Writing systems
Chinese (汉字/漢字)
Chinese characters (Hànzì) are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world and the only one of the four independently invented writing systems that has remained in continuous use. They derive from the oracle bone script used on animal bones or turtle shells in the late 2nd millennium BCE.
Countries using Chinese characters have standardized their forms: simplified characters (汉字) are used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while traditional characters (漢字) are used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Standard written Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.
About 2,000 characters have been simplified. Many of them are based on commonly used abbreviations, some of which have been in use in cursive forms since the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC).
Based on cursive versions:
長 → 长 (cháng) = long, length, strong point
樂 → 乐 (lè) = happy, to take pleasure in, to laugh
Based on obscure or ancient variants:
塵 → 尘 (chén) = dirt, the material world
無 → 无 (wú) = to not have, not
Made by removing radicals:
開 → 开 (kāi) = to open
麼 → 么 (ma/me) = an adverb affix
Made by retaining the radical:
廣 → 广 (guǎng) = broad, numerous
親 → 亲 (qīn) = parent, relative
Made by replacing a part with a simple, arbitrary symbol:
難 → 难 (nán) = hard, bad
這 → 这 (zhè) = this
Notable features
Script type: logography
Writing direction: right-to-left in columns (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), left-to-right in rows (Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, and Singapore)
Number of characters: 80,000+. However, the largest monolingual dictionary contains 106,230 characters. Knowing about 3,000 characters allows you to read about 99% of the characters used in newspapers and magazines. Twice as many are required to read literature and technical texts.
Languages: Bouyei, Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean, Lakkia, Mienic languages, Okinawan, and Zhuang (8)
A syllable is usually represented by a single character, which can have a range of meanings, sometimes corresponding to different pronunciations. Therefore, there are many homophones—syllables that sound the same but have different meanings, so the same sound can be represented by several characters.
There are three main types of characters:
Semantographs:
Pictographs are visual representations of physical objects, such as 日 (rì, “sun”) and 山 (shān, “mountain”).
Indicatives are visual representations of abstract concepts, such as 上 (shàng, “up”) and 凸 (tū, “convex”).
Compound ideographs combine characters to convey a new meaning, such as 明 (míng, “bright”)—⽇ and ⽉ (yuè, “moon”)—and 休 (xiū, “rest”)—⼈ (rén, “man”) and ⽊ (mù, “tree”).
Phonographs or phono-semantic compounds consist of a semantic and a phonetic component. Examples include 河 (hé, “river”) and 湖 (hú, “lake”), which consist of 氵, a simplified combining form of ⽔ (shuǐ, “water”), and a phonetic component. 河 is pronounced similarly to 可 (kě), while 湖 is pronounced identically to 胡 (hú). They make up around 90% of all characters.
Loangraphs are adaptations of existing characters to write words with similar pronunciations or borrowed from other languages. They are often deliberately chosen to create certain connotations: for example, Coca-Cola is 可口可乐/可口可樂 (kěkǒu kělè, “delicious enjoyable”).
Characters can consist of between one and 64 strokes, which are always written in the same direction and order, using the following twelve basic strokes:
Historical evolution of characters
Pictographs
Indicatives
Compound ideographs
Phonographs
Loangraphs