![]() If Mulan’s family wanted to choose a more recent and simple engraving for their sword, this could have been a possible font too.įrom left to right: seal script, clerical script and regular script. Clerical script, as a formal yet practical font, remains widely used for monuments and gravestones. Created for official use, clerical script came to its prime during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) and was replaced by regular (also known as standard) script (楷书) in the Three Kingdoms Era (220-280 A.D.). In a turning point in Chinese calligraphy, clerical script greatly simplified and standardized the writing system, making it easy to read and write while projecting a formal vibe. Thus, clerical script (隶书) was introduced and promoted for efficiency. Since the unification of fonts and scripts, the Emperor had to deal with seven times more documents than the previous amount. Though ornate and fancy, seal script was soon found to be too complicated for daily writing due to its extravagant nature. All books and documents created in other scripts were located, piled and burned.Ī Seal script engraving of “Whatever” on the sword in the 2019 production of The Untamed. At that time, fonts and scripts were unified into Qin’s local official writing: seal script (篆文). Seven political powers emerged with their own writing systems for the language, until 221 B.C., when six vassal states were conquered and unified under Qin, the first imperial dynasty of China. Scripts from this era are called Chinese bronze inscriptions (金文 literally: metal script), and the logographs became more mature with simplified strokes and consistent styles for each character.Īfter both the Shang and Zhou (1046 – 771 B.C.) dynasties fell apart, vassal states each claimed sovereignty, and languages and scripts evolved within each state independently, like modern Europe. Oracle bone script (L) and Chinese bronze inscription (R): “mountain” and “rain.” (Source: Bronze Script – A Step ForwardĪs the Bronze Age came, words were widely casted onto bronze vessels used for sacrificial ceremonies. Earlier this year, Legend of Deification, a Chinese movie featuring the life story of a famous politician/king advisor of that era, incorporated the oracle bone script style into its poster. This is the font in Chinese history that looks the most ancient, mysterious, primitive, or even tribal. Prior to the Bronze Age, kings and priests on the land that is now China used to carve hieroglyphs onto these same media, set them on fire, and interpret the cracking marks afterwards and the images they carved soon evolved into a script. ![]() The first documented Chinese words, dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 B.C.), were carved into animal bones and tortoise shells for divination, hence the name oracle bone script (甲骨文). ![]() Oracle Bone Script – The First Chinese Words ![]() No one has trained us to think this way, but as native speakers, we’d know it when spotting a misused font, just like how English speakers would never mix the time periods of Gothic fonts, cursive, and typewriter style. The Chinese writing system and fonts, like the language itself, have evolved for thousands of years and the fonts that remain preserved today seem to each serve a default purpose in the speakers’ minds, whether it be for engraving, writing, or printing. (This struggle of losing traditional scripts due to modern technology also exists in many other cultures, for example, Urdu.) They are relatively modern fonts invented for the convenience of print and digital presentation, rather than for carrying cultural value or personality statements. If you do an online search for “Chinese tattoo fail,” you’ll find most of the tattoos are not only hilarious in content, but also feature a similar font style: rigid, squarish, every stroke cleanly separated from each other. “Chinese tattoo fail.” (Source: Unfortunately, this is a common mistake when international languages are visually presented outside their regions.
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