While there are only twenty-six letters in the English language, there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters. In practice, though, a person needs to know fewer than four thousand to be functionally literate.
The earliest Chinese characters were probably mostly pictograms—where the character looks like the thing it represents—and ideograms. Over the years they have evolved to where they are hard to recognize. Here are three examples.
Today only about four percent of Chinese characters are pictograms, but one is particularly intriguing—the character for “ship” or “large boat.” It’s formed by combining the words for “eight” (the number of people on the ark), “person,” and “boat.”
The earliest Chinese characters were probably mostly pictograms—where the character looks like the thing it represents—and ideograms. Over the years they have evolved to where they are hard to recognize. Here are three examples.
Today only about four percent of Chinese characters are pictograms, but one is particularly intriguing—the character for “ship” or “large boat.” It’s formed by combining the words for “eight” (the number of people on the ark), “person,” and “boat.”
Did ancient Chinese know about the Flood? We don’t really know, but the coincidence is intriguing. There are more than 300 flood stories around the world. Six of them are told in Noah: The Real Story.
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