Chinese characters
Chinese characters | ||
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Script type | Logographic
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Time period | c. 13th century BCE – present | |
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Languages |
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Chinese characters | |||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||
Zhuang | sawgun | ||||||
Sawndip | 𭨡倱[1] | ||||||
Korean name | |||||||
Hangul | 한자 | ||||||
Hanja | 漢字 | ||||||
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Japanese name | |||||||
Kanji | 漢字 | ||||||
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Chinese characters
The first attested characters are
.After being introduced in order to write
At the most basic level, characters are composed of
Development
Chinese characters are accepted as representing one of four independent inventions of writing in human history.
Various innovations were required for Chinese characters to emerge from proto-writing. Firstly, pictographs became distinct from simple pictures in use and appearance: for example, the pictograph 大, meaning 'large', was originally a picture of a large man, but one would need to be aware of its specific meaning in order to interpret the sequence 大鹿 as signifying 'large deer', rather than being a picture of a large man and a deer next to one another. Due to this process of abstraction, as well as to make characters easier to write, pictographs gradually became more simplified and regularised—often to the extent that the original objects represented are no longer obvious.[4]
This proto-writing system was limited to representing a relatively narrow range of ideas with a comparatively small library of symbols. This compelled innovations that allowed for symbols to directly encode spoken language.[5] In each historical case, this was accomplished by some form of the rebus technique, where the symbol for a word is used to indicate a different word with a similar pronunciation, depending on context.[6] This allowed for words that lacked a plausible pictographic representation to be written down for the first time. This technique pre-empted more sophisticated methods of character creation that would further expand the lexicon. The process whereby writing emerged from proto-writing took place over a long period; when the purely pictorial use of symbols disappeared, leaving only those representing spoken words, the process was complete.[7]
Classification
Chinese characters have been used in several different
The areas where Chinese characters were historically used—sometimes collectively termed the Sinosphere—have a long tradition of lexicography attempting to explain and refine their use; for most of history, analysis revolved around a model first popularised in the 2nd-century Shuowen Jiezi dictionary.[13] More recent models have analysed the methods used to create characters, how characters are structured, and how they function in a given writing system.[14]
Structural analysis
Most characters can be analysed structurally as compounds made of smaller components (部件; bùjiàn), which are often independent characters in their own right, adjusted to occupy a given position in the compound.[15] Components within a character may serve a specific function: phonetic components provide a hint for the character's pronunciation, and semantic components indicate some element of the character's meaning. Components that serve neither function may be classified as pure signs with no particular meaning, other than their presence distinguishing one character from another.[16]
A straightforward structural classification scheme may consist of three pure classes of semantographs, phonographs and signs—having only semantic, phonetic, and form components respectively, as well as classes corresponding to each combination of component types.[17] Of the 3500 characters used frequently in Standard Chinese, pure semantographs are estimated to be the rarest, accounting for about 5% of the lexicon, followed by pure signs with 18%, and semantic–form and phonetic–form compounds together accounting for 19%. The remaining 58% are phono-semantic compounds.[18]
The Chinese palaeographer Qiu Xigui (b. 1935) presents three principles of character function adapted from an earlier proposal by Tang Lan (1901–1979), with semantographs describing all characters whose forms are wholly related to their meaning, regardless of the method by which the meaning was originally depicted, phonographs that include a phonetic component, and loangraphs encompassing existing characters that have been borrowed to write other words. Qiu also acknowledges the existence of character classes that fall outside of these principles, such as pure signs.[19]
Semantographs
Pictographs
Most of the oldest characters are
Pictographs have often been extended from their original meanings to take on additional layers of metaphor and synecdoche, which sometimes displace the character's original sense. This process has sometimes created excess ambiguity between the different senses of a character, which is usually resolved by creating new compound characters.[24]
Indicatives
Indicatives (指事; zhǐshì), also called simple ideographs or self-explanatory characters,[20] are visual representations of abstract concepts that lack any tangible form. Examples include 上 ('up') and 下 ('down')—these characters were originally written as dots placed above and below a line, and later evolved into their present forms with less potential for graphical ambiguity in context.[25] More complex indicatives include 凸 ('convex'), 凹 ('concave'), and 平 ('flat and level').[26]
Compound ideographs
Compound ideographs (会意; 會意; huìyì)—also called logical aggregates, associative idea characters, or syssemantographs—combine other characters to convey a new, synthetic meaning. A canonical example is 明 ('bright'), interpreted as the juxtaposition of the two brightest objects in the sky: ⽇ 'SUN' and ⽉ 'MOON', together expressing their shared quality of brightness. Other examples include 休 ('rest'), composed of pictographs ⼈ 'MAN' and ⽊ 'TREE', and 好 ('good'), composed of ⼥ 'WOMAN' and ⼦ 'CHILD'.[27]
Many traditional examples of compound ideographs are now believed to have actually originated as phono-semantic compounds, made obscure by subsequent changes in pronunciation.[28] For example, the Shuowen Jiezi describes 信 ('trust') as an ideographic compound of ⼈ 'MAN' and ⾔ 'SPEECH', but modern analyses instead identify it as a phono-semantic compound—though with disagreement as to which component is phonetic.[29] Peter A. Boodberg and William G. Boltz go so far as to deny that any compound ideographs were devised in antiquity, maintaining that secondary readings that are now lost are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators,[30] but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars.[31]
Phonographs
Phono-semantic compounds
Phono-semantic compounds (形声; 形聲; xíngshēng) are composed of at least one semantic component and one phonetic component.[32] They may be formed by one of several methods, often by adding a phonetic component to disambiguate a loangraph, or by adding a semantic component to represent a specific extension of a character's meaning.[33] Examples of phono-semantic compounds include 河 (hé; 'river'), 湖 (hú; 'lake'), 流 (liú; 'stream'), 沖 (chōng; 'surge'), and 滑 (huá; 'slippery'). Each of these characters have three short strokes on their left-hand side: 氵, a simplified combining form of ⽔ 'WATER'. This component serves a semantic function in each example, indicating the character has some meaning related to water. The remainder of each character is its phonetic component: 湖 (hú) is pronounced identically to 胡 (hú) in Standard Chinese, 河 (hé) is pronounced similarly to 可 (kě), and 沖 (chōng) is pronounced similarly to 中 (zhōng).[34]
The phonetic components of most compounds may only provide an approximate pronunciation, even before subsequent sound shifts in the spoken language. Some characters may only have the same initial or final sound of a syllable in common with phonetic components.[35] A phonetic series comprises all the characters created using the same phonetic component, which may have diverged significantly in their pronunciations over time. For example, 茶 (chá; caa4; 'tea') and 途 (tú; tou4; 'route') are part of the phonetic series of characters using 余 (yú; jyu4), a literary first-person pronoun. The Old Chinese pronunciations of these characters were similar, but the phonetic component no longer serves as a useful hint for their pronunciation due to subsequent sound shifts.[36]
Loangraphs
The phenomenon of existing characters being adapted to write other words with similar pronunciations was necessary in the initial development of Chinese writing, and has remained common throughout its subsequent history. Some loangraphs (假借; jiǎjiè; 'borrowing') are introduced to represent words previously lacking another written form—this is often the case with abstract grammatical particles such as 之 and 其.[37] The process of characters being borrowed as loangraphs should not be conflated with the distinct process of semantic extension, where a word acquires additional senses, which often remain written with the same character. As both processes often result in a single character form being used to write several distinct meanings, loangraphs are often misidentified as being the result of semantic extension, and vice versa.[38]
Loangraphs are also used to write words borrowed from other languages, such as the various Buddhist terminology introduced to China in antiquity, as well as contemporary non-Chinese words and names. For example, each character in the name 加拿大 (Jiānádà; 'Canada') is often used as a loangraph for its respective syllable. However, the barrier between a character's pronunciation and meaning is never total: when transcribing into Chinese, loangraphs are often chosen deliberately as to create certain connotations. This is regularly done with corporate brand names: for example, Coca-Cola's Chinese name is 可口可乐; 可口可樂 (Kěkǒu Kělè; 'delicious enjoyable').[39][40][41]
Signs
Some characters and components are pure signs, whose meaning merely derives from their having a fixed and distinct form. Basic examples of pure signs are found with the numerals beyond four, e.g. 五 ('five') and 八 ('eight'), whose forms do not give visual hints to the quantities they represent.[42]
Traditional Shuowen Jiezi classification
The Shuowen Jiezi is a character dictionary authored c. 100 CE by the scholar Xu Shen (c. 58 – c. 148 CE). In its postface, Xu analyses what he sees as all the methods by which characters are created. Later authors iterated upon Xu's analysis, developing a categorisation scheme known as the 'six writings' (六书; 六書; liùshū), which assigns every character to one of six categories that had previously been mentioned in the Shuowen Jiezi. For nearly two millennia, this scheme was the primary framework by which characters were analysed throughout the Sinosphere.[43] Xu based most of his analysis on examples of Qin seal script that were written down several centuries before his time—these were usually the oldest forms available to him, but Xu stated that he was aware of the existence of even older forms.[44]
Modern scholars agree that the theory presented in the Shuowen Jiezi is problematic, failing to fully capture the nature of Chinese writing, both in the present, as well as at the time Xu was writing.[45] Traditional Chinese lexicography as embodied in the Shuowen Jiezi presupposes either a phonetic or semantic purpose for every character component, providing implausible etymologies for characters.[46] However, the 'six writings' model has proven resilient, and it continues to serve as a guide for students in the process of memorising characters.[47]
History
The broadest trend in the evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape (字形; zìxíng), the "external appearances of individual graphs", and in graphical form (字体; 字體; zìtǐ), "overall changes in the distinguishing features of graphic[al] shape and calligraphic style, [...] in most cases refer[ring] to rather obvious and rather substantial changes".[49] The traditional notion of an orderly procession of script styles, each suddenly appearing and displacing the one previous, has been disproven by later scholarship and archaeological work. Instead, scripts evolved gradually, with several coexisting in a given area.[50]
Traditional invention narrative
Several of the Chinese classics indicate that knotted cords were used to keep records prior to the invention of writing.[51][52] Works that reference the practice include chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching[53] and the "Xici II" chapter within the I Ching.[54] According to one tradition, Chinese characters were invented during the 3rd millennium BCE by Cangjie, a scribe of the legendary Yellow Emperor. Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called 字 (zì) due to his frustration with the limitations of knotting, taking inspiration from his study of the tracks of animals, landscapes, and the stars in the sky. On the day that these first characters were created, grain rained down from the sky; that night, the people heard the wailing of ghosts and demons, lamenting that humans could no longer be cheated.[55][56]
Neolithic
A series of inscribed graphs and pictures have been discovered at
Oracle bone script
The oldest attested Chinese writing comprises a body of inscriptions produced during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), with the very earliest examples from the reign of Wu Ding dated between 1250 and 1200 BCE.[60][61] Many of these inscriptions were made on oracle bones—usually either ox scapulae or turtle shells—and recorded official divinations carried out by the Shang royal house. Contemporaneous inscriptions in a related but distinct style were also made on ritual bronze vessels. This oracle bone script (甲骨文; jiǎgǔwén) was first documented in 1899, after specimens were discovered being sold as "dragon bones" for medicinal purposes, with the symbols carved into them identified as early character forms. By 1928, the source of the bones had been traced to a village near Anyang in Henan—discovered to be the site of Yin, the final Shang capital—which was excavated by a team led by Li Ji (1896–1979) from the Academia Sinica between 1928 and 1937.[62] To date, over 150,000 oracle bone fragments have been found.[63]
Oracle bone inscriptions recorded divinations undertaken to communicate with the spirits of royal ancestors. The inscriptions range from a few characters in length at their shortest, to several dozen at their longest. The Shang king would communicate with his ancestors by means of scapulimancy, inquiring about subjects such as the royal family, military success, and the weather. The answers as interpreted would be inscribed on the divination material itself.[64] Inscriptions were made on the bones only after they had been cracked by exposure to heat. A minority of characters were also inked onto the bones with a brush before the strokes were incised. Moreover, the evidence of brush use has also revealed that many of the character stroke orders that would be used by later calligraphers were already conventional by this time.[65]
Oracle bone script is the direct ancestor of later forms of written Chinese. The oldest known inscriptions already represent a well-developed writing system, which suggests an initial emergence predating the late second millennium BCE. Although written Chinese is first attested in official divinations, it is widely believed that writing was also used for other purposes during the Shang, but that the media used in other contexts—likely bamboo and wooden slips—were less durable than bronzes or oracle bones, and have not been preserved.[66]
Zhou scripts
As early as the Shang, the oracle bone script existed as a simplified form alongside another that was used in bamboo books, in addition to elaborate pictorial forms often used in clan emblems. These other forms have been preserved in what is called
Study of these bronze inscriptions has revealed that the mainstream script underwent slow, gradual evolution during the late Shang, which continued during the
Qin unification and small seal script
Following Qin's conquest of the other Chinese states that culminated in the founding of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, the Qin small seal script was standardised for use throughout the entire country under the direction of Chancellor Li Si (c. 280 – 208 BCE).[73] It was traditionally believed that Qin scribes only used small seal script, and the later clerical script was a sudden invention during the early Han. However, more than one script was used by Qin scribes: a rectilinear vulgar style had also been in use in Qin for centuries prior to the wars of unification. The popularity of this form grew as writing became more widespread.[74]
Clerical script
By the Warring States period (c. 475 – 221 BCE), an immature form of clerical script (隶书; 隸書; lìshū) had emerged based on the vulgar form developed within Qin, often called "early clerical" or "proto-clerical".[75] The proto-clerical script evolved gradually; by the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), it had arrived at a mature form, also called 八分 (bāfēn). Bamboo slips discovered during the late 20th century point to this maturation being completed during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BCE). This process, called libian (隶变; 隸變), involved character forms being mutated and simplified, with many components being regularised, substituted, or omitted. In turn, the forms of components themselves were regularised as to use fewer, straighter, and more well-defined strokes. As a result, clerical forms largely lack the direct pictorial quality of seal script—the process that produced the clerical form of 月 obscured its origins as a picture of the Moon.[76]
Around the midpoint of the
Cursive and semi-cursive
An early type of cursive script (草书; 草書; cǎoshū) was also in use as early as 24 BCE, incorporating cursive forms popular at the time, as well as elements from the vulgar writing that originated within Qin. By the Jin dynasty (266–420), the Han cursive style became known as 章草 (zhāngcǎo; 'orderly cursive'), sometimes known in English as 'clerical cursive', 'ancient cursive', or 'draft cursive'. Some attribute this name to the fact that the style was considered more orderly than another later form called 今草 (jīncǎo; 'modern cursive'), which had first emerged during the Jin and was influenced by semi-cursive and regular script. This later form was exemplified by the work of figures like Wang Xizhi (303–361), who is often regarded as the most important calligrapher in Chinese history.[79][80]
An early form of semi-cursive script (行书; 行書; xíngshū; 'running script') can be identified during the late Han, with its development stemming from a cursive form of neo-clerical script. Liu Desheng (劉德升; c. 147 – 188 CE) is traditionally recognised as the inventor of the semi-cursive style, though accreditations of this kind often indicate a given style's early masters, rather than its earliest practitioners. Later analysis has suggested popular origins for semi-cursive, as opposed to it being an invention of Liu.[81] It can be characterised partly as the result of clerical forms being written more quickly, without formal rules of technique or composition: what would be discrete strokes in clerical script frequently flow together instead. The semi-cursive style is commonly adopted in contemporary handwriting.[82]
Regular script
Structure
Each character of a text is written within a uniform square allotted for it. As part of the evolution from seal script into clerical script, character components became regularised as discrete series of
Characters are constructed according to predictable visual patterns. Some components have distinct combining forms when occupying specific positions within a character—for example, the ⼑ 'KNIFE' component appears as 刂 on the right side of characters, but as ⺈ at the top of characters.[92] The order in which components are drawn within a character is fixed. The order in which the strokes of a component are drawn is also largely fixed, but may vary according to several different standards.[93][94] This is summed up in practice with a few rules of thumb, including that characters are generally assembled from left to right, then from top to bottom, with "enclosing" components started before, then closed after, the components they enclose.[95] For example, 永 is composed of two components written with one and four strokes respectively, drawn in the following order:
Character | Component | Stroke | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 丶 | 1 | ||
2 | 水 | |||
2 | ||||
3 | ||||
4 | ||||
5 |
Variant characters
Over a character's history,
For example, prior to the Qin dynasty the character meaning 'bright' was written as either 明 or 朙—with either ⽇ 'SUN' or 囧 'WINDOW' on the left, and ⽉ 'MOON' on the right. As part of the Qin programme to standardise small seal script across China, the 朙 form was promoted. Some scribes ignored this, and continued to write the character as 明. However, the increased usage of 朙 was followed by the proliferation of a third variant: 眀, with ⽬ 'EYE' on the left—likely derived as a contraction of 朙. Ultimately, 明 became the character's standard form.[99]
Layout
From the earliest inscriptions until the 20th century, texts were generally laid out vertically—with characters written from top to bottom in columns, arranged from right to left. A horizontal writing direction—with characters written from left to right in rows, arranged from top to bottom—only became predominant in the Sinosphere during the 20th century, as a result of Western influence.[100] Many publications outside mainland China continue to use the traditional vertical writing direction.[101][102]
Methods of writing
The earliest attested Chinese characters were carved into bone, or marked using a stylus in clay moulds used to cast ritual bronzes. Characters have also been incised into stone, or written in ink onto slips of silk, wood, and bamboo. The invention of paper for use as a writing medium occurred during the 1st century CE, and is traditionally credited to Cai Lun (d. 121 CE).[103] There are numerous styles, or scripts (书; 書; shū) in which characters can be written, including the historical forms like seal script and clerical script. Most styles used throughout the Sinosphere originated within China, though they may display regional variation. Styles that have been created outside of China tend to remain localised in their use: these include the Japanese edomoji and Vietnamese lệnh thư scripts.[104]
Calligraphy
Calligraphy was traditionally one of the four arts to be mastered by Chinese scholars, considered to be an artful means of expressing thoughts and teachings. Chinese calligraphy typically makes use of an ink brush to write characters. Strict regularity is not required, and character forms may be accentuated to evoke a variety of aesthetic effects.[105] Traditional ideals of calligraphic beauty often tie into broader philosophical concepts native to East Asia. For example, aesthetics can be conceptualised using the framework of yin and yang, where the extremes of any number of mutually reinforcing dualities are balanced by the calligrapher—such as the duality between strokes made quickly or slowly, between applying ink heavily or lightly, between characters written with symmetrical or asymmetrical forms, and between characters representing concrete or abstract concepts.[106]
Printing and typefaces
Woodblock printing was invented in China between the 6th and 9th centuries,[107] followed by the invention of movable type by Bi Sheng (972–1051) during the 11th century.[108] The increasing use of print during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties (1644–1912) led to considerable standardisation in character forms, which prefigured later script reforms during the 20th century. This print orthography, exemplified by the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary, was later dubbed the jiu zixing ('old character shapes').[109] Printed Chinese characters may use different typefaces,[110] of which there are four broad classes in use:[111]
- Song (宋体; 宋體) or Ming (明体; 明體) typefaces—with "Song" generally used with simplified Chinese typefaces, and "Ming" with others—broadly correspond to Western serif styles. Song typefaces are broadly within the tradition of historical Chinese print; both names for the style refer to eras regarded as high points for printing in the Sinosphere. While type during the Song dynasty (960–1279) generally resembled the regular script style of a particular calligrapher, most modern Song typefaces are intended for general purpose use and emphasise neutrality in their design.
- Sans-serif typefaces are called 'black form' (黑体; 黑體; hēitǐ) in Chinese and 'Gothic' (ゴシック体) in Japanese. Sans-serif strokes are rendered as simple lines of even thickness.
- "Kai" typefaces (楷体; 楷體) imitate a handwritten style of regular script.
- Fangsong typefaces (仿宋体; 仿宋體), called "Song" in Japan, correspond to semi-script styles in the Western paradigm.
Use with computers
Before computers became ubiquitous, earlier electro-mechanical communications devices like
Input methods
Chinese characters are predominantly input on computers using a standard keyboard. Many input methods (IMEs) are phonetic, where typists enter characters according to schemes like pinyin or bopomofo for Mandarin, Jyutping for Cantonese, or Hepburn for Japanese. For example, 香港 ('Hong Kong') could be input as xiang1gang3
using pinyin, or as hoeng1gong2
using Jyutping.[114]
Character input methods may also be based on form, using the shape of characters and existing rules of handwriting to assign unique codes to each character, potentially increasing the speed of typing. Popular form-based input methods include Wubi on the mainland, and Cangjie—named after the mythological inventor of writing—in Taiwan and Hong Kong.[114] Often, unnecessary parts are omitted from the encoding according to predictable rules. For example, 疆 ('border') is encoded using the Cangjie method as NGMWM
, which corresponds to the components 弓土一田一
.[115]
Contextual constraints may be used to improve candidate character selection. When ignoring tones, 大学; 大學 and 大雪 are both transcribed as daxue
, the system may prioritize which candidate should appear first based on the surrounding context.[116]
Encoding and interchange
While special text encodings for Chinese characters were introduced prior to its popularisation,
Vocabulary and adaptation
Writing first emerged during the historical stage of the Chinese language known as Old Chinese. Most characters correspond to morphemes that originally functioned as stand-alone Old Chinese words.[121] Classical Chinese is the form of written Chinese used in the classic works of Chinese literature between roughly the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE.[122] This form of the language was imitated by later authors, even as it began to diverge from the language they spoke. This later form, referred to as "Literary Chinese", remained the predominant written language in China until the 20th century. Its use in the Sinosphere was loosely analogous to that of Latin in pre-modern Europe. While it was not static over time, Literary Chinese retained many properties of spoken Old Chinese. Informed by the local spoken vernaculars, texts were read aloud using literary and colloquial readings that varied by region. Over time, sound mergers created ambiguities in vernacular speech as more words became homophonic. This ambiguity was often reduced through the introduction of multi-syllable compound words,[123] which comprise much of the vocabulary in modern varieties of Chinese.[124][125]
Over time, use of Literary Chinese spread to neighbouring countries, including Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Alongside other aspects of Chinese culture, local elites adopted writing for record-keeping, histories, and official communications, forming what is sometimes called the
Following the introduction of Literary Chinese, characters were later adapted to write many non-Chinese languages spoken throughout the Sinosphere. These new writing systems used characters to write both native vocabulary and the numerous
Literary and vernacular Chinese
Words in Classical Chinese were generally a single character in length.[138] An estimated 25–30% of the vocabulary used in Classical Chinese texts consists of two-character words.[139] Over time, the introduction of multi-syllable vocabulary into vernacular varieties of Chinese was encouraged by phonetic shifts that increased the number of homophones.[140] The most common process of Chinese word formation after the Classical period has been to create compounds of existing words. Words have also been created by appending affixes to words, by reduplication, and by borrowing words from other languages.[141] While multi-syllable words are generally written with one character per syllable, abbreviations are occasionally used.[142] For example, 二十 (èrshí; 'twenty') may be written as the contracted form 廿.[143]
Sometimes, different morphemes come to be represented by characters with identical shapes. For example, 行 may represent either 'road' (xíng) or the extended sense of 'row' (háng): these morphemes are ultimately cognates that diverged in pronunciation but remained written with the same character. However, Qiu reserves the term homograph to describe identically shaped characters with different meanings that emerge via processes other than semantic extension. An example homograph is 铊; 鉈, which originally meant 'weight used at a steelyard' (tuó). In the 20th century, this character was created again with the meaning 'thallium' (tā). Both of these characters are phono-semantic compounds with ⾦ 'GOLD' as the semantic component and 它 as the phonetic component, but the words represented by each are not related.[144]
There are a number of 'dialect characters' (方言字; fāngyánzì) that are not used in standard written vernacular Chinese, but reflect the vocabulary of other spoken varieties. The most complete example of an orthography based on a variety other than Standard Chinese is Written Cantonese. A common Cantonese character is 冇 (mou5; 'to not have'), derived by removing two strokes from 有 (jau5; 'to have').[145] It is common to use standard characters to transcribe previously unwritten words in Chinese dialects when obvious cognates exist. When no obvious cognate exists due to factors like irregular sound changes, semantic drift, or an origin in a non-Chinese language, characters are often borrowed or invented to transcribe the word—either ad hoc, or according to existing principles.[146] These new characters are generally phono-semantic compounds.[147]
Japanese
Japanese writing |
---|
Components |
Uses |
Transliteration |
In Japanese, Chinese characters are referred to as kanji. Beginning in the Nara period (710–794), readers and writers of kanbun—the Japanese term for Literary Chinese writing—began employing a system of reading techniques and annotations called kundoku. When reading, Japanese speakers would adapt the syntax and vocabulary of Literary Chinese texts to reflect their Japanese-language equivalents. Writing essentially involved the inverse of this process, and resulted in ordinary Literary Chinese.[148] When adapted to write Japanese, characters were used to represent both Sino-Japanese vocabulary loaned from Chinese, as well as the corresponding native synonyms. Most kanji were subject to both borrowing processes, and as a result have both Sino-Japanese and native readings, known as on'yomi and kun'yomi respectively. Moreover, kanji may have multiple readings of either kind. Distinct classes of on'yomi were borrowed into Japanese at different points in time from different varieties of Chinese.[149]
The Japanese writing system is a mixed script, and has also incorporated syllabaries called kana to represent phonetic units called moras, rather than morphemes. Prior to the Meiji era (1868–1912), writers used certain kanji to represent their sound values instead, in a system known as man'yōgana. Starting in the 9th century, specific man'yōgana were graphically simplified to create two distinct syllabaries called hiragana and katakana, which slowly replaced the earlier convention. Modern Japanese retains the use of kanji to represent most word stems, while kana syllabograms are generally used for grammatical affixes, particles, and loanwords. The forms of hiragana and katakana are visually distinct from one another, owing in large part to different methods of simplification: katakana were derived from smaller components of each man'yōgana, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of man'yōgana in their entirety. In addition, the hiragana and katakana for some moras were derived from different man'yōgana.[150] Characters invented for Japanese-language use are called kokuji. The methods employed to create kokuji are equivalent to those used by Chinese-original characters, though most are ideographic compounds. For example, 峠 (tōge; 'mountain pass') is a compound kokuji composed of ⼭ 'MOUNTAIN', 上 ‘ABOVE’, and 下 ‘BELOW’.[151]
While characters used to write Chinese are monosyllabic, many kanji have multi-syllable readings. For example, the kanji 刀 has a native kun'yomi reading of katana. In different contexts, it can also be read with the on'yomi reading tō, such as in the Chinese loanword 日本刀 (nihontō; 'Japanese sword'), with a pronunciation corresponding to that in Chinese at the time of borrowing. Prior to the universal adoption of katakana, loanwords were typically written with unrelated kanji with on'yomi readings matching the syllables in the loanword. These spellings are called ateji: for example, 亜米利加 was the ateji form for modern アメリカ (Amerika; 'America'). As opposed to man'yōgana used solely for their pronunciation, ateji still corresponded to specific Japanese words. Some are still in use: the official list of jōyō kanji includes 106 ateji readings.[152]
Korean
In Korean, Chinese characters are known as hanja. Literary Chinese may have been written in Korea as early as the 2nd century BCE. During the
Much of the Korean lexicon consists of Chinese loanwords, especially technical and academic vocabulary.
Hanja | Hangul | Gloss | |
---|---|---|---|
Native translation | Sino-Korean | ||
水 | 물; mul | 수; su | 'water' |
人 | 사람; saram | 인; in | 'person' |
大 | 큰; keun | 대; dae | 'big' |
小 | 작을; jakeul | 소; so | 'small' |
下 | 아래; arae | 하; ha | 'down' |
父 | 아비; abi | 부; bu | 'father' |
韓 | 나라 이름; nara ireum | 한; han | 'Korea' |
Vietnamese
Chinese characters are called chữ Hán (𡨸漢), chữ Nho (𡨸儒), or Hán tự (漢字) in Vietnamese. Literary Chinese was used for all formal writing in Vietnam until the modern era,[161] having first acquired official status in 1010. Literary Chinese written by Vietnamese authors is first attested in the late 10th century, though the local practice of writing is likely several centuries older.[162] Characters used to write Vietnamese called chữ Nôm (𡨸喃) are first attested in an inscription dated to 1209 made at the site of a pagoda.[163] A mature chữ Nôm script had likely emerged by the 13th century, and was initially used to record Vietnamese folk literature. Some chữ Nôm characters are phono-semantic compounds corresponding to spoken Vietnamese syllables.[164] A technique with no equivalent in China created chữ Nôm compounds using two phonetic components. This was done because Vietnamese phonology included consonant clusters not found in Chinese, and were thus poorly approximated by the sound values of borrowed characters. Compounds used components with two distinct consonant sounds to specify the cluster, e.g. 𢁋 (blăng;[d] 'Moon') was created as a compound of 巴 (ba) and 陵 (lăng).[165] As a system, chữ Nôm was highly complex, and the literacy rate among the Vietnamese population never exceeded 5%.[166] Both Literary Chinese and chữ Nôm fell out of use during the French colonial period, and were gradually replaced by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. Following the end of colonial rule in 1954, the Vietnamese alphabet has been sole official writing system in Vietnam, and is used exclusively in Vietnamese-language media.[167]
Other languages
Several minority languages of
Graphically derived scripts
Between the 10th and 13th centuries, dynasties founded by non-Han peoples in northern China also created scripts for their languages that were inspired by Chinese characters, but did not use them directly: these included the
Chinese characters have also been repurposed phonetically to transcribe the sounds of non-Chinese languages. For example, the only manuscripts of the 13th-century Secret History of the Mongols that have survived from the medieval era use characters in this manner to write the Mongolian language.[174]
Education and lexicography
Dictionaries
Dozens of schemes have been devised for indexing Chinese characters and arranging them in dictionaries, though relatively few have achieved widespread use. Characters may be ordered according to methods based on their meaning, visual structure, or pronunciation.[175]
The
Before the invention of romanisation systems for Chinese,
Pedagogy
Studies of Chinese-language literacy suggest that literate individuals generally have an
Character literacy was often historically acquired via Chinese primers like the 6th-century Thousand Character Classic and 13th-century Three Character Classic,[183] as well as surname dictionaries like the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.[184]
Reform and standardisation
Attempts to reform and standardise the use of characters have been undertaken by states throughout the script's history. thousands of
Reforms prior to the 20th century were generally conservative, and sought to reduce the use of simplified variants.
In 1911, the
People's Republic of China
The project of script reform in China was ultimately inherited by the Communists, who resumed work following the
A
Japan
After World War II, the Japanese government instituted its own program of orthographic reforms. Some characters were assigned simplified forms called shinjitai; the older forms were then labelled kyūjitai. Inconsistent use of different variant forms was discouraged, and lists of characters to be taught to students at each grade level were developed. The first of these was the 1850-character tōyō kanji list in 1945, later replaced by the 1945-character jōyō kanji list in 1981. In 2010, the jōyō kanji were expanded to include a total of 2136 characters.[204][205] The Japanese government restricts characters that may be used in names: in addition to the jōyō kanji, names may also include the jinmeiyō kanji, an additional list of 983 characters historically prevalent in names.[206][207]
South Korea
Hanja are still used in South Korea, though not to the extent that kanji are used in Japan. In general, there is a trend toward the exclusive use of hangul in ordinary contexts.[208] Characters remain in use in place names, newspapers, and to disambiguate homophones. They are also used in the practice of calligraphy. Use of hanja in education is politically contentious, with official policy regarding the prominence of hanja in curricula having vacillated since the country's independence.[209][210] Some support the total abandonment of hanja, while others advocate an increase in use to levels previously seen during the 1970s and 1980s. Students in grades 7–12 are presently taught with a principal focus on simple recognition and attaining sufficient literacy to read a newspaper.[154] The South Korean Ministry of Education published the Basic Hanja for Educational Use in 1972, which specified 1800 characters meant to be learned by secondary school students.[211] In 1991, the Supreme Court of Korea published the Table of Hanja for Use in Personal Names (인명용한자; Inmyeong-yong hanja), which initially included 2854 characters.[212] The list has been expanded several times since; as of 2022[update], it includes 8319 characters.[213]
North Korea
In the years following its establishment, the North Korean government sought to eliminate the use of hanja in standard writing; by 1949, characters had been almost entirely replaced with hangul in North Korean publications.[214] While mostly unused in writing, hanja remain an important part of North Korean education: a 1971 textbook for university history departments contained 3323 distinct characters, and in the 1990s North Korean school children were still expected to learn 2000 characters.[215] A 2013 textbook appears to integrate the use of hanja in secondary school education.[216] It has been estimated that North Korean students learn around 3000 hanja by the time they graduate university.[217]
Taiwan
The Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters published by Taiwan's Ministry of Education lists 4808 traditional characters.[218] The Ministry of Education also compiles dictionaries of characters used in Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka.[219]
Other regional standards
Singapore's Ministry of Education promulgated three successive rounds of simplifications: the first round in 1969 included 502 simplified characters, and the second round in 1974 included 2287 simplified characters—including 49 that differed from those in the PRC, which were ultimately removed in the final round in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted the revisions made in mainland China in 1986.[220]
The Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau's List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters includes 4762 traditional characters used in elementary and junior secondary education.[221][222]
Notes
- simplifiedas 汉字
- Chinese pinyin: Hànzì; Wade–Giles: Han4-tzŭ4; Jyutping: Hon3 zi6
- Japanese Hepburn: kanji
- Korean revised romanisation: Hanja; McCune–Reischauer: Hancha
- Vietnamese: Hán tự
- ^ Zev Handel lists:[2]
- Sumerian cuneiform emerging c. 3200 BCE
- Egyptian hieroglyphs emerging c. 3100 BCE
- Chinese characters emerging c. 13th century BCE
- Maya script emerging c. 1 CE
- ^ According to Handel: "While monosyllabism generally trumps morphemicity—that is to say, a bisyllabic morpheme is nearly always written with two characters rather than one—there is an unmistakable tendency for script users to impose a morphemic identity on the linguistic units represented by these characters."[10]
- Middle Vietnamesepronunciation; the word is pronounced in modern Vietnamese as trăng.
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Citations
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Further reading
- DeFrancis, John (1989). "Chinese". Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-824-81207-2– via pinyin.info.
- Demattè, Paola (2022). The Origins of Chinese Writing. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-197-63576-6.
- ISBN 978-9-634-63811-7.
- King, Ross, ed. (2023). Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen 文. Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis. Vol. 5. Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-43769-2.
- Mair, Victor H. (2 August 2011). "Polysyllabic Characters in Chinese Writing". Language Log.
- Mullaney, Thomas S. (2024). The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-04751-7.
- ISBN 978-0-774-80192-8.
- Simmons, Richard VanNess, ed. (2022). Studies in Colloquial Chinese and Its History: Dialect and Text. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 978-9-888-75409-0.
Works of historical interest
- Fourmont, Étienne (1742). Linguæ Sinarum Mandarinicæ Hieroglyphicæ Grammatica Duplex [Bilingual Grammar of the Mandarin Chinese Hieroglyphics] (in Latin). Paris: Hippolyte-Louis Guérin.
- Medhurst, Walter Henry (1842). Chinese and English dictionary. Jakarta.
- Williams, Samuel Wells (1842). Easy lessons in Chinese. Macau: Office of the Chinese Repository.
- Edkins, Joseph (1876). Introduction to the study of the Chinese characters. London: Trübner.
- Chalmers, John (1882). An account of the structure of Chinese characters under 300 primary forms. London: Trübner.
- Giles, Herbert Allen (1912) [1892]. A Chinese–English dictionary. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). London: B. Quaritch.
- Condit, I. M. (1893). Chinese and English dictionary. New York: American Tract Society.
- Poletti, P. (1896). A Chinese and English dictionary. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press.
- Soothill, William Edward (1906) [1900]. The Student's Four Thousand Tzu and General Pocket Dictionary (6th ed.). Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press.
- Tai Tung (戴侗) (1954). The Six Scripts. Translated by Hopkins, L. C. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-60515-2– via Google Books.
External links
- Unihan Database – Official Unicode site on Chinese characters and Han unification, with reference glyphs, readings, and meanings for all characters encoded in the standard
- Chinese Text Project Dictionary – Comprehensive character dictionary, including data for all Chinese characters within Unicode, and exemplary examples of use in Classical Chinese texts
- zi.tools – Character lookup by component description, character etymology, phonology, orthography, and dictionary
- Chinese Etymology by Richard Sears