A report on Chinese characters

Excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters
Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in cuneiform, Egyptian and Chinese characters
Ox scapula with oracle bone inscription
The Shi Qiang pan, a bronze ritual basin dated to around 900 BC. Long inscriptions on the surface describe the deeds and virtues of the first seven Zhou kings.
A page from a Song dynasty publication in a regular script typeface which resembles the handwriting of Ouyang Xun from Tang Dynasty
The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.
Current (dark green) and former extension (light green) of the use of Chinese characters
The first two lines of the classic Vietnamese epic poem The Tale of Kieu, written in the Nôm script and the modern Vietnamese alphabet. Chinese characters representing Sino-Vietnamese words are shown in green, characters borrowed for similar-sounding native Vietnamese words in purple, and invented characters in brown.
Mongolian text from The Secret History of the Mongols in Chinese transcription, with a glossary on the right of each row
Sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang dynasty calligrapher Sun Guoting, c. 650 AD
Chinese calligraphy of mixed styles written by Song dynasty (1051–1108 AD) poet Mifu. For centuries, the Chinese literati were expected to master the art of calligraphy.
The first four characters of Thousand Character Classic in different type and script styles. From right to left: seal script, clerical script, regular script, Ming and sans-serif.
Variants of the Chinese character for guī 'turtle', collected c. 1800 from printed sources. The one at left is the traditional form used today in Taiwan and Hong Kong,, though may look slightly different, or even like the second variant from the left, depending on your font (see Wiktionary). The modern simplified forms used in China,, and in Japan, 亀, are most similar to the variant in the middle of the bottom row, though neither is identical. A few more closely resemble the modern simplified form of the character for diàn 'lightning', 电.
Five of the 30 variant characters found in the preface of the Imperial (Kangxi) Dictionary which are not found in the dictionary itself. They are 為 (爲) wèi "due to", 此 cǐ "this", 所 suǒ "place", 能 néng "be able to", 兼 jiān "concurrently". (Although the form of 為 is not very different, and in fact is used today in Japan, the radical 爪 has been obliterated.) Another variant from the preface, 来 for 來 lái "to come", also not listed in the dictionary, has been adopted as the standard in Mainland China and Japan.
The character 次 in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. If you have an appropriate font installed, you can see the corresponding character in Vietnamese:.
Zhé, "verbose"
Zhèng (unknown meaning)
alternative form of Taito
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Cumulative frequency of simplified Chinese characters in Modern Chinese text
Kanji for 剣道 (Kendo), pronounced differently from the Korean term 劍道 (Kumdo), or the Chinese words 劍道 (jiàndào; it is more common to use the expressions 劍術 jiànshù or 劍法 jiànfǎ in Chinese).
Nàng, "poor enunciation due to snuffle"
Taito, "the appearance of a dragon in flight"
Biáng, a kind of noodle in Shaanxi

Chinese characters are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese.

- Chinese characters
Excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters

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Bird seal script on the Sword of Goujian and its equivalents in modern Chinese

Bird-worm seal script

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Type of ancient seal script originating in China.

Type of ancient seal script originating in China.

Bird seal script on the Sword of Goujian and its equivalents in modern Chinese

The Chinese character 鳥 (Niǎo) means "bird" and the character 蟲 (Chóng) means "insect", but can also mean any creature that looks like a "worm", including invertebrate worms and reptiles such as snakes and lizards (and even the Chinese dragon).

Bronze relief of Cangjie by Lee Lawrie, 1939, at the Library of Congress's John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.

Cangjie

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Legendary figure in ancient China (c.

Legendary figure in ancient China (c.

Bronze relief of Cangjie by Lee Lawrie, 1939, at the Library of Congress's John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.

2667 BCE – 2596 BCE), claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters.

In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

Pinyin

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Official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China, and to some extent, in Taiwan and Singapore.

Official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China, and to some extent, in Taiwan and Singapore.

In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
Relative pitch changes of the four tones
Many writers are not yet aware of the rules for dividing text into words by spaces, and either put a space after each syllable, or run all words together. The manufacturer of this image's blankets put unnecessary spaces into the city name, 'Bishikaike' (which is the correct pinyin for 比什凯克, 'Bishkek') on the bottom line, but wrote the English text in the arc on top with no spaces at all.
Single storey a in four different Kai script fonts. Notice that accented pinyin letters are different in style and width with the regular letter.
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Standard Chinese is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.

It is often used to teach Mandarin, which is normally written using Chinese characters, to learners who are already familiar with the Latin alphabet.

Chinese characters (hànzì, 漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations

Writing system

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Method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use.

Method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use.

Chinese characters (hànzì, 漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia
Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters.
Table of scripts in the introduction to Sanskrit-English Dictionary by Monier Monier-Williams
This textbook for Puyi shows the English alphabet. Although the English letters run from left to right, the Chinese explanations run from top to bottom then right to left, as traditionally written
Early Chinese character for sun (ri), 1200 B.C
Modern Chinese character (ri) meaning "day" or "Sun"
A bilingual stop sign in English and the Cherokee syllabary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
A Bible printed with Balinese script
An overview of the writing directions used in the world

Common usage varies from discipline to discipline; compare cuneiform sign, Maya glyph, Chinese character.

An example of Japanese writing in 1940 using katakana exclusively.

Katakana

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Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

An example of Japanese writing in 1940 using katakana exclusively.
In this travel warning, the kanji for "fog" (霧) has been written in katakana (キリ) to make it more immediately readable
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Roots of katakana highlighted
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A page of the Meiji Constitution written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana
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Collection of Poems by Priest Myōe, 1248

It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhùyīn fúhào in Chinese.

Organic nomenclature in Chinese

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The Chinese Chemical Society (CCS; ) lays out a set of rules based on those given by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for the purpose of systematic organic nomenclature in Chinese.

The Chinese Chemical Society (CCS; ) lays out a set of rules based on those given by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for the purpose of systematic organic nomenclature in Chinese.

The majority of the Chinese characters used for this purpose are phonosemantic compounds, with part of the character giving a general semantic category and the other part providing a pronunciation, usually based on the international (European) pronunciation.

Handwritten Vietnamese alphabet

Vietnamese alphabet

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Modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese.

Modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese.

Handwritten Vietnamese alphabet
A page from Alexandre de Rhodes' 1651 dictionary
Different ways in which tone marks can be presented on letters that already have diacritic e.g. (`) on letter ê when computerising Vietnamese.

Since the 12th century, several Vietnamese words started to be written in chữ Nôm, using variant Chinese characters, each of them representing one word.

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Jurchen script

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The writing system used to write the Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in northeastern China in the 12th–13th centuries.

The writing system used to write the Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in northeastern China in the 12th–13th centuries.

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A medallion with the Jurchen translation of the Chinese couplet, Míngwáng shèn dé, sì yí xián bīn (明王慎德.四夷咸賓: "When a wise king is heedful of virtue, foreigners from all quarters come as guests"). The image was preserved in a Ming Dynasty catalog of molds for making ink cakes.
Jurchen inscription dated 1196, on a rock in Mongolia
Da Jin huang di dutong jinglüe langjun xingji (大金皇弟都統經略郎君行記)

It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese (Han characters).

From right to left: Kangxi Dictionary forms, Mainland China standard, Hong Kong standard, Taiwan standard, Japanese standard. Areas in the rightmost column where there are significant differences among different standards are highlighted in yellow. (Note: 玄 is not written completely in the Kangxi Dictionary because 玄 is a character in the Kangxi Emperor's given name, 玄燁. It was taboo to write in full a character in the emperor's given name, so 玄 and all characters containing it as a component are missing the final dot. Similarly, the final vertical stroke in 燁 is also omitted.)

Variant Chinese characters

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From right to left: Kangxi Dictionary forms, Mainland China standard, Hong Kong standard, Taiwan standard, Japanese standard. Areas in the rightmost column where there are significant differences among different standards are highlighted in yellow. (Note: 玄 is not written completely in the Kangxi Dictionary because 玄 is a character in the Kangxi Emperor's given name, 玄燁. It was taboo to write in full a character in the emperor's given name, so 玄 and all characters containing it as a component are missing the final dot. Similarly, the final vertical stroke in 燁 is also omitted.)
Twelve variants of the character 劍 (double-edged sword), varying in both radical use and component form. 僉 (or 㑒, 佥) is phonetic. 刀 (or 刂) refers to a blade. 金 (or 釒) refers to metal. 刃 (or 刄) refers to a blade edge.

Variant Chinese characters (Kanji: 異体字; Hepburn: itaiji; ; Revised Romanization: icheja) are Chinese characters that are homophones and synonyms.

Japanese calligraphy written in the semi-cursive style.

Semi-cursive script

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Style of calligraphy which emerged in China during the Han dynasty .

Style of calligraphy which emerged in China during the Han dynasty .

Japanese calligraphy written in the semi-cursive style.
Traced copy of the "Preface to the Orchard Pavilion Collection" by Wang Xizhi, written in semi-cursive script
Chinese characters for Guangdong written in simplified Chinese on top, traditional Chinese on the bottom.
Artwork of the calligrapher, Wang Xizhi

The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character’s strokes are permitted to be visibly connected as the writer writes, but not to the extent of the cursive style.