语言与文风2017al3x.svbtle.com
论中文书写：演变
On Chinese Writing: Evolution
导读
这是「On Chinese Writing」系列的第二篇，梳理汉字书写系统如何一步步演变：从李斯以小篆统一文字，到隶书的兴起，以及在单一字符承载多种颜色等细节背后藏着的语言史。它值得写作者一读，因为作者示范了怎样把冷门知识整理成有主线、有人物、有转折的叙事，而不是堆砌知识点。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
遇到看似「奇怪」的语言现象，先放回历史与使用场景里解释，比直接下「这种语言很怪」的判断更有说服力。
- 02
用一个小切口贯穿全篇，比如「一个字为何能表示三种颜色」，让宏大的演变史变得具体可感。
- 03
写历史时交代「谁在用、谁在改写」，把军官与奴隶写成隶书的作者，抽象演变立刻有了人和权力关系。
- 04
指出审美的历史性：后世眼中的「雅」常常建立在此前被视作潦草随意的风格之上，这种反差本身就是文章的洞见。
HN 评论精选
隶书本出自非专业的军官和奴隶之手，后世学者却反过来把它确立为新美学标准——艺术规范常诞生于被轻视的实践。
文章很好，但漏掉了我认为这段历史里最有趣的部分。李斯以小篆统一文字，但据我所知，这种字体除了官方公告、铭刻之类，实际用得并不多。当时秦始皇清洗了官僚阶层，只留下一个小小学派，把大部分文书工作下放给军官和奴隶。这些人把字写得一塌糊涂，用随意的自由体取代了原本精严规整的书写，这就是「隶书」。约一百年后，新皇帝对儒生更宽容，学者们重新出山。此时他们面临选择：用李斯的标准字体，还是采用军官和奴隶那种凌乱自由的书体？惊人的是，他们选了隶书，并基于隶书的特征对汉字书写美学做了彻底的重构。后世那些「精致」的艺术家欣赏未受训练的书写者笔下的流动与动感，把这些特质吸收进一套全新的标准。就一种艺术形式的演变而言，这段历史实在令人叹为观止。
jhedwards查看英文原文
This is a great article but it leaves out what in my opinion is the most interesting part of this history. Li Si unified the script in the form of "Lesser Seal", but this script wasn't used much except for, if I recall correctly, official proclamations, engravings and whatnot. At that time the first emperor purged the bureaucratic class, except for a small school of philosophers, and delegated most clerical tasks down to military officers and slaves. These people absolutely butchered the script and replaced its refined artistic regularity with a more casual free-form style. This is called Li Shu or "clerical script". Fast forward a hundred years or so, the new emperor is kinder to Confucianists and the academics are out of hiding. Now the scholars have a choice: use the standard script of Li Si or adopt the messy free-form style of the officers and slaves. The amazing thing is that they chose to use clerical script and did a complete re-interpretation of the aesthetics of Chinese writing based on the characteristics of that script. The "refined" artists of the later eras appreciated how fluid and dynamic the writing of untrained scribes was and incorporated those qualities into a completely new standard. There's an absolutely mind-blowing history here in terms of the evolution of an art form.
颜色的命名与感知随语言、时代乃至政治而变，因此「中文奇怪」这类判断本身站不住脚。
这算不上什么「极度的怪异」。不仅不同语言的国家对颜色的划分方式不同（国际交通公约要求导航标志用纯绿色，还为此定义了两个「绿」，其中一个据我所知只在日本使用），颜色本身也会随时间改变。还记得「酒暗色的海」吗？英国首相格莱斯顿在从政之前分析过，这不是比喻，而是当时人们感知颜色的真实方式。颜色的选择还牵涉政治：英语的彩虹有八色（红橙黄绿蓝靛紫），是因为牛顿出于神秘主义理由坚持必须是八个——可谁真的用「靛」？多数英语使用者其实只看到六色，就是学校里教的那几种原色。语言本身的政治就更不必说了。
gumby查看英文原文
> and another example of the extreme weirdness of Chinese: why does a single character mean three colors when you have 9353 characters available? That's not an example of extreme weirdness; not only do different languages countries have different colors (international traffic conventions require that navigation signs be a pure green -- and define two, one use AFAIK only in Japan), those colors change over time. Remember the "wine dark sea?" British Prime Minister Gladstone, of all people, analyzed (before going into politics) why this was not metaphorical but actually how color was perceived (best reference I can find at this moment: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2) Politics plays a role in color selection: we have 8 colors in the English rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) because Newton insisted there must be eight for mystical reasons, who really uses indigo? Really most English speakers see six, the primaries taught in school. And lets not get into the politics of language itself. (My grandfather was named Gladstone, surely after the PM. He was born in the bush in South Australia so I'm pretty certain that the PM's early work on Greek had no influence on the choice)
技术能否落地常受书写系统规模影响：活字印刷在中国早四百年却难普及，字符数量是重要成本。
活字印刷术在中国比欧洲早了四百年出现，但没能普及，原因之一是汉字数量太多（此外还有其他复杂因素）。维基百科「活字印刷」词条写道：世界上第一套用于印制纸质书籍的活字印刷技术，约在公元1040年由中国的毕昇发明；约1450年，古腾堡在欧洲做出了另一版本的金属活字印刷机；印刷机可被视为催生文艺复兴的关键因素之一，并因其高效而传遍全球。欧洲语言所需的字符数量有限，是一个重要原因。
jwmullally查看英文原文
The movable-type printing press was invented 400 years earlier in China than Europe, but failed to take off due to the high number of characters (amoung other complexities). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_type > The world's first movable type printing press technology for printing paper books was [...] invented in ancient China around AD 1040 by [...] Bi Sheng > Around 1450 Johannes Gutenberg made another version of a metal movable-type printing press in Europe > The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and due to its effectiveness, its use spread around the globe. > The more limited number of characters needed for European languages was an important factor.
同类还值得读
像说话一样写作
Write like you talk
这篇短文主张写作应像说话一样自然、清晰，避免装腔作势的书面腔。
语言与文风2015 · 647 分 · 272 评4 条写作要点编辑精选法律语言难懂源于写作不佳，而非专业概念
Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
这是一项认知科学研究：法律文本难懂，主要不是因为充斥专业术语，而是因为写作者把句子写得又长又绕、修饰语层层嵌套、回指距离过远。
语言与文风2022 · 559 分 · 322 评5 条写作要点编辑精选写得简单
Write Simply
保罗·格拉汉姆在这篇短文里主张：好文章应该写得简单——用日常词汇、短句、直白的结构，不为显得聪明而堆砌复杂表达。
语言与文风2021 · 484 分 · 330 评4 条写作要点编辑精选Tortured phrases：科学写作中出现的一种可疑文风
Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science
《自然》新闻报道了一种在科学论文中蔓延的怪现象：原本标准的术语被同义替换软件改写成了古怪说法，比如把 "cloud computing" 写成 "haze figuring"。
语言与文风2021 · 329 分 · 256 评4 条写作要点编辑精选乔治·奥威尔 1940 年对《我的奋斗》的书评
George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)
这是奥威尔1940年对《我的奋斗》的书评。
语言与文风2014 · 305 分 · 240 评4 条写作要点编辑精选