牛津高中英语M3U2-Project 课文填空练习1

The development of Chinese characters

The Chinese language differs _______ Western languages in _______, instead of an alphabet, it uses characters _______ stand for ideas, objects or deeds. Chinese words _______ (form) by _______ (put) together different characters. In many

_______ (case), a single character can also make _______a word. The history of the Chinese language can _______ (examine) by looking at _______ these characters developed.

Chinese writing began thousands of years ago. According to _______ ancient story, a man _______ (name) Cang Jie invented Chinese writing. One winter day while he _______ (hunt), he saw the tracks of animals _______ the snow and observed that the _______ (appear) of each one was different. Then he had the idea _______ he could use different shapes _______ (represent) different objects. The first Chinese characters were drawings of physical objects. Some characters have been

_______(simplify) and others have _______ (make) more difficult _______ time.

However, _______a whole, the characters have developed from drawings _______ standard forms. The character ________ a mountain was at first three

mountaintops together. This became one mountaintop and three lines, and ________ time turned into the character ________ (use) nowadays.

Not all characters ________ (develop) from drawings of objects. Sometimes ________ (express) ideas, some characters ________ (make) by combining two or more characters together. For example, 'rest’, _____________ (make up) the characters for a man and a tree. The character 'prisoner’ ________ (form) with a ‘man, inside a square. Other characters _____________ (develop) for directions and numbers. ________ is easy to distinguish their meanings by looking at them, for example, the characters for ‘up’ and ‘down’, which are ________ (oppose) of each other.

Though these kinds of characters indicate ________ （mean）, one of their shortcomings ________ (be) that they do not show how they should ________ (pronounce). Therefore, a method ________ (devop) to have one part of a character ________ (indicate) the meaning and ________ (other/others/another/the other/the others) suggest the pronunciation. Many Chinese characters ________ (use) today were made this way.

In the 1950s the Chinese government introduced ________ (simplify) Chinese characters and now they ________________________________________________

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(已在中国大陆全面普及).

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