NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Chinese character

A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字; pinyin: Hànzì) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Traditional Chinese (Traditional Chinese: æ£é«”å—/ç¹é«”å—, Simplified Chinese: æ£ä½“å—/ç¹ä½“å—) refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... HÃ¡n tá»± (æ¼¢å—, lit. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Image File history File links Zh-han4zi4. ... Min (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: BÃ¢n hong-giÃ¢n; BUC: MÃ¬ng huÅng-ngiÃ²ng) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Teochew dialect (Diō-jiu-oē, Chinese:潮州话, Hanyu Pinyin: Cháozhōuhuà, Teochiu or Tiuchiu), is a Chinese language and dialect of Minnan spoken in a region of eastern Guangdong refered to as Chaoshan. ... Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese spoken varieties of Chinese. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Shanghainese (ä¸Šæµ·è¨€è¯ [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... Northern Wu Romanization Scheme. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ... Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji The Hepburn romanization system ) is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japaneseâ€“English dictionary, published... Japanese writing Kanji æ¼¢å— Kana ä»®å Hiragana å¹³ä»®å Katakana ç‰‡ä»®å Uses Furigana æŒ¯ã‚Šä»®å Okurigana é€ã‚Šä»®å Romaji ãƒãƒ¼ãƒžå— Kunrei-shiki (è¨“ä»¤å¼, Cabinet-ordered system) is a romanization system, that is, a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. ... McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced (a modified) McCune-Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000. ... The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order: Vietnamese also uses the 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph below. ... HÃ¡n tá»± (æ¼¢å—, lit. ... A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of writing systems (scripts). ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Variant Chinese characters are Chinese characters that can be used interchangeably. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... The second round of Chinese character simplification was officially promulgated on December 20, 1977 by the Peoples Republic of China, and replaced the existing (first round) simplified Chinese characters that were already in use. ... The Traditional Chinese characters versus Simplified Chinese characters debate (ç¹ç°¡ä¹‹çˆ, more recently: æ£ç°¡ä¹‹çˆ) has existed for a long time among Chinese users. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ... It has been suggested that Shakukun be merged into this article or section. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Idu munja is an archaic writing system which represents the Korean language using hanja. ... HÃ¡n tá»± (æ¼¢å—, lit. ... Chá»¯ nÃ´m (ð¡¦‚å–ƒ lit. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島松下問童子言師採藥去隻在此山中雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lÃ¬shu; Japanese: éš¸æ›¸ä½“, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (æ¥·æ›¸ Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (æ£æ¥·), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Chinese characters of Cursive Script in regular script (left) and cursive script (right). ... Since the Chinese language uses a logographic script â€” that is, a script where one or two characters corresponds roughly to one word or meaning â€” there are vastly more characters, or glyphs, than there are keys on a standard computer keyboard. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms. ...

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.^[1] The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: åº·ç†™å—å…¸; Pinyin: KÄngxÄ« ZÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese character dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ...

In the Chinese writing system, each character corresponds to a single spoken syllable. A majority of words in all modern varieties of Chinese are poly-syllabic and thus require two or more characters to write. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. In addition, many Chinese characters were adopted according to their meaning by the Japanese and Korean languages to represent native words, disregarding pronunciation altogether. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation). ... Look up cognate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Non-Chinese languages which have adopted sinography — and, with the orthography, a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language — are known as Sinoxenic languages, whether or not they still use the characters. The term does not imply any genetic affiliation with Chinese. The major Sinoxenic languages are generally considered to be Japanese and Vietnamese. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Sinograph. ...

History

Precursors

In the 1970s, Neolithic proto-writing was discovered that may be ancestral to the Oracle Bone Script. At Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered "featuring 8453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing." These pictographs have been deemed comparable to the early characters of the Bronze Age.^[2] Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 513 pixelsFull resolution (1965 Ã— 1260 pixel, file size: 382 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) (All user names refer to en. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 513 pixelsFull resolution (1965 Ã— 1260 pixel, file size: 382 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) (All user names refer to en. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... This article is about the ancient Chinese dynasty. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Writing systems evolved in the 4th millennium BC out of neolithic proto-writing. ... Damaidi (å¤§éº¥åœ°) is a small village in China located in Zhongwei County in Ningxia, among the Weining Mountains on the north bend of the Yellow River. ... Ningxia (Simplified Chinese: å®å¤; Traditional Chinese: å¯§å¤; Pinyin: NÃngxiÃ ; Wade-Giles: Ning-hsia; Postal Pinyin: Ningsia), full name Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Simplified Chinese: å®å¤å›žæ—è‡ªæ²»åŒº; Traditional Chinese: å¯§å¤å›žæ—è‡ªæ²»å€; Pinyin: NÃngxiÃ HuÃzÃº ZÃ¬zhÃ¬qÅ«), is a Hui autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China, located on the northwest Loess...

Although the earliest forms of primitive Chinese writing are no more than individual symbols and therefore cannot be considered a true written script, the inscriptions found on bones (dated to 2500–1900 BC) used for the purposes of divination from the late Neolithic Longshan (simplified Chinese: 龙山; traditional Chinese: 龍山; pinyin: lóngshān) culture (c. 3200–1900 BC) are identified by some to as proto-writing. It is possible that these inscriptions are ancestral to the later Oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty and therefore the modern Chinese script, since late Neolithic culture found in Longshan is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists to be ancestral to the Bronze Age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou dynasties. Longshan culture (é¾å±±æ–‡åŒ–) was a late Neolithic culture centered around the central and lower Yellow River in China. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... The Erlitou culture (äºŒé‡Œé æ–‡åŒ–) (1900 BC to 1500 BC) is a name given by archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age society that existed in China. ... Shang Dynasty (Chinese: 商朝) or Yin Dynasty (殷代) (1600 BC - 1046 BC) followed the legendary Xia Dynasty and preceded the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) in China. ... Zhou refers to Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) or Zhou state Zhou Dynasty (690 AD - 705 AD) Zhou (political division) â€” Zhou is the name of a political/administrative division of China. ...

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell-bone-script"). The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC).^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] However, as the symbols used are predominantly pictographs, the linkages to the modern Chinese writing system would be decipherable only to linguistic archaeologists. The oracle bone inscriptions were discovered at what is now called the Yin Ruins near Anyang city in 1899. Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley. ... Replica of an oracle bone -- turtle shell Replica of an oracle bone -- ox scapula Oracle bones (ç”²éª¨ç‰‡ pinyin: jiÇŽgÇ”piÃ n) are pieces of bone or turtle shell used in royal divination in the mid Shang to early Zhou dynasties in ancient China, and often bearing written inscriptions in what... Anyang (Simplified Chinese: å®‰é˜³, Traditional Chinese: å®‰é™½; pinyin: Ä€nyÃ¡ng) is a prefecture-level city in Henan province, Peoples Republic of China. ...

Legendary origins

According to legend, Chinese characters were by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zì — Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of civilization, for good and for bad. Portrait of Cangjie showing his four eyes and eight pupils Cang Jie(Traditional Chinese: å€‰é ¡; Simplified Chinese: ä»“é¢‰, Pinyin: cÄng jiÃ©), is a legendary figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of the Chinese characters. ... Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor or Huang Di (Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , pinyin: huÃ¡ngdÃ¬) is a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero who is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese. ... Shanxi (Chinese: å±±è¥¿; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal System Pinyin: Shansi) is a province in the northern part of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Iron Age to medieval

The Seal script evolved out of the Zhōu dynasty script (see bronze script), arising in the Warring State of Qin. Seal script became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qin dynasty, and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty. The Semi-cursive script develops as a variant of the clerical script in the early centuries AD. Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島松下問童子言師採藥去隻在此山中雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... This article is about the ancient Chinese dynasty. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Alternative meaning: Warring States Period (Japan) The Warring States Period (traditional Chinese: 戰國時代, simplified Chinese: 战国时代 pinyin Zhànguó Shídài) takes place from sometime in the 5th century BC to the unification of China by Qin in 221 BC. It is nominally considered to be the second part of the Eastern... Qin or Chin (Wade-Giles) (ç§¦), pronounced something like Shin, (778 BC-207 BC) was a state during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of China. ... Qin Dynasty in 210 BC Capital Xianyang Language(s) Chinese Government Monarchy History - Unification of China 221 BC - Death of Qin Shi Huangdi 210 BC - Surrender to Liu Bang 206 BC The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Chao) (221 BC - 206 BC) was preceded by the... This article is about the authentication means. ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication to Cao Wei 220... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ...

The Japanese Kanji were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 1st century AD. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ...

The traditional style of Chinese writing emerges with the Clerical script in the 5th century AD. The Regular script style matures in the 7th century. The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lÃ¬shu; Japanese: éš¸æ›¸ä½“, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (æ¥·æ›¸ Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (æ£æ¥·), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and...

The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 7th century (Hanja). Adaptation for Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm) emerged in the 13th century. This article is about the Korean civilization. ... The grounds of Koreas Buryeongsa Temple. ... Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Chá»¯ nÃ´m (ð¡¦‚å–ƒ lit. ...

Modern history

Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the PRC's formation in 1949. One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lu Feikui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared briefly, then disappeared. Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known as the [[. In East Asia, the rise of militarism occurred. ... The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949. ... The Kuomintang of China (abbreviation KMT) [1], also often translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a political party in the Republic of China (ROC), now on Taiwan, and is currently the largest political party in terms of seats in the Legislative Yuan, and the oldest political party in the... The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. ... A car from 1956 Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Also Nintendo emulator: 1964 (emulator). ... The 1950s decade refers to the years 1950 to 1959 inclusive. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...

"Han unification" was completed for the purposes of Unicode in 1991 (Unicode 1.0). Han unification is the process used by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ...

Written styles

There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used. These characters were used over 3,000 years ago. Image File history File links CaoshuShupu. ... Image File history File links CaoshuShupu. ... For the band, see Tang Dynasty (band). ... Part of the Treatise on Calligraphy Sun Guoting (Traditional Chinese: å«éŽåº), or Sun Qianli (å«è™”ç¦®)[1]was a Chinese calligrapher of the early Tang Dynasty, remembered for his cursive calligraphy and his Treatise on Calligraphy (æ›¸èœ). The work was the first important theoretical work on Chinese calligraphy, and has remained important ever since...

The Oracle Bone and Bronzeware scripts being no longer used, the oldest script that is still in use today is the Seal Script (simplified Chinese: 篆书; traditional Chinese: 篆書; pinyin: zhuànshū). It evolved organically out of the Zhou bronze script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals this was copied and sticked. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style. Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Left: Bronze fang zun ritual wine container dated c. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島松下問童子言師採藥去隻在此山中雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... For the volcano in Indonesia, see Emperor of China (volcano). ... The monarch known now as Qin Shi Huang (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Shih-huang) (259 BCE â€“ September 10, 210 BCE),[1] personal name YÃng ZhÃ¨ng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BCE to 221 BCE (officially still under the Zhou Dynasty), and... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ...

Scripts that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (simplified Chinese: 隶书; traditional Chinese: 隸書; pinyin: lìshū) of the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, the Weibei (Chinese: 魏碑; pinyin: wèibēi), the "Regular Script" (simplified Chinese: 楷书; traditional Chinese: 楷書; pinyin: kǎishū) used for most printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (simplified Chinese: 行书; traditional Chinese: 行書; pinyin: xíngshū) used for most handwriting. The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lÃ¬shu; Japanese: éš¸æ›¸ä½“, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Qin Dynasty in 210 BC Capital Xianyang Language(s) Chinese Government Monarchy History - Unification of China 221 BC - Death of Qin Shi Huangdi 210 BC - Surrender to Liu Bang 206 BC The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Chao) (221 BC - 206 BC) was preceded by the... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication to Cao Wei 220... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (æ¥·æ›¸ Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (æ£æ¥·), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

The Cursive Script (simplified Chinese: 草书; traditional Chinese: 草書; pinyin: cǎoshū; literally "grass script") is not in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the Simplified Chinese characters adopted by the People's Republic of China, and some of the simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the Cursive Script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script. Cursive is a style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ...

There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the standard scripts described above. Edomoji (æ±Ÿæˆ¸æ–‡å—) are Japanese lettering styles which were invented for advertising in the Edo period. ...

Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島松下問童子言師採藥去隻在此山中雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lÃ¬shu; Japanese: éš¸æ›¸ä½“, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Semi-cursive script is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Cursive is a style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (æ¥·æ›¸ Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (æ£æ¥·), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Traditional Chinese (Traditional Chinese: æ£é«”å—/ç¹é«”å—, Simplified Chinese: æ£ä½“å—/ç¹ä½“å—) refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (æ¥·æ›¸ Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (æ£æ¥·), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Ri_Trad. ... Sol redirects here. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuue_Trad. ... This article is about Earths moon. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Shan_Trad. ... For other uses, see Mountain (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Shui_Trad. ... Impact from a water drop causes an upward rebound jet surrounded by circular capillary waves. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Yuu_Trad. ... This article is about precipitation. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu4_Trad. ... For other uses, see Wood (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_He_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_He_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_He_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_He_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_He_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_He_Trad. ... For other uses, see Millet (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Ren_Trad. ... This article is about modern humans. ... Image File history File links Character_Nuu_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Nuu_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Nuu_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Nuu_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Nuu_Trad. ... Diverse women. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Mu_Trad. ... Mom and Mommy redirect here. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Eye_Trad. ... For other uses, see Eye (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Niu_Trad. ... For general information about the genus, including other species of cattle, see Bos. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Yang_Trad. ... Species See text. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Trad. ... Image File history File links Character_Ma_Simp. ... Binomial name Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758 The horse (Equus caballus, sometimes seen as a subspecies of the Wild Horse, Equus ferus caballus) is a large odd-toed ungulate mammal, one of ten modern species of the genus Equus. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Trad. ... Image File history File links Character_Niao_Simp. ... For other uses, see Bird (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Trad. ... Image File history File links Character_Gui_Simp. ... For other uses, see Tortoise (disambiguation). ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Trad. ... Image File history File links Character_Long_Simp. ... Japanese name Hiragana: KyÅ«jitai: Shinjitai: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Thai name Thai: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: The Chinese dragon is a Chinese mythical creature, depicted as a long, scaled, snake-like creature with four claws. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Oracle. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Seal. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Cler. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Semi. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Cur. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Trad. ... Image File history File links Character_Feng_Simp. ... Chinese Phoenix sculpture, Nanning city, Guangxi province. ...

Formation of characters

The early stages of the development of characters were dominated by pictograms, in which meaning was expressed directly by the shapes. The development of the script, both to cover words for abstract concepts and to increase the efficiency of writing, has led to the introduction of numerous non-pictographic characters. There are several kinds of Chinese characters, including a handful of pictograms (è±¡å½¢ pinyin: xiÃ ngxÃng) and a number of indicatives (æŒ‡äº‹ zhÇshÃ¬), but the vast majority are phono-semantic compounds (å½¢è² xÃngshÄ“ng). ... The left part of mÄ, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ... An excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters. ... An excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

The various types of character were first classified c. 100 AD by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen, whose etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字/说文解字) divides the script into six categories, the liùshū (六書/六书). While the categories and classification are occasionally problematic and arguably fail to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, the system has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.[1] XÇ” ShÃ¨n XÇ” ShÃ¨n (è¨±æ…Ž) was the author of ShuÅwÃ©n JiÄ›zÃ¬, which was the first Chinese character dictionary. ... a version of Shuowen Jiezi ShuÅwÃ©n JiÄ›zÃ¬ (èªªæ–‡è§£å—, Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters) was the first Chinese character dictionary, compiled by XÇ” ShÃ¨n between 100 CE and 121 CE in Han Dynasty China. ...

Four percent of Chinese characters are derived directly from individual pictograms (Chinese: 象形字; pinyin: xiàngxíngzì), and in most of those cases the relationship is not necessarily clear to the modern reader. Of the remaining 96%, some are logical aggregates (simplified Chinese: 会意字; traditional Chinese: 會意字; pinyin: huìyìzì), which are characters combined from multiple parts indicative of meaning. But most characters are pictophonetics (simplified Chinese: 形声字; traditional Chinese: 形聲字; pinyin: xíng-shēngzì), characters containing two parts where one indicates a general category of meaning and the other the sound. The sound in such characters is often only approximate to the modern pronunciation because of changes over time and differences between source languages. Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Pictophonetic refers to a class of Chinese characters containing two parts: one indicating a general category of meaning and the other the sound. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

Pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì)

Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. While characters in this class derive from pictures, they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 (rì) for "sun", 月 (yuè) for "moon", and 木 (mù) for "tree"....[2]

There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) estimated that 4% of characters fell into this category.

Pictophonetic compounds (形聲字/形声字, Xíngshēngzì)

Also called semantic-phonetic compounds, or phono-semantic compounds, this category represents the largest group of characters in modern Chinese. Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character represents.

Examples are 河 (hé) river, 湖 (hú) lake, 流 (liú) stream, 沖 (chōng) riptide, 滑 (huá) slippery. All these characters have on the left a radical of three dots, which is a simplified pictograph for a water drop, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 冲 (chōng), the phonetic indicator is 中 (zhōng), which by itself means middle. In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character has diverged from that of its phonetic indicator; this process means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today. Further, the choice of radicals may also seem arbitrary in some cases; for example, the radical of 貓 (māo) cat is 豸 (zhì), originally a pictograph for worms, but in characters of this sort indicating an animal of any sort. The left part of mÄ, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ...

Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 AD) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary. The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: åº·ç†™å—å…¸; Pinyin: KÄngxÄ« ZÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese character dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ...

Ideograph (指事字, zhǐshìzì)

Also called a simple indicative, simple ideograph, or ideogram, characters of this sort either add indicators to pictographs to make new meanings, or illustrate abstract concepts directly. For instance, while 刀 (dāo) is a pictogram for "knife", placing an indicator in the knife makes 刃 (rèn), an ideogram for "blade". Other common examples are 上 (shàng) for "up" and 下 (xià) for "down". This category is small, as most concepts can be represented by characters in other categories.

Logical aggregates (會意字/会意字, Huìyìzì)

Also translated as associative compounds, characters of this sort combine pictograms to symbolize an abstract concept. For instance, 木 (mu) is a pictogram of a tree, and putting two 木 together makes 林 (lin), meaning forest. Combining 日 (rì) sun and 月 (yuè) moon makes 明 (míng) bright, which is traditionally interpreted as symbolizing the combination of sun and moon as the natural sources of light.

Some scholars flatly reject the existence of this category, opining that failure of modern attempts to identify a phonetic in an alleged logical aggregate is due simply to our not looking at ancient so-called secondary readings.^[7] These are readings that were once common but have since been lost as the script evolved over time. Commonly given as a logical aggregate is ān 安 "peace" which is popularly said to be a combination of "building" 宀 and "woman" 女, together yielding something akin to "all is peaceful with the woman at home". However, 女 was in olden days most likely a polyphone with a secondary reading of *an, as may be gleaned from the set yàn 妟 "tranquil", nuán 奻 "to quarrel", jiān 姦 "licentious".

Adding weight to this argument is the fact that characters claimed to belong to this "group" are almost invariably interpreted from modern forms rather than the archaic versions which as a rule are vastly different and often far more graphically complex. However, interpretations differ greatly, as can be evidenced from thorough studies of different sources.^[8]

Associate Transformation (轉注字/转注字, Zhuǎnzhùzì)

Characters in this category originally didn't represent the same meaning but have bifurcated through orthographic and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 (kǎo) to verify and 老 (lǎo) old were once the same character, meaning "elderly person", but detached into two separate words. Characters of this category are rare, so in modern systems this group is often omitted or combined with others. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. ...

Borrowing (假借字, Jiǎjièzì)

Also called phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 (zì), which has lost its original meaning of nose completely and exclusively means oneself, or 萬 (wan), which originally meant scorpion but is now used only in the sense of ten thousand. In Written Chinese, jiajie (å‡å€Ÿ borrow; make use of) is the practice of using the character for one word to write another homophonous or near-homophonous word. ...

This technique has become uncommon, since there is considerable resistance to changing the meaning of existing characters. However, it has been used in the development of written forms of dialects, notably Cantonese and Taiwanese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, due to the amount of dialectal vocabulary which historically has had no written form and thus lacks characters of its own. This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... For other uses, see Formosan languages, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Languages of Taiwan. ...

Written variants

Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters occupying a roundish area, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area. Characters made up of multiple parts squash these parts together in order to maintain a uniform size and shape — this is the case especially with characters written in the Sòngtǐ style. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (simplified Chinese: 方块字; traditional Chinese: 方塊字; pinyin: fāngkuàizì). The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ... fig. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

The actual shape of many Chinese characters varies in different cultures. Mainland China adopted simplified characters in 1956, but Traditional Chinese characters are still used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Singapore has also adopted simplified Chinese characters. Postwar Japan has used its own less drastically simplified characters since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of romanized Vietnamese and hangul, respectively. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Shinjitai (in Shinjitai: ; in KyÅ«jitai: æ–°å—é«”; meaning new character form), are the forms of Kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the TÅyÅ Kanji List in 1946. ... The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order: Vietnamese also uses the 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph below. ... Jamo redirects here. ...

Orthography

The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs for any character, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. The widespread usage of the characters in several different nations has prevented any one system becoming universally adopted; consequently, the standard shape of any given character in Chinese usage may differ subtly from its standard shape in Japanese or Korean usage, even where no simplification has taken place. Allography, from the Greek for other writing, has several meanings which all relate to how words and sounds are written down. ...

Usually, each Chinese character takes up the same amount of space, due to their block-like square nature. Beginners therefore typically practice writing with a grid as a guide. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, stroke placement, and the order in which they are written (stroke order). Most words can be written with just one stroke order, though some words also have variant stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts; certain characters are also written with different stroke orders in different languages. Outline of the character æ°¸, showing stroke order. ...

Common typefaces

There are two common typefaces based on the regular script for Chinese characters akin to serif and sans-serif fonts in the West. The most popular for body text is a family of fonts called the Song typeface (宋体), also known as Minchō (明朝) in Japan, and Ming typeface (明體) in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these fonts come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical regularity. This typeface is similar to Western serif fonts such as Times New Roman in both appearance and function. Image File history File links Hanzitypefaces. ... Image File history File links Hanzitypefaces. ... In typography, serifs are non-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. ... In typography, serifs are the small features at the end of strokes within letters. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Northern Song in 1111 AD Capital Bianjing (æ±´äº¬) (960â€“1127) Linan (è‡¨å®‰) (1127â€“1276) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy Emperor - 960â€“976 Emperor Taizu - 1126â€“1127 Emperor Qinzong - 1127â€“1162 Emperor Gaozong - 1278â€“1279 Emperor Bing History - Zhao Kuangyin taking over the throne of the Later Zhou... For other uses, see Ming. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Woodblock printing. ... Wood grain describes the alignment, texture and appearance of the wood fibres. ... The Times New Roman typeface, on top at 88. ...

The other common group of fonts is called the black typeface (黑体/體) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese. This group is characterized by straight lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography. This group of fonts, first introduced on newspaper headlines, is commonly used on headings, websites, signs and billboards. Arial, sometimes marketed as Arial MT, is a typeface and a computer font packaged with Microsoft Windows, other Microsoft software applications, and many PostScript computer printers. ... This article is about the typeface Helvetica. ...

Reform

Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Shinjitai (in Shinjitai: ; in KyÅ«jitai: æ–°å—é«”; meaning new character form), are the forms of Kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the TÅyÅ Kanji List in 1946. ...

Simplification in China

The use of traditional characters versus simplified characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Because character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally a result of caoshu writing or idiosyncratic reductions, traditional, standard characters were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the PRC has officially adopted a simplified script, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the ROC retain the use of the traditional characters. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer. In addition there is a special system of characters used for writing numerals in financial contexts; these characters are modifications or adaptations of the original, simple numerals, deliberately made complicated to prevent forgeries or unauthorized alterations. This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Chinese numerals are characters for writing numbers in Chinese. ...

Although most often associated with the PRC, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the CCP) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script, in imitation of the Roman alphabet, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh. PRC is a common abbreviation for: Peoples Republic of China Palestinian Red Crescent Popular Resistance Committees This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Kuomintang of China (abbreviation KMT) [1], also often translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a political party in the Republic of China (ROC), now on Taiwan, and is currently the largest political party in terms of seats in the Legislative Yuan, and the oldest political party in the... The Communist Party of China (CPC) (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the ruling political party of the Peoples Republic of China, a position guaranteed by the countrys constitution. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The four tones of guo as written in characters, simplified on left, traditional on right and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. ...

The PRC issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "second round simplified characters") was promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely, while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng. The second round of Chinese character simplification was officially promulgated on December 20, 1977 by the Peoples Republic of China, and replaced the existing (first round) simplified Chinese characters that were already in use. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ...

Many of the simplifications adopted had been in use in informal contexts for a long time, as more convenient alternatives to their more complex standard forms. For example, the traditional character 來 lái (come) was written with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隸書 lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses two fewer strokes, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún (cloud) was written with the structure 云 in the oracle bone script of the Shāng dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of to say. The simplified form reverted to this original structure. The clerical script or chancery script (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: lÃ¬shu; Japanese: éš¸æ›¸ä½“, Reishotai;) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication to Cao Wei 220... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley. ...

Japanese kanji

In the years after World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified forms called Shinjitai 新字体 (lit. "new character forms"; the older forms were then labelled the Kyūjitai 旧字体 , lit. "old character forms"). The number of characters in common use was restricted, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established, first the 1850-character Tōyō kanji 当用漢字 list in 1945, and later the 1945-character Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 list in 1981. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the former, see Jinmeiyō kanji). Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... There is still dispute as to whether Japan is a constitutional monarchy or a republic. ... Shinjitai (in Shinjitai: ; in KyÅ«jitai: æ–°å—é«”; meaning new character form), are the forms of Kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the TÅyÅ Kanji List in 1946. ... Japanese writing Kanji æ¼¢å— Kana ä»®å Hiragana å¹³ä»®å Katakana ç‰‡ä»®å Uses Furigana æŒ¯ã‚Šä»®å Okurigana é€ã‚Šä»®å RÅmaji ãƒãƒ¼ãƒžå— Category The tÅyÅ kanji (å½“ç”¨æ¼¢å—, kanji for general use) are the result of a... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji The jÅyÅ kanji (å¸¸ç”¨æ¼¢å—) are the 1,945 kanji issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education on October 10, 1981. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Southeast Asian Chinese communities

Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. These resulted in some simplifications that differed from those used in mainland China. It ultimately adopted the reforms of the PRC in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system. ... ...

Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the Mainland China simplifications; here, however, the simplifications were not generally widely adopted, as the Chinese educational system fell outside the purview of the federal government. However, with the advent of the PRC as an economic powerhouse, simplified characters are taught at school, and the simplified characters are more commonly, if not almost universally, used. However, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation use the traditional characters. Chinese newspapers are published in either set of characters, typically with the headlines in Traditional Chinese while the body is in Simplified Chinese. Politics of Malaysia takes place in a framework of a federal parliamentary monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Malaysia is the head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. ...

Comparisons of Traditional, Simplified and Kanji

Note: this table is merely a brief sample, not a complete listing. Kowtowing Kowtow, from the Chinese term kÃ²u tÃ³u (Cantonese: kau tÃ uh) (å©é ), is the act of deep respect shown by kneeling and bowing so low as to touch the head to the ground. ...

Dictionaries

Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries. The great majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals. Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. ... The left part of mÄ, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ...

Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several different ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes. Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), zhuyin (in Taiwanese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well. Stroke order refers to the way of writing Chinese characters. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Zhuyin fuhao (Chinese: ; written in Zhuyin fuhao: ã„“ã„¨Ë‹ ä¸€ã„‹ ã„ˆã„¨ËŠ ã„ã„ Ë‹), often abbreviated as Zhuyin, is a phonetic system for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin, for people learning to read, write or speak Mandarin. ... Japanese writing Kanji æ¼¢å— Kana ä»®å Hiragana å¹³ä»®å Katakana ç‰‡ä»®å Manyogana ä¸‡è‘‰ä»®å Uses Furigana æŒ¯ã‚Šä»®å Okurigana é€ã‚Šä»®å RÅmaji ãƒãƒ¼ãƒžå— For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ... Jamo redirects here. ...

For instance, to look up the character where the sound is not known, e.g., 松 (pine tree), the user first determines which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number "4" for radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page directly.

Another dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each of the four corners. The Four Corner Method (literal translation) (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) is a character input method used for encoding Chinese characters either into a computer, or a manual typewriter, using four numerical digits per character. ...

Most modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the traditional radical-based character index in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary arranges the main character entries alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling. To find a character with unknown sound using one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically. Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

Sinoxenic languages

Besides Japanese and Korean, a number of Asian languages have historically been written using Han characters, with characters modified from Han characters, or using Han characters in combination with native characters. They include:

In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it. The Iu Mien language is one of the main languages spoken by the Yao people in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and more recently the USA. There are about 900,000 speakers in total. ... The Jurchens (Traditional Chinese: å¥³çœž; Simplified Chinese: å¥³çœŸ; pinyin: nÇšzhÄ“n) were a Tungus people who inhabited parts of Manchuria and northern Korea until the 17th century, when they became the Manchus. ... The Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people. ... Hmong (RPA: Hmoob) or Mong (RPA: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian) branch of the Hmong-Mien/Miao-Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. ... The Nakhi (Chinese: ; pinyin: ) are an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China. ... Tangut (also Xixia or Hsi-Hsia) is an ancient northerneastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Tangut Empire. ... Vietnamese (tiáº¿ng Viá»‡t, or less commonly Viá»‡t ngá»¯[2]), formerly known under the French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. ... Chá»¯ nÃ´m (ð¡¦‚å–ƒ lit. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Zhuang logograms or sawndip is a logogram created as a derivative characters of Han characters and used by Zhuang in Guangxi, China. ... The Yi scripts, also known as Cuan or Wei, are used to write the Yi languages. ...

Number of Chinese characters

The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are developed all the time. Chinese characters are theoretically an open set. The number of entries in major Chinese dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory. In topology and related fields of mathematics, a set U is called open if, intuitively speaking, you can wiggle or change any point x in U by a small amount in any direction and still be inside U. In other words, if x is surrounded only by elements of U...

Comparing the Shuowen Jiezi and Hanyu Da Zidian reveals that the overall number of characters recorded in dictionaries has increased 577 percent over 1,900 years. Depending upon how one counts variants, 50,000+ is a good approximation for the current total number. This correlates with the most comprehensive Japanese and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters; the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten has some 50,000 entries, and the Han-Han Dae Sajeon has over 57,000. The latest behemoth, the Zhonghua Zihai, records a staggering 85,568 single characters, although even this fails to list all characters known, ignoring the roughly 1,500 Japanese-made kokuji given in the Kokuji no Jiten^[10] as well as the Chu Nom inventory only used in Vietnam in past days. a version of Shuowen Jiezi ShuÅwÃ©n JiÄ›zÃ¬ (èªªæ–‡è§£å—, Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters) was the first Chinese character dictionary, compiled by XÇ” ShÃ¨n between 100 CE and 121 CE in Han Dynasty China. ... The Yupian (Chinese: ; Pinyin: YÃ¹piÄn; Wade-Giles: YÃ¼-pien; Jade Chapters) is a circa 543 CE Chinese dictionary edited by Gu Yewang (é¡§é‡ŽçŽ‹; Ku Yeh-wang; 519-581) during the Liang Dynasty. ... Qieyun (Chinese 切韻) is a Chinese character rime dictionary, published in 601 AD during the Sui Dynasty. ... Guangyun (Chinese: 廣韻) is a rime dictionary. ... Jiyun (Chinese: 集韻) is a Chinese rime book published in 1037 during the Song Dynasty. ... The Zihui (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ZÃ¬huÃ¬; Wade-Giles: Tzu Hui; literally character collection/categorization) was a 1615 Chinese dictionary, edited by Mei Yingzuo (æ¢…è†ºç¥š) during the late Ming Dynasty. ... The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: ; Pinyin: KÄngxÄ« ZÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ... The Zhonghua Da Zidian (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ZhÅnghuÃ¡ dÃ zÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Chung-hua ta tzu-tien; Comprehensive Chinese character dictionary) was an unabridged Chinese dictionary of characters published in 1915. ... The Hanyu Da Zidian (Chinese: ; pinyin: HÃ nyÇ” dÃ zÃ¬diÇŽn; literally Comprehensive Chinese Character Dictionary) is one of the best available reference works on Chinese characters. ... Dai Kan-Wa jiten (Japanese:å¤§æ¼¢å’Œè¾žå…¸, literally The Great Chinese-Japanese Dictionary) is a Japanese dictionary of Chinese characters. ... Han-Han Dae Sajeon (Korean: í•œí•œëŒ€ì‚¬ì „, æ¼¢éŸ“å¤§è¾å…¸, meaning The Great Dictionary of Chinese Character to Korean, is a name for many Korean dictionary of Chinese characters. ...

Modified radicals and obsolete variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. There are about 300 radicals and 100 are in common use. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person pronoun tā (他 "he; she; it"), which is written with the "person radical," illustrates modifying significs to form new characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 "she") with the "woman radical", tā (牠 "it") with the "animal radical", tā (它 "it") with the "roof radical", and tā (祂 "He") with the "deity radical", One consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和 "harmony; peace", which combines the "grain radical" with the "mouth radical", has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the "flute radical". Look up homograph in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The monarch known now as Qin Shi Huang (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Shih-huang) (259 BCE â€“ September 10, 210 BCE),[1] personal name YÃng ZhÃ¨ng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BCE to 221 BCE (officially still under the Zhou Dynasty), and... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ...

Chinese

It is usually said that about 3,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. Note that Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are multi-morphemic and multi-syllabic compounds, that is, most Chinese words are written with two or more characters; each character representing one syllable. Knowing the meanings of the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not invariably the case. In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

In the People's Republic of China, which uses Simplified Chinese characters, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语常用字表; Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表; Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China, has 6,763 code points. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì proficiency test covers approximately 5,000 characters. Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... GB2312 is the registered internet name for a key official character set of the Peoples Republic of China, used for simplified Chinese characters. ... GB18030 is the registered Internet name for the official character set of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... The HÃ nyÇ” ShuÇpÃng KÇŽoshÃ¬ (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ), abbreviated as HSK, is the worlds most well-known test of Chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers, such as foreign students, overseas Chinese, or members of ethnic minority groups in China. ...

In the ROC, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters, while the most widely-used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13,053. For the Chinese civilization, see China. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... For other uses, see Big five. ...

In Hong Kong, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Education and Manpower Bureau's Soengjung Zi Zijing Biu (常用字字形表), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759 characters. Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ...

In addition, there is a large corpus of dialect characters, which are not used in formal written Chinese but represent colloquial terms in non-Mandarin Chinese spoken forms. One such variety is Written Cantonese, in widespread use in Hong Kong even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration's recognition of Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also an informal body of characters used to represent the spoken Hokkien (Min Nan) dialect. Written Cantonese refers to the written language used to write colloquial standard Cantonese using Chinese characters. ... This article is about a type of political territory. ... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ...

Japanese

In Japanese there are 1,945 Jōyō kanji (常用漢字 lit. "frequently used kanji") designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education; these are taught during primary and secondary school. The list is a recommendation, not a restriction, and many characters missing from it are still in common use. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji The jÅyÅ kanji (å¸¸ç”¨æ¼¢å—) are the 1,945 kanji issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education on October 10, 1981. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ...

The one area where character usage is officially restricted is in names, which may contain only government-approved characters. Since the Jōyō kanji list excludes many characters which have been used in personal and place names for generations, an additional list, referred to as the Jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字 lit. "kanji for use in personal names"), is published. It currently contains 983 characters, bringing the total number of government-endorsed characters to 2928. (See also the Names section of the kanji article.) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ...

Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3500 kanji. The kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests a speaker's ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the kanji kentei tests on 6000 kanji, though in practice few people attain (or need to attain) this level. The Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test ), also known as Kanji Kentei ), or Kanken, is a test of kanji ability. ...

Korean

In times past, until the 15th century, in Korea, Chinese was the only form of written communication, prior to the creation of hangul, the Korean alphabet. Much of the vocabulary, especially in the realms of science and sociology, comes directly from Chinese. However, due the lack of tones in Korean, as the words were imported from Chinese, many dissimilar characters took on identical sounds, and subsequently identical spelling in hangul. Chinese characters are sometimes used to this day for either clarification in a practical manner, or to give a distinguished appearance, as knowledge of Chinese characters is considered a high class attribute and an indispensable part of a classical education. Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Jamo redirects here. ...

In Korea, 한자 hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by totally abandoning their use. These individuals encourage the exclusive use of the native hangul alphabet throughout Korean society and the end to character education in public schools. Korean writing systems Hangul Hanja Hyangchal Gugyeol Idu Mixed script Korean romanization Revised Romanization of Korean McCune-Reischauer Yale Romanization Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ...

In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by education ministers' personal opinions. At times, middle and high school students have been formally exposed to 1,800 to 2,000 basic characters, albeit with the principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper-literacy. Since there is little need to use hanja in everyday life, young adult Koreans are often unable to read more than a few hundred characters.

There is a clear trend toward the exclusive use of hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy. Hanja is also extensively used in situations where ambiguity must be avoided, such as academic papers, high-level corporate reports, government documents, and newspapers; this is due to the large number of homonyms that have resulted from extended borrowing of Chinese words. Contemporary Western Calligraphy. ... Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ...

The issue of ambiguity is the main hurdle in any effort to "cleanse" the Korean language of Chinese characters. Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn hints at meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the phonetic entry for 기사 gisa yields more than 30 different entries. In the past, this ambiguity had been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated hanja.

In the modern Korean writing system based on hangul, Chinese characters are not used any more to represent native morphemes.

In North Korea, the government, wielding much tighter control than its sister government to the south, has banned Chinese characters from virtually all public displays and media, and mandated the use of hangul in their place.

Vietnamese

Although now nearly extinct in Vietnamese, varying scripts of Chinese characters (hán tự) were once in widespread use to write the language, although hán tự became limited to ceremonial uses beginning in the 19th century. Similarly to Japan and Korea, Chinese (especially Classical Chinese) was used by the ruling classes, and the characters were eventually adopted to write Vietnamese. To express native Vietnamese words which had different pronunciations from the Chinese, Vietnamese developed the Chữ Nôm script which used various methods to distinguish native Vietnamese words from Chinese. Vietnamese is currently exclusively written in the Vietnamese alphabet, a derivative of the Latin alphabet. HÃ¡n tá»± (æ¼¢å—, lit. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... Chá»¯ nÃ´m (ð¡¦‚å–ƒ lit. ... The Vietnamese alphabet has the following 29 letters, in collating order: Vietnamese also uses the 10 digraphs and 1 trigraph below. ... Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ...

Rare and complex characters

Often a character not commonly used (a "rare" or "variant" character) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common characters and exclude the less oft-used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters. Personal names in Chinese culture follow a number of conventions different from those of personal names in Western cultures. ... Yamada TarÅ (), a typical Japanese name (male), equivalent to John Smith in English. ... A Korean personal name consists of a family name followed by a given name. ... Vietnamese names generally consist of three parts: a family name, a middle name, and a given name, used in that order. ...

People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊, pinyin Wáng Jiànxuān) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃, pinyin Yóu Xīkūn), ex-PRC Premier Zhu Rongji (朱镕基 Zhū Róngjī), and Taiwanese singer David Tao (陶喆 Táo Zhé). Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar characters, including a picture of the personality, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply substituting a homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is accepted practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead. Wang Chien-shien (çŽ‹å»ºç…Š Pinyin: WÃ¡ng JiÃ nxuÄn) (born August 7, 1938) is a founder of the New Party. ... Yu Shyi-kun (æ¸¸éŒ«å ƒ, pinyin: YÃ³u XÃkÅ«n) (born April 25, 1948), a Taiwanese politician of the Democratic Progressive Party, is Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan, ROC. He previously served as Premier of the Republic of China from 2002 to 2005. ... ZhÅ« RÃ³ngjÄ« (born October 1, 1928, Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ) is a prominent Chinese politician who served as the Mayor and Party chief in Shanghai between 1987 and 1991, before serving as Vice-Premier and then Premier of the Peoples Republic of China from March 1998 to March... David Tao (Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; born July 11, 1969) is a popular Taiwanese singer-songwriter. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ...

There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is 𪚥 (U+2A6A5) zhé listen (help· info) (pictured below, left), meaning "verbose" and boasting sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while boasting the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one. Image File history File links Zh-zhe2. ... Europe in 450 The 5th century is the period from 401 to 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ...

The most complex character found in modern Chinese dictionaries is 齉 (U+9F49) nàng listen (help· info) (pictured below, second from left), meaning "snuffle" (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with "just" thirty-six strokes.^{[citation needed]} The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New Phonetic IMA 2002a for Traditional Chinese is 龘 dá "the appearance of a dragon in flight"; it is composed of the dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links Zh-nang4. ...

In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists [5]— it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters on top of the abovementioned triple "dragon" character (龘). Also meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it is pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.^{[citation needed]} Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana ManyÅgana Uses Furigana Okurigana RÅmaji ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (å¹³ä»®å), katakana (ç‰‡ä»®å), and the Arabic numerals. ...

The most complex Chinese character still in use may be biáng (pictured right, bottom), with 57 strokes, which refers to Biang biang noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with syllable biang cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Mandarin word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character. The character for biÃ¡ng in calligraphic regular script The character for biÃ¡ng in songti script Biang biang noodles Restaurant specializing in Biang Biang noodles BiÃ¡ng biÃ¡ng noodles are a type of noodle popular in Chinas Shaanxi province. ... Noodle King chain shop serving Biang Biang Noodles Biang Biang Noodles refer to a type of noodles popular in Chinas Shaanxi province. ... (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ShÇŽnxÄ«; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal map spelling: Shensi) is a north-central province of the Peoples Republic of China, and includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River as well as the Qinling Mountains across the... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ...

In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī ("one") with just one horizontal stroke. The most common character in Chinese is 的 de, a grammatical particle functioning as an adjectival marker and as a clitic genitive case analogous to the English ’s, with eight strokes. The average number of strokes in a character has been calculated as 9.8;^[11] it is unclear, however, whether this average is weighted, or whether it includes traditional characters. In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ...

Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇年. However, there is another way to write zero which would be 零. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".^[12] Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes. For other senses of this word, see zero or 0. ...

Chinese calligraphy

The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China, Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China. Calligraphy is an art dating back to the earliest day of history, and widely practiced throughout China to this day. ... Image File history File links Mifu02. ... Image File history File links Mifu02. ... Northern Song in 1111 AD Capital Bianjing (æ±´äº¬) (960â€“1127) Linan (è‡¨å®‰) (1127â€“1276) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy Emperor - 960â€“976 Emperor Taizu - 1126â€“1127 Emperor Qinzong - 1127â€“1162 Emperor Gaozong - 1278â€“1279 Emperor Bing History - Zhao Kuangyin taking over the throne of the Later Zhou... Mi Fu(1051-1107) was a native of Shanxi who was noted as a Chinese painter, poet, and calligrapher. ... Ink brushes of various size and material for sale at a Taipei store. ... The Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar, otherwise known as siyi, is a term used to describe four main requirements of the Chinese scholar gentleman. ...

Contents

History

Precursors

Legendary origins

Iron Age to medieval

Modern history

Written styles

Formation of characters

Pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì)

Pictophonetic compounds (形聲字/形声字, Xíngshēngzì)

Ideograph (指事字, zhǐshìzì)

Logical aggregates (會意字/会意字, Huìyìzì)

Associate Transformation (轉注字/转注字, Zhuǎnzhùzì)

Borrowing (假借字, Jiǎjièzì)

Written variants

Orthography

Common typefaces

Reform

Simplification in China

Japanese kanji

Southeast Asian Chinese communities

Comparisons of Traditional, Simplified and Kanji

Dictionaries

Sinoxenic languages

Number of Chinese characters

Chinese

Japanese

Korean

Vietnamese

Rare and complex characters

Chinese calligraphy

See also

References

External links

Contents

History GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Precursors

Legendary origins

Iron Age to medieval

Modern history

Written styles

Formation of characters

Pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì)

Pictophonetic compounds (形聲字/形声字, Xíngshēngzì)

Ideograph (指事字, zhǐshìzì)

Logical aggregates (會意字/会意字, Huìyìzì)

Associate Transformation (轉注字/转注字, Zhuǎnzhùzì)

Borrowing (假借字, Jiǎjièzì)

Written variants

Orthography

Common typefaces

Reform

Simplification in China

Japanese kanji

Southeast Asian Chinese communities

Comparisons of Traditional, Simplified and Kanji

Dictionaries

Sinoxenic languages

Number of Chinese characters

Chinese

Japanese

Korean

Vietnamese

Rare and complex characters

Chinese calligraphy

See also

References

External links

History