take a whole level of Arc B to lay out.