1 . The Chinese language differs from Western languages     1    in that, instead of an alphabet, it uses characters which stand for ideas, objects or deeds. Chinese words are formed by putting together different characters. In many cases, a single character can also make up a word. The history of the Chinese language can be examined by looking at     2     这些汉字是如何发展的．

Chinese writing began thousands of years ago. According to an ancient story, a man named Cang Jie invented Chinese writing. After seeing the tracks of animals in the snow and observing that the appearance of each one was different,     3     he had the idea that he could use different shapes to represent different objects. The first Chinese characters were drawings of physical objects. Some characters have been simplified and others have been made more difficult over time. However, as a whole, the characters have developed from drawings into standard forms.     4     并非所有的汉字都从物体的图画演变而来.     5     Sometimes to express ideas, some characters were made by combining two or more characters together．