Chinese character
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Image:Hanzi (traditional).png Image:Hanzi (simplified).png
Chinese character (Template:Zh-tsp) are logograms used in written Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In North Korea, they have been completely replaced by Hangul and are used only sparingly in South Korea. Use of Chinese characters has disappeared from the Vietnamese language, where they were used until the 20th century.
Chinese characters are called Template:Audio in Mandarin Chinese, kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and hán tự or chữ nho in Vietnamese (all except the last being the pronunciation of the two characters for "Chinese characters" 漢字 in the local language).
In Chinese, a word is composed of one or more characters ("字" zì); for instance the word hànzì is composed of two characters. Each Chinese character represents a single syllabic unit in all spoken variants of Chinese still existing today. One exception is the character 兒, simplified as 儿, which in addition to its original, syllabic usage ér (child; son), represents an -r sound attached to some words in Mandarin. Polysyllabic characters have also been created for foreign weights and measures, e.g. 粴 límǐ "centimetre", although these are no longer used in China or Taiwan.
Contrary to popular belief, only a small number of Chinese characters are pictograms, although many of these are characters for very common words. For example, the Chinese character for "umbrella" is a pictogram of an umbrella: 傘 (伞) san. Most characters are based on other characters that were homonyms at the time the character was created —the word "按" àn meaning "to press down" contains "安" ān (peace), which serves as its phonetic component, and "手" shǒu (hand), which indicates that the action is done using one's hand.
In China itself, thousands of simplified characters were officially adopted between 1956 and 1964, in the hopes that this would help eradicate mass illiteracy. This created a major distinction between the two sets of characters. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia and Simplified Chinese characters in Mainland China, Singapore and also in Malaysia. 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. And 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.
Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese are not linguistically related to Chinese, and in order to make Chinese characters work in those languages with radically different grammars, many adaptations had to be made. For example, Japanese kanji are used to represent not only borrowings from Chinese, which are mono- or bisyllabic (On-yomi), but also native Japanese words, which are often polysyllabic (Kun-yomi).
In many cases in these languages, there are differences from the characters used in Chinese. Japanese has standardised a set of 1,945 characters, known as the Jōyō kanji, which includes simplified or variant forms of characters traditionally used in China, as well as a number of characters created by the Japanese themselves.
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. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes call Han characters fāngkuài zì (lit. "square-block-characters").
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Origin
According to legend, the inventor of Chinese characters was named Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), but this is likely only a legend. Another tradition ascribes the invention to the legendary first Emperor, Fu Hsi.
According to modern archaeological evidence, Chinese writing could have very early roots. The earliest evidence for what might be writing comes from Jiahu, a Neolithic site in the Huai River valley in Henan Province, dated to c. 6500 BC. It has yielded turtle carapaces that were pitted and inscribed with symbols. The Longshan site of Chengziyai in Shandong Province has produced fragments of inscribed bones used to divine the future, dating to 2500 - 1900 BC, and symbols on pottery vessels from Dinggong are thought by some scholars to be an early form of writing. Symbols of a similar nature have also been found on pottery shards from the Liangzhu culture of the lower Yangtze valley. 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 Culture (c. 3200 - 1900 BC) are thought by some to be a proto-written script, similar to the earliest forms of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. 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 the Longshan late Neolithic culture is considered by respectable historians and archaeologists to be culturally directly ancestral to the bronze age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou Dynasties.
The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén, lit. "shell-bone-script"), a well-developed writing system of the Shang Dynasty (or Yin (殷) Dynasty), attested from about 1600 BC (from Zhengzhou) and 1300 BC (from Anyang), along with a very few logographs found on pottery shards and cast in bronzes (known as the Bronze script) which is very similar to but more complex and pictorial than the Oracle Bone Script. Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known Oracle Bone logographs can be identified with later Chinese characters and therefore easily read. However, it should be noted that these 1,400 logographs include most of the commonly used ones.
The Yi script is quite old, and is superficially similar to modern Chinese, but does not seem to be derived from it. It was perhaps inspired by the example of modern Chinese, but the possibility cannot be discounted that it and the modern Chinese script both descend from a common source, such as the Oracle Bone Script.
Styles
Image:HanziZhuan.jpg The earliest Chinese characters are the Oracle Bone Script of the late Shang Dynasty and the Bronze Scripts (金文 jīnwén) of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. These scripts are no longer in use, and are of purely academic interest.
The first script that is still in use today, albeit restricted use, is the 篆書, 篆书 zhuànshū ("seal script"). 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. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the seal script remains alive in China and Japan today; some calligraphers also work in this style.
Scripts that are still used regularly are the "clerical script" (隸書, 隶书 lìshū) of the Qin to Han dynasties, the "Wei monumental script" (魏碑 wèibēi, see Weibei), the "regular script" (楷書, 楷书 kǎishū) used for most printing, and the "semi-cursive script" (行書, 行书 xíngshū) used for most handwriting.
The cursive (草書, 草书 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. Many simplified Chinese characters according to the CCP 1964 list are derived from cursive simplifications of traditional characters.
Section Headers (部首 bùshǒu, aka radicals)
Image:HanziJin.jpg Main article: radical
Each character has a component called a section header (部首 bùshǒu) under which it is traditionally indexed in Chinese dictionaries. These are often called radicals in English, a misnomer arising from the mistaken conception that every bùshǒu was a kind of semantic root, or "radix" (when in fact some are not, while some play that role in only a portion of the characters listed thereunder). For clarity, one may avoid the term "radical" entirely, instead using bùshǒu for the dictionary index component, and semantic component for any portion of a character bearing meaning.
The number of section headers in dictionaries is usually 214. Full characters are ordered according to their section header, and are then subcategorised by their total number of strokes.
Classification
See also: Chinese character classification
The Six-Principles Theory of Chinese Script
Chinese scholars have traditionally classified Han characters according to six principles (六書 liùshū) by structural composition or usage. This six-way classification is historical and problematic; it is no longer the focus of modern scholars. However, its pervasiveness results in its deserving an explanation.
- The first type, and the type most often associated with Chinese writing, are pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì), which are pictorial representations of the morpheme represented, e.g. 山 shān for "mountain". However, these are only a tiny fraction of Chinese characters.
- The second type are simple indicatives or ideograms (指事字 zhǐshìzì) that attempt to graphicalize abstract concepts, such as 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down". Also considered ideograms are pictograms with an ideographic indicator; for instance, 刀 dāo is a pictogram meaning "knife", while 刃 rèn is an ideogram meaning "blade". Many scholars object to the term ideogram or ideograph on the grounds that these words suggest such graphs convey ideas directly, without association to spoken words. The terms indicative or simple indicative avoid this concern.
- Huìyìzì (會意字 lit. "get-meaning-words"), associative compounds, semantic-semantic compounds or compound indicatives are those in which each element (semantic component) of the character hints at the meaning or the two interact to show meaning.
- Xíngshēngzì (形聲字) are semantic-phonetic compounds, phono-semantic compounds or pictophonetic compounds in which one component (the semantic component) indicates the general meaning of the character, and the other (the phonetic) hints at the pronunciation. An example is 樑 liáng, where the phonetic 梁 liáng indicates the pronunciation of the character and the semantic 木 mù ("wood") its meaning of "supporting beam". Characters of this type constitute the vast majority, over 90%, of Chinese logograms.
- Zhuǎnzhùzì (轉註字 changed-annotation characters) are characters which were originally the same character but have bifurcated through orthographic and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 kǎo (to test) and 老 lǎo (old) were once the same character, meaning "elder person".
- Jiǎjièzì (假借字 lit. "improvised-borrowed-words") are known as phonetic loan characters, and come into use when a character with the same or a similar sound is "borrowed"; occasionally, the new meaning can supplant the old meaning. 自 zì used to be a pictographic word meaning "nose", but was borrowed to mean "self". It is now used almost exclusively to mean "self", while the "nose" meaning survives only in set phrases and more archaic compounds. Because of their derivational process, the entire set of Japanese kana can in purely formal terms be considered to be Jiǎjièzì, hence the name kana (仮名; 仮 is a simplified form of 假).
The first two types above are dútǐ (獨體 single-body), meaning that the character was created independently of other Chinese characters. Although the perception of most Westerners is that most characters were derived in single-body fashion, pictograms and simple indicatives actually take up but a small proportion of Chinese logograms. More productive for the Chinese script were the next two, hétǐ (合體 compound), methods, i.e. the character was created from assembling different characters. Despite being called "compounds", these logograms are still single characters, and are written to take up the same amount of space as any other logogram. Note also that the first four types refer to how a character's structure comes about; the fifth is a comment on the relationship between two characters, while the sixth refers to the loan usage of a character. The six types are thus not mutually exclusive, as a character could be created in one way, and yet borrowed phonetically, i.e., belonging to two types.
The most productive method of Chinese writing, the semantic-phonetic compound (xíngshēngzì 形聲字), was made possible because the phonetic system of Chinese allowed for generous (homonymy), and because in consideration of phonetic similarity tone was generally ignored, as were the final consonants of the characters in consideration, at least according to theory following from reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation. Note that due to the long period of language evolution, such component "hints" within characters as provided by the semantic-phonetic compounds are sometimes useless and may be misleading in modern usage. This is particularly true in non-Chinese languages (with Japanese being a notable exception for its phonological conservatism).
Section Header (部首 bùshǒu) system
In modern dictionaries, characters are generally classified in sections based on shared graphic components called 部首 bùshǒu, literally "section headers". These are often also called radicals. However, the term 'radical' has also been used to refer to (and literally means) the semantic root of a character. Since not every section header plays a role as semantic root in every character listed under it, the translation of 部首 bùshǒu as radical is logically incorrect. Furthermore, it is not correct to automatically assume the remainder of a compound is its phonetic element, though according to research done by John DeFrancis, more than 95% of all characters were formed on the "radical + phonetic" principle.
For example, 各 gè is listed under the 部首 bùshǒu of 口 kǒu mouth. However, the compound has nothing to do with the concept of, or graph for, mouth. The oracle bone form of this compound, although very similar to the modern graph, clearly shows 夂, a foot (inverted form of 止 zhǐ, originally a foot) arriving at or entering a U- or 口-shaped object, representing perhaps a dwelling or a walled city. The original attested meaning is to arrive (the graph was only later borrowed for the modern meaning of each). It is clear that 口 is merely a convenient graphic extraction for the purpose of dictionary classification, and that even in its original function as perhaps a dwelling, it was not the radix or semantic root of the entire graph in the manner of European languages. Rather, the compound is formed by the principle of 會意 huìyì, variously translated as compound indicative, associative compound, logical aggregate, joined meaning, etc.
Some 部首 bùshǒu are not even etymologically components of many of the graphs listed under them at all. Even a cursory examination of characters listed under the first six 部首 bùshǒu (一丨丶丿乙亅) will show that they do not play the role of radix in most of them. Under 一 yī 'one', for example, are listed 上 下 且 丘 丙 丑 and 並, all of which are present in the oracle bones as monosomatic graphs completely unrelated to the meaning of 'one'. 一 clearly is merely a convenient graphical extraction under which to list them. 部首 bùshǒu cannot therefore be rationally translated as radical (meaning semantic 'radix' or root), even though this is the most common term now.
Orthography
Usually Chinese characters each take up the same amount of space, due to their block, square nature. One of the easiest ways for beginners to ensure a proper push-off is, hence, to practise writing with a grid as a guide, which is indeed standard practice in primary schools for both normal exercises and calligraphy training. 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. On a larger scale, Chinese text is traditionally written from top to bottom and then right to left, but it is more common today to see the same orientation as Western languages: going from left to right and then top to bottom (see Chinese written language). Most punctuation marks were adopted from the West, but there are a few exceptions: for example, names of books are marked with a wavy line drawn to their right in vertical text, or enclosed in a special double pointed bracket in horizontal text.
Common errors while writing Chinese characters include incorrect stroke direction, incorrect stroke order, incorrect stroke length relative to other strokes, and incorrect placement of strokes relative to other strokes, as well as the weight given to the different parts of a stroke. Each mistake is highly visible to the literate eye, and such mistakes are often shunned, being marks of illiteracy or incompetence. In a culture that values scholarship as its highest virtue, such attributions are highly undesirable. Because of this strictness in not only the image of the character, but how the image is produced, it is considered by many the most difficult to learn properly.
Due to the long history of China, as well as many stylistic variations that have developed and the many attempts by past rulers to standardise writing, some characters have multiple forms. The characters themselves can be considered separate, but often are merely derivatives of each other in that their composition is of the same root. They are often not considered simplifications, as their stroke count is sometimes the same, and often lessened only but a slight amount. Probably the most famous today is the character for sword (劍), where the radical (on the right) is knife (刀). The same word can be written with different forms for the radical, including using 刃 or 刀 itself.
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, and especially official, works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings. Since the 1950's and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the PRC has officially adopted a simplified script, while Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan 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 unauthorised alterations.
Reforms
- Main articles: Simplified Chinese character, Shinjitai
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.
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"), were 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.
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, with some even incorporating special Cantonese characters when publishing about the canto celebrity scene of Hong Kong.
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 Toyo 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).
| Traditional | Chinese simp. | Japanese simp. | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified in Chinese, not Japanese | 電 | 电 | 電 | electricity |
| 開 | 开 | 開 | open | |
| 東 | 东 | 東 | east | |
| Simplified in Japanese, not Chinese | 佛 | 佛 | 仏 | Buddha |
| 惠 | 惠 | 恵 | favour | |
| 拜 | 拜 | 拝 | kowtow, pray to, worship | |
| Simplified in both, but differently | 圖 | 图 | 図 | picture, diagram |
| 轉 | 转 | 転 | turn | |
| 廣 | 广 | 広 | wide, broad | |
| Simplified in both in the same way | 學 | 学 | 学 | learn |
| 體 | 体 | 体 | body | |
| 點 | 点 | 点 | dot, point |
Note: this table is merely cursory, and is not a complete listing.
Dictionaries
The design and use of a dictionary of Chinese characters presents interesting problems. Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for the Chinese characters. The great majority of these schemes — beloved by their inventors but nobody else — have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals.
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. In Japanese and Korean dictionaries, it is usually possible to search for characters by sound, using Kana and Hangul. Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well.
For instance, to look up the character 松 (pine tree) in a typical dictionary, 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 popular dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each of the four corners.
Most Chinese-English dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the radical lookup method combined with an alphabetical listing of characters based on their pinyin romanization system. To use 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, just as if it were an English dictionary.
This system has also been reborrowed by Chinese-language dictionary editors, giving rise to dictionaries with the traditional radical-based character listings in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary carries character listings by their pronunciation listed alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling.
Derivatives of Han characters
Besides Korean and Japanese, a number of Asian languages have historically been written with Han characters, or with characters modified from Han characters. They include:
- Khitan language (ja:契丹文字)
- Miao language
- Nakhi (Naxi) language (Geba script)
- Tangut language (fr:Tangoute, zh:西夏文, [1], [2])
- Vietnamese language (Chữ nôm)
- Zhuang language
The Jurchen language (ja:女真文字) used an ideographic script consisted of original characters with a few Han borrowings.
In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it.
Number of Chinese characters
The question of how many characters there are is still the subject of debate. In the 18th century, European scholars claimed the total tally to be about 80,000. This number, however, is thought to be exaggerated as the character count varies by dictionary and its comprehensiveness. For example, the Kangxi Dictionary lists about 40,000 characters, while the modern Zhonghua Zihai lists in excess of 80,000 (the most comprehensive Korean hanja dictionary Han-Han Dae Sajeon consists about 60,000 characters, while Japanese competing kanji dictionary Dai Kan-Wa Jiten lists 50,000 entries). One reason for the overwhelming number of characters is due to the existence of rarely-occurring variant and obscure characters (many of which are unused, even in Classical Chinese). Note, however, that no two characters are ever contextually identical.
The large number of Chinese characters is due to their logographic nature — for every morpheme a glyph is required, and variant characters have at times developed for the same morpheme. Furthermore, in the centuries after the standardisation of the Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang to the zhuanshu, the literati multiplied the total stock of characters by modifying extant characters à la xíngshēngzì (形聲字) method—by altering the radical of a homonym character to provide a distinct glyph for either new words or words that had till then been homographs. It has also been claimed that the sheer number of characters is used as a way to separate scholars from the ordinary, and perhaps even to keep certain texts from being read by all but the most scholarly.
Chinese
It is usually said that about 2,000 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. (According to modern statistics, if one has learned just the 100 most commonly used Chinese logographs, one can read as much as 40% of all modern texts on average. If one has learned the 200 most commonly used Chinese logographs, then one can understand on average 54% of all modern texts. If one learned the 1000 most commonly used Chinese logographs, then one can on average read 89% of all modern texts. With 2000 logographs one can read 97% of all modern texts on averageTemplate:Cite needed) Note that it is not necessary to know a character for every known word of Chinese, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are bimorphemic compounds, i.e. they are made up of two, usually common, characters. There are 6763 code points in GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi proficiency test covers approximately 5000 characters.
In the Taiwanese Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāojǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表), a list of standard forms for regularly used Chinese characters) 4808 characters are listed; The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48027 characters, while the most widely-used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13053.
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 Min Nan dialect.
Japanese
In Japanese there are 1945 Jōyō kanji (常用漢字 lit. "frequently used kanji") designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education; this list, promulgated in 1981, replaced an older version, the 1850-character Tōyō kanji (当用漢字) list of 1945. The Jōyō Kanji are taught during primary and secondary school. Publications which include characters which fall outside this list were recommended to have furigana or rubi printed alongside the main text as a phonetic guide; this recommendation is usually not followed, however, when the unofficial character(s) are widely recognised and known.
Upon formalization of the daily-use kanji, government offices and newspapers were encouraged to phase out the use of all other characters. This created an immediate problem with place and personal names which were not on the list but had been used in localities and families for hundreds of years, impeding map production and birth registration processes. To resolve this issue, the government drew up a list of 983 additional characters, referred to as the Jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字 lit. "kanji for use in personal names"), to be used in personal and geographical names. This brought the total number of government-supported characters to 2928. (See also the Names section of the Kanji article.)
There is some speculation that many of the "odd" kanji on the Jinmeiyō kanji list were promoted in an attempt to bring about a de facto expansion of the Jōyō kanji list, rather than for the serious idea of including characters used in names. The idea of reducing the number of kanji in use has been a politically contentious issue, with many conservatives staunchly believing in the immutability of kanji as part of the Japanese culture, and that kanji ought to be used frequently.
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 this level as Japanese generally uses fewer Chinese characters than Chinese, and literacy in Japanese requires knowledge of fewer characters.
Korean
In Korea, 한자 Hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by total abandonment of 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.
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 principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper-literacy. Thus, compared to a Japanese high school graduate, a young adult Korean may at best be able to write fewer than several hundred of the simplest and most common characters. On the other hand, Korean adults who were teenagers under anti-character education ministers, may be approaching functional illiteracy with regard to hanja.
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.
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 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 Chu Nom 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.
Rare and complex characters
Image:Zhé.png Image:Nàng.png Image:Biang.gif 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.
People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊, pinyin Wáng Jiàn-xuān) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃, pinyin Yóu Xī-kūn), 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.
There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is ꚥ zhé Template:Audio (pictured right, top), 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, albeit in the space for one.
An 84-stroke kokuji also exists [3]— it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters on top of the complex character made up of three "dragon" characters (龘). Meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it is read (in kun-yomi) おとど otodo, たいと taito and だいと daito.
![[3]](http://www.mojikyo.gr.jp/gif96/066/066147.gif){kind=link}
The most complex character found in modern Chinese dictionaries is 齉 nàng Template:Audio (pictured right, middle), meaning "poor enunciation due to snuffle", with "just" thirty-six strokes.
The most complex 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.
In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī ("one") with just one horizontal stroke. The most common character is 的 de, a grammatical particle functioning as a clitic genitive case and analogous to English 's, with eight strokes. According to Bellassen (1989), the average number of strokes in a character is 9.8; it is unclear, however, whether this average is weighted, or whether it includes traditional characters.
Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇, which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇年. 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 数术九章 (Shu Shu Jiu Zhang - or "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). (See Joseph Needham's famous "Science and Civilisation in China" Volume III) It is not directly derived from the Hindu-Arabic numeral "0".
See also
- Blissymbols (an international auxiliary logographic language)
- Chinese written language
- Chinese calligraphy
- Chinese character encoding
- Chinese characters for chemical elements
- Chinese input methods for computers
- Earthly Branches
- Eight Principles of Yong
- Han unification
- Heavenly Stems
- Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
- Shodo, Japanese calligraphy
- Stroke order
- Transliteration into Chinese characters
- Xiandai Hanyu changyong zibiao (现代汉语常用字表, List of Frequently-Used Words in Modern Chinese, analogous to the Jōyō kanji)
References
- Bellassen, Joël & Zhang Pengpeng (1989). Méthode d'Initiation à la Langue et à l'Écriture chinoises. La Compagnie. ISBN 2-9504135-1-X.
External links
- A Typographic Outcry: a curious perspective
- Chinese characters and culture
- Articles about Chinese Characters
- Chinese Character Dictionary: Look up simplified and traditional characters by English definition, pinyin, Cantonese, and radical/stroke.
- Generator for Chinese typographical filler text
- If English was written like Chinese
- Chinese Symbols Introduction to Chinese Symbols
- Chinese: a selection about Chinese characters from Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, by John DeFrancis
- Chinese Script and Language: comprehensive information on the overview of the Chinese language.
- Hanzi Smatter 一知半解: dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western cultureTemplate:Link FA
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