Level 8 · Lesson 1

六书总说
The six categories

六书按造字的方法给汉字分类，不按意思分类。

Xu Shen sorted characters by how they were made, not by what they mean — and one category covers most of them.

你已经会了 · You already know this

你已经认识几百个汉字了：人、口、日、月、水、火、书、门、车。也许你没有问过一个问题——这些字是怎么造出来的？东汉的许慎问了，还在《说文解字》里回答了：汉字不是随便画的，造字的方法一共只有六种，古人叫它六书。

You can already read several hundred characters. You have never had to ask where they came from — and Chinese children mostly do not ask either. Xu Shen asked. His Shuōwén Jiězì, presented to the throne in 121 CE, is built on one claim: characters were not invented at random. There are only six ways of making one, and the six have names. This level is those names.

规则 · The rules

六书是古人给汉字分类的六个名字：象形、指事、会意、形声、转注、假借。

规则 1

六书这个名称见于《周礼》；许慎在《说文解字·叙》里第一次给六书下了定义，还举了例字。

The name liùshū is older than Xu Shen — it appears in the Zhōulǐ — but Xu Shen was the first to define each of the six and give example characters.

注意：六书分的是造字的方法，不是意思。日和月同类，不是因为它们都在天上，而是因为它们都是画出来的。反过来，两个意思差不多的字，很可能属于两类。这一点想清楚了，后面十一课都好懂。

Hold on to this: the six sort characters by manufacture, not by meaning. 日 and 月 are in the same class because both are drawings, not because both hang in the sky. Two characters with almost the same meaning can easily fall into two different classes. Get that straight now and the other eleven lessons of this level are easy.

前四种是造字法，造出新字；后两种是用字法，只说明已有的字怎么用。

规则 2

清代学者戴震把这个分法叫做四体二用。

The Qing scholar Dai Zhen called this the 四体二用 view: four ways of making characters, two ways of using them.

象形、指事、会意、形声造字；转注、假借不造字。假借是借一个同音的字来写另一个词，来和其都是这样借来的。转注说的是意思相通、可以互相解释的一对字，例如考和老。这两种，第七课再细讲。

The first four make new characters; the last two do not. 假借 borrows an existing character for a homophone — 来 and 其 both arrived that way. 转注 describes a pair of characters that explain each other, such as 考 and 老. Lesson 7 of this level takes both apart properly; for now, just know they sit on the other side of the line.

形声字最多：《说文解字》收了九千多个字，形声字占八成以上。

规则 3

现代常用汉字里，形声字的比例更高。

Phono-semantic compounds are the overwhelming majority — over four fifths of the Shuowen, and a still larger share of the characters printed today.

为什么形声字这么多？因为象形和指事要一个一个地想办法，画不出来就没办法；形声只要拿一个表示意思的部分，再拿一个表示读音的部分，两个一合，新字就有了。语言里的词越来越多，这个办法最快，所以后来的字几乎都走了这条路。

Why so many? Because drawing has to be reinvented for every single word, and most words cannot be drawn at all. A phono-semantic compound needs no invention: take a part for the meaning, take a part for the sound, put them together, and the character exists. As the vocabulary grew, this was the only method that could keep up.

六书讲的是字的本义；今天的意思，常常是从本义引申来的。

规则 4

本的本义是树根，引申出根本、本来；一本书的本是更晚的用法。

本 first meant the root of a tree; 根本 'basis' and 本来 'originally' are extensions of that, and the measure word in 一本书 is a later use again.

所以看见一个字的时候，可以问两个问题：这个字是怎么造的？它的本义是什么？回答了这两个问题，一个字的今天和三千年前就连起来了。这一级的十二课，做的就是这件事。

So two questions to ask of any character from now on: how was it made, and what did it first mean? Answer both and the character you write today is joined to the one someone cut into bone three thousand years ago. That is the work of this level.

一步一步 · Step by step

本：从树根到一本书

木 — 象形 xiàngxíng — a drawing of a tree
木加下面一画 — a short stroke low on the trunk, pointing at the roots
本 — 本义 běnyì, the original meaning: the root of a tree
根本、本来 — 引申 yǐnshēn — root becomes basis, becomes originally
一本书 — extended once more, into the measure word you have used since level 3

练习 · Practice

六书里，哪一种字最多？ Which of the six categories has the most characters in it?

转注和假借属于什么？ What kind of category are 转注 and 假借?

本的 ______ 是树根；根本、本来是引申出来的意思。 Fill in the term for a character's original meaning.

六书的六个名字。 Match each of the six names to its English label.