“One to Ten” in Chinese writing
Last updated: 26 Feb 2021
This article is part of a compendium of 3500 characters.
(This article has been converted into a course at this Facebook group.)
Please ensure you know these foundational concepts before reading this article:
- Radicals: indexing radicals, abbreviated radicals, improvised radicals
- Writing strokes: our 7 Stroke Types nomenclature
(“right down throw press dot rise hook”) - Character construction principles: pictorial, semantic, phonetic, and combinations thereof.
Keep these 2 reference sources at hand when you read this article:
- 汉字部首表 (Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components)
(We will refer to this as “Table of Radicals”.) - 通用规范汉字表 (Table of General Standard Chinese Characters)
(We will refer to this as “Table of Characters”.)
Lost (or non-existent) historical records often cloud the real reasons for evolutionary paths taken by Chinese written forms.
The following stories about the evolution of written forms for “one to ten” collect the most plausible and most memorable and mnemonic stories among various theories postulated.
The aim, as usual, is to facilitate your easy learning of Chinese writing.
One to Three, ‘一 二 三’
“One”, “two” and “three” are simple enough, represented by the appropriate number of horizontal lines (“right” stroke): ‘一’ (character 1), ‘二’ (character 3), ‘三’ (character 22).
Four, ‘四’ (character 262)
The natural progression from “three” (‘三’) would link to an early form for “four” that is too tall to fit into a consistent square space. It was also visually tedious; manually counting the number of similar strokes would slow reading speed.
Recall that Chinese character construction fits into a “consistent square space” (see character construction for ‘刀’, “knife”, at section “It only gets easier → Reversing the mutations”).
Character forms evolved to wrap pictorial shapes into square boundaries. As each character is a consistent square space, you’ll often encounter pictorial shapes bent to fit.
An early evolutionary path may have attempted to write the 4 horizontal strokes vertically, but would then quickly encounter the same square-space constraint (too wide, rather than too tall). Also because manually counting the 4 strokes may slow reading speed, 2 of the strokes have been simplified into a single circle. Hence, we see a rotation (horizontal to vertical) and a simplification in a subsequent form.
Not only was the number of similar strokes (4 vertical strokes) reduced (to 2) for visual clarity, the evolution also neatly packed the written form into a consistent square space.
The vague circular shape then turned into neat lines in the current written form. (Note that the “hook” in the second stroke that is “right-down-hook” is a calligraphic style; actual form is 4 straight lines for the bounding box.)
Five, ‘五’ (character 88)
The early form for “five”, much like for “four”, was a visually tedious stack of horizontal strokes.
The bounding two strokes, top and bottom, were retained while the rest were abbreviated into a generic ‘X’, improving visual clarity. Also, we see the written form packing into a consistent square space (no longer too tall).
The ‘X’ might have proved difficult to write; meticulously connecting every extremity to the bounding horizontal lines takes effort. The next evolutionary step sees a flowing and rapid cursive style that dispensed the need to connect the ‘X’ completely. (Perhaps people also wondered why a generic ‘O’ couldn’t be used instead of a generic ‘X’.)
Through the standardization of writing strokes, the amorphous form above became neat lines today.
From here on, we will have to rely the Chinese character construction mechanism of “phonetic construction”, aka “phonetic borrowing” in which the written form is borrowed from another character that sounds the same (homophone).
Imagine in English how young children may “borrow” (erroneously) the spelling of “see” to stand for “sea”, and we will literally arrive at what “phonetic borrowing” in Chinese writing means! If “see” means “sea”, then we will need to assign another word to mean “see”; that is what happens in the following cases — “six”, “seven”, “eight” and “nine” — of phonetic borrowing.
Six, ‘六’ (character 160)
The story of the character for “six” breaks from the pattern seen in “one” through “five”. It was likely that the earliest Chinese only needed to count to “five” (in the case of writing, at least).
The story starts at a very early time when people lived in simple lodges, which in those times might have been nothing more than a simple hut. At that time, the character ‘六’ stood for “lodge”, not “six”.
The earliest forms of housing looked exactly like the earliest written form for “lodge”. At this point, note that the concept “six” probably wasn’t in the Chinese writing system yet.
At some point, when literacy and writing expanded and people probably found the need to actually write “six”, the character ‘六’ was assigned to the meaning “six”. Why?
The assignment was likely for phonetic reason, the pronunciation for “six” (luk6 in Cantonese, which actually sounds like “lok”) was possibly very close to (or exactly) the pronunciation for “lodge” (lou4 in Cantonese, which really rhymes with “lok”). Therefore, the question of “what to write to represent ‘six’ ” was probably answered by borrowing the writing for “lodge”.
Speech undoubtedly came before writing. Due to homophones (or near-homophones), phonetic borrowings in Chinese writing, such as from “lodge” (lu2) to “six” (liu4), are common.
Perhaps the need to write “six” was more urgent than the need to write “lodge” due to early trade? Maybe that was why the written form for “lodge” was appropriated for “six”?
A more likely reason is that ancient Chinese assigned simpler written forms to represent numerals, and created more complex forms to represent concepts more complex than mere numerals.
Now that the writing for “lodge” has been appropriated for the concept of “six”, a new character ‘庐’ was created for “lodge”. I will write separately about the character ‘庐’.
(TODO: Link to article that explains character construction for ‘庐’.)
Today, the written form for “six” has neat lines.
Remembering the story of “lodge” (‘庐’, lu2, character 839) and “six” (‘六’, liu4, character 160), along with their pronunciations that are still very close, may help us easily memorize how to write “six”. That would certainly help us learn both characters ‘庐’ (“lodge”) and ‘六’ (“six”)!
Seven, ‘七’ (character 7)
The story of the character “seven” likely follows the same phonetic borrowing seen for “six”.
The original meaning for the written form of “seven”, from antiquity, was “to cut”.
Similar to the phonetic borrowing seen for “lodge” to “six”, there could have been very close phonetic proximity between “to cut” (qie1) and “seven” (qi1). As with the case for “lodge” and “six”, the simple written form for “to cut” was appropriated for the concept of “seven”, and a more complex written form was created to represent “to cut”.
This is another case of phonetic borrowing that appropriates the writing from another concept (“to cut”, in this case) to a numeral concept (“seven”, in this case).
As the writing for “to cut” has been assigned to “seven”, a new character ‘切’ (character 107) was created to mean “to cut”.
Note that today’s character ‘切’ (“to cut”, character 107) has a left radical that is an abbreviation of ‘七’ (and a right radical that is ‘刀’, “knife”, character 18). Unsurprisingly, the pronunciation for ‘切’ (qie1) is rather close to ‘七’ (qi1).
(TODO: Link to article that explains character construction for ‘切’.)
Still, there remains one more mystery. The old form for “seven” doesn’t look like the current form that is ‘七’. Why?
By the time ancient Chinese found a need to write beyond “five”, they probably invented the written forms for “six” through “ten” in a hurry (for early commerce? invented via a single scholar?), at which time written forms for “seven” and “ten” would exist concurrently. In such a hurry, there would expectedly be a higher chance for collision of written forms. As it turns out, “seven” and “ten” looked almost the same.
The old form for “seven” looked too much like the old (and current) form for “ten”. Something has to give. The form for “seven” was aesthetically morphed.
The evolution from the above old form to the current form was clearly to distinguish from “ten” (‘十’, discussed further below), by bending the “down” stroke to the right. (Note how bending the “down” stroke to the right balances the “rise” stroke that drops to the left. Aesthetics!)
Memorizing the character for “seven” is a lot easier than that for “six”. The character ‘七’ retains a connection to its old meaning via its appearance (as a left radical) in ‘切’.
Eight, ‘八’ (character 9)
The story of the character “eight” is probably along the same lines as that for “six” and “seven”: an appropriation of simple written form from another concept that is more complex than mere numerals. As well, the story here also involves phonetic borrowing.
The original meaning for the written form of “eight”, from antiquity, was “to separate”.
This written form hasn’t changed much.
Similar to the phonetic borrowing seen for “to cut” to “seven” — there is close phonetic proximity between “to separate” (ba1) and “eight” (ba1) — the simple written form for “to separate” was appropriated for the concept of “eight”, and a more complex written form ‘扒’ (“to separate”, character 201) was created to represent “to separate”.
Yet another case of phonetic borrowing. From “to separate” (ba1) to “eight” (ba1). Also, we see a simple written form (‘八’) assigned to a mere numeral (‘eight’) while a more detailed form (‘扒’) is invented for a more complex concept (“to separate”).
(TODO: Link to article that explains character construction for ‘扒’.)
Memorizing the character for “eight” is easy, as with that for “seven”. The character ‘八’ retains a connection to its old meaning via its appearance (as a right radical) in ‘扒’. (The left radical ‘扌’ semantically stands for “action”, as explained in a separate article all about “hand”.)
Nine, ‘九’ (character 15)
By now, we shouldn’t be faulted for expecting the story of the character “nine” to follow that for “six”, “seven” and “eight”. And we would be correct in our expectation! (Scholars who invented Chinese writing would likely continue to use a proven methodology!)
The original meaning for the written form of “nine”, from antiquity, was “elbow”. Note how the blue highlight shows its evolution to the current form which we display further below.
The pictorial construction of “nine” is evident: it is a right hand attached to a bending arm (presumably bent at the elbow). (The form looks particularly bendy, but consider how indiscernible a single bend might be. The bendy form also keeps within space constraints better.)
The phonetic proximity between “elbow” (zhou3) and “nine” (jiu3) can only be observed with an adequate understanding of Han Yu Pin Yin. In that romanization system, vowel combination ‘iu’ is pronounced like ‘iou’, hence ‘ou’ in zhou3 actually rhymes very well with ‘iu’ in jiu3. The consonant ‘j’ sounds like ‘z’ and ‘zh’ in Han Yu Pin Yin, so the phonetic proximity is indeed very close.
The character ‘肘’ (“elbow”, zhou3, character 806) was invented to stand for “elbow” after the original simple form was appropriated to stand for “nine”.
(TODO: Link to article that explains character construction for ‘肘’. Literally, the radicals are “meat” and “hand”.)
How does the old form of “nine” end up like today’s form? The 3-pronged hand is spread out on the left, while the bending arm goes to the right. Remember: characters evolve to fill out a consistent square space; the old form was too tall.
(Recall that Chinese character construction fits into a “consistent square space”. See character construction for ‘刀’, “knife”, at section “It only gets easier → Reversing the mutations”).
Memorizing the character for “nine” is easy enough, though as hard as for “six”. The character ‘九’ still looks like an elbow pictorially, just as ‘六’ still resembles a lodge pictorially. Remembering that ‘九’ (“nine”, jiu3) sounds very close to ‘肘’ (“elbow”, zhou3) will help us learn both characters!
Ten, ‘十’ (character 4)
Legend has it that ancient Chinese, before they discovered writing, used strings and knots to record events. Perhaps that was their spreadsheet for census and accounting?
That legend was also rumored to say that the system of strings and knots used by ancient Chinese were:
- Sophisticated, consisting of large and small knots.
- Every 9 small knots are followed by 1 large knot.
(Possibly to facilitate quick counting.)
Since every 10th knot is a large knot, if legend is true, that would explain why the “large knot in a string” would be the written form to stand for “ten”.
Another mnemonic could be to think of “ten” as “complete”, such as in the proverb “十全十美” (literally “ten completeness ten beautiful”, meaning “perfectly good”). Even in Western culture, we have the phrase “perfect ten”. By this mnemonic, we can consider the written form to “completely cover all directions, horizontal and vertical”.
In a humorous turn, it might even be easier to memorize this series: “one two three four five, hut cut part elbow ten”.
We’ve completed the extraction of useful mnemonics for memorizing characters “one” through “ten”. Ironically, these simple numerals and simple written forms have proven difficult to learn (save for “one” through “three”) for beginner Chinese learners. Now you know why! We just need a good “blast to the past” to get a good grasp on these written forms.
