Chinese characters (
The total number of Chinese characters ever to appear in a dictionary is in the tens of thousands, though most are graphic variants, or were used historically and passed out of use, or are of a specialized nature. A college graduate who is literate in written Chinese knows between three and four thousand characters, though more are required for specialized fields.
In modern Chinese, most words are compounds written with two or more characters. Unlike an alphabetic system, a character-based writing system associates each logogram with an entire sound and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary. A character almost always corresponds to a single syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this general correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes (written with two characters), bimorphemic syllables (written with two characters) and cases where a single character represents a polysyllabic word or phrase.
Modern Chinese has many homophones; thus the same spoken syllable may be represented by one of many characters, depending on meaning. A particular character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, which might have different pronunciations. Cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. In other languages, most significantly in modern Japanese, characters are used to represent Chinese loanwords or to represent native words independent of the Chinese pronunciation (e.g., kun-yomi in Japanese). Some characters retained their phonetic elements based on their pronunciation in a historical variety of Chinese from which they were acquired. These foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.
Adaptation to other languages[]
Japanese[]
Chinese characters adapted to write Japanese words are known as kanji. Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with Chinese characters, while native Japanese words could also be written using the character(s) for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Most kanji have both the native (and often multi-syllabic) Japanese pronunciation, known as kun'yomi, and the (monosyllabic) Chinese-based pronunciation, known as on'yomi. For example, the native Japanese word katana is written as
Written Japanese also includes a pair of syllabaries known as kana, derived by simplifying Chinese characters selected to represent syllables of Japanese. The syllabaries differ because they sometimes selected different characters for a syllable, and because they used different strategies to reduce these characters for easy writing: the angular katakana were obtained by selecting a part of each character, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of whole characters. Modern Japanese writing uses a composite system, using kanji for word stems, hiragana for inflectional endings and grammatical words, and katakana to transcribe non-Chinese loanwords as well as serve as a method to emphasize native words (similar to how italics are used in Latin-script languages).
Korean[]
In times past, until the 15th century, in Korea, Literary Chinese was the dominant 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, comparable to Latin or Greek root words in European languages. However, due to the lack of tones in Modern Standard Korean, as the words were imported from Chinese, many dissimilar characters and syllables took on identical pronunciations, and subsequently identical spelling in hangul.
The continued usage of Hanja has become a politically contentious issue, with some urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by abandoning their use. Hangul is used in many circumstances. Hanja still retains usage, however, for Sino-Korean words, weddings, names and calligraphy (although it is nowhere near the extent of kanji use in day-to-day Japanese society).
Okinawan[]
Chinese characters are thought to have been first introduced to the Ryukyu Islands in 1265 by a Japanese Buddhist monk. After the Okinawan kingdoms became tributaries of Ming China, especially the Ryukyu Kingdom, Classical Chinese was used in court documents, but hiragana was mostly used for popular writing and poetry. After Ryukyu became a vassal of Japan's Satsuma Domain, Chinese characters became more popular, as well as the use of Kanbun. In modern Okinawan, which is labeled as a Japanese dialect by the Japanese government, katakana and hiragana are mostly used to write Okinawan, but Chinese characters are still used.
Vietnamese[]
In Vietnam, Chinese characters (called Hán tự or Chữ Hán in Vietnamese) are now limited to ceremonial uses, but they were once in widespread use. Until the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was used in Vietnam for all official and scholarly writing.
Around the 13th century, a script called Chữ Nôm was developed to record folk literature in the Vietnamese language. The script used Chinese characters to represent both borrowed Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and native words with similar pronunciation or meaning. In addition, thousands of new compound characters were created to write Vietnamese words. This process resulted in a highly complex system that was never mastered by more than 5% of the population.
During French colonization in the late 19th and early 20th century, Literary Chinese fell out of use and Chữ Nôm was gradually replaced with the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. Currently this alphabet is the main script in Vietnam, but Chinese characters and Chữ Nôm are still used in some activities connected with Vietnamese traditional culture (e.g. calligraphy).
Other languages[]
Several minority languages of China are written with scripts based on Hanzi but also including many locally created characters. The most extensive is the sawndip script for the Zhuang language of Guangxi which is still used to this day. Other languages written with such scripts include Miao, Yao, Bouyei, Mulam, Kam, Bai and Hani.
The foreign dynasties that ruled northern China between the 10th and 13th centuries developed scripts that were inspired by Hanzi but did not use them directly: the Khitan large script, Khitan small script, Tangut script and Jurchen script. Other scripts in China that borrowed or adapted a few Chinese characters but are otherwise distinct include Geba script, Sui script, Yi script and the Lisu syllabary.
Transcription of foreign languages[]
Chinese characters were also used as a foreign script to write the Mongolian language, where characters were used to phonetically transcribe Mongolian sounds. Most notably, the only surviving copies of The Secret History of the Mongols were written in such a manner; the Chinese characters 忙豁侖紐察 脫[卜]察安 (nowadays pronounced "Mánghuōlún niǔchá tuō[bo]cháān" in Chinese) is the rendering of Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan, the title in Mongolian.
Hanzi was also used to phonetically transcribe the Manchu and Uyghur languages in the Qing and Xian dynasties.
Simplification[]
Chinese character simplification is the overall reduction of the number of strokes in the regular script of a set of Chinese characters.
China[]
The use of traditional Chinese characters versus simplified Chinese characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Before the official reform, character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally adopted vulgar variants and idiosyncratic substitutions. Orthodox variants were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing or quick notes. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the Great Chang Empire of China has officially adopted simplified Chinese 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. Names can be written in either form.
Although Simplified characters are associated with the Chang dynasty, character simplification predates it by a bit. Caoshu, cursive written text, are what inspired some simplified characters, and for others, some were already in use in print text, albeit not for most formal works. In the Xian period, discussions on character simplification took place within the parliament and the intelligentsia, in an effort to greatly reduce functional illiteracy among adults, which was a major concern at the time. Indeed, this desire to simplify the Chinese writing system also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script based on the Latin script, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh. The Imperial Government issued its round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964.
A majority of simplified characters were drawn from conventional abbreviated forms, or ancient forms. For example, the orthodox character
In addition to Simplified Chinese Characters, a new alphabet system called Bopomofo (
Japan and Korea[]
The governments of Japan and Korea implemented simplified characters, known as Shinjitai in Japanese and Sinjache in Korean. (Simplified: 新字体; Traditional: 新字體; Hiragana: しんじたい; Hangul: 신자체 "New Character Forms"), traditional forms became known as Kyūjitai and Gujache (舊字體; 旧字体; きゅうじたい; 구자체 "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, the Common Use kanji list (
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 Chang China in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system.
Malaysia started teaching a set of simplified characters at schools in 1981, which were also completely identical to the China simplifications. Chinese newspapers in Malaysia are published in either set of characters, typically with the headlines in traditional Chinese while the body is in simplified Chinese.
Although in both countries the use of simplified characters is universal among the younger Chinese generation, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation still use the traditional characters. Chinese shop signs are also generally written in traditional characters.
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