General Standard Chinese Characters (mainland China, 2013)
Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong, 2007)
Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982)
Grapheme-usage standards
General Standard Characters (PRC, 2013)
Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010)
Other standards
Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC, 2002)
Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009)
Previous standards
Commonly-used Characters (PRC, 1988)
Tōyō kanji (Japan, 1946)
Reforms
China
Clerical reforms
Traditional characters
Simplified characters
(first round
second round)
Debate
Japan
Kyūjitai
Shinjitai
Ryakuji
Korea
Yakja
Singapore
Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs and readings
Literary and colloquial readings
Variants
Graphemic variants
Zetian characters
Derived systems
Slavonic transcription
Nüshu
Kana (
Man'yōgana
Hiragana
Katakana
)
Jurchen script
Khitan (
Large
Small
)
Idu script
Bopomofo
Sawndip
Chữ Nôm
Transliteration of Chinese
v
t
e
Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rather, the writing system is morphosyllabic: characters are one spoken syllable in length, but generally correspond to morphemes in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word. Most characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation.[1] Literacy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000.[2][3] This has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese.[4]
Chinese writing is first attested during the late Shang dynasty (c. 1250 – c. 1050 BCE),[5][6][7] but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (c. 2500–2000 BCE).[8] After a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE).[9] Over the millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of Chinese calligraphy.[10] As the varieties of Chinese diverged, a situation of diglossia developed, with speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using Literary Chinese.[11] In the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with written vernacular Chinese, largely corresponding to Standard Chinese, a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Although most other varieties of Chinese are not written, there are traditions of written Cantonese, written Shanghainese and written Hokkien, among others.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
^DeFrancis (1984), p. 84.
^DeFrancis (1968).
^Norman (1988), p. 73.
^Ramsey (1987), p. 143.
^Boltz, William G. (1986). "Early Chinese Writing". World Archaeology. 17 (3): 420–436. doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979980. ISSN 0043-8243. JSTOR 124705.
^Keightley, David N. (1996). "Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China". Representations (56): 68–95. doi:10.2307/2928708. ISSN 0734-6018. JSTOR 2928708.
^DeFrancis, John (1989). "Chinese". Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-824-81207-2 – via pinyin.info.
WrittenChinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly...
spoken throughout China. It is contrasted with Literary Chinese, which was the predominant written form of the language in imperial China until the early...
character used to write it. For instance, writtenChinese first transcribed the name Yáo "the Yao people (in southwest China and Vietnam)" with the character for...
of Chinese is "written language" (書面語), in contrast to the "spoken language" (口語), i.e. Cantonese. While, like other varieties of WrittenChinese, it...
Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. 'Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages...
with written language. But spoken languages clearly continue to influence written languages throughout their lives too. For example, writtenChinese is...
Standard Chinese (simplified Chinese: 现代标准汉语; traditional Chinese: 現代標準漢語; pinyin: Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ; lit. 'modern standard Han speech') is a modern...
Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c. the 5th century BCE. For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese...
Written Cantonese is the most complete written form of a Chinese language after that for Mandarin Chinese and Classical Chinese. WrittenChinese was the...
the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and WrittenChinese Language (Order of the President No.37)". Chinese Government. 31 October 2000...
MAN-dər-in; simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話; pinyin: Guānhuà; lit. 'officials' speech') is a group of Chinese language dialects that are...
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Chinese characters...
These forms were predominant in writtenChinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing...
Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote numbers in writtenChinese. Today, speakers of Chinese languages use three written numeral systems:...
the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4,500 years, while examples of the writing system that would become writtenChinese are attested...
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the...
strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze basin constitutes the geographic core of the Chinese cultural...
in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include writtenChinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese...
in Northern China. These confederation of tribes were the ancestors of the modern Han Chinese people as well as the progenitors of Chinese civilization...
(traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdùng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic)...
as Guoyu (Chinese: 國語; pinyin: Guóyǔ; lit. 'National language') or Huayu (華語; Huáyǔ; 'Mandarin language'), is the variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in...
Many logograms have an ideographic component (Chinese "radicals", hieroglyphic "determiners"). In Chinese, about 90% of characters are compounds of a semantic...
Writing systems that use Chinese characters also include various punctuation marks, derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Historically, judou...
Republic of China. It is the world's 5th most traded currency as of April 2022. The yuan (Chinese: 元 or simplified Chinese: 圆; traditional Chinese: 圓; pinyin:...
Old Chinese spoken in ancient times. Although written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream writtenChinese in...
language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on Old Chinese used in ancient times. Whilst the written form of Chinese mostly...
Classics. The Chinese classics used a form of writtenChinese consciously imitated by later authors, now known as Classical Chinese. A common Chinese word for...
novels were written in written vernacular Chinese, an evolution from the preeminence of Literary Chinese patterned off the language of the Chinese classics...
Global Information