A Study On Features Of The Chinese Character During 16th To 19th Western Sinology

From the 16th to the 19th centuries,Western missionaries and scholars had given perseverant efforts to perceive the features of Chinese characters.These sinologists were not only Chinese learners,researchers but also spreaders.It is of great value for today' s Chinese character teaching to learn about European' s learning and study conditions from the existing books and manuscripts in Western Sinology.This paper take features of the Chinese character during 16th to 19th western sinology as the main object of study.First of all,the paper sorted and described the letters and major publications of the western missionaries and scholars in chronological order,and found that westerns had researched and explored mainly three aspects of features of the Chinese character:the Chinese characters' nature and function when recording Chinese Language as writing symbols,the structure and the sense of configuration,the stability of Chinese character and the amount of it.Besides,many sinologists tended to interpret the shapes and semantics of Chinese character in imagic ways.The paper discussed the ways of learning and memory by taking A Treatise on Mnemonics of Matteo Ricci as the the most typical example.Based upon analysis,the paper found that Matteo Ricci had created three different way to change the shapes,sounds and semantics of Chinese character into psychological impressions,which contains the usage of original image,the creation of image,or borrowing the image from homophone characters.And the book had suggested that the method would lead to a better memory for those character learners.Mostly the learner could use the strokes,components,or meaning of characters to create a complete meaningful picture or scene.To remember the words,he suggested the learners could use associative network.The mnemonics of Matteo Ricci could help learners to enhance the efficiency when recollecting Chinese characters,and which should be considered as an effective way by learners and instructors.Finally,the paper summarized the enlightenment for contemporary Chinese characters teaching,such as making use of the principles in in traditional ways,using the component disassembly method,creating the associative network among characters and words,etc.