Chinese Characters History

Contents
Articles
Chinese character 1
Traditional Chinese characters 25
Kangxi Dictionary 28
Simplified Chinese characters 31
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters 40
Kanji 53
Hanja 65
Chữ Nôm 72
Khitan scripts 77
References
Article Sources and Contributors 81
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 83
Article Licenses
License 84
Chinese character 1
Chinese character
Chinese character
Left: "Chinese character" in Traditional Chinese. Right: "Chinese character" in Simplified Chinese. Pronounced as Hànzì, kanji, hanja,
and Hán tự.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 漢字
Simplified Chinese 汉字
Japanese name
Kanji 漢字
Hiragana かんじ
Korean name
Hangul 한자
Hanja 漢字
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ Hán Tự (Sino-Viet.)

Chữ Nho (native tongue)
Hán tự 漢字 (Sino-Viet.)
字儒 (native tongue)
Chinese character 2
Chinese
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese
Time period Bronze Age China to present
Parent systems Oracle Bone Script

• Chinese
ISO 15924 Hani, Hans, Hant
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.
A Chinese character, also known as a Han character (汉字 / 漢字; Hànzì), is a logogram used in writing Chinese
(hanzi), Japanese (kanji), less frequently Korean (hanja), and formerly Vietnamese (hán tự), and other languages.
Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Chinese
characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.[1] [2] [3]
The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large
number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown
that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.[4]
In the Chinese writing system, the characters are monosyllabic, each usually corresponding to a spoken syllable with
a basic meaning. However, although Chinese words may be formed by characters with basic meanings, a majority of
words in Mandarin Chinese require two or more characters to write (thus are polysyllabic) but have meaning that is
distinct from but dependent on the characters they are made from.[5] Cognates in the various Chinese
languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same
character.
Chinese characters have also been used and in some cases continue to be used in other languages, most significantly
Japanese (where a single character can represent several spoken syllables), Korean, and Vietnamese. Chinese
characters are used both by meaning to represent native words, ignoring the Chinese pronunciation, and by meaning
and sound, to represent Chinese loanwords. These foreign pronunciations of Chinese characters are known as
Sinoxenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Ancient Chinese.
History
Precursors
In the last 50 or so years, inscriptions have been found on pottery in a variety of locations in China such as Bànpō
near Xī'ān, as well as on bone and bone marrows at Hualouzi, Cháng'ān near Xī'ān. These simple, often geometric
marks have been frequently compared to some of the earliest known Chinese characters, on the oracle bones, and
some have taken them to mean that the history of Chinese writing extends back over six millennia.
However, because these marks occur singly, without any context to imply, and because they are generally extremely
crude and simple, Qiú Xīguī (2000, p. 31) concluded that "we do not have any basis for stating that these constituted
writing, nor is there reason to conclude that they were ancestral to Shang dynasty Chinese characters." Isolated
graphs and pictures continue to be found periodically, frequently accompanied by media reports pushing back the
purported beginnings of Chinese writing a few thousand years. For example, at Dàmàidì in Níngxià, 3,172 pictorial
cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BCE have been discovered, leading to headlines such as "Chinese writing '8,000
years old.'"[6] Similarly, archaeologists report finding a few inscribed symbols on tortoise shells at the Neolithic site
of Jiahu in Henan, dated to around 6,600–6,200 BCE, leading to headlines of "'Earliest writing' which was found in
China.[7]
Chinese character 3
In his comment released to the BBC, Professor David Keightley urged caution in the latter instance, pointing to the
lack of any direct cultural connection to Shāng culture, combined with gaps between them of many millennia.
However, in the same BBC article, a supporting argument is provided by Dr Garman Harbottle, of the Brookhaven
National Laboratory in New York, US, who collaborated with a team of archaeologists at the University of Science
and Technology of China, in Anhui province in the discovery. Dr Harbottle points to the persistence of sign use at
different sites along the Yellow River throughout the Neolithic and up to the Shāng period, when a complex writing
system appears.[7]
One group of sites of interest is the Dàwènkǒu culture sites (2800–2500 BCE, only one millennium earlier than the
early Shāng culture sites, and positioned so as to be plausibly albeit indirectly ancestral to the Shāng). There, a few
inscribed pottery and jade pieces have been found,[8] one of which combines pictorial elements (resembling,
according to some, a sun, moon or clouds, and fire or a mountain) in a stack which brings to mind the compounding
of elements in Chinese characters. Major scholars are divided in their interpretation of such inscribed symbols.
Some, such as Yú Xǐngwú,[9] Táng Lán[10] and Lǐ Xuéqín,[11] have identified these with specific Chinese characters.
Others such as Wang Ningsheng[12] interpret them as pictorial symbols such as clan insignia, rather than writing. But
in the view of Wang Ningsheng, "True writing begins when it represents sounds and consists of symbols that are
able to record language. The few isolated figures found on pottery still cannot substantiate this point."[13]
Legendary origins
According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary
emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a
tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied
the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called
zì—Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and
saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of the world.
Oracle bone script

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone
script (甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén, literally "shell-bone-script"). These were identified by
scholars in 1899 on pieces of bone and turtle shell being sold as medicine, and by
1928, the source of the oracle bones had been traced back to modern Xiǎotún
(小屯) village at Ānyáng in Hénán Province, where official archaeological
excavations in 1928–1937 discovered 20,000 oracle bone pieces, about 1/5 of the
total discovered. The inscriptions were records of the divinations performed for
or by the royal Shāng household. The oracle bone script is a well-developed
writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC).[14] [15]
[16]
Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known oracle bone script logographs can be
identified with later Chinese characters and thus deciphered by paleographers.
Bronze Age: Parallel script forms and gradual evolution

The traditional picture of an orderly series of scripts, each one invented suddenly
and then completely displacing the previous one as implied by neat series of Shāng Dynasty Oracle Bone Script
graphs in popular books on the subject, has been conclusively demonstrated to be on Ox Scapula, Linden-Museum,
fiction by the archaeological finds and scholarly research of the last half Stuttgart, Germany. Photo by Dr.
century.[17] Gradual evolution and the coexistence of two or more scripts was Meierhofer
Chinese character 4
more often the case. As early as the Shāng dynasty, oracle bone script coexisted as a simplified form alongside the
normal script of bamboo books (preserved for us in typical bronze inscriptions) as well as extra-elaborate pictorial
forms (often clan emblems) found on many bronzes.
Based on studies of such bronze inscriptions, it is clear
that from the Shāng dynasty writing to that of the
Western Zhōu and early Eastern Zhōu, the mainstream
script evolved in a slow, unbroken fashion, until taking
the form now known as seal script in the late Eastern
Zhōu in the state of Qín, without any clear line of
division.[18] [19] Meanwhile other scripts had evolved,
especially in the eastern and southern areas during the
late Zhōu, including regional forms, such as the gǔwén
“ancient forms” of the eastern Warring States preserved
Left: Bronze fāngzūn (方樽) ritual wine container dated about 1000 in the Hàn dynasty character dictionary Shuōwén Jiézì
BCE. The written inscription cast in bronze on the vessel as variant forms, as well as decorative forms such as
commemorates a gift of cowrie shells (then used as currency in bird and insect scripts.
China) from someone of presumably elite status in Zhou Dynasty
society. Right: Bronze fāngyí (方彝) ritual container dated about
1000 BCE. A written inscription of some 180 Chinese characters Unification: Seal script, vulgar writing and
appears twice on the vessel. The written inscription comments on
proto-clerical
state rituals that accompanied court ceremony, recorded by an
official scribe. Seal script, which had evolved slowly in the state of
Qín during the Eastern Zhōu dynasty, became
standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qín dynasty (leading to a popular misconception
that it was invented at that time), and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or
signets) in the Hàn dynasty onward. But despite the Qín script standardization, more than one script remained in use
at the time. For example, a little-known, rectilinear and roughly executed kind of common (vulgar) writing had for
centuries coexisted with the more formal seal script in the Qín state, and the popularity of this vulgar writing grew as
the use of writing itself became more widespread.[20] By the Warring States period, an immature form of clerical
script called “early clerical” or “proto-clerical” had already developed in the state of Qín[21] based upon thus vulgar
writing, and with influence from seal script as well.[22] The coexistence of the three scripts, small seal, vulgar and
proto-clerical, with the latter evolving gradually in the Qín to early Hàn dynasties into clerical script, runs counter to
the traditional beliefs that the Qín dynasty had one script only, and that clerical script was suddenly invented in the
early Hàn dynasty from the small seal script.
Hàn Dynasty
Proto-clerical evolving to clerical

Proto-clerical, which had emerged by the Warring States period from vulgar Qín writing, matured gradually, and by
the early Western Hàn, was little different from that of the Qín.[23] Recently discovered bamboo slips show the script
becoming mature clerical script by the middle to late reign of Emperor Wǔ of the W. Hàn,[24] who ruled 141 BCE to
87 BCE.
Clerical & clerical cursive

Contrary to popular belief of one script per period, there were in fact multiple scripts in use during the Hàn.[25]
Although mature clerical script, also called 八分 bāfēn[26] script, was dominant at that time, an early type of cursive
script was also in use in the Hàn by at least as early as 24 BCE (very late W. Hàn),[27] incorporating cursory (sic)
forms popular at that period as well as many[28] from the vulgar writing of the Warring State of Qín. By around the
Chinese character 5
Eastern Jìn dynasty this Hàn cursive became known as 章草 zhāngcǎo (also known as 隶草 / 隸草 lìcǎo today), or
in English sometimes clerical cursive, ancient cursive, or draft cursive. Some believe that the name, based on 章
zhāng meaning "orderly", is because this was a more orderly form[29] of cursive than the modern form of cursive
emerging around the E. Jìn and still in use today, called 今草 jīncǎo or "modern cursive".[30]
Neo-clerical
Around the mid Eastern Hàn,[29] a simplified and easier to write form of clerical appeared, which Qiú (2000, p. 113
& 139) terms "neo-clerical" (新隶体 / 新隸體 xīnlìtǐ) and by the late E. Hàn it had become the dominant daily
script,[29] although the formal, mature bāfēn (八分) clerical script remained in use for formal situations such as
engraved stelae.[29] Some have described this neo-clerical script as a transition between clerical and regular script,[29]
and it remained in use through the Cáo Wèi and Jìn dynasties.[31]
Semi-cursive
By the late E. Hàn, an early form of semi-cursive script appeared,[32] developing out of a somewhat cursively written
kind of neo-clerical script[33] and cursive.[34] It was traditionally attributed to Liú Déshēng ca. 147–188 CE,[31] [35]
although such attributions refer to early masters of a script rather than to their actual inventors, since the scripts
generally evolved into being over time. Qiú 2000, p. 140 gives examples of early semi-cursive showing that it had
popular origins rather than being only Liú’s invention.
Written styles
There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can
be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models.
Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor
variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used. These
characters were used over 3,000 years ago.
The Shang dynasty Oracle Bone and Zhou dynasty scripts found on
Chinese bronze inscriptions being no longer used, the oldest script that
is still in use today is the Seal Script (篆书 / 篆書 zhuànshū). It
evolved organically out of the Spring and Autumn period Zhou script,
and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of
China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now
only used in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read it
effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the
script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style.
Scripts that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (隶书 /
隸書 lìshū) of the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, the Weibei
(Chinese: 魏碑; pinyin: wèibēi), the "Regular Script" (楷书 / 楷書
kǎishū) used mostly for printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (行书 /
Sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang
行書 xíngshū) used mostly for handwriting.
Dynasty calligrapher Sun Guoting, c. 650 AD.
The Cursive Script (草书 / 草書 cǎoshū, literally "grass script") is not
in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than
explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are
no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is
highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the Simplified Chinese characters adopted by
Chinese character 6
the People's Republic of China, and some of the simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the Cursive
Script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script.
There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain
restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the scripts described above.
Wèi to Jìn period
Regular script
Regular script has been attributed to Zhōng Yáo, of the E. Hàn to Cáo Wèi period (ca 151–230 CE), who has been
called the “father of regular script”. However, some scholars[36] think that one person alone cannot develop a new
script which is universally adopted, but only be a contributor to its gradual formation. The earliest surviving pieces
written in regular script are copies of his works, including at least one copied by Wáng Xīzhī. This new script, which
is the dominant modern Chinese script, developed out of a neatly written form of early semi-cursive, with addition of
the pause (顿 / 頓 dùn) technique to end horizontal strokes, plus heavy tails on strokes which are written to
downward right diagonal.[37] Thus, early regular script emerged from a neat, formal form of semi-cursive which had
emerged from neo-clerical (a simplified, convenient form of clerical). It then matured further in the Eastern Jìn
dynasty in the hands of the "Sage of Calligraphy" Wáng Xīzhī and his son Wáng Xiànzhī. It was not, however, in
widespread use at that time, and most continued using neo-clerical or a somewhat semi-cursive form of it for daily
writing,[37] while the conservative bāfēn clerical script remained in use on some stelae, alongside some semi-cursive,
but primarily neo-clerical.[38]
Modern cursive
Meanwhile, modern cursive script slowly emerged out of the clerical cursive (zhāngcǎo) script during the Cáo Wèi
to Jìn period, under the influence of both semi-cursive and the newly emerged regular script.[39] Cursive was
formalized in the hands of a few master calligraphers, the most famous and influential of which was Wáng Xīzhī.[40]
However, because modern cursive is so cursive, it is hard to read, and never gained widespread use outside of
literary circles.
Dominance and maturation of regular script

It was not until the Southern and Northern Dynasties that regular script rose to dominant status.[41] During that
period, regular script continued evolving stylistically, reaching full maturity in the early Táng dynasty. Some call the
writing of the early Táng calligrapher Ōuyáng Xún (557–641) the first mature regular script. After this point,
although developments in the art of calligraphy and in character simplification still lay ahead, there were no more
major stages of evolution for the mainstream script.
Modern history
Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the
government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the
PRC's formation in 1949. One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lu Feikui, who proposed in
1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in
1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. In the 1930s and 1940s,
discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of
Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in
China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. The People's
Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and
the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant,
transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared
Chinese character 7
briefly, then disappeared.

"Han unification" was completed for the purposes of Unicode in 1991 (Unicode 1.0).
Formation of characters
Chinese character classification

Category Percentage of characters (approximation)
Phono-semantic compounds 82%
Ideogrammic compounds 13%
Pictograms 4%
Ideograms Few (less than 1%)
Transformed cognates Few
Rebus Few
The earliest known Chinese texts, in the Oracle bone script, display a
fully developed writing system, with little difference in functionality
from modern characters. It is assumed that the early stages of the
development of characters were dominated by pictograms, which were
the objects depicted, and ideograms, in which meaning was expressed
iconically. The demands of writing full language, including words
which had no easy pictographic or iconic representation, forced an
expansion of this system, presumably through use of rebus.
The presumed methods of forming characters were first classified c.

100 AD by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen (許慎), whose etymological
dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字 / 說文解字) divides the script
into six categories, the liùshū (六书 / 六書). While the categories and
classification are occasionally problematic and arguably fail to reflect
the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, this account has
been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.[42]
Four percent of Chinese characters are derived directly from individual

pictograms, though in most cases the resemblance to an object is no Excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese
characters
longer clear. Others were derived as ideograms; as compound
ideograms, where two ideograms are combined to give a third reading;
and as rebuses. But most characters were devised as phono-semantic compounds, with one element to indicate the
general category of meaning and the other to suggest the pronunciation. Again, in many cases the suggested sound is
no longer accurate. All today are logograms, and are not actually used pictographically or ideographically.
Pictograms
• 象形字 xiàngxíngzì
Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. While characters in this
class derive from pictures, they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and
their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 rì for "sun", 月 yuè for "moon", and 木 mù
for "tree"....[43]
Chinese character 8
There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu
Shen (c. 100 AD) estimated that 4% of characters fell into this category.
Ideograms
• 指事字 zhǐshìzì
Also called simple indicatives or simple ideographs, these characters either modify existing pictographs iconically,
or are direct iconic illustrations. For instance, by modifying 刀 dāo, a pictogram for "knife", by marking the blade,
an ideogram 刃 rèn for "blade" is obtained. Direct examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down". This
category is small.
Ideogrammic compounds
• 会意字 / 會意字 huìyìzì
Translated literally as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters symbolically combine
pictograms or ideograms to create a third character. For instance, doubling the pictogram 木 mù "tree" produces 林
lín "grove", while tripling it produces 森 sēn "forest". (It is interesting to note (see below) that 林 and 森 both have
the same reconstructed Old Chinese final *-ǐǝm.[44] ) Similarly, combining 日 rì "sun" and 月 yuè "moon", the two
natural sources of light, makes 明 míng "bright". Other commonly cited examples include the characters 休 xiū
"rest", composed of the pictograms 人 rén "person" and 木 mù "tree", and also 好 hǎo "good", composed of the
pictograms 女 nǚ "woman" and 子 zǐ "son/child".
Xu Shen estimated that 13% of characters fall into this category.
Some scholars flatly reject the existence of this category, opining that failure of modern attempts to identify a
phonetic in a compound is due simply to our not looking at ancient "secondary readings", which were lost over
time.[45] For example, the character 安 ān "peace", a combination of "roof" 宀 and "woman" 女, is commonly cited
as an ideogrammic compound, purportedly motivated by a meaning such as "all is peaceful with the woman at
home". However, there is evidence that 女 was once a polyphone with a secondary reading of *an, as may be
gleaned from the set 妟 yàn "tranquil", 奻 nuán "to quarrel", and 姦 jiān "licentious". Supporting this reasoning is
the fact that modern interpretations often neglect archaic forms that were in use when the characters were created.
These arguments notwithstanding, there are some characters that do appear to genuinely belong to this category. It is
doubtful that secondary readings can be found for many cases, and the characters 林, 森, 明, 休, and 好 are all
attested in oracle bone script, with the same components as the modern forms.
Phono-semantic compounds
• 形声字 / 形聲字 xíngshēngzì
By far the most numerous category are the phono-semantic compounds, also called semantic-phonetic compounds or
pictophonetic compounds. These characters are composed of two parts: one of a limited set of pictographs, often
graphically simplified, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and an existing character pronounced
approximately as the new target word.
Examples are 河 hé "river", 湖 hú "lake", 流 liú "stream", 沖 chōng "riptide" (or "flush"), 滑 huá "slippery". All
these characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes, which is a simplified pictograph for a river,
indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic
indicator. For example, in the case of 沖 chōng (Old Chinese /druŋ/[46] ), the phonetic indicator is 中 zhōng (Old
Chinese /truŋ/[47] ), which by itself means "middle". In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character
is slightly different from that of its phonetic indicator; this process means that the composition of such characters can
sometimes seem arbitrary today. Further, the choice of radicals may also seem arbitrary in some cases; for example,
the radical of 貓 māo "cat" is 豸 zhì, originally a pictograph for worms, but in characters of this sort indicating an
Chinese character 9
animal of any kind.

Xu Shen (c. 100 CE) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary
(1716 CE) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese
vocabulary.
This method is still sometimes used to form new characters, for example 钚 bù "plutonium") is the metal radical 金
jīn plus the phonetic component 不 bù, described in Chinese as "不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning". Many Chinese
names of elements in the periodic table and many other chemistry-related characters were formed this way.
Transformed cognates
• 转注字 / 轉注字 zhuǎnzhùzì
Characters in this category originally didn't represent the same meaning but have bifurcated through orthographic
and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 kǎo "to verify" and 老 lǎo "old" were once the same character, meaning
"elderly person", but detached into two separate words. Characters of this category are rare, so in modern systems
this group is often omitted or combined with others.
Rebus
• 假借字 jiǎjièzì
Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to
represent an unrelated word with similar pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with
characters such as 自 zì, which has lost its original meaning of "nose" completely and exclusively means "oneself",
or 萬 wàn, which originally meant "scorpion" but is now used only in the sense of "ten thousand".
Variants
Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters mostly occupying the x-height, with ascenders or
descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area in which the components of every
character are written to fit in order to maintain a uniform size and shape, especially with small printed characters in
Ming and sans-serif styles. Because of this, beginners often practise writing on squared graph paper, and the Chinese
sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (方块字 / 方塊字; fāngkuàizì), sometimes translated as
tetragraph,[48] in reference to Chinese characters.
Despite standardization, some nonstandard forms are commonly used, especially in handwriting.
Regional standards
The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs for many characters, and there have been
many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. In recent times, the widespread usage of the
characters in several different nations has prevented any particular system becoming universally adopted and the
standard form of many Chinese characters thus varies in different regions.
Mainland China adopted simplified characters in 1956, but Traditional Chinese characters are still used in Hong
Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Singapore has also adopted Simplified Chinese characters. Postwar Japan has used its
own less drastically simplified characters, Shinjitai, since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese
characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of romanized Vietnamese
and Hangul, respectively.
The standard character forms of each region are described in:
• The List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese for Mainland China.
• The List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters for Hong Kong.
Chinese character 10
• The Standard Form of National Characters for Taiwan.

• The list of Jōyō kanji for Japan.
• The Kangxi Dictionary (de facto) for Korea.
In addition to strictness in character size and shape, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The most
important rules regard the strokes employed, stroke placement, and stroke order. Just as each region that uses
Chinese characters has standardized character forms, each also has standardized stroke orders, with each standard
being different. Most characters can be written with just one correct stroke order, though some words also have
many valid stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts. Some characters are also written
with different stroke orders due to character simplification.
Typography
There are three major families of typefaces used in Chinese
typography:
• Song / Ming
• Sans-serif
• Regular script
Ming and sans-serif are the most popular in body text and are
based on regular script for Chinese characters akin to Western
serif and sans-serif typefaces, respectively. Regular script
typefaces emulate regular script.
The Song typeface (宋体 / 宋體, sòngtǐ) is also known as Minchō

(明朝) in Japan and Ming typeface (明体 / 明體, míngtǐ) in
Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these styles come from the
Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in
China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally,
it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain.
However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because
those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This
A page from a Ming Dynasty edition of the Book of Qi
resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick
vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal
strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the
current Ming typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes
contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the
end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical
regularity.
Microsoft JhengHei is a sans-serif typeface intended
for onscreen use.
Sans-serif typefaces, called black typeface (黑体 / 黑體, hēitǐ) in
Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese, are
characterized by simple lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica
in Western typography. This group of typefaces, first introduced on newspaper headlines, is commonly used where
legibility and neutrality is desired.
Regular script typefaces are also commonly used, but not as

common as Ming or sans-serif typefaces for body text. Regular
script typefaces are often used to teach students Chinese
characters, and often aim to match the standard forms of the region
where they are meant to be used. Most typefaces in the Song
Dynasty were regular script typefaces which resembled a
particular person's handwriting (e.g. the handwriting of Ouyang
Xun, Yan Zhenqing, or Liu Gongquan), while most modern
regular script typefaces tend toward anonymity and regularity.
Reform
Chinese character simplification is the overall reduction of the
number of strokes in the regular script of a set of Chinese
characters.
Simplification in China
The use of Traditional characters versus simplified characters
varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the A page from a Song Dynasty publication in a regular
script typeface which resembles the handwriting of
medium. Before the official reform, character simplifications were
Ouyang Xun.
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 PRC has officially adopted Simplified Chinese
characters for use in mainland China, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the ROC (Taiwan) were not affected by the
reform. 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.
Although most often associated with the PRC, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory.
Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always
existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification
took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long
maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to
simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the CPC) also nursed aspirations of some for the
adoption of a phonetic script, in imitation of the Roman alphabet, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu
Romatzyh.
The PRC issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second
in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "second round simplified characters") was
promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely,
while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been
simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng.
Many of the simplifications adopted had been in use in informal contexts for a long time, as more convenient
alternatives to their more complex standard forms. For example, the orthodox character 來 lái ("come") was written
with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隶书 / 隸書, lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses one fewer
stroke, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún ("cloud") was written with the structure 云
in the oracle bone script of the Shāng dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of "to
say" while the 雨 radical was added to differentiate meanings. The Simplified form adopts the original structure.
Japanese kanji
In the years after World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some
characters were given simplified forms called Shinjitai 新字体 (lit. "new character forms"; the older forms were
then labelled the Kyūjitai 旧字体, lit. "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, first the
1850-character Tōyō kanji 当用漢字 list in 1945, and later the 1945-character Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 list in 1981.
Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This
was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals.
These are simply guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly
used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the latter, see Jinmeiyō kanji).
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 the PRC in their entirety as official,
and has implemented them in the educational system. However, unlike in the PRC, personal names may still be
registered in Traditional characters.
Malaysia started teaching a set of simplified characters at schools in 1981, which were also completely identical to
the Mainland 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.
Comparisons of Traditional, Simplified, and Kanji

The following is a comparison of Chinese characters in the Standard Form of National Characters, a common
Traditional Chinese standard used in Taiwan; the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo, the standard for Mainland
Chinese Simplified Chinese characters; and the Jōyō kanji, the standard for Japanese Kanji. "Simplified" refers to
having significant differences from the Taiwan standard, not necessarily being a newly created character or a newly
performed substitution. The characters in the Hong Kong standard and the Kangxi Dictionary are also known as
"Traditional," but are not shown.
Comparisons of Traditional characters, Simplified

Chinese characters, and Simplified Japanese
characters in their modern standardized forms [49]
Traditional Chinese simp. Japanese Kanji meaning

Simplified in mainland China, not Japan
電电電
electricity
買买買
buy
開开開
open
東东東
east
車车車
car, vehicle
紅红紅
red (crimson in Japanese)
無无無
nothing
鳥鸟鳥
bird
熱热熱
hot
時时時
time
語语語
language
Simplified in Japan, not Mainland China
佛佛仏
Buddha
(In some cases this represents the adoption
of different variants as standard)
惠惠恵
favour
德德徳
moral, virtue
拜拜拝
kowtow, pray to, worship
黑黑黒
black
冰冰氷
ice
兔兔兎
rabbit
妒妒妬
jealousy
Simplified in Mainland China and Japan,
聽听聴
listen
but differently
證证証
certificate, proof
龍龙竜
dragon
賣卖売
sell
龜龟亀
turtle, tortoise
歲岁歳
age, year
藝艺芸
art, arts
戰战戦
fight, war
關关関
to close, relationship
鐵铁鉄
iron, metal
圖图図
picture, diagram
團团団
group, regiment
轉转転
turn
廣广広
wide, broad
惡恶悪
bad, evil
豐丰豊
abundant
腦脑脳
brain
雜杂雑
miscellaneous
壓压圧
pressure, compression
雞鸡鶏
chicken
價价価
price
樂乐楽
fun
氣气気
air
廳厅庁
hall, office
Simplified in Mainland China and Japan
聲声声
sound, voice
in the same way
學学学
learn
體体体
body
點点点
dot, point
貓猫猫
cat
蟲虫虫
insect
舊旧旧
old
會会会
can (verb); meeting
萬万万
ten-thousand
盜盗盗
thief
寶宝宝
treasure
國国国
country
醫医医
medicine
[1] "Chinese Writing Symbols" (http:/ / www. kwintessential. co. uk/ articles/ article/ China/ Chinese-Writing-Symbols/ 1651). Kwintessential. .
Retrieved 2010-03-20.
[2] "History of Chinese Writing Shown in the Museums" (http:/ / en. artintern. net/ index. php/ news/ main/ html/ 1/ 1101). CCTV online. .
Retrieved 2010-03-20.
[3] Jane P. Gardner & J. Elizabeth Mills. "Journey to East Asia" (http:/ / www. everything. com/ journey-east-asia/ ). Everything.com, F+W
Media. . Retrieved 2010-03-20.
[4] Norman, Jerry (2008). "Chinese Writing" (http:/ / www. asiasociety. org/ education-learning/ world-languages/ chinese-language-initiatives/
chinese-writing). . Retrieved 2009-08-17.
[5] East Asian Languages at pinyin.info (http:/ / www. pinyin. info/ readings/ texts/ east_asian_languages. html)
[6] BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Chinese writing '8,000 years old' (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ asia-pacific/ 6669569. stm); "Carvings may
rewrite history of Chinese characters" (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ english/ 2007-05/ 18/ content_6121225. htm). Xinhua online.
2007-05-18. . Retrieved 2007-05-19.; Unknown (2003-05-18). . BBC News. . Retrieved 2007-11-17.
[7] Paul Rincon (2003-04-17). "Earliest writing'which was found in China" (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ science/ nature/ 2956925. stm). BBC
News. .
[8] Qiú 2000, p.38.
[9] 于省吾 Yú Xǐngwú 1973, p.32; cited in Qiú 2000, p.35.
[10] 唐蘭 Táng Lán 1975, p.72–73; cited in Qiú 2000, p.35.
[11] Lǐ Xuéqín 李學勤 1985; cited in Qiú 2000, p.35.
[12] Wang Ningsheng 1981, p.27; cited in Qiú 2000, p.35.
[13] Wang, Ningsheng 1981, p.28; cited in Qiú 2000, p.38.
[14] William G. Boltz: "Early Chinese Writing", World Archaeology, Vol. 17, No. 3, Early Writing Systems (1986), pp. 420–436 (436):
The earliest known form of Chinese writing are the so-called 'oracle bone inscriptions' of the late Shang,
divinatory inscriptions incised on turtle plastrons and ox scapulae, dating from about 1200-1050 B.C.
Shang bronze inscriptions from about 1100 B.C. constitute the second carliest source of evidence for
archaic Chinese writing.
[15] David N. Keightley: "Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China", Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition
(1996), pp.68–95 (68):
The oracle-bone inscriptions of the Late Shang dynasty (c. 1200-1050 B.C.), the earliest body of writing
we yet possess for East Asia, were written in a script ancestral to all subsequent forms of Chinese
writing.
[16] John DeFrancis: Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems: Chinese (http:/ / www. pinyin. info/ readings/ texts/ visible/
index. html)
[17] Qiú 2000 pp.63–4, 66, 86, 88–9, 104–7 & 124.
[18] Qiú 2000, p.60, and pp.59–150 in general.
[19] Chén Zhāoróng 2003.
[20] Qiú 2000, p.104.
[21] Qiú 2000; p.59 & p.104–7.
[22] Qiú 2000, p.119.
[23] Qiú 2000, p.l23.
[24] Qiú 2000, p.119 & 123–4.
[25] Qiú 2000, p.130.
[26] Qiú 2000, p.121.
[27] Qiú 2000, p.132–3 provides archaeological evidence for this dating, in contrast to unsubstantiated claims dating the beginning of cursive
anywhere from the Qín to the Eastern Hàn.
[28] Qiú 2000, p.131 &133.
[29] Qiú 2000, p.138.
[30] Qiú 2000, p.131.
[31] Qiú 2000, p.139.
[32] Qiú 2000 p.113 & 139.
[33] Qiú 2000, p.140–1 mentions examples of neo-clerical with “strong overtones of cursive script” from the late E. Hàn.
[34] Qiú 2000 p.142.
[35] Liú is then said to have taught Zhōng Yáo and Wáng Xīzhī.
[36] Transcript of lecture 《楷法無欺》 by 田英章 (http:/ / www. guoyiguan. com/ cgi-bin/ topic. cgi?forum=8& topic=1). Retrieved
2010-05-22.
[37] Qiú 2000, p.143.
[38] Qiú 2000, p.144.
[39] Qiú 2000, p.148.
[40] Wáng Xīzhī is so credited by essays by other calligraphers in the 6th to early 7th centuries, and most of his extant pieces are in modern
cursive script (Qiú 2000, p.148).
[41] Qiú 2000, p.145.
[42] http:/ / www. tiaccwhf. net/ ~t038/ kaho/ newpage82. htm
[43] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Image:Chinese_Pictographs. ogg& oldid=184680243
[44] Handbook of Ancient Pronunciations of Chinese Characters (漢字古音手册), Guo, Xi-liang, Peking Univ. Press, 1986.
[45] The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System, William G. Boltz, pp. 104–110, ISBN 0-940490-18-8.
[46] Database query to Chinese characters - 沖 (http:/ / starling. rinet. ru/ cgi-bin/ response. cgi?root=config& morpho=0&
basename=\data\china\bigchina& first=1& text_character=æ²) by Sergei Starostin
[47] Database query to Chinese characters - 中 (http:/ / starling. rinet. ru/ cgi-bin/ response. cgi?root=config& morpho=0&
basename=\data\china\bigchina& first=1& text_character=ä¸) by Sergei Starostin
[48] Mair, Victor H. (September 2009). "danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray"
(http:/ / pinyin. info/ chinese/ crisis. html). . Retrieved August 20, 2010.
[49] This table is merely a brief sample, not a complete listing.
Dictionaries
Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries. The great
majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly
widespread use. This is the system of radicals.
Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several different ways. Many Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by
radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes. Under each radical,
characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using
pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), zhuyin (in Taiwanese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in
Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries
often allow other search methods as well.

For instance, to look up the character where the sound is not known, e.g., 松 (pine tree), the user first determines
which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns
to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number "4" for
radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all
the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the
non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so
the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to
locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing
each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can
locate the correct page directly.
Another dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each
of the four corners.
Most modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the traditional radical-based
character index in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary arranges the main character entries
alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling. To find a character with unknown sound using one of these
dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the
radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then
turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically.
Other languages
Besides Chinese/Sinitic languages, Japanese/Japonic languages, Korean, and Vietnamese language (Chữ nôm), a
number of smaller Asian languages have been written or continue to be written using Han characters, with characters
modified from Han characters, or using Han characters in combination with native characters. They include:
• Bai language
• Dong language
• Iu Mien language
• Jurchen language, Jurchen script
• Khitan language, Khitan script
• Miao language
• Nakhi (Naxi) language (Geba script)
• Tangut language,[1] [2] Tangut script
• Zhuang language (using Zhuang logograms, or "sawndip")
In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it.
Along with Persian and Arabic, Chinese characters were also used
as a foreign script to write the Mongolian language, where
characters were used to phonetically transcribe Mongolian sounds.
Before the 13th century and the establishment of the Mongolian
script, foreign scripts such as Chinese had to be used to write the
Mongolian language. 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 (Pinyin:
mánghuōlúnniǔchá tuō[bo]chá'ān) is the rendering of Mongγol-un
niγuca tobčiyan, the title in Mongolian.
Historical spread
The Vietnamese Hán tự were first used in Vietnam during the
millennium of Chinese rule starting in 111 BC, while adaptation
for the vernacular Chữ Nôm script (based on Chinese characters)
emerged around the 13th century AD.
The oldest known record of the Sawndip characters used by the
Zhuang, a non-Han peoples from what is today known as Guangxi, Mongolian text from The Secret History of the
is from a stele dating from 689, which predates the earliest Mongols in Chinese transcription, with a glossary on
example of Vietnamese chữ Nôm. the right of each row.
The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from

the 7th century (Hanja). The Japanese Kanji were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 8th century
AD.
Number of Chinese characters

The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are developed
all the time - for instance, brands may create new characters when none of the existing ones allow for the intended
meaning. Chinese characters are theoretically an open set and anyone can create new characters as they see fit. Such
inventions are however often excluded from officialized character sets.[3] The number of entries in major Chinese
dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory.
Number of characters in Chinese dictionaries[4] [5]

Year Name of dictionary Number of characters
100 Shuowen Jiezi 9,353
543? Yupian 12,158
601 Qieyun 16,917
997 Longkan Shoujian 26,430
1011 Guangyun 26,194
1039 Jiyun 53,525
1615 Zihui 33,179
1675 Zhengzitong 33,440
1716 Kangxi Zidian 47,035
1916 Zhonghua Da Zidian 48,000

1989 Hanyu Da Zidian 54,678
1994 Zhonghua Zihai 85,568
2004 Yitizi Zidian [6]

106,230
Number of Chinese characters in non-Chinese dictionaries

Year Country Name of dictionary Number of characters
2003 Japan Dai Kan-Wa jiten 50,000+
2008 South Korea Han-Han Dae Sajeon 53,667
Comparing the Shuowen Jiezi and Hanyu Da Zidian reveals that the overall number of characters recorded in
dictionaries has increased 577 percent over 1,900 years. Depending upon how one counts variants, 50,000+ is a good
approximation for the current total number. This correlates with the most comprehensive Japanese and Korean
dictionaries of Chinese characters; the Dai Kan-Wa jiten has some 50,000 entries, and the Han-Han Dae Sajeon has
over 57,000. The latest behemoth, the Zhonghua Zihai, records a staggering 85,568 single characters, although even
this fails to list all characters known, ignoring the roughly 1,500 Japanese-made kokuji given in the Kokuji no Jiten[7]
as well as the Chu Nom inventory only used in Vietnam in past days.
Modified radicals and obsolete variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. There
are about 300 radicals and 100 are in common use. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way
to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the
standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person
pronoun tā (他 "he; she; it"), which is written with the "person radical", illustrates modifying significs to form new
characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 "she") with the "woman radical", tā (牠
"it") with the "animal radical", tā (它 "it") with the "roof radical", and tā (祂 "He") with the "deity radical", One
consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not
even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和 "harmony; peace", which combines the "grain radical" with the
"mouth radical", has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the "flute radical".
Chinese
It is usually said that about 2,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese
newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. Note that Chinese
characters should not be confused with Chinese words, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Old
Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are multi-morphemic and multi-syllabic compounds, that is, most Chinese
words are written with two or more characters; each character representing one syllable. Knowing the meanings of
the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not
invariably the case.
In the People's Republic of China, which uses Simplified Chinese characters, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo
(现代汉语常用字表; Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000
less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表; Chart of Generally
Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above.
GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China, has 6,763 code
points. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì
(汉语水平考试; Chinese Proficiency Test) proficiency test covers approximately 5,000 characters.
In the ROC, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ
Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the
Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common
National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the
official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters, while the most widely used encoding scheme,
BIG-5, supports only 13,053.
In Hong Kong, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, the Education and Manpower Bureau's Soengjung Zi
Zijing Biu (常用字字形表), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759
characters.
In addition, there is a large corpus of dialect characters, which are not used in formal written Chinese but represent
colloquial terms in non-Mandarin Chinese spoken forms. One such variety is Written Cantonese, in widespread use
in Hong Kong even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration's recognition of
Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also an informal body of characters used to represent the
spoken Hokkien (Min Nan) dialect. Many dialects have specific characters for words exclusive to the dialect, for
example, the vernacular character , pronounced cii11 in Hakka, means "to kill".[8] Furthermore, Shanghainese
Chinese also has its own series of written text, but these are not widely used in actual texts, Mandarin being the
preference for all mainland regions. (For instance, 㑚, 哎垯, and 呒没, all of which are widely known and used by
Shanghainese.)
Japanese
In Japanese there are 2,136 Jōyō kanji (常用漢字 lit. "frequently used kanji") designated by the Japanese Ministry
of Education; these are taught during primary and secondary school. The list is a recommendation, not a restriction,
and many characters missing from it are still in common use.
The one area where character usage is officially restricted is in names, which may contain only
government-approved characters. Since the Jōyō kanji list excludes many characters which have been used in
personal and place names for generations, an additional list, referred to as the Jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字 lit. "kanji
for use in personal names"), is published. It currently contains 983 characters, bringing the total number of
government-endorsed characters to 2928. (See also the Names section of the kanji article.)
Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3,500 kanji. The kanji kentei
(日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests a speaker's
ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the kanji kentei tests on 6,000 kanji, though in practice few
people attain (or need to attain) this level.
Written Japanese also includes a pair of syllabic scripts known as kana, which are used in combination with kanji. A
minority of words in modern Japanese can be expressed with kanji alone, requiring the use of kana in written
communication.
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 Korean, as the words were imported from Chinese, many dissimilar characters took on
identical sounds, and subsequently identical spelling in hangul. Chinese characters are sometimes used to this day for
either clarification in a practical manner, or to give a distinguished appearance, as knowledge of Chinese characters
is considered a high class attribute and an indispensable part of a classical education. It is also observed that the
preference for Chinese characters is treated as being conservative and Confucian.
In Korea, 한자 hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the
national language and culture by totally abandoning their use. These individuals encourage the exclusive use of the
native hangul alphabet throughout Korean society and the end to character education in public schools.
In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by education ministers'
personal opinions. At times, middle and high school students have been formally exposed to 1,800 to 2,000 basic
characters, albeit with the principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper-literacy. Since there
is little need to use hanja in everyday life, young adult Koreans are often unable to read more than a few hundred
characters.
There is a clear trend toward the exclusive use of hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to
some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy. Hanja is also extensively used in
situations where ambiguity must be avoided, such as academic papers, high-level corporate reports, government
documents, and newspapers; this is due to the large number of homonyms that have resulted from extensive
borrowing of Chinese words.
The issue of ambiguity is the main hurdle in any effort to "cleanse" the Korean language of Chinese characters.
Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn hints at
meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the phonetic entry for 기사 gisa yields more than 30 different
entries. In the past, this ambiguity had been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated hanja.
In the modern hangul-based Korean writing system, Chinese characters are no longer used to represent native
morphemes.
In North Korea, the government, wielding much tighter control than its sister government to the south, has banned
Chinese characters from virtually all public displays and media, and mandated the use of hangul in their place.
Vietnamese
Although now nearly extinct in Vietnam, varying scripts of Chinese characters (hán
tự) were once in widespread use to write the language, although hán tự became
limited to ceremonial uses beginning in the 19th century. Similarly to Japan and
Korea, Chinese (especially Literary Chinese) was used by the ruling classes, and the
characters were eventually adapted to write Vietnamese. To express native Vietnamese
words which had different pronunciations from the Chinese, Vietnamese developed
the Chữ Nôm script which used various methods to distinguish native Vietnamese
words from Chinese. Vietnamese is currently exclusively written in the Vietnamese
alphabet, a derivative of the Latin alphabet.
Rare and complex characters

Often a character not commonly used (a "rare" or "variant" character) will appear in a
personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese
name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has
caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common
characters and exclude the less oft-used characters. This is especially a problem for
personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters. the 3 names of Chinese
character in Vietnamese: chữ
One man who has encountered this problem is Taiwanese politician Yu Shyi-kun Hán, chữ Nho, Hán tự.
(游錫堃, pinyin Yóu Xíkūn), due to the rarity of the last character in his name.
Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar
characters, including a picture of the personality, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply substituting a
homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Taiwanese
political posters, movie posters etc. will often add the bopomofo phonetic symbols next to such a character. Japanese
newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is accepted practice for people to
write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.
There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Joël
Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is /⩪ (U+2A6A5) zhé listen, meaning "verbose" and
boasting sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that
while boasting the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply
requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one. Another
64-stroke character is /⁓ (U+2053B) zhèng composed of 興 xīng/xìng (lit. "flourish") four times.
One of the most complex characters found in modern Chinese dictionaries[9] is 齉 (U+9F49) nàng listen (pictured
below, middle image), meaning "snuffle" (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with "just" thirty-six
strokes. However, this is not in common use. The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New
Phonetic IME 2002a for Traditional Chinese is 龘 tà "the appearance of a dragon walking"; it is composed of the
dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48 strokes. Among the most complex characters in
modern dictionaries and also in frequent modern use are 籲 yù "to implore", with 32 strokes; 鬱 yù: "luxuriant,
lush; gloomy", with 29 strokes, as in 憂鬱 yōuyù "depressed", with 15 and 29 strokes, respectively; 豔 yàn
"colorful", with 28 strokes; and 釁 xìn "quarrel", with 25 strokes, as in 挑釁 tiǎoxìn "to pick a fight". Also in
occasional modern use is 鱻 xiān “fresh” (variant of 鮮 xiān) with 33 strokes.
In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists[10] —it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters on top of the
abovementioned triple "dragon" character (龘). Also meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it has been
pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.
The most complex Chinese character still in use may be biáng (pictured right, bottom), with 57 strokes, which refers
to Biang biang noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with syllable biang
cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Chinese word
means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.
Zhé, "verbose" Zhèng "flourish" Nàng, "poor enunciation Taito, "the appearance of Biáng, a kind of noodle
due to snuffle" a dragon in flight" in Shaanxi
Chinese calligraphy
The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese
calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China,
Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese
Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy.
Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform
shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the
character must occur. Each character has a set number of
brushstrokes; none must be added or taken away from the
character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally,
strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be
accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy
was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and
teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more
precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
References Chinese calligraphy of mixed styles written by Song

[1] http:/ / www. cflac. org. cn/ chinaartnews/ 2003-10/ 08/ content_1024511. htm Dynasty (1051–1108 AD) poet Mifu. For centuries, the
[2] http:/ / www. huaxia. com/ ssjn/ smxx/ 00197002. html Chinese literati were expected to master the art of
calligraphy.
[3] "Creating New Chinese Characters" (http:/ / weber. ucsd. edu/ ~dkjordan/
chin/ mojicakes. html). .
[4] Updated from Norman, Jerry. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1988, p. 72. ISBN 0521296536.
[5] Zhou Youguang 周有光. The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts; 中国语文的时代演进, translated by Zhang Liqing
张立青. Ohio State University National East Asian Language Resource Center. 2003, pp.72-73.
[6] 《異體字字典》網路版說明 (http:/ / dict. variants. moe. edu. tw/ start. htm) Official website for "The Dictionary of Chinese Variant Form",
Introductory page
[7] Hida & Sugawara, 1990, Tokyodo Shuppan.
[8] Hakka Dictionary (http:/ / hakka. dict. edu. tw/ result_detail. jsp?n_no=1120& soundtype=0& sample=é )
[9] (U+9F49) nàng is found, for instance, on p.707 of 漢英辭典(修訂版) A Chinese-English Dictionary, (Revised Edition) Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press, Beijing, 1995. ISBN 7-5600-0739-2.
[10] http:/ / www. mojikyo. gr. jp/ gif96/ 066/ 066147. gif
Sources
Generalities
• Qiú, Xīguī 裘錫圭 (2000). Chinese writing. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute
of East Asian Studies. [English translation by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman of Wénzìxué Gàiyào
文字學概要, Shangwu, 1988.]
Ancient characters
• Boltz, William G. (1994). The origin and early development of the Chinese writing system. New Haven: The
American Oriental Society.
• Keightley, David (1978). Sources of Shang history: the oracle-bone inscriptions of bronze-age China. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
• Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
External links
History and construction of Chinese characters
• History of Chinese writing (http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html)
• Evolution of Chinese Characters (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_evolution.htm)
• Zhongwen.com (http://zhongwen.com/) : a searchable dictionary with information about character formation
• Chinese character etymologies (http://www.chineseetymology.org/)
• Chinese Characters (http://chineseideographs.com): Explanation of the forms of Chinese Characters; of their
ideographic nature. Based on the Shuo Wen, other traditional sources and modern archeological finds.
Chinese characters in computing
• Unihan Database (http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html): Chinese, Japanese, and Korean references,
readings, and meanings for all the Chinese and Chinese-derived characters in the Unicode character set
Others
• Chinese Text Project Dictionary (http://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en) Comprehensive character dictionary
including data for all Chinese characters in Unicode, and exemplary usage from early Chinese texts.
Traditional Chinese characters

Traditional Chinese
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Chinese
Time period Since 5th century AD

• Seal Script
• Clerical Script
• Traditional Chinese
Child systems Simplified Chinese

Kanji
Hanja
Chữ Nôm
Zhuyin
Khitan script
ISO 15924 Hant
Traditional Chinese characters refers to Chinese characters in any character set which does not contain newly
created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. It most commonly refers to characters in the
standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, or in the Kangxi Dictionary. The modern shapes of traditional
Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been
more or less stable since the 5th century (during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.) The retronym "traditional
Chinese" is used to contrast traditional characters with Simplified Chinese characters, a standardized character set
introduced by the government of the People's Republic of China on Mainland China in the 1950s.
Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau. They were
also used in mainland China before the People's Republic of China simplified them in the 1950s and 1960s. In
overseas Chinese communities other than Singapore and Malaysia, traditional characters were most commonly
used,[1] although the number of printed materials in simplified characters is growing in Australia, USA and Canada,
targeting or created by new arrivals from mainland China. A large number of overseas Chinese online newspapers
allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China,
Singapore and Malaysia in official publications. The debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has
been a long-running issue among Chinese communities.
Chinese names
Traditional Chinese characters (Standard characters) are referred to by several different
names within the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially calls
traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional
Chinese: 正體字; simplified Chinese: 正体字; pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄓㄥˋ
ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). However, the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard,
simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters.[2] Symbol of Traditional
Chinese Character in
Computers
In contrast, users of standard characters (traditional characters) outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau
and overseas Chinese communities, and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters
(traditional Chinese: 繁體字; simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). An
informal name sometimes used by users of simplified characters is "old characters" (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozì;
Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).
Users of standard characters (traditional characters) also sometimes refer them as "Full Chinese characters"
(traditional Chinese: 全體字; simplified Chinese: 全体字; pinyin: quántǐ zì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to
distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.
Some standard characters (traditional characters) users argue that traditional characters are the original form of the
Chinese characters and cannot be called "complex". Similarly, simplified characters cannot be "standard" because
they are not used in all Chinese-speaking regions. Conversely, supporters of simplified Chinese characters object to
the description of traditional characters as "standard," since they view the new simplified characters as the
contemporary standard used by the vast majority of Chinese speakers. They also point out that traditional characters
are not truly traditional as many Chinese characters have been made more elaborate over time.[3]
Some people refer to standard characters as simply "proper characters" (Chinese: 正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) and
modernized characters as "modernized-stroke characters" (simplified Chinese: 简笔字; traditional Chinese: 簡筆字;
pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) or "reduced-stroke characters" (simplified Chinese: 减笔字; traditional Chinese: 減筆字; pinyin:
jiǎnbǐzì) (simplified- and reduced- are actually homonyms in Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).
The use of such words as "complex", "standard" and "proper" in the context of such a visceral subject as written
language arouses strong emotional reactions, especially since there are also political ramifications in this case.
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters explores the differences of opinion that exist on this matter
within Chinese-speaking regions.
Printed text
When printing text, people in China, Malaysia and Singapore mainly use the simplified system, developed by the
People's Republic of China government in the 1950s. However, the PRC also prints material intended to be read
outside of mainland China using traditional characters, and the reverse is also true. In writing, most people use
informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an alternative character (異體字) will be used in place
of one with more strokes, such as 体 for 體. In the old days, there were two main uses of alternative characters.
First, alternative characters were used to avoid using the characters of the formal name of an important person in less
formal contexts as a way of showing respect to the said person by preserving the characters of the person's name.
This act is called "offense-avoidance" (避諱) in Chinese. Secondly, alternative characters were used when the same
characters were repeated in context to show that the repetition was intentional rather than an editorial mistake
(筆誤).
Computer encoding
In the past, Traditional Chinese was most often rendered using the Big5 character encoding scheme, a scheme that
favors Traditional Chinese. Unicode, however, has become increasingly popular as a rendering method. Unicode
gives equal weight to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters. There are various IMEs (Input Method
Editors) available to input Chinese characters. There are still many Unicode characters that cannot be written using
most IMEs; one example would be the character used in the Shanghainese dialect instead of 嗎, which is U+20C8E ⃈
(伐 with a 口 radical).
Web pages
The World Wide Web Consortium recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant as a language attribute value
and Content-Language value to specify web-page content in Traditional Chinese.[4]
Usage in other languages

Traditional Chinese characters are also known as Hanja in Korean (in the 20th century almost completely replaced
with Hangul), and many Kanji (used in Japanese) are unsimplified. Compared to the Chinese reform, many
simplified Kanji were less affected (such as the character for round (also used to refer to Japanese and Chinese
currency): 円 = Kanji, 圆 = simplified Chinese form, 圓 = full form). They coincide with those simplified in China
but some were simplified differently, thus being a different standard (e.g. "dragon" 竜 current standard Japanese
(tatsu/RYŪ), 龙 (Chinese simplified), 龍 (Chinese traditional) lóng (Mandarin), lung4 (Cantonese)).
References
[1] Keller, Andrée Tabouret (1997). Vernacular Literacy: A Re-Evaluation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-823635-2
[2] Academy of Social Sciences, (1978), Modern Chinese Dictionary, The Commercial Press: Beijing.
[3] Norman, Jerry (1988) Chinese, Cambridge University Press, p81.
[4] "Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content" (http:/ / www. w3. org/ TR/ i18n-html-tech-lang/
#ri20040429. 113217290). W3.org. . Retrieved 2009-05-27.
Kangxi Dictionary
Kangxi Dictionary
The Kangxi Dictionary: 2005 reprint
Chinese name
Chinese 康熙字典
Japanese name
Kanji 康熙字典
Hiragana こうきじてん
The Kangxi Dictionary (1716: 康熙字典 Kāngxī zìdiǎn) was the standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and
19th centuries. The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty ordered its compilation in 1710. The creator
innovated greatly by reusing and confirming the new Zihui system of 214 radicals, since then known as 214 Kangxi
radicals, and was eventually published in 1716. The dictionary is named after the Emperor's era name.
The dictionary contains more than 47,000 characters (including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters) but
less than a quarter of these characters are now in common use.
Compilation
The Kangxi Dictionary editors, including Zhang Yushu (張玉書) and Chen Tingjing (陳廷敬), partly based it on two
Ming Dynasty dictionaries: the 1615 Zihui (字彙 "Character Collection") by Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚), and the 1627
Zhengzitong (正字通 "Correct Character Mastery") by Zhang Zilie (張自烈). Since the imperial edict required that
the Kangxi Dictionary be compiled within five years, a number of errors were inevitable. The Daoguang Emperor
established a review board and their 1831 Zidian kaozheng (字典考證 "Character Dictionary Textual Research")
corrected 2,588 mistakes, mostly in quotations and citations. (Teng and Biggerstaff 1971: 130)
The supplemented dictionary contains 47,035 character entries, plus 1,995 graphic variants, giving a total of 49,030
different characters. They are grouped under the 214 radicals and arranged by the number of additional strokes in the
character. Although these 214 radicals were first used in the Zihui, due to the popularity of the Kangxi Dictionary
they are known as Kangxi radicals and remain in modern usage as a method to categorize traditional Chinese
characters.
The character entries give variants (if any), pronunciations in traditional fanqie spelling and in modern reading of a
homophone, different meanings, and quotations from Chinese books and lexicons. The dictionary also contains rime
tables with characters ordered under syllable rime classes, tones, and initial syllable onsets.
The Kangxi Dictionary is available in many forms, from old Qing Dynasty editions in block printing, to reprints in
traditional Chinese bookbinding, to modern revised editions with essays in Western-style hardcover, to the digitized
Internet version.
The Kangxi Dictionary is one of the Chinese dictionaries used by the Ideographic Rapporteur Group for the Unicode
standard.
Structure of the Kangxi dictionary

• Preface by Kangxi Emperor : pp. 1–6 (御製序)
• Notes on the use of the dictionary : pp. 7–12 (凡例)
• Indication of pronunciation of characters : pp. 13–40 (等韻)
• Comprehensive table of contents by radicals : pp. 41–49 (總目)
• Facilitated consulting contents : pp. 50–71 (检字)
• The dictionary proper : pp. 75–1631
• Main text : pp. 75–1538
• Addendum contents : pp. 1539–1544 (補遺)
• Addendum text : pp. 1545–1576
• Appendix contents (No–source–characters) : pp. 1577–1583 (備考)
• Appendix text : pp. 1585–1631
• Postscript : pp. 1633–1635 (後記)
• Textual research : pp. 1637–1683 (考证)
References
• Teng, Ssu-yü and Biggerstaff, Knight. 1971. An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works,
3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-03851-7
External links
• 康熙字典網上版 Kangxi Dictionary Net Version [1]
• Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 [2], English translation of one definition, on Chinaknowledge.de
• Making Friends with the Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 [3], Occasional paper with translation of Kangxi Emperor's
preface 御製康熙字典序
• 汉典 The Chinese Language Dictionary Homepage (in Chinese only) [4]
References
[1] http:/ / www. kangxizidian. com
[2] http:/ / www. chinaknowledge. de/ Literature/ Science/ kangxizidian. html
[3] https:/ / seguecommunity. middlebury. edu/ index. php?& action=site& site=tbilling& section=11854& page=48886& story=150166&
detail=150166
[4] http:/ / www. zdic. net
Simplified Chinese characters

Simplified Chinese
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Chinese
Time period Since 1956

• Seal Script
• Clerical Script
• Traditional Chinese
• Simplified Chinese
Sister systems Kanji, Chữ Nôm, Hanja, Khitan script, Zhuyin
ISO 15924 Hans
Simplified Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 简体字; traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: Jiǎntizì)[1] are
standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo for use in Mainland China.
Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of many standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese
written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in Mainland China has promoted them for use
in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People's
Republic of China and Singapore.
Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Macau.
Overseas Chinese communities generally use traditional characters, but simplified characters are often used among
mainland Chinese immigrants.
Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable
proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications are based on popular cursive forms embodying
graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. Some characters were simplified by applying regular
rules; for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simpler variant. Some characters were
simplified irregularly, however, and some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from
traditional characters. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between
the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies.
A second round of simplifications was promulgated in 1977, but was later retracted for a variety of reasons.
However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future. In August
2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters.[2] [3] [4] [5]
Extent
Jianhuazi zong biao (简化字总表[[Category:Articles containing Chinese language text [6]]]), "Complete List of
Simplified Characters" or the final list of simplified characters announced in 1986, contains the following:
• Chart 1, which contains 350 singly simplified characters, whose simplifications cannot be generalized to other
characters
• Chart 2, which contains 132 simplified characters and 14 simplified radicals, which can all be generalized to other
characters
• Chart 3, a list of 1,753 characters which are simplified in accordance with Chart 2. This list is non-exhaustive, so
a character that can be simplified in accordance with Chart 2 should be simplified, even if it does not appear in
Chart 3.
• Appendix, which contains:
• 39 characters that are officially considered to be cases where a complicated variant character has been
abolished in favour of a simpler variant character, rather than where a complicated character is replaced by a
newly-created simpler character. However, these characters are commonly considered to have been
simplifications, so they are included here for reference purposes.
• 35 place names that have been modified to replace rare characters with more common ones. These are not
character simplifications, because it is the place names that were being modified, not the characters
themselves. One place name has since been reverted to its original version.
Di yi pi yitizi zhengli biao (第一批异体字整理表[[Category:Articles containing Chinese language text [7]]]), "Series
One Organization List of Variant Characters," also accounts for some of the orthography difference between
Mainland China on the one hand, and Hong Kong and Taiwan on the other. Although these are not technically
"simplifications", they are often regarded as such, because the end effect is the same. It contains:
• 1,027 variant characters deemed obsolete as of the final revision in 1993. Some of these are obsolete in Taiwan
and Hong Kong as well, but others remain in use.
Comparison with Japanese simplification

After World War II, Japan also simplified a number of Chinese characters (kanji) used in the Japanese language. The
new forms are called shinjitai. Compared to Chinese, the Japanese reform was more directed, affecting only a few
hundred characters and replacing them with simplified forms, most of which were already in use in Japanese cursive
script. Further, the list of simplifications was exhaustive, unlike Chinese simplification – thus analogous
simplifications of not explicitly simplified characters (extended shinjitai) are not approved, and instead standard
practice is to use the traditional forms.
The number of characters in circulation was also reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each
grade of school were established. The overall effect was to standardize teaching and the use of Kanji in modern
literature and media.
Origins and history
Mainland China
Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the
government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the
PRC's formation in 1949. Cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms
used in print have always existed (they date back to as early as the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC), though early
attempts at simplification resulted in more characters being added to the lexicon).
One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified
characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many
anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. Traditional culture and values such as
Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system
as an obstacle in modernising China and therefore proposed that a reform be initiated. It was suggested that the
Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth
Movement, called Chinese characters the “writing of ox-demons and snake-gods” niúguǐ shéshén de wénzì
(牛鬼蛇神的文字). Lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, "If Chinese characters are
not destroyed, then China will die." (漢字不滅，中國必亡。) Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese
characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time.[8]
In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a
large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help
boost literacy in China.[9] 324 simplified characters collected by Qian Xuantong were officially introduced in 1935
as the table of 1st batch simplified character (第一批簡體字表) and suspended in 1936. In many world languages,
literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms.
The People's Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first
in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still
rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together
appeared briefly, then disappeared.
Within the PRC, further character simplification became associated with the leftists of the Cultural Revolution,
culminating in a second round of character simplifications (known as erjian 二简), or "Second-round simplified
characters", which were promulgated in 1977. Intellectuals who opposed the reform were labeled rightists. One such
intellectual, Chen Mengjia, committed suicide.[10] In part due to the shock and unease felt in the wake of the Cultural
Revolution and Mao's death, the second-round of simplifications was poorly received. In 1986 the authorities
retracted the second round completely. Later in the same year, the authorities promulgated a final list of
simplifications, which is identical to the 1964 list except for six changes (including the restoration of three characters
that had been simplified in the First Round: 叠, 覆, 像; note that the form 疊 is used instead of 叠 in regions using
Traditional Chinese). Although no longer recognized officially, some second-round characters appear in informal
contexts, as many people learned second-round simplified characters in school.
Simplification initiatives have been aimed at eradicating characters entirely and establishing the Hanyu Pinyin
romanization as the official written system of the PRC, but the reform never gained quite as much popularity as the
leftists had hoped. After the retraction of the second round of simplification, the PRC stated that it wished to keep
Chinese orthography stable. Years later in 2009, the Chinese government released a major revision list which
included 8300 characters. No new simplifications were introduced. However, six characters previously listed as
"traditional" characters that have been simplified, as well as 51 other "variant" characters were restored to the
standard list. In addition, orthographies (e.g., stroke shape) for 44 characters were modified slightly. Also, the
practice of simplifying obscure characters by analogy of their radicals is now discouraged. A State Language
Commission official cited "over-simplification" as the reason for restoring some characters. The language authority
declared an open comment period until August 31, 2009 for feedback from the public.[11]
Singapore and Malaysia

Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification, eventually arriving at the same set of
simplified characters as Mainland China.
The first round, consisting of 498 Simplified characters from 502 Traditional characters, was promulgated by the
Ministry of Education in 1969. The second round, consisting of 2287 Simplified characters, was promulgated in
1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the Mainland China system; those were removed in the final
round in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted the six revisions made by Mainland China in 1986. However, unlike in
mainland China where personal names may only be registered using simplified characters, parents have the option of
registering their children's names in traditional characters in Singapore.
Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the simplified
characters used in Mainland China. Chinese-language schools use these.
Traditional characters are still often seen in decorative contexts such as shop signs and calligraphy in both countries.
Hong Kong
A small group called Dou Zi Sei (導字社) / Dou Zi Wui (導字會) attempted to introduce a special version of
simplified characters using romanizations in the 1930s. Today, however the traditional characters remain.
Method of simplification
There are several methods in which characters were simplified:[12]
1. Replacing complicated components of common characters with simpler shapes:
• 對 → 对; 觀 → 观; 風 → 风; etc.
2. Changing the phonetic:
• 潔 → 洁; 鄰 → 邻; 極 → 极; etc.
3. Omitting entire components:
• 廣 → 广; 寧 → 宁; 滅 → 灭; etc.
4. Using printed forms of cursive shapes (simplified Chinese: 草书楷化; traditional Chinese: 草書楷化; pinyin:
cǎoshūkǎihuà):
• 書 → 书; 長 → 长; 馬 → 马; etc.
5. Adopting ancient forms that are simpler in form:
• 涙 → 泪; 網 → 网; 傑 → 杰; etc.
6. Creating new radical-radical compounds:
• 體 → 体; 塵 → 尘; 竃 → 灶; etc.
7. Creating new radical-phonetic compounds:
• 護 → 护; 驚 → 惊; 膚 → 肤; etc.
8. Merging a character into another one that sounds the same or similar:
• 餘 → 余; 穀 → 谷; 後 → 后; etc.
9. Merging several characters into a newly created and simpler character:
• 髮 & 發 → 发; 儘 & 盡 → 尽; 曆 & 歷 → 历; etc.

10. Systematically simplifying character components, so that all characters that use a given component are
simplified in the same way:
• 門 → 门; 閉 → 闭; 問 → 问; etc.
• 馬 → 马; 騎 → 骑; 駕 → 驾; etc.
• 鳥 → 鸟; 鴨 → 鸭; 鴕 → 鸵; etc.
• Note that there are exceptions to the rules that simplify character components. Using the 門 → 门 rule
given above as an example, the exceptions include 開 → 开 and 關 → 关.
Since traditional characters are sometimes merged, confusion may arise when Classical Chinese texts are printed in
simplified characters. In rare instances, simplified characters actually became one or two strokes more complex than
their traditional counterparts due to logical revision. An example of this is 搾 mapping to the previously existing
variant form 榨. Note that the "hand" radical on the left (扌), with three strokes, is replaced with the "tree" radical
(木), with four strokes.
Another example of the simplified character which has more strokes than the traditional character is 强 (12 strokes)
which when written in traditional Chinese is 強 (11 strokes).
One peculiar simplification does not change the stroke count of the character at all, but is merely a swap in position
of the left and right sides of the character. It is the Chinese character for "enough", the traditional being 夠 and the
simplified 够.
Distribution and use

The People's Republic of China, Singapore
and Malaysia generally use simplified
characters. They appear very sparingly in
printed text produced in Hong Kong,
Macau, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese
communities, although they are becoming
more prevalent as China opens to the world.
Conversely, the mainland is seeing an
increase in the use of traditional forms,
where they are often used on signs and in
logos.
Mainland China
The Law of the People's Republic of China The slogan 战无不胜的毛泽东思想万岁 (Zhàn wúbù shèng de Máo Zédōng
on the National Common Language and sīxiǎng wànsuì; Long live the invincible Mao Zedong Thought) on Xinhua Gate in
Characters implies simplified Chinese as the Beijing.
standard script, and relegates Traditional

Chinese to certain aspects and purposes such as ceremonies, cultural purposes (e.g. calligraphy), decoration,
publications and books on ancient literature and poetry, and research purposes. Traditional Chinese remains
ubiquitous on buildings predating the promotion of simplified characters, such as former government buildings,
religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese is also often used for
commercial purposes, such as shopfront displays and advertisements, though this is officially discouraged.
The PRC also tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in
traditional characters. For example, the PRC prints versions of the People's Daily in traditional characters and both
the People's Daily and Xinhua websites have versions in traditional characters using Big5 encoding. Mainland
companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use Traditional characters on their displays and
packaging to communicate with consumers (the reverse is true as well). Also, as part of the one country, two systems
model, the PRC has not attempted to force Hong Kong or Macau into using simplified characters.
Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. In digital
media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos,
karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters, thereby exposing
mainlanders to the use of traditional characters.
Hong Kong
Textbooks, official statements, newspapers, including the PRC-funded media, show no signs of moving to simplified
Chinese characters. However simplified Chinese character version of publications are becoming popular, because
these mainland editions are often cheaper.
It is common for Hong Kong people to learn traditional Chinese characters in school, and some simplified Chinese in
passing (either through reading mainland-published books or other media). For use on computers, however, people
tend to type Chinese characters using a traditional character set such as Big5. In Hong Kong, as well as elsewhere, it
is common for people who use both sets to do so because it is much easier to convert from the traditional character
set to the simplified character set because of the usage of the aforementioned methods 8 and 9 of simplification.
Taiwan
Simplified Chinese characters are not officially used in governmental and civil publications in Taiwan (the Republic
of China). However, it is legal to import simplified character publications and distribute them. Certain simplified
characters that have long existed in informal writing for centuries also have popular usage, while those characters
simplified originally by the Taiwanese government are much less common in daily appearance.
In all areas, most handwritten text will include informal character simplifications (alternative script), and some
characters (such as the "Tai" in Taiwan: traditional 臺 simplified/alternative 台) have informal simplified forms that
appear more commonly than the official forms, even in print. The use of Japanese hiragana character の [no] in
place of the more complex 的 [de] is common: both mean "of", despite their unrelated pronunciations. Japanese
characters and Chinese simplified characters are not acceptable to use in official documents in the Republic of
China.

In Singapore, where Chinese is one of the official languages, simplified characters are the official standard and used
in all official publications as well as the government-controlled press. While simplified characters are taught
exclusively in schools, the government does not officially discourage the use of traditional characters, unlike in the
People's Republic of China. While all official publications are in simplified characters, the government still allows
parents to choose whether to have their child's Chinese name registered in simplified or traditional characters.
In Malaysia, as simplified characters are taught exclusively in Chinese schools since 1981, most younger Chinese
Malaysians are proficient in simplified characters. As Chinese is not an official language in Malaysia, official usage
of Chinese, and hence simplified characters, is rare.
As there is no restriction of the use of traditional characters in the mass media, television programmes, books,
magazines and music CD's that have been imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan are widely available, and these
almost always use traditional characters. Most karaoke discs, being imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan, have song
lyrics in traditional characters as well. Many shop signs continue to be written in traditional characters. Menus in
hawker centres and coffeeshops are also usually written in traditional characters.
Overseas Chinese
Among overseas Chinese communities (except for Singapore and Malaysia), traditional characters are most
commonly used.[13]
Education
In general, schools in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore use simplified characters exclusively, while schools
in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan use traditional characters exclusively.
For overseas Chinese going to "Chinese school", which character set is used depends very much on which school
one attends. Not surprisingly, parents will generally enroll their children in schools that teach the script they
themselves use. Descendants of Hong Kongers and people who emigrated before the simplification will therefore
generally be taught traditional (and in Cantonese), whereas children whose parents are of more recent mainland
origin will probably be taught simplified.
Teaching Chinese as a foreign language to non-Chinese students is mainly carried out in simplified characters and
Hanyu Pinyin.
Mainland China
In December 2004, Beijing's educational authorities rejected a proposal from a Beijing CPPCC political conference
member that called for elementary schools to teach traditional Chinese characters in addition to the simplified ones.
The conference member pointed out that most mainland Chinese, especially young people, have difficulties with
traditional Chinese characters; this is especially important in dealing with non-mainland communities such as
Taiwan and Hong Kong. The educational authorities did not approve the recommendation, saying that it did not fit in
with the "requirements as set out by the law" and it could potentially complicate the curricula.[14] A similar proposal
was delivered to the 1st Plenary Session of the 11th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in the March
of 2008.[15]
Hong Kong
Most, if not all, Chinese language text books in Hong Kong are written in traditional characters. Before 1997, the use
of simplified characters was generally discouraged by educators. After 1997, while students are still expected to be
proficient and utilise traditional characters in formal settings, they may sometimes adopt a hybrid written form in
informal settings to speed up writing. With the exception of open examinations, Simplified Chinese characters are
considered acceptable by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority for their speed.

Chinese text books in Singapore and Malaysia are written exclusively in simplified characters, and only simplified
characters are taught in school. Traditional characters are usually only taught to those taking up calligraphy as a
co-curricular activity.
Chinese as a foreign language

As the source of many Chinese Mandarin textbooks is mainland China, the majority of textbooks teaching Chinese
are now based on simplified characters and hanyu pinyin – although there are textbooks originating in China which
have a traditional version. For practical reasons, universities and schools prepare students who will be able to
communicate with mainland China, so their obvious choice is to use simplified characters.
Most universities on the west coast of the United States previously taught the traditional character set, most likely
due to the large population of Chinese Americans who continue to use the traditional forms. The largest Mandarin
Chinese program in North America, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, switched to simplified
characters at least a decade ago, although the majority of the surrounding Chinese Canadian population, who are
non-Mandarin speaking, at that time were users of traditional characters. Stanford University's Cantonese program
instructs its students with a traditional character set partly because Hong Kong uses traditional characters as well . In
places where a particular set is not locally entrenched, e.g., Europe and the United States, instruction is in or is
swinging towards simplified, as the economic importance of mainland China increases, and also because of the
availability of inexpensive decent quality textbooks printed in mainland China. Teachers of international students
often recommend learning both systems.
In the United Kingdom, universities mainly teach Chinese at undergraduate level using the simplified characters
coupled with pinyin. However, they will require the students to learn and be able to recognise the traditional forms
by the last year of the course, by which time the students will have completed a year's study either in mainland China
or Taiwan.
In Australia and New Zealand, schools, universities and TAFEs use predominantly simplified characters.
Russia and most East European nations are traditionally oriented on the education of the PRC's system for teaching
Chinese, uses simplified characters but exposes the learners to both systems.
In South Korea, universities have used predominantly simplified characters in 1990s. In high school, Chinese is one
of the selective subjects. By the regulation of the national curricula standards, MPS I and traditional characters had
been originally used before (since the 1940s), but by the change of regulation, pinyin and simplified characters have
been used to pupils who enter the school in 1996 or later. Therefore MPS I and traditional characters disappeared
after 1998 in South Korean high school Chinese curriculum.
In Japan there are two types of schools. Simplified Chinese is taught instead of traditional Chinese in pro-mainland
China schools. They also teach Pinyin, a romanization system for standard Chinese, while the Taiwan-oriented
schools teach Zhuyin, which uses phonetic symbols. However, the Taiwan-oriented schools are starting to teach
simplified Chinese and Pinyin to offer a more well-rounded education.[16]
Computer encoding
In computer text applications, the GB encoding scheme most often renders simplified Chinese characters, while Big5
most often renders traditional characters. Although neither encoding has an explicit connection with a specific
character set, the lack of a one-to-one mapping between the simplified and traditional sets established a de facto
linkage.
Since simplified Chinese conflated many characters into one and since the initial version of the GB encoding
scheme, known as GB2312-80, contained only one code point for each character, it is impossible to use GB2312 to
map to the bigger set of traditional characters. It is theoretically possible to use Big5 code to map to the smaller set
of simplified character glyphs, although there is little market for such a product. Newer and alternative forms of GB
have support for traditional characters. In particular, mainland authorities have now established GB 18030 as the
official encoding standard for use in all mainland software publications. The encoding contains all East Asian
characters included in Unicode 3.0. As such, GB 18030 encoding contains both simplified and traditional characters
found in Big-5 and GB, as well as all characters found in Japanese and Korean encodings.
Unicode deals with the issue of simplified and traditional characters as part of the project of Han unification by
including code points for each. This was rendered necessary by the fact that the linkage between simplified
characters and traditional characters is not one-to-one. While this means that a Unicode system can display both
simplified and traditional characters, it also means that different localization files are needed for each type.
The Chinese characters used in modern Japanese have also undergone simplification, but generally to a lesser extent
than with simplified Chinese. It's worth mentioning that Japan's writing system utilizes a reduced number of Chinese
characters in daily use, resulting partly from the Japanese language reforms; thus, a number of complex characters
are written phonetically. Reconciling these different character sets in Unicode became part of the controversial
process of Han unification. Not surprisingly, some of the Chinese characters used in Japan are neither 'traditional'
nor 'simplified'. In this case, these characters cannot be found in traditional/simplified Chinese dictionaries.
Web pages
The World Wide Web Consortium's Internationalization working group recommends the use of the language tag
zh-Hans as a language attribute value and Content-Language value to specify web-page content in simplified
Chinese characters.[17]
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters

The debate over the use of traditional versus simplified Chinese characters has existed for a long time and still
continues.
Further reading
• Bökset, R. (2006). Long story of short forms: the evolution of simplified Chinese characters. Stockholm East
Asian monographs, No. 11. Stockholm: Dept. of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University. ISBN 9162868322
• Chen, H. (1987). Simplified Chinese characters. Torrance, CA: Heian. ISBN 0893462934
• Bergman, P. M. (1980). The basic English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary: using simplified characters (with
an appendix containing the original complex characters) transliterated in accordance with the new, official
Chinese phonetic alphabet. New York, N.Y.: New American Library. ISBN 0451092627
Notes
[1] 教育部就《汉字简化方案》等发布 50 周年答记者问[[Category:Articles containing non-English language text (http:/ / www. gov. cn/
xwfb/ 2006-03/ 22/ content_233556. htm)]].
[2] 关于《通用规范汉字表》公开征求意见的公告[[Category:Articles containing Chinese language text (http:/ / www. china-language. gov.
cn/ gfhzb/ gfhzb/ gong_gao. html)]]. Page about the list at the State Language Commission's website, including a link to a pdf of the list.
Accessed 2009.08.18.
[3] 汉字，该繁还是简？[[Category:Articles containing Chinese language text (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ focus/ 2009-04/ 09/
content_11154357. htm)]]. Syndicated from 人民日报 (People's Daily), 2009-04-09. Accessed 2009.04.10.
[4] 专家称恢复繁体字代价太大新规范汉字表将公布 (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ edu/ 2009-04/ 09/ content_11152862. htm) Syndicated
from 新京报, 2009-04-09. Accessed 2009.04.10.
[5] (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ english/ 2009-08/ 12/ content_11871748. htm)
[6] http:/ / zh. wikisource. org/ zh/ 简化字总表
[7] http:/ / zh. wikisource. org/ zh/ 第一批异体字整理表
[8] Yen, Yuehping. [2005] (2005). Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society. Routledge. ISBN 0415317533
[9] 简化字的昨天、今天和明天 (http:/ / bolin. netfirms. com/ 087. htm)
[10] Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones, Harper Collins, New York, 2006. ISBN 0060826584.
[11] " China to regulate use of simplified characters (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ english/ 2009-08/ 12/ content_11871748. htm)", China View,
August 12, 2009. Accessed 2009-08-17.
[12] For more details, see zh:简化字
[13] Keller, Andrée Tabouret. [1997] (1997). Vernacular Literacy: A Re-Evaluation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198236352
[14] 千龙网-北京-市教委驳回政协委员普及繁体字教学建议 (http:/ / beijing. qianlong. com/ 3825/ 2004/ 12/ 08/ 118@2411471. htm)
(Thousand dragon net – Beijing – city Education Committee rejects commissar of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to
popularize the traditional character teaching suggestion)
[15] Debate: A need to introduce traditional characters to schools? (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ forum/ 2008-03/ 14/ content_7780688. htm)
[16] School bridges China-Japan gap (http:/ / search. japantimes. co. jp/ cgi-bin/ fl20081223zg. html)
[17] Richard Ishida (editor): Best Practice 13: Using Hans and Hant codes (http:/ / www. w3. org/ TR/ i18n-html-tech-lang/ #ri20040429.
113217290) in Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content – W3C Working Group Note 12 April
2007.
External links
• Andrew West, Proposal to Encode Obsolete Simplified Chinese Characters (http://www.babelstone.co.uk/
CJK/N3695.html)
• Stroke Order Animation and Dictionary of Simplified Chinese Characters (http://www.ArchChinese.com)
• Simplified to Traditional Chinese Conversion Table (http://www.sayjack.com/chinese/
simplified-to-traditional-chinese-conversion-table/)
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese

characters
The debate on traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 繁简之争
or 正简之争; traditional Chinese: 繁簡之爭 or 正簡之爭; Mandarin Pinyin: fánjiǎn zhīzhēng or zhèngjiǎn
zhīzhēng; Jyutping: faan4gaan2 zi1zang1 or zing3gaan2 zi1zang1[1] a.k.a. 漢字簡化爭論[2] ) is an ongoing debate
concerning Chinese orthography among users of Chinese characters. It has stirred up heated responses from
supporters of both sides in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese communities
with its implications of political ideology and cultural identity.[3] Simplified characters here exclusively refer to
those characters simplified by the People's Republic of China, instead of the concept of character simplification as a
whole. The effect of simplified characters on the language remains controversial decades after their introduction.
Split orthography: a problem?

The sheer difficulties posed by having two concurrent writing systems hinders communications between mainland
China and other regions. For those who know both systems well, translating an entire document written using
simplified characters to traditional characters, or vice versa, is a trivial but laborious task. For machine and computer
translation, however, translation from simplified to traditional is not straightforward because there is not a
one-to-one mapping of a simplified character to a traditional character. As a result a computer can be used for the
bulk of the translation but will still need final checking by a human.
The writer Ba Jin, in his essay "Thoughts: Reform of Chinese characters" (随想录·汉字改革), urged caution in any
reforms to the written Chinese language. He cited the inability of those educated in Hong Kong or Taiwan to read
material published on the mainland, and vice versa, as a great disadvantage of simplified Chinese. He also cited the
ability to communicate, not just with Chinese peoples of various regions, but also with people from across the
Sinosphere — countries such as Japan and Vietnam — as a great advantage of the written Chinese language that
should not be undermined by excessive simplification.[4]
Others claim that it is not difficult for a person educated in one system to become familiarized with the other system
quickly through exposure and experience. For computer automated translation, one simplified character may equate
to many traditional characters, but not vice versa. Some knowledge of the context of the word usage is required for
correct mapping, but it has been difficult for computers to work with word usage perfectly. As a result, direct
computer mapping from simplified to traditional is not trivial and requires sophisticated programming. (This line of
reasoning is used both by traditional Chinese advocates opposed to simplification, and simplified Chinese advocates
opposed to the continued use of traditional characters.)
Cultural legitimacy
Pro-Simplified characters
• Proponents say that the Chinese writing system has been changing for millennia: it has already passed through the
Oracle Script, Bronzeware Script, Seal Script and Clerical Script stages. Moreover, some simplified characters are
drawn from conventional abbreviated forms that have been in use for centuries such as the use of 礼 instead of
禮 ,[5] and some simplified characters are in fact restorations of ancient forms that had become more complicated
over time. For instance, the character for "cloud" was originally 云, but the character was borrowed to write a
homophonous word meaning "to say". To disambiguate the two uses of the character, the "rain" radical (雨) was
added on top when it meant "cloud", forming the current traditional character 雲. The homophonous word
meaning "to say", however, has become archaic in modern Chinese, though 雲 continues to be used for "cloud".
The simplified version simply restores 云 to its original use as "cloud".[5]
Pro-Traditional characters
• While some simplified characters were adopted from conventional abbreviated forms that have existed for a long
time, the vast majority of the changes made by PRC were "unnatural" such as the removal of the symbol for heart
(心) from the word love (愛) into the new character (爱) without 'heart'. To many, the new 'heartless' love
character is totally against Confucianism which emphasises filial piety and humanity.[6]
• Pro-Traditional commentators claim that the changes through the history are merely alteration in writing styles,
not in the structure of the characters, especially after the Qin standardization. They also claim many other
simplified characters were arbitrarily designed by the government of the PRC to pervert traditional Chinese
culture for political reasons in order to carry out what the PRC viewed as modernization. Despite the fact that
character simplification began in 1956 and had origins going back to the early 20th century before the founding of
the PRC, and that character simplification was not a part of the Four Olds nor the Cultural Revolution (both
starting in the mid 1960s), they claim character simplification, "Anti-Four Olds" and the Cultural Revolution were
all treacherous acts of destruction of traditional Chinese culture. As a result of such "unnatural" evolution, many
characteristics underlying various Chinese characters, including radicals, etymologies and phonetics were ignored
and destroyed in their simplified form. One frequently-cited example of this argument is found in the character for
"sage" or "holy", 圣 in simplified and 聖 in traditional. The simplified character removed the king radical (王),
replacing it with soil (土). Supporters of simplification note that 圣 (literally meaning holy) is an ancient
component used in characters like 怪(literally meaning crazy or queer), and that 圣 was used as a variant of 聖
before the Chinese Communist government even existed.[6]
Literacy
• Proponents feel that Simplified characters having fewer strokes makes it easier to learn.[7] Literacy rates have
risen steadily in rural and urban areas since the simplification of the Chinese characters, while this trend was
hardly seen during 30 years of KMT rule and 250 years of Manchurian rule before them, when the traditional
writing system was dominant, though this rise in literacy may not necessarily be due to simplification alone.
• Although Taiwan, which uses Traditional Chinese characters, has a better literacy rate, proponents point out that
with a population 50 times larger and landmass 260 times bigger, the illiteracy in mainland China is much more
difficult to eradicate. In 2004, the only provinces of China where the illiteracy rates were lower than Taiwan's
were Guangdong at 3.84%, and Guangxi at 3.79%.[8]
• The literacy rate in mainland China is higher than that of Taiwan when compared at the same GDP per capita.
Year Literacy Rate ( Mainland [11] Year

GDP per capita ( ppp, Mainland GDP per capita ( ppp, Taiwan Literacy Rate ( Taiwan )
[9] [10] [10] [12]
) ) )
1964 66.42 - - - 1964
1982 77.19 325.021 - - 1982
1988 - - 7,907.18 91.7 1988
1990 84.12 795.912 - - 1990
2000 93.28 2,372.14 - - 2000
2003 - - 22,392.91 97 2003
• The literacy rate of Taiwan and Hong Kong is higher than that of Mainland, compared for the same year.[13]
• Although the adoption of Simplified Chinese characters is correlated with increased literacy rates, correlation
does not imply causation.[14] [15]
• Aside from correlational arguments, the only other form of evidence offered in support of script reform success
through character simplification is anecdotal.[14]
• The validity of statistics about literacy rates in mainland China is questionable.[16]
• The increase of literacy rates in mainland China is likely due to educational reform.[17]
Simplification was meant to be a stepping stone
• The earliest members of the Communist Party of China including intellectuals like Lu Xun were convinced
alphabetization was necessary to improve literacy. The suggestion was that changes should begin with Simplified
characters first, then eventually make way to an alphabet system. In fact, the members continued to pledge that an
alphabet system was the "ultimate objective".[18] In 1936 Mao told American journalist Edgar Snow that the Latin
alphabet was a good instrument to promote literacy.[19] At the height of Communist party victory in July 1950,
the possibility of continuing with an alphabet system was dissolved when Mao Zedong brought up Chinese
nationalism. He suggested Latin alphabets were "too foreign". The original plan of using alphabets to improve
literacy has since faded.[18] The change from an alphabet reform to a simplified reform is considered a U-turn in
Mao's policy.[20]
Destruction of traditional Chinese culture
• Some argue that Karlgren's quote (below) is possibly being misused and quoted out of context. At that time the
concept of traditional and simplified characters did not exist, they were simply Chinese writing. Given the
context, Karlgren may have meant abolition of Chinese characters, rather than specific modifications. If Karlgren
was not specifically arguing against character simplification, then this is a misuse of his quote.
• Some argue that characters have not been replaced with an alphabet, and that character simplification began in
1956 and had origins going back to the early 20th century before the founding of the PRC, and that character
simplification was not a part of the Four Olds nor the Cultural Revolution (both began in the mid 1960s). They
also note that whether traditional characters were "destroyed" or not is a matter of opinion, others might say they
were "modified".
• Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren suggested early in 1929 that "the day Chinese discard it (Chinese characters), they
will surrender the very foundation of their culture."[18]
• Some users of traditional characters hold the view that the PRC's character simplification in itself was a
destruction of traditional characters, and claim that character simplification, "Anti-Four Olds" and the Cultural
Revolution were all treacherous acts of destruction of traditional Chinese culture. They claim that Mao began
character simplification in 1956 and in the mid 1960s launched the Four Olds and the Cultural Revolution[21] to
destroy "Old Chinese Culture", despite the fact that Mao had earlier raised the need to preserve Chinese culture
and characters for Chinese nationalism,[18] when core Communist party members advocated to replace characters
with an alphabet.
Disambiguation
• Proponents feel that some traditional characters are too similar in appearance, such as 書 (shū) "book", 晝 (zhòu)
"daytime" and 畫 (huà) "drawing": the simplified forms are 书, 昼, and 画, which look much more distinct.
• Opponents claim the reverse: simplifications make distinct characters more similar to each other in appearance,
giving the "shape recognition" mechanism of the reading part of the brain ambiguous clues. An example is 無
(wú) "none", simplified into 无, which looks very similar to the existing character 天 (tiān) "sky". Also, 設 (shè)
"designate", and 沒 (méi) "without", are quite similar in their simplified forms 设 and 没 and can result in
confusion in rapid handwriting (Another example of the same kind is 活 (huó) "to live" and 話 (huà) "talk,"
which in simplified are 活 and 话 and can be misinterpreted in rapid handwriting). Similarly, some simplified
characters create more confusion. In traditional writing, 千 (qiān) "thousand", and 乾 (gān) "dry" are very
different characters. In simplified writing, the same characters appear to be almost identical, being 千 and 干,
respectively.[22]
Speed of writing
• Simplified characters have fewer strokes; for example, the common character
邊 (biān, meaning "side") has 18 strokes in traditional form, while its
simplified form 边 has only 5. Proponents of simplification claim this makes
them easier to write.[7] Characters with more than 15 strokes are especially
difficult to write.[23]
• IME(Input Method Engine) is actually some sort of simplification of Chinese
characters .[24]
An extremely rare 50+ stroke
character (brand of a noodle type)
was not simplified.
• Opponents say that the speed advantage of simplified Chinese becomes less relevant in the computer age. With
modern computing, entering Chinese characters is now dependent on the convenience of input method editors or
IMEs. Some IMEs use phoneme-based input, such as pinyin romanization or bopomofo, while others are
grapheme-based, such as cangjie and wubi. These have mainly sidelined the speed issues in handwritten Chinese,
as traditional and simplified Chinese often have the same input speed, especially with phoneme-based IMEs.
Furthermore, even when it comes to handwriting, a majority of people resort to semi-cursive script to reduce
strokes and save time.
Phonetics
• Proponents: Chinese characters are most often made up of a pronunciation-indicating part (called the phonetic)
and a part that indicates the general semantic domain (called the radical). During the process of simplification,
there are some attempts to bring greater coherence to the system. For example, the shape of 憂 (yōu), meaning
"anxious", is not a good indicator of its pronunciation, because there are no clear radical and phonetic
components. The simplified version is 忧, a straightforward combination of the "heart" radical to the left
(indicating emotion) and the phonetic 尤 (yóu) to the right.
• Opponents point out that some simplified forms undermine the phonetics of the original characters, e.g. 盤 (pán,
plate) has the phonetic component 般 (bān) on top, but the simplified form is 盘, whose upper part is now 舟
(zhōu). 盧 (lú, a family name) and 爐 (lú, "furnace") shares the same component 盧 in their original forms, but
they were inconsistently simplified into 卢 and 炉 respectively, so that 炉 now has the less helpful 户 (hù) as
its phonetic. Some characters were radically stripped of all phonetic elements. An example of a traditional
character simplified such that its phonetic element is totally removed is 廣 (guǎng, meaning "extensive"), of
which the internal character 黃 (huáng) is enclosed within a 广. Simplified, the character is written without its
internal phonetic element: 广 .
• Opponents say that such mergers make Classical Chinese texts in simplified Chinese characters difficult to
understand. They discourage the proliferation of such homographs. Also, it makes Chinese much more easily
mistranslated in foreign languages. In Mainland China, signs such as "dried goods" (Traditional Chinese: 乾貨,
Simplified Chinese: 干货) are often mistranslated into English as "fuck goods".[25] [26] The reason is that the
Traditional Chinese characters 乾 (dry), 幹 (to carry out, which also used in Mandarin to mean "fuck") and 干
(to intervene) are all merged into to character 干 in Simplified Chinese.[22] (For better illustration, there is a
similar example in informal English usage in which 'yr' could mean 'year' or 'your'. The Chinese Government
standardised the language using the Simplified form 干(like 'yr') to replace the Traditional characters 乾 and 幹
(like 'year' and 'your') and forbids the usage of the Traditional characters unless having previously received an
official permit. By doing so, awkwardness and difficulty may be found when reading sentences like, 'Do you
remember last yr yr roommate broke his leg?')
Radicals
• Proponents say that the radical system is imperfect in the first place. For example, 笑 (smile, laugh) uses the
"bamboo" radical.
• The removal of the radical 雨 from the traditional word 電 (electricity) is a sign that Chinese is moving into the
modern era because 雨 (rain radical) symbolizes that electricity comes from lightning. However nowadays
electricity can come from more sources than just lightning; thus proving that the simplification of 電 to 电 is a
more realistic approach in developing a better Chinese for the modern world.
• Some argue that simplification results in a broken connection between characters, which makes it more difficult
for students to expand their vocabulary in terms of perceiving both the meaning and pronunciation of a new
character. For example, 鬧 (din, fuss) is now 闹, with a door radical that is not indicative of its meaning. Another
instance is the simplification of 愛 (love) to 爱, where the simplified version removes the radical 心 (heart).
• The round of characters simplified by the Communist party was not systematic.[27] Extensive studies have been
conducted among different age groups, especially children, to show that reducing the strokes loses the radical and
phonetic relationships between the characters. This actually makes it more difficult for simplified character
readers to distinguish the characters, since they now rely heavily on memorization.[27]
• Some traditional characters are very distinct. Such as electricity/lightning 電, rope 繩 and turtle 龜. After the
simplification process all three characters appear to have the same components even though they have no
relationship at all. Respectively electricity 电, rope 绳, turtle 龟 can be easily confused. The simplification of the
word electricity/lightning 電 to 电 also took it out of the natural context. It no longer belongs with snow 雪,
thunder 雷 and clouds 雲.
Merger of characters
• Classical Chinese mainly used one character to form one word, which made it very common that one character
has multiple meanings and multiple pronunciation: "天" means "sky" (天苍苍), "heaven" (天将降大任), "nature"
(浑然天成), "weather" (心忧炭贱愿天寒); "长" means "length" (cháng, 长一身有半), "specialty" (cháng,
一技之长), "grow" (zhǎng, 草木遂长), "senior" (zhǎng, 以君为长者), etc. And context is vital to determine the
meaning of a certain character in Classical Chinese. After the early 1900s' Vernacular Chinese movement, words
were mainly formed by multiple characters (mostly two), and one word usually has only one meaning: "天空"
means "sky", "上天" means "heaven", "天然" means "nature", "天气" means "weather", "长度" means "length" ,
"生长" means "grow", etc. And context is unnecessary to determine the meaning of a certain word. So merger of
characters with few meanings in identical or similar pronunciation, actually made no inconvenience when using
Vernacular Chinese: "头发" (頭髮, fà) means "hair", "出发" (出發, fā) means "set off", "谷物" (穀物, gǔ) means
"grain", "山谷" (gǔ) means "hollow" , but reduce the characters needed to learn in modern life.[28]
• Simplified Chinese characters frequently include merged characters, which opponents view as baseless and
arbitrary: 後 (hòu, "behind") and 后 (hòu, "queen") are both simplified into 后. Likewise, 隻 (zhī, a measure
word) and 只 (zhǐ, "only") are merged into 只; 發 (fā, "happening") and 髮 (fà, "hair") are merged into 发; 穀
(gǔ, "crop") and 谷 (gǔ, "valley") are merged into 谷, and so on.
• On 3 September 1993, the Board of Language Usage & Applications of China permitted and re-introduced the
usage of the character ‘鎔’ and released a new policy of Resolution for the Complication in Using Character ‘鎔’
and Its Usage Re-introduction (《关于“鎔”字使用问题的批复》). The movement was an attempt in trying to
resolve the controversy caused by the conflict between the lawful mergers of characters of ‘鎔’and ‘熔’ and the
name usage of former Vice Premier Zhu Rongji. According to earlier Chinese laws regarding Chinese Language
Simplification, character ‘鎔’should have always been written as ‘熔’; however, Zhu Rongji insisted on writing
‘鎔’ when it came down to writing his name because he was originally named in the character ‘鎔’but not ‘熔’.
Thus, the Board later re-introduced the character. Pro-traditional characters supporters often use this example in
against the use of Simplified Chinese, especially when it comes down to mergers of characters in names of
historical heroes, scholars, philosophers, and political figures. They also complain about the trouble in flight
reservations alike when travelling in and out of Mainland China due to the mergers of characters.[29]
• Professor Wang, at Beijing University of Education, also the Vice President of Chinese Language Association,
and an official of Ministry of Education of China, agreed and criticised that some characters were oversimplified
during the simplification campaign, and thus more difficult to learn, apply, and use. Wang particularly pointed at
merged characters borne with these problems.[30]
Aesthetics
• Traditional Chinese Character look very well in large size calligraphy but a number of very complex characters
are much harder to identify when smaller fonts are used and complex character components can merge together.
Simplified Chinese characters look more appealing when small fonts are used. It is much harder to see details and
individual components in characters with a large number of strokes when small fonts are used. It is especially an
issue if the quality of print is low. The recognition issue applies to some OCR software as well. Such software
handles easier hanzi with fewer details.
• About 30% of simplified Chinese characters match simplified kanji (see shinjitai).[31] This makes it easier for
people who know simplified characters to be able to read and understand Japanese kanji. For example, the
character 国 (country) is written the same way in Japanese (国) although in traditional Chinese it is 國.
• Traditional Chinese Characters are often used as the de facto standard characters set in Chinese calligraphy in
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and even in the People's Republic of China (mainland China), presumably because
of its aesthetic value or partly thereof.[32] This is one of the very few exceptions that the PRC government permits
the use of traditional Chinese Character in mainland China.
Symbolism conflict
• The source of texts in simplified characters is far from belonging to mainland China only, as overseas
communities now produce newspapers in both scripts, some continue in traditional and some new choose
simplified. Chinese newspapers in Singapore and Malaysia mainly publish in simplified. Besides, simplified
characters are often used when targeting the population of the PRC.
• It's no longer the case that everything in simplified Chinese is made in mainland China. A number of websites
offer an easy switch between the 2 versions, the major multilingual non-Chinese news web-sites offer the Chinese
version in the simplified Chinese script.
• Simplified Chinese characters were not entirely developed by the PRC as some of the simplified characters were
taken from Japanese Shinjitai. This assures that simplified characters cannot be treated as "communist" because
they weren't just developed by the PRC and it isn't just the PRC that are using it now.
• Generally traditional character users may have a political sensitivity based on which script is used.[33]
• Cultural nationalists proclaimed that simplified characters are the creation of the CCP, therefore it is socialist or
communist, whereas traditional characters represent capitalism or nationalism. The political symbolism makes it
difficult for the CCP to restrict traditional characters. Especially in the Special Administrative Regions, where the
temporary solution is seen as the One country two system.[34] Hong Kong and Macau are perceived as
capitalist.[35] Another association made is that simplified characters represent the conservative forces of social
state. Whereas traditional characters represent the pre-Revolutionary China, one with Confucian literature, history
and the newest and most modern Chinese life in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas.[36]
Government Enforcement
• The mainland Chinese government have also enforced a law, where a fine of 1000 yuan (=US$147.06) can be
imposed if traditional characters are used in place of the legally sanctioned simplified characters.[36] [37]
Late recognition of flawed process
• Some note that the below paragraph merely states that there will be no more large scale simplification schemes,
and that the KMT's proposed simplification in the 1930s was not carried out. It does not present evidence to
support, or even argue, that there is a "late recognition of flawed process".
• On May 20, 1980 the Committee of Script Reform publicized via New China News Agency in the People's Daily
and Guangming Ribao that they would recommend revision of the Second-round simplified Chinese character.
After lengthy consultation, the SCCSS was set up, and recommended a list of simplified characters. By 1986 the
group was terminated, and the characters withdrawn, since it failed to win support by the State Council. The
conference stated that no more large scale simplification schemes on the order of the first and second schemes
would ever be attempted.[38] In comparison the first major public withdrawal by the Communist party came 50
years after the first withdrawal by Kuomintang. In 1934/1935, KMT attempted to simplify just 324 characters in
the "First Set of Simplified characters".[39] It was thought of as a continual step toward alphabetization.[19] They
used the three principles of (1) adopt existing ones and do not create new ones. (2) select those that circulate
relatively widely in society. (3) do not simplify characters that originally did not have too many strokes.[19] Still,
characters by the KMT never reached the public.[39]
Social
• Proponents argue that many minds link simplified characters with the idea of communism and traditional
characters with anticommunism or at least "non-communism". Thus the political implications and affiliations of
the writing systems are seen by some as the emotional impetus for the debate. This view interprets most of the
back-and-forth debate on the merits of the system, ultimately, as rationalizations.
• Some teachers in areas where traditional Chinese characters are used often scold students who use simplified
characters, even to the extent of calling them "uneducated". This, in addition to other matters, has enforced a
prejudice held by some traditional Chinese character users that traditional Chinese is for the educated and
cultured, while simplified Chinese is for the illiterate, dumb, even the barbaric. In Taiwan, simplified characters
have been regarded as "Communist" and are studiously avoided.[40]
Political Implications
• Those who use simplified characters counter that their traditional counterparts politicise a strictly linguistic issue.
• The simplified characters have been referred to by Taiwan and refugees from China as a "Communist plot", a
deliberate attempt to cut off traditional Chinese culture and values.[41] Simplified characters were banned in
Taiwan.[42] According to the Taiwan Affairs Office run by the Communist Party of China, the ban was only lifted
in 2003.[42] Simplified characters are also branded in Taiwan as "bandit characters" (匪字, literally gangster
characters).[43] In the past it was a variation only learned by specialists doing intelligence work at the height of
the Communist China era.[41] Over time, many immigrants who left the PRC quickly learned traditional
characters and have found simplified character materials from the PRC to be propagandistic.[41]
• Splitting simplified characters and traditional characters allow the Communist party to selectively censor. An
example is the sex trade book Whispers and Moans serialized in Hong Kong's Literary Century magazine during
2000 and 2001. The book was sold out in Hong Kong including a popular Japanese version. Beijing's Central
Bureau of Censorship claimed the book about sex industries contained too many "unhealthy words". The book
conflicted with mainland's Marriage Law of 2002, which claim topics outside marriage as "controversial" or
"spiritual pollution". They were able to censor this book by the simplified characters edition in 2003 without
affecting other regions.[44]
Ratio of current usage or pragmatism of the choice between the two systems
• Despite the promotion of traditional Chinese characters, they are still used by only some 50 million people,
including those in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong and many overseas communities.[45] Simplified
Chinese has come to dominate the written form of Chinese used nearly all over the world.[46]
• In the wake of the mainland's rise over the past 20 years, simplified characters now prevail in overseas Chinese
communities in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. This places traditional Chinese, which is
used by just over 30 million people around the world—mostly in Taiwan and Hong Kong—in danger of being
marginalized. [47]
• The high ratio achieved by Simplified characters are by force. Red guards ransacked homes, persecuting teachers
and took part in other violent activities.[48] One example is the faculties at Nankai University who were beaten
and publicly reviled. Some were murdered. Many faculty families were left homeless.[49] In 1966 universities
were even shut down to allow students to participate in the Cultural revolution. Traditional literature were also
halted.[50] In just one month between November 9 and December 7, 1966 Red guard member Tan Hou-lan
(谭厚兰) burned 2,700 traditional books.[51]
Developments in Recent Years

In recent years, the official Campaign of Simplification of Chinese Language has caused many highly controversial
discussions in the general public to higher level of the government in Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and amongst
some international organisations.
2007
In an effort to address the pressing need for a common language, World Health Organization published a book
named International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region in October
2007. The purpose of preparing and publishing the book is to translate the terminologies in the field of traditional
Chinese medicine between English and Chinese. However, WHO has chosen to print the book in Traditional Chinese
characters but not Simplified Chinese. It is believed by many that it has been the first time in history that Mainland
China Government has 'accepted' any international organisations releasing any publications printed in Traditional
Chinese characters without opposition, since the start of Chinese Language Simplification Campaign.[52] [53]
In November 2007, scholars and representatives from Japan, Korea, Mainland China, and Taiwan came to Beijing
and joined the Eighth Annual International Conference of Chinese Language Study. The conference was conducted
and hosted by the National Office of International Promotion of Chinese Language and Board of Language Usage &
Applications of the Ministry of Education of China. Immediately after, Korean media reported that the scholars and
representatives reached a few conclusions after long discussion in the conference. One of those conclusions was that
scholars would be using Traditional Chinese characters to standardise 5000 common Chinese characters across the
countries and would continue to allow the use of Simplified Chinese characters if there happened to have one across
those different areas. However, Chinese officials claimed that they did not reach such an agreement but would like to
see the harmonious coexistence of Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Still, to many, that was the approval from
Chinese Government because they were no longer absolutely opposed to the use of Traditional Chinese.[54] [55]
2008
In March 2008, a well-known Mainland author, Gan Wang, published a review article on his personal blog about the
possibility of the re-introduction of Traditional Chinese, What About Abolishing Simplified Chinese within the Next
50 Years?.[56] The article then caused a heated debate in many public forums.
Later in the Mainland Lianghui Meeting 2008, 21 Members of Lianghui proposed a bill to re-introduce Traditional
Chinese education in primary school curricula to secure the place of core Chinese culture from eroding over
generations. The proposal was then rejected by the Minister of Education. The Minister explained, 'Our nation has its
fundamental governing principles. [One of them, by law, is] to promote the usage of Simplified Chinese and
Mandarin. This is the basic condition… Thus, we will not consider re-introducing Traditional Chinese education in
our primary school curricula.'[57] [58] [59] [60]
On 5 July 2008, on his visit to famous Taiwanese writer Koarn Hack Tarn's home, Taiwanese President Ma
Ying-jeou promised that he would not introduce the usage of Simplified Chinese into the territories just because of
the local newly passed policy to let Mainland tourists visit Taiwan but to provide side-by-side translation so that
Mainland visitors could appreciate the aesthetic nature of Traditional Chinese. And he also told journalists that he
wished all Chinese people would eventually be using Traditional Chinese in the near future.[59]
In Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is not rare for people to use Simplified Chinese in informal writings. Although a very
small portion of people support the introduction of Simplified Chinese education, the majority of people are strongly
against teaching Simplified Chinese in schools. In these areas, it is unnoticeable of any trends of using Simplified
Chinese in personal blog, public forums, news journals, magazines, and other mass media.
While in Mainland China, not only has the number of pro-Traditional Chinese scholars, professionals, lecturers, and
teachers been steadily increasing but also a trend of using Traditional Chinese in artworks, advertisements, personal
signatures etc. has been observed more often in the general public as well. Some people even actively engage in
reading books, plays, and poems printed in Traditional Chinese characters. Voices of official permit of co-existence
of Simplified and Traditional Chinese or full re-introduction of Traditional Chinese alike are getting louder and more
common in Mainland China.[61]
2009
In early 2009, the ROC (Taiwan) government launched a campaign to obtain World Heritage status for Traditional
Chinese characters in a bid to preserve them for the future.[62]
During Lianghui Meeting 2009, Member of Lianghui, Mr Pan Qing-Lin proposed a bill to abolish Simplified
Characters successively and reintroduce Traditional Characters step by step within the next 10 years. He explained
his three major reasons for the proposal in terms of the destruction of the scientific and aesthetic aspects of Chinese
characters, the enhancement in technology diminishing the fast handwriting advantage of Simplified Characters, and
the potential benefit for Taiwan unification progress. He also believes that the name used in Taiwan for Traditional
Characters, Orthodox Characters, is very meaningful indeed. Furthermore, he explicitly supports Taiwan's Campaign
for World Heritage Status for Orthodox Characters and feels the pressure on Mainland Chinese Government from
the Campaign.[63] In addition, another Member of Lianghui, Ms Chen Jun followed Pan's moves and called for
Mainland Chinese Government's supports for the Campaign. Along with the support for the Campaign, Ms Chen
suggested the introduction of Traditional Characters education into the primary and secondary education. She
expected the introduction of Traditional Characters education would increase and improve schoolchildren's and
teenagers' passion for and understanding of traditional Chinese culture and language.[64] Again, like the similar
proposals in the previous year of Lianghui Meeting, these proposals caused heated public debates across Chinese
communities around the globe and got rejected by the Mainland Government.
On 11 March 2009, shortly after the Lianghui Meeting of 2009, famous Swedish linguist, member of the Swedish
Academy and the Committee of Nobel Prize in Literature, Professor Göran Malmqvist (Chinese: 馬悅然)
commented in his interview,'"Grid Characters" (Chinese Characters) are the most developed language in the world.
Simplified Chinese Characters used in Mainland China will eventually be replaced by Traditional Chinese
Characters. I am very confident of that.' He also believes in which sacrifices should be made for reintroducing
Traditional Characters.[65]
In April, Mr Lee Yu-Ming, the undersecretary of the Board of Language Usage & Applications, confirmed to the
media that Mainland Government would release a new measure regarding usage of Chinese characters within a year.
Under the new policy, a new Table of Standardised Characters would be created to restrict people from using any
‘non-standard characters’. Mr Lee estimated the Table would consist of more than 8000 characters. He emphasised
that the new policy would not permit anyone from using ‘non-standard characters’, especially for their names. People
would have to use those characters straight from the Table. The undersecretary also pointed out that the Government
would not reintroduce Traditional Chinese after serious considerations.[66] However, probably for the very first time,
experts and officials from the Board admitted some Simplified Characters had been over-simplified and made
imperfectly, and consequently, more difficult to learn, apply, and use. Hence, the newly created Table would provide
an opportunity to redress the problems.[67] In addition, these professionals agreed the priceless values of the
informative nature of and the cultural inheritance borne within Traditional Characters and the necessity of being able
to recognise them.[68] In order to form better evaluations of the suggestion of reintroduction of Traditional
Characters, the officials invited 91 senior students to sit for an exam testing the knowledge of Traditional Characters.
These students are potential teachers with outstanding GPA in majors of Ancient Chinese Language and Ancient
Chinese Literature from Beijing Normal University. Only 3 students passed. These officials then concluded the
suggestion of reintroduction of Traditional Characters would cost a lot. However, they agreed the policy of
‘Knowing Traditional; Using Simplified’ would be a feasible policy.[69]
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characters", while most Chinese speakers outside Taiwan, whether using simplified or traditional characters, refer to traditional characters as
simplified Chinese: 繁体字; traditional Chinese: 繁體字; pinyin: fántǐ zì; literally "complex characters" For details on the difference in
naming, as well as the differences in usage of the same names in different Chinese-speaking regions, see Traditional Chinese
characters#Chinese names.
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Daiva. Miller, Laura. Miller, Peggy J. Morgan, Marcyliena. Nardini, Gloria. Cho, Grace. Gundlach, Robert. Rohsenow, John S. Moss,
Beverly. Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City's Neighborhoods. (2003). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN
0805843450. p. 338.
[42] Taiwan affairs office under PRC. " Gwytb.gov.cn (http:/ / www. gwytb. gov. cn:8088/ detail. asp?table=Trade& title=Cross-strait+ Trade&
m_id=67)." Mainland literature embraced in Taiwan. Retrieved on 2009-01-12.
[43] Planning Chinese Characters: Reaction, Evolution Or Revolution. Zhao, Shouhui Zhao. Baldauf, Richard B. Baldauf, Richard B. Jr. Springer
publishing, 2007. ISBN 0387485740, 9780387485744. pg 216.
[44] Yang, Yishan. Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the Men and Women of Hong Kong's Sex industry. (2006). Blacksmith Books. ISBN
9628673289. p. 17.
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[46] http:/ / www. etaiwannews. com/ etn/ news_content. php?id=825469& lang=eng_news
[47] Government to seek UNESCO listing for traditional Chinese (http:/ / taiwanjournal. nat. gov. tw/ ct. asp?CtNode=122& xItem=47488)
[48] The Chinese Cultural Revolution Reconsidered: Beyond Purge and Holocaust. By Kam-yee Law Macmillan publishing, 2003. ISBN
0333738357, 9780333738351. p.121
[49] Friedman, Edward. Pickowicz, Paul G. Selden, Mark. Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China. Yale University Press, 2007.
ISBN 030012595X, 9780300125955. p.86
[50] The Cambridge History of China: Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution, 1966-1982. MacFarquhar, Roderick. Fairbank, John K.
Twitchett, Denis. Published by Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0521243378, 9780521243377.
[51] Big5.China.com. " Big5.China.com (http:/ / big5. china. com. cn/ chinese/ feature/ 437157. htm)." 文革中五大學生領袖今何在. Retrieved
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Kanji
Kanji (漢字) are the logographic Traditional Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system
along with hiragana (ひらがな, 平仮名), katakana (カタカナ, 片仮名), Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional
use of the Latin alphabet (known as "rōmaji"). The Japanese term kanji (漢字) literally means "Han characters" or
"Chinese characters" and is the same written term used in the Chinese language to refer to the character writing
system.
Kanji
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Old Japanese, Japanese
Parent systems Cangjie writing (mythological)

• Oracle Bone Script
• Seal Script
• Clerical Script
• Kaishu
• Kanji
Sister systems Hanja, Zhuyin, Simplified Chinese, Chu Nom, Khitan script, Jurchen script
History
Chinese characters first came to Japan on articles imported from China. An early instance of such an import was a
gold seal given by the emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 57 AD.[1] It is not clear when Japanese people started
to gain a command of Classical Chinese by themselves. The first Japanese documents were probably written by
Chinese immigrants. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of the Liu
Song Dynasty in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were
organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. From the 6th century onwards, Chinese documents
written in Japan tended to show linguistic interference from Japanese, suggesting the wide acceptance of Chinese
characters in Japan.
The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time kanji was introduced. Originally texts were written in
the Chinese language and would have been read as such. Over time, however, a system known as kanbun (漢文)
Kanji 54
emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to restructure and read
Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of
Japanese grammar.
Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. A writing
system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese
characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana,
a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era
literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified
man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to
collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji.
In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems,
while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, native Japanese words
(where the kanji is considered too difficult to read or remember), and words in which the kanji is not on the
government-sanctioned list of characters. Katakana are used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords
(except those borrowed from Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on
certain words.
Local developments and divergences from Chinese

While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji
used in Japanese and Chinese characters used in Chinese. Such differences include (i) the use of characters created in
Japan, (ii) characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and (iii) post-World War II
simplifications of the kanji. Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has
the result that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.
Kokuji
Kokuji (国字, "national characters") are characters particular to Japan, generally devised in Japan. The term wasei
kanji (和製漢字, "kanji made in Japan") is also used to refer to kokuji. There are hundreds of kokuji in existence.[2]
Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language.
These include the following:
• 峠 (とうげ tōge "mountain pass")
• 榊 (さかき sakaki "tree, genus Cleyera")
• 畑 (はたけ hatake "field of crops")
• 辻 (つじ tsuji "crossroads, street")
• 働 (どう dō, はたら hatara(ku) "work")
• 腺 (せん sen, "gland"). This character has been introduced to China.[3]
Kanji 55
Kokkun
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese
meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters such as:
• 藤 fuji (wisteria; Ch. téng rattan, cane, vine)
• 沖 oki (offing, offshore; Ch. chōng rinse, minor river (Cantonese))
• 椿 tsubaki (Camellia japonica; Ch. chūn Ailanthus)
Readings
Reading Characters in Japanese
Meaning Pronunciation
a) semantic on L1 L1
b) semantic kun L1 L2
c) phonetic on — L1
d) phonetic kun — L2
[4]
*With L1 representing the language borrowed from (Chinese) and L2 representing the borrowing language (Japanese).
Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different
words (or, in some cases, morphemes). From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more
different "readings". Deciding which reading is meant depends on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and
even location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings. These readings are normally
categorized as either on'yomi (literally, sound reading) or kun'yomi (literally, meaning reading).
On'yomi (Chinese reading)

The on'yomi (音読み), the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the
Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were introduced from different parts
of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi, and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan
would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character 働 "to work", which
has the kun'yomi hataraku and the on'yomi dō, and 腺 "gland", which has only the on'yomi sen.
Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types:
• Go-on (呉音, "Wu sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Southern and Northern Dynasties
during the 5th and 6th centuries. There is a high probability of Go referring to the Wu region (in the vicinity of
modern Shanghai), which still maintains linguistic similarities with modern Japanese.
• Kan-on (漢音, "Han sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th
centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an (長安 or 长安, modern Xi'an). Here, Kan is
used in the sense of China.
• Tō-on (唐音, "Tang sound") readings are from the pronunciations of later dynasties, such as the Song (宋) and
Ming (明). They cover all readings adopted from the Heian era (平安) to the Edo period (江戸). This is also
known as Tōsō-on (唐宋音).
• Kan'yō-on (慣用音, "Idiomatic sound") readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have
become accepted into the language. In some cases, they are the actual readings that accompanied the character's
introduction to Japan, but do not match how the character “should” be read according to the rules of character
construction and pronunciation.
Examples (rare readings in parentheses)
Kanji 56
Kanji Meaning Go-on Kan-on Tō-on Kan'yō-on
明 bright myō mei (min) —
行 go gyō kō (an) —
gō kō
極 extreme goku kyoku — —
珠 pearl shu shu ju (zu)
度 degree do (to) — —
輸 transport (shu) (shu) — yu
雄 masculine — — — yū
熊 bear — — — yū
子 child shi shi su —
清 clear shō sei (shin) —
京 capital kyō kei (kin) —
兵 soldier hyō hei — —
強 strong gō kyō — —
The most common form of readings is the kan-on one. The go-on readings are especially common in Buddhist
terminology such as gokuraku 極楽 "paradise", as well as in some of the earliest loans, such as the Sino-Japanese
numbers. The tō-on readings occur in some later words, such as isu 椅子 "chair", futon 布団 "mattress", and andon
行灯, "a kind of paper lantern".
In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese sound. However, some homographs called 多音字
(pinyin: duōyīnzì) such as 行 (pinyin: háng or xíng) (Japanese: gō, gyō) have more than one reading in Chinese
representing different meanings, which is reflected in the carryover to Japanese as well. Additionally, many Chinese
syllables, especially those with an entering tone, did not fit the largely consonant-vowel (CV) phonotactics of
classical Japanese. Thus most on'yomi are composed of two morae (beats), the second of which is either a
lengthening of the vowel in the first mora, the vowel i, or one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or moraic n, chosen for
their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. It may be that palatalized consonants before vowels
other than i developed in Japanese as a result of Chinese borrowings, as it is virtually unknown in words of native
Japanese origin.
On'yomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words (熟語 jukugo), many of which are the result of the
adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in Japanese or
could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the English
borrowings from Latin, Greek, and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or
considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts. The major exception to this rule is family
names, in which the native kun'yomi reading is usually used (though on'yomi are found in many personal names,
especially men's names).
Kanji 57
Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)

The kun'yomi (訓読み), Japanese reading, or native reading (literally, meaning reading), is a reading based on the
pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamatokotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese
character when it was introduced. As with on'yomi, there can be multiple kun readings for the same kanji, and some
kanji have no kun'yomi at all.
For instance, the kanji for east, 東, has the on reading tō. However, Japanese already had two words for "east":
higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji 東 had the latter readings added as kun'yomi. In contrast, the kanji 寸, denoting a
Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native Japanese equivalent; it only has an on'yomi,
sun, with no native kun reading. Most kokuji, Japanese-created Chinese characters, only have kun readings.
Kun'yomi are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of yamatokotoba. Most noun or adjective kun'yomi
are two to three syllables long, while verb kun'yomi are usually between one and three syllables in length, not
counting trailing hiragana called okurigana. Okurigana are not considered to be part of the internal reading of the
character, although they are part of the reading of the word. A beginner in the language will rarely come across
characters with long readings, but readings of three or even four syllables are not uncommon. 承る uketamawaru
and 志 kokorozashi have five syllables represented by a single kanji, the longest readings of any kanji in the Jōyō
character set.
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the
different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written 治す, means
"to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix or correct something". Sometimes the distinction
is very clear, although not always. Differences of opinion among reference works is not uncommon; one dictionary
may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. As a result, native speakers
of the language may have trouble knowing which kanji to use and resort to personal preference or by writing the
word in hiragana. This latter strategy is frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと moto, which
has at least five different kanji: 元, 基, 本, 下, and 素, the first three of which have only very subtle differences.
Local dialectical readings of kanji are also classified under kun'yomi, most notably readings for words in Ryukyuan
languages.
Other readings
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi, known as jūbako (重箱) or yutō (湯桶)
words, which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words): the first character of
jūbako is read using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi, while it is the other way around with yutō. These are the Japanese
form of hybrid words. Other examples include 場所 basho "place" (kun-on), 金色 kin'iro "golden" (on-kun) and
合気道 aikidō "the martial art Aikido" (kun-on-on).
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori (名乗り), which are mostly used for names (often given
names), and are generally closely related to the kun'yomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori or, occasionally,
unique readings not found elsewhere.
Gikun (義訓) or jukujikun (熟字訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the
characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi. For example, 今朝 ("this morning") is read neither as *ima'asa, the
kun'yomi of the characters, nor *konchō, the on'yomi of the characters. Instead it is read as kesa—a native Japanese
word with two syllables (which may be seen as a single morpheme, or as a fusion of kyō (previously kefu), "today",
and asa, "morning").
Many ateji (kanji used only for their phonetic value) have meanings derived from their usage: for example, the
now-archaic 亜細亜 ajia was formerly used to write "Asia" in kanji; the character 亜 now means Asia in such
compounds as 東亜 tōa, "East Asia". From the written 亜米利加 amerika, the second character was taken, resulting
in the semi-formal coinage 米国 beikoku, which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of
Kanji 58
America".
When to use which reading

Although there are general rules for when to use on'yomi and when to use kun'yomi, the language is littered with
exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior
knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places).
The rule of thumb is that kanji occurring in isolation, such as a character representing a single word unit, are
typically read using their kun'yomi (though there are numerous exceptions). They may be written with okurigana to
mark the inflected ending of a verb or adjective, or by convention. For example: 情け nasake "sympathy", 赤い
akai "red", 新しい atarashii "new ", 見る miru "(to) see", 必ず kanarazu "invariably". Okurigana is an important
aspect of kanji usage in Japanese; see that article for more information on kun'yomi orthography
Kanji occurring in compounds are generally read using on'yomi, called 熟語 jukugo in Japanese (though again,
exceptions abound). For example, 情報 jōhō "information", 学校 gakkō "school", and 新幹線 shinkansen "bullet
train" all follow this pattern. This isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts
completely different pronunciations. 東 "east" and 北 "north" use the kun readings higashi and kita, being
stand-alone characters, while 北東 "northeast", as a compound, uses the on reading hokutō. This is further
complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one on'yomi: 生 is read as sei in 先生 sensei "teacher" but
as shō in 一生 isshō "one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; 易 is read i when it
means "simple", but as eki when it means "divination", both being on'yomi for this character.
These rules of thumb have many exceptions. Kun'yomi compound words are not as numerous as those with on'yomi,
but neither are they rare. Examples include 手紙 tegami "letter", 日傘 higasa "parasol", and the famous 神風
kamikaze "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as 空揚げ (also written 唐揚げ) karaage
"Chinese-style fried chicken" and 折り紙 origami, although many of these can also be written with the okurigana
omitted (for example, 空揚 or 折紙).
Similarly, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in isolation: 愛 ai "love", 禅 Zen, 点 ten "mark, dot".
Most of these cases involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion, although exceptions do occur.
A lone 金 may be read as kin "gold" or as kane "money, metal"; only context can determine the writer's intended
reading and meaning.
Multiple readings have given rise to a number of homographs, in some cases having different meanings depending
on how they are read. One example is 上手, which can be read in three different ways: jōzu (skilled), uwate (upper
part), or kamite (upper part). In addition, 上手い has the reading umai (skilled). Furigana is often used to clarify any
potential ambiguities.
As stated above, 重箱 jūbako and 湯桶 yutō readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of
reading are possible: on-on, kun-kun, kun-on and on-kun.
Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō) and Japan itself (日本 Nihon or sometimes
Nippon) are read with on'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with kun'yomi: 大阪 Ōsaka,
青森 Aomori, 箱根 Hakone. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may not match
that in the original. The Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸) baseball team, the Hanshin (阪神) Tigers, take their name
from the on'yomi of the second kanji of Ōsaka and the first of Kōbe. The name of the Keisei (京成) railway line,
linking Tokyo (東京) and Narita (成田) is formed similarly, although the reading of 京 from 東京 is kei, despite
kyō already being an on'yomi in the word Tōkyō.
Japanese family names are also usually read with kun'yomi: 山田 Yamada, 田中 Tanaka, 鈴木 Suzuki. Japanese
given names, although they are not typically considered jūbako or yutō, often contain mixtures of kun'yomi, on'yomi
and nanori: 大助 Daisuke [on-kun], 夏美 Natsumi [kun-on]. Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the
readings of given names do not follow any set rules and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a
Kanji 59
person's name without independent verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called
地球 Āsu and 天使 Enjeru, quite literally "Earth" and "Angel"; neither are common names, and have normal
readings chikyū and tenshi respectively. Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make
a good guess for most names.
Chinese place names and Chinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost
invariably read with on'yomi. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may
differ widely from that used by Chinese speakers. For example, Mao Zedong's name, written 毛沢東, is pronounced
as Mō Takutō in Japanese. Today, Chinese names that aren't well known in Japan are often spelled in Katakana
instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation.
Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in
ruby characters known as furigana, (small kana written above or to the right of the character) or kumimoji (small
kana written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners and manga
(comics). It is also used in newspapers for rare or unusual readings and for characters not included in the officially
recognized set of essential kanji.
Total number of kanji

The number of possible characters is disputed. The Daikanwa Jiten contains about 50,000 characters, and this was
thought to be comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries, such as the Yiti Zidian dictionary
published in 2004 contain 100,000 or more characters, many consisting of obscure variants. The vast majority of
these are not in common use in either Japan or China; as discussed below, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 characters
are in common use in Japan.
Orthographic reform and lists of kanji

In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a
series of orthographic reforms. This was done with the goal of
facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature
and periodicals. The number of characters in circulation was reduced,
and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school
were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs, called
新字体 (shinjitai). Many variant forms of characters and obscure
alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.
These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these

standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known
as hyōgaiji (表外字).
Kyōiku kanji
The Kyōiku kanji 教育漢字 ("education kanji") are 1006 characters
that Japanese children learn in elementary school. The number was 881
until 1981. The grade-level breakdown of the education kanji is known A young woman practicing kanji. Ukiyo-e
as the Gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō (学年別漢字配当表), or the woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu, 1897
gakushū kanji.
Kanji 60
Jōyō kanji
The Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 are 1,945 characters consisting of all the Kyōiku kanji, plus an additional 939 kanji taught
in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana. The Jōyō
kanji were introduced in 1981. They replaced an older list of 1,850 characters known as the General-use kanji (tōyō
kanji 当用漢字) introduced in 1946. The Japanese National Kanji Conference will add new characters to the list, to
be enforced by 2010[5] . Some of these new characters are currently Jinmeiyō kanji and were previously not included
in the Jōyō kanji. Some of the characters are used to write prefecture names: 阪,熊,奈,岡,鹿,梨,阜,埼,茨,栃 and 媛.
Jinmeiyō kanji
Since September 27, 2004, the Jinmeiyō kanji 人名用漢字 consist of 2,928 characters, containing the Jōyō kanji
plus an additional 983 kanji found in people's names. There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952,
but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the phrase Jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2,928, and
sometimes it only refers to the 983 that are only used for names.
Jinmeiyō kanji literally translates to "Chinese characters for use in personal names".
Hyōgaiji
Hyōgaiji (表外字 "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in the jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji lists. These
are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist.
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji

The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as
other forms of writing such as the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Greek alphabet, Hindu-Arabic numerals, etc. for
use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
• JIS X 0208:1997 [6], the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
• JIS X 0212:1990 [7], a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used,
mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete;
• JIS X 0213:2000 [8], a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,625 additional kanji, of which
2,741 were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding;
• JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/Unicode standard.
Gaiji
Gaiji (外字), literally meaning "external characters", are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding
systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional
glyph in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as well.
Gaiji can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters. Both are a problem for information
interchange, as the codepoint used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or
operating system to another.
Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997, and JIS X 0213-2000 used the range of code-points previously
allocated to gaiji, making them completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode"
service, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters).
Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas, while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent
Glyphlets)[9] [10] technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.
The Text Encoding Initiative uses a <g> element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji.[11]
(The g stands for "gaiji".[12] )
Kanji 61
Types of Kanji: by category

A Chinese scholar Xu Shen (許慎), in the Shuōwén Jiězì (說文解字) ca. 100 CE, classified Chinese characters into
six categories (Japanese: 六書 rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and no longer
the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually
exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.
(For a table of all the kyōiku kanji (教育漢字) broken down by category see this page [13], from which the following
descriptions have been extracted.)
Shōkei-moji (象形文字)
These characters are pictograms, sketches of the object they represent. For example, 目 is an eye, 木 is a tree, etc.
(Shōkei 象形 is also the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs). The current forms of the characters are very
different from the original, and it is now hard to see the origin in many of these characters. It is somewhat easier to
see in seal script. These make up a small fraction of modern characters.
Shiji-moji (指事文字)
Shiji-moji are ideograms, often called "simple ideograms" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the
difference from compound ideograms (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept
such as 上 "up" or "above" and 下 "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
Kaii-moji (会意文字)
These are compound ideograms, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideograms".
These are usually a combination of pictograms that combine iconicly to present an overall meaning. An example is
the kokuji 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down). Another is 休 (rest) from 人
(person) and 木 (tree). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
Keisei-moji (形声文字)
These phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic",
or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the
standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above,
so Keisei-moji will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two
components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general
category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element)
approximates the pronunciation. (The pronunciation really relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be
distantly detectable in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to kun'yomi. The
same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to
Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound,
typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.)
As examples of this, consider the kanji with the 言 shape: 語, 記, 訳, 説, etc. All are related to
word/language/meaning. Similarly kanji with the 雨 (rain) shape (雲, 電, 雷, 雪, 霜, etc.) are almost invariably
related to weather. Kanji with the 寺 (temple) shape on the right (詩, 持, 時, 侍, etc.) usually have an on'yomi of
"shi" or "ji". Sometimes one can guess the meaning and/or reading simply from the components. However,
exceptions do exist — for example, neither 需 nor 霊 have anything to do with weather (at least in their modern
usage), and 待 has an on'yomi of "tai". That is, a component may play a semantic role in one compound, but a
phonetic role in another.
Kanji 62
Tenchū-moji (転注文字)
This group have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually
explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely
defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, 楽 is used for
'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different on'yomi, gaku
'music' and raku 'pleasure'.
Kasha-moji (仮借文字)
These are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns
above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a
similar sounding word. For example, 来 in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was
homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any
embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat 麦, originally meant "to come", being a
Keisei-moji having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters
swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very
long history.
Related symbols
The iteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto
mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example 色々 (iroiro
"various") and 時々 (tokidoki "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the surname
Sasaki (佐々木). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji 仝 (variant of 同 dō "same").
Another frequently used symbol is ヶ (a small katakana "ke"), pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity
(such as 六ヶ月, rokkagetsu "six months") or "ga" in place names like Kasumigaseki (霞ヶ関). This symbol is a
simplified version of the kanji 箇.
Radical-and-stroke sorting
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by convention such as is used with the Roman Alphabet, uses
radical-and-stroke sorting to order a list of Kanji words. In this system, common components of characters are
identified; these are called radicals in Chinese and logographic systems derived from Chinese, such as Kanji.
Characters are then grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. When
there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation. For example,
the Chinese character for "mother" (媽) is sorted as a thirteen-stroke character under the three-stroke primary radical
(女) meaning "woman".
Kanji 63
Kanji education
Japanese school children are expected to
learn 1,006 basic kanji characters, the kyōiku
kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The
order in which these characters are learned
is fixed. The kyōiku kanji list is a subset of a
larger list of 1,945 kanji characters known
as the jōyō kanji, characters required for the
level of fluency necessary to read
newspapers and literature in Japanese. This
larger list of characters is to be mastered by
the end of the ninth grade.[14]
Schoolchildren learn the characters by
repetition and radical.
Students studying Japanese as a foreign

language are often required by a curriculum
to acquire kanji without having first learned
the vocabulary associated with them. This image lists all joyo-kanji, with kyo-iku kanji in red, according to Halpern's
Strategies for these learners vary from KLD indexing system.
copying-based methods to mnemonic-based
methods such as those used in James Heisig's series Remembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on
the etymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and
Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix,
are also seen.
The Japanese government provides the Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken;
"Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude") which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji
kentei tests about 6,000 kanji.
References
[1] gold seal from Han emperor, 57 CE, discovered in 1758
[2] http:/ / www. sljfaq. org/ afaq/ kokuji-list. html
[3] James H. Buck, Some Observations on kokuji, in The Journal-Newsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Oct. 15,
1969), pp. 45-49.
[4] Rogers, Henry. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Print.
[5] (http:/ / www. asahi. com/ culture/ update/ 0128/ TKY200801280154. html)
[6] http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 2/ http:/ / www. io. com/ ~kazushi/ encoding/ jis. html#kanji90
[7] http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 2/ http:/ / www. io. com/ ~kazushi/ encoding/ jis. html#kanjisup
[8] http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 2/ http:/ / www. io. com/ ~kazushi/ encoding/ jis. html#kanji00
[9] http:/ / www. adobe. com/ support/ downloads/ detail. jsp?ftpID=2437 "Introducing the Adobe SING Gaiji architecture"
[10] http:/ / www. adobe. com/ devnet/ opentype/ "Adobe OpenType Technology Center"
[11] "Representation of Non-standard Characters and Glyphs" (http:/ / www. tei-c. org/ release/ doc/ tei-p5-doc/ html/ WD. html), Guidelines for
Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange.
[12] Reference documentation of <g> element (http:/ / www. tei-c. org/ release/ doc/ tei-p5-doc/ html/ ref-g. html), Guidelines for Electronic
Text Encoding and Interchange.
[13] http:/ / www. csse. monash. edu. au/ ~jwb/ kanjitypes. html
[14] J. Halpern, The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, p. 38a (2006).
Kanji 64
Other sources
• DeFrancis, John (1990). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN
0-8248-1068-6.
• Hadamitzky, W., and Spahn, M., (1981) Kanji and Kana, Boston: Tuttle.
• Hannas, William. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN
0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover).
• www.japan-guide.com (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2046.html)
• Kaiser, Stephen (1991). Introduction to the Japanese Writing System. In Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide.
Tokyo: Kondansha International. ISBN 4-7700-1553-4.
• Morohashi Tetsuji, 大漢和辞典/Daikanwajiten (Comprehensive Chinese-Japanese Dictionary) 1984-1986.
Tokyo: Taishukan (generally regarded as the most authoritative kanji dictionary)
• Mitamura, Joyce Yumi and Mitamura, Yasuko Kosaka (1997). Let's Learn Kanji. Tokyo: Kondansha
International. ISBN 4-7700-2068-6.
• Unger, J. Marshall (1996). Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines. ISBN
0-19-510166-9
External links
• Jim Breen's WWWJDIC server (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C) used to
find Kanji from English or romanized Japanese
• KanjiQ (http://www.languagebug.com/kanji_q) - Kanji flashcard tool that runs on mobile phones.
• JISHOP (http://www.jishop-software.com) - Japanese-English computer kanji dictionary
• KanjiLearn (http://www2.gol.com/users/jpc/Japan/Kanji/KanjiLearn/)— Electronic set of 2135 two-sided
kanji flashcards, as easy to use as paper flashcards.
• Convert Kanji to Romaji, Hiragana (http://nihongo.j-talk.com/kanji/)—Converts Kanji and websites to forms
that are easy to read and gives a word by word translation
• Tangorin (http://tangorin.com/multiradical/)—Find kanji fast by selecting their elements
• Dictionary of Kokuji (http://homepage2.nifty.com/TAB01645/) in Japanese
• Learn Japanese Kanji (http://learnjapanese.elanguageschool.net/kanji-jlpt-lists)—How to write Kanji in
Japanese
• Drill the kanji (http://www.japanese-kanji.com/)—online Java tool (Asahi-net)
• Kanji Alive (http://kanjialive.uchicago.edu/)—Online kanji learning tool in wide use at many universities,
colleges and high-schools.
• Real Kanji (http://www.realkanji.com/)—Practice kanji using different typefaces.
• Change in Script Usage in Japanese: A Longitudinal Study of Japanese Government White Papers on Labor
(http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2005/Tomoda.html), discussion paper by Takako Tomoda in the
Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies (http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/), 19 August 2005.
• Kanji Dictionary (http://www.taipansoftware.com/en/japanese/dictionary/), a kanji dictionary with a focus on
compound-exploring.
• Genetic Kanji (http://www.genetickanji.com/), Etymologically-organized lists for learning kanji.
• Kanji Networks (http://www.kanjinetworks.com/), a kanji etymology dictionary
• (Japanese) 漢字研究・漢字資料 ("Kanji studies, Kanji data") (http://www.konan-wu.ac.jp/~kikuchi/kanji/
index.html)—official documents about Kanji.
• Japanese Kanji Dictionary (http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html)—Each character is presented by a
grade, stroke count, stroke order (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdicinf.html#sod_tag),
phonetic reading and native Japanese reading. You can also listen to the pronunciation.
Kanji 65
• WWWJDIC Text Translator (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1KG)—Takes

Japanese text and returns each word with pronunciation (hiragana) and a translation in English.
Glyph conversion
• A simple Shinjitai - Kyūjitai converter (http://www.geocities.jp/qjitai/)
• A practical Shinjitai - Kyūjitai - Simplified Chinese character converter (http://yurara.kir.jp/material/kanji.
html)
• A complex Shinjitai - Kyūjitai converter (http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/ja/tools/tradkan0.htm)
• A downloadable Shinjitai - Kyūjitai - Simplified Chinese character converter (http://www.skycn.com/soft/
44716.html) - Download directly (http://www.sjwx.net/zht.rar)
Hanja
Hanja
Korean name
Hangul 한자/한문한자
Hanja 漢字/韓文漢字
Revised Romanization Hanja
McCune–Reischauer Hancha
Korean writing systems
Hangul
Hanja
• Hyangchal
• Gugyeol
• Idu
Mixed script
Korean transliteration
• Revised Romanization
• McCune–Reischauer
• Yale
• ISO/TR 11941
• Kontsevich (Cyrillic)
Hanja 66
Hanja
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Korean

• Seal Script
• Clerical Script
• Regular script
• Hanja
Sister systems Kanji, Zhuyin, Simplified Chinese, Chu Nom, Khitan script, Jurchen script
Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed
from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers
to words which can be written with hanja, and hanmun (한문, 漢文) refers to Classical Chinese writing, although
"hanja" is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts. Because hanja never underwent major reform,
they are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese and kyūjitai characters. Only a small number of hanja
characters are modified or unique to Korean. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in Japan
(kanji) and Mainland China have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding hanja characters.
Although a phonetic Korean alphabet, now known as hangul, had been created by a team of scholars commissioned
in the 1440s by King Sejong the Great, it did not come into widespread use until the late 19th and early 20th
century.[1] Thus, until that time it was necessary to be fluent in reading and writing hanja in order to be literate in
Korean, as the vast majority of Korean literature and most other Korean documents were written in hanja. Today,
hanja plays a different role. Scholars who wish to study Korean history must study hanja in order to read historical
documents. For the general public, learning a certain number of hanja is very helpful in understanding words that are
formed with them. Hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in hangul, and even
words of Chinese origin — hanja-eo (한자어, 漢字語) — are written with the hangul alphabet most of the time.
History
A major impetus for the introduction of Chinese characters into Korea was the spread of Buddhism. The major
Chinese text that introduced hanja to Koreans, however, was not a religious text but the Chinese text, Cheonjamun
(Thousand Character Classic).
Koreans had to learn Classical Chinese to be properly literate for the most part, but there were some systems
developed to use simplified forms of Chinese characters that phonetically transcribe Korean, namely, hyangchal
(향찰; 鄕札), gugyeol (구결; 口訣), and idu (이두; 吏讀).
One way of adapting hanja to write Korean in such systems (such as Gugyeol) was to represent native Korean
grammatical particles and other words solely according to their pronunciation. For example, Gugyeol uses the
characters 爲尼 to transcribe the Korean word "hăni", in modern Korean, that means "does, and so". However, in
Chinese, the same characters are read as the expression "wéi ní," meaning "becoming a nun." This is a typical
example of Gugyeol words where the radical (爲) is read in Korean for its meaning (hă — "to do") and the suffix 尼,
ni (meaning 'nun'), used phonetically.
Hanja was the sole means of writing Korean until King Sejong the Great promoted the invention of hangul in the
15th century. However, even after the invention of hangul, most Korean scholars continued to write in hanmun.
Hanja 67
It was not until the 20th century that hangul truly replaced hanja. Officially, hanja has not been used in North Korea
since June 1949 (additionally, all texts are now written horizontally instead of vertically).
Additionally, many words borrowed from Chinese have been replaced in the North with native Korean words.
However, there are a large number of Chinese-borrowed words in widespread usage in the North (although written in
hangul), and hanja characters still appear in special contexts, such as recent North Korean dictionaries [2].
Character formation
Each hanja is composed of one of 214 radicals plus in most cases one or more additional elements. The vast majority
of hanja use the additional elements to indicate the sound of the character, but a few hanja are purely pictographic,
and some were formed in other ways.
Eumhun (sound and meaning)

To aid in understanding the meaning of a character, or to describe it orally to distinguish it from other characters
with the same pronunciation, character dictionaries and school textbooks refer to each character with a combination
of its sound and a word indicating its meaning. This dual meaning-sound reading of a character is called eumhun
(음훈; 音訓; from 音 "sound" + 訓 "meaning," "teaching").
The word or words used to denote the meaning are often—though hardly always—words of native Korean (i.e.,
non-Chinese) origin, and are sometimes archaic words no longer commonly used.
Education
Hanja are still taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, apart from the normal Korean language
curriculum. Formal hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior
high school in grade 12. A total of 1,800 hanja are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in
grade 10).[3] Post-secondary hanja education continues in some liberal arts universities.[4] The 1972 promulgation of
basic hanja for educational purposes was altered on December 31, 2000, to replace 44 hanja with 44 others. The
choice of characters to eliminate and exclude caused heated debates prior to and after the 2000 promulgation.
Though North Korea rapidly abandoned the general use of hanja soon after independence,[5] the number of hanja
actually taught in primary and secondary schools is greater than the 1,800 taught in South Korea.[6] Kim Il-sung had
earlier called for a gradual elimination of the use of hanja,[7] but by the 1960s, he had reversed his stance; he was
quoted as saying in 1966, "While we should use as few Sinitic terms as possible, students must be exposed to the
necessary Chinese characters and taught how to write them."[8] As a result, a Chinese-character textbook was
designed for North Korean schools for use in grades 5-9, teaching 1,500 characters, with another 500 for high school
students.[9] College students are exposed to another 1,000, bringing the total to 3,000.[10]
In Korean language and Korean studies programs at universities around the world, a sample of hanja is typically a
requirement for students. Becoming a graduate student in these fields usually requires students to learn at least the
1,800 basic hanja.
Current uses of hanja

Because many different hanja—and thus, many different words written using hanja—often share the same sounds,
two distinct hanja words (hanjaeo) may be spelled identically in the phonetic hangul alphabet. Thus, hanja are often
used to clarify meaning, either on their own without the equivalent hangul spelling, or in parentheses after the hangul
spelling as a kind of gloss. Hanja are often also used as a form of shorthand in newspaper headlines, advertisements,
and on signs, for example the banner at the funeral for the sailors lost in the sinking of ROKS Cheonan
(PCC-772).[11]
Hanja 68
Hanja in print media

In South Korea, hanja are used most frequently in academic literature, where they often appear without the
equivalent hangul spelling. Usually, only those words with a specialized or ambiguous meaning are printed in hanja.
In mass-circulation books and magazines, hanja are generally used rarely, and only to gloss words already spelled in
hangul when the meaning is ambiguous. Hanja are also often used in newspaper headlines as abbreviations or to
eliminate the ambiguity typical of newspaper headlines in any language.[12] In formal publications, personal names
are also usually glossed in hanja in parentheses next to the hangul. In contrast, North Korea eliminated the use of
hanja even in academic publications by 1949, a situation which has since remained unchanged.[8] Hanja are often
used for advertising or decorative purposes, and appear frequently in athletic events and cultural parades, dictionaries
and atlases. For example, the hanja 辛 (sin or shin, meaning sour or hot) appears prominently on packages of Shin
Ramyun noodles.
Hanja in dictionaries
In modern Korean dictionaries, all entry words of Sino-Korean origin are printed in hangul and listed in hangul
order, with the hanja given in parentheses immediately following the entry word.
This practice helps to eliminate ambiguity, and it also serves as a sort of shorthand etymology, since the meaning of
the hanja and the fact that the word is composed of hanja often help to illustrate the word's origin.
As an example of how hanja can help to clear up ambiguity, many homophones are written in hangul as 수도 (sudo),
including:
1. 修道 — spiritual discipline
2. 受渡 — receipt and delivery
3. 囚徒 — prisoner
4. 水都 — 'city of water' (e.g. Venice or Hong Kong)
5. 水稻 — rice
6. 水道 — drain
7. 隧道 — tunnel
8. 水道 — rivers, path of surface water
9. 首都 — capital (city)
10. 手刀 — hand-knife
Hanja dictionaries (Jajeon (자전, 字典) or Okpyeon (옥편, 玉篇)) are organized by radicals, like hanzi (Chinese,
漢字) and kanji (Japanese, 漢字).
Hanja in personal names

Korean personal names are generally based on hanja, although some exceptions exist. On business cards, the use of
hanja is slowly fading away, with most older people displaying their names in hanja while most of the younger
generation utilizes Hangul. Korean personal names usually consist of a one-character family name (seong, 성, 姓)
followed by a two-character given name (ireum, 이름). There are a few 2-character family names (e.g. 남궁, 南宮,
Namgung), and the holders of such names — but not only them — tend to have one-syllable given names.
Traditionally, the given name in turn consists of one character unique to the individual and one character shared by
all people in a family of the same sex and generation (see Generation name). Things have changed, however, and
while these rules are still largely followed, some people have given names that are native Korean words (popular
ones include "Haneul" — meaning "sky" — and "Iseul" — meaning "morning dew"). Nevertheless, on official
documents, people's names are still recorded in both hangul and in hanja (if the name is composed of hanja).
Hanja 69
Hanja in place names

Due to standardization efforts during Goryeo and Joseon eras, native Korean placenames were converted to hanja,
and most names used today are hanja-based. The most notable exception is the name of the capital, Seoul- although
Seoul is the English pronunciation of 서울 (Seo-Ul) which literally mean 'Capital'. Disyllabic names of railway lines,
freeways, and provinces are often formed by taking one character from each of the two locales' names. For Seoul, the
abbreviation is the hanja gyeong (경, 京, "capital"). Thus,
• The Gyeongbu (경부, 京釜) corridor connects Seoul (gyeong) with Busan (bu);
• The Gyeongin (경인, 京仁) corridor connects Seoul with Incheon (in);
• The former Jeolla (전라, 全羅) Province took its name from the first characters in the city names Jeonju (전주,
全州) and Naju (나주, 羅州) ("Naju" is originally "Raju," but the initial "r/l" sound in South Korean is simplified
to "n").
Most atlases of Korea today are published in two versions: one in hangul (sometimes with some English as well),
and one in hanja. Subway and railway station signs give the station's name in hangul, hanja, and English, both to
assist visitors and to disambiguate the name.
Hanja usage
Opinion surveys show that the South Korean public do not consider hanja literacy essential, a situation attributed to
the fact that formal hanja education in South Korea does not begin until the seventh year of schooling.[13] Hanja
terms are also expressed through hangul, the standard script in the Korean language. Some studies suggest that hanja
use appears to be in decline. In 1956, one study found mixed-script Korean text (in which Sino-Korean nouns are
written using hanja, and other words using hangul) were read faster than texts written purely in hangul; however, by
1977, the situation had reversed.[14] In 1988, 80% of one sample of people without a college education "evinced no
reading comprehension of any but the simplest, most common hanja" when reading mixed-script passages.[15]
Korean hanja
A small number of characters were invented by Koreans themselves. Most of them are for proper names
(place-names and people's names) but some refer to Korean-specific concepts and materials. They include 畓 (논
답; non dap; "paddyfield"), 乭 (Dol, a character only used in given names), 㸴 (So, a rare surname from Seongju),
and 怾 (Gi, an old name of the Kumgangsan).
Yakja
Some hanja characters have simplified forms (약자, 略字, yakja) that can be
seen in casual use. An example is , which is a cursive form of 無 (meaning
"nothing").
Pronunciation
Each hanja character is pronounced as a single syllable, corresponding to a
single composite character in hangul. The pronunciation of hanja in Korean is
not identical to the way they are pronounced in modern Chinese, particularly
Mandarin, although some Chinese dialects and Korean share similar Yakja (약자, 略字) simplification of
pronunciations for some characters. For example, 印刷 "print" is yìnshuā in 無
Mandarin Chinese and inswae (인쇄) in Korean, but it is pronounced insue in
Shanghainese (a Wu Chinese dialect). One obvious difference is the complete loss of tone from Korean while all
Chinese dialects retain tone. In other aspects, the pronunciation of hanja is more conservative than most northern and
Hanja 70
central Chinese dialects, for example in the retention of labial consonant codas in characters with labial consonant
onsets, such as the characters 法 (법 beop) and 凡 (범 beom); the labial codas existed in Middle Chinese but do not
survive intact in most northern and central Chinese varieties today.
Due to divergence in pronunciation since the time of borrowing, sometimes the pronunciation of a hanja and its
corresponding hanzi may differ considerably. For example, 女 ("woman") is nǚ in Mandarin Chinese and nyeo (녀)
in Korean. However, in most modern Korean dialects (especially South Korean ones), 女 is pronounced as yeo (여)
when used in an initial position, due to a systematic elision of initial n's when followed by y or i.
Additionally, sometimes a hanja-derived word will have altered pronunciation of a character to reflect Korean
pronunciation shifts, for example mogwa 모과 木瓜 "quince" from mokgwa 목과.
References
Notes
[1] Fischer, Stephen Roger (2004-04-04). A History of Writing (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=Ywo0M9OpbXoC& pg=PA189). Globalities.
London: Reaktion Books. pp. 189–194. ISBN 1861891016. . Retrieved 2009-04-03.
[2] http:/ / www. kcna. co. jp/ item/ 2003/ 200305/ news05/ 29. htm#6
[3] Hannas 1997: 71. "A balance was struck in August 1976, when the Ministry of Education agreed to keep Chinese characters out of the
elementary schools and teach the 1,800 characters in special courses, not as part of Korean language or any other substantitive curricula. This
is where things stand at present"
[4] Hannas 1997: 68-69
[5] Hannas 1997: 67. "By the end of 1946 and the beginning of 1947, the major newspaper Nodong sinmun, mass circulation magazine Kulloja,
and similar publications began appearing in all-hangul. School textbooks and literary materials converted to all-hangul at the same time or
possibly earlier (So 1989:31)."
[6] Hannas 1997: 68. "Although North Korea has removed Chinese characters from its written materials, it has, paradoxically, ended up with an
educationa program that teachers more characters than either South Korea or Japan, as Table 2 shows."
[7] Hannas 1997: 67. "According to Ko Yong-kun, Kim went on record as early as February 1949, when Chinese characters had already been
removed from most DPRK publications, as advocating their gradual abandonment (1989:25)."
[8] Hannas 1997: 67
[9] Hannas 1997: 67. "Between 1968 and 1969, a four-volume textbook appeared for use in grades 5 through 9 designed to teach 1,500
characters, confirming the applicability of the new policy to the general student population. Another five hundred were added for grades 10
through 12 (Yi Yun-p'yo 1989: 372)."
[10] Hannas 2003: 188-189
[11] Yang, Lina (2010-04-29). "S. Korea bids farewell to warship victims" (http:/ / news. xinhuanet. com/ english2010/ photo/ 2010-04/ 29/
c_13272696_4. htm). Xinhua. .
[12] Brown 1990: 120
[13] Brown 1990: 119-121
[14] Taylor and Taylor 1983: 90
[15] Brown 1990: 119
Sources
• Brown, R.A. (1990). "Korean Sociolinguistic Attitudes in Japanese Comparative Perspective". Journal of Asia
Pacific Communication 1: 117–134.
• DeFrancis, John (1990). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
ISBN 0-8248-1068-6.
• Hannas, William. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover).
• Hannas, William. C. (2003). The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3711-0.
• Taylor, Insup; Taylor, M. Martin (1983). The psychology of reading. New York: Academic Press.
ISBN 0-1268-4080-6.
Hanja 71
External links
• open okpyŏn (open-source hanja dictionary) (http://openokpyon.com/)
• Hanja Hangul Convert Project (http://kldp.net/projects/hanja/)
• Hanja (Chinese characters) (http://www.learnkorean.com/whanja/hclassindex.asp)
• Hanja Dictionary for learners of Korean (http://hanjadic.bravender.us)
• One out of Five Korean Students Couldn't Write Their Own Names (in hanja) (http://www.asianoffbeat.com/
default.asp?display=1361)
Chữ Nôm 72
Chữ Nôm
Chữ Nôm
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Vietnamese
Time period circa 1200-1949
Parent systems Oracle bone script

• Seal script
• Clerical script
• Regular script
• Chữ Nôm
Sister systems Simplified Chinese, Kanji, Hanja, Khitan script, Zhuyin
Chữ Nôm (Vietnamese pronunciation: [cɨ̌ˀnom] lect? (need audio); 字喃/↣喃/↘喃) is script formerly used to write Vietnamese.
It makes use of Chinese characters (known as Hán tự in Vietnamese), as well as other characters coined following
the Chinese model. The earliest example of Nôm dates to the 13th century. It was used almost exclusively by the
elites, mostly for literature. At this time, formal writing was not done in Vietnamese, but in classical Chinese. Nôm
was replaced by quốc ngữ (alphabetical Vietnamese) beginning in the 1920s and is now entirely obsolete.
History
Using Chinese characters to represent the Vietnamese language can be traced to 布蓋, part of the posthumous title of
Phùng Hưng, a national hero who succeeded in temporarily gaining back the control of the country from the hands of
the Chinese during the late 8th century. These two characters may represent bố cái, "father and mother" (i.e., as
respectable as one's parents), or vua cái, "great king". During the 10th century, the founder of the Đinh Dynasty
(968-979) named the country Đại Cồ Việt (大瞿越). The second character of this title is another early example of
using Chinese characters to represent Vietnamese native words, although which word it represents is unknown.[1]
For many years, it was believed that the oldest surviving piece of Vietnamese writing was a stone inscription dating
from 1343 in which Chinese characters were used to represent the names of some 20 villages. In 1970, however, a
Vietnamese scholar reported the discovery of a stele at a temple at Bảo Ân that dated from 1209, on which 18
Chinese characters were used to record the names of villages and people who had donated rice land to the pagoda.
The first piece of literary writing in Vietnamese appeared in 1282, when the then Minister of Justice Nguyễn Thuyên
composed a charm in verse that was thrown into the Red River to chase away a crocodile.[2]
Usually only the elite had the knowledge of chữ Nôm, which was used as an aid to teaching Chinese characters
(DeFrancis 1977:30). After the emergence of chữ Nôm, a great amount of Vietnamese literature was produced by
Chữ Nôm 73
many notable writers, among them Nguyễn Trãi of the 15th century, who left us the first surviving collection of Nôm
poems. Vietnamese literature flourished during the 18th century, which saw the production of Nguyễn Du's Tale of
Kieu and Hồ Xuân Hương's lyrics. These works were circulated orally in the villages, so that even the illiterate had
access to the Nôm literature.[3]
On the other hand, formal writings were still mostly done in classical Chinese. An exception was during the brief Hồ
Dynasty (1400-1407), when Chinese was abolished and Vietnamese was made the official language. However, the
subsequent Chinese invasion put an end to that. The Vietnamese language, and its written form chữ Nôm, became a
preferred vehicle for social protest during the Lê Dynasty (1428-1788), which led to its being banned in 1663, 1718,
and 1760. There was a final attempt during the Tây Sơn Dynasty (1788–1802) to give the script official status, but
this attempt was reversed by the rulers of the subsequent Nguyễn Dynasty (1802-1945). Gia Long, founder of the
Nguyễn Dynasty, supported chữ Nôm before becoming the emperor, but reverted to classical Chinese soon after
seizing power (Hannas 1997:83-84).[4]
From the latter half of the 19th century onwards, the French colonial authorities discouraged or simply banned the
use of classical Chinese. They decreed the end of the traditional Civil Service Examination, which emphasized the
command of classical Chinese, in 1915 and 1918-1919. The decline of the Chinese language (hence that of the
Chinese characters) meant at the same time a decline of chữ Nôm, since the Nôm and the Chinese characters are so
intimately connected.[5] During the early half of the 20th century, chữ Nôm gradually died out as quốc ngữ grew
more and more standardized and popular.
Chữ Nôm 74
Classification
The chữ Nôm characters can be divided into two groups:
those borrowed from Chinese and those coined by the
Vietnamese.
Borrowed characters
In chữ Nôm, the characters borrowed from Chinese are
used to:
1. represent Chinese loan words. Sometimes the
character would have two pronunciations, one more
assimilated into the Vietnamese phonological system,
another reflecting more the original Chinese reading
(that of Middle Chinese). For example, 本 ("root",
"foundation") can be pronounced as either vốn or
bản, the former being the more assimilated "Nôm
reading", while the latter the so-called
"Sino-Vietnamese reading" (cf the Middle Chinese
reading /pún/[6] ). A diacritic may be added to the
character to indicate the "indigenous" reading. When
本 is meant to be read as vốn, it is written as 本㆑, with
a diacritic at the upper right corner.
2. represent native Vietnamese words. For example, to
use 沒 to represent the word một ("one"). In this case
A page from Tự Đức Thánh Chế Tự Học Giải Nghĩa Ca (Chinese:
沒 is only used phonetically, regardless of the 嗣德聖製字學解義歌), a 19th-century primer for teaching
meaning of the word it represents in Chinese. Hannas Vietnamese children Chinese characters. The work is attributed to
(1997:81) says that he cannot find any example of Emperor Tự Đức, the 4th Emperor of the Nguyễn Dynasty. In this
primer, chữ Nôm is used to gloss the Chinese characters, for
using a Chinese character semantically to represent a
example, ⅟ is used to gloss 天
native Vietnamese word, i.e., there is only on reading,
but no kun reading, for the Chinese characters in Vietnamese, to draw an analogy from Japanese kanji reading.
However, Zhou (1998:223) gives some example of kun reading in chữ Nôm.
Invented characters
The coined characters can be divided into:
1. semantic-phonetic, which are composed of two parts, one (a borrowed character or radical) indicating the
semantic field to which the word (that the character represents) belongs or simply the word's meaning, another (a
borrowed or invented character) the approximate sound of the word. For example, (ba "three") is composed of
巴 the phonetic part and 三 the semantic part. This type of character is the most common one among the
invented characters.
2. compound-semantic characters, which are composed of two Chinese characters which represent words of similar
meaning. For example, ⅟ (trời "sky", "heaven") is composed of 天 ("sky") and 上 ("upper").
3. modified Chinese characters, which can be related either semantically or phonetically to the original Chinese
character. For example, the Nôm character ❠ (ấy "that', "those") is a simplified form of the Chinese character 衣,
their relationship being a phonetic one; the Nôm character 爫 (làm "work", "labour") is a simplified form of the
Chinese character 為, their relationship being a semantic one.
Chữ Nôm 75
Standardization
In 1867, the reformist Nguyễn Trường Tộ proposed a standardization of chữ Nôm (along with the abolition of
classical Chinese), but the new system, what he called quốc âm Hán tự (國音漢字 lit. "Han characters with national
pronunciations"), was refused by Emperor Tự Đức.[7] To this date, chữ Nôm has never been officially standardized.
As a result, a Vietnamese word can be represented by variant Nôm characters. For example, the very word chữ
("character", "script"), a Chinese loan word, can be written as either 字 (Chinese character), ↘ (invented character,
"compound-semantic") or ↣ (invented character, "semantic-phonetic"). For another example, the word béo ("fat",
"greasy") can be written either as 脿 or . Both characters are invented characters with a semantic-phonetic
structure, the difference being the phonetic indicator (表 vs. 報).
Chữ Nôm software

There are a number of software tools that can produce chữ Nôm characters simply by typing Vietnamese words in
quốc ngữ:
• HanNomIME [8], a Windows-based Vietnamese keyboard driver that supports Hán characters and chữ Nôm.
• Vietnamese Keyboard Set [9] which enables chữ Nôm and Hán typing on Mac OS X.
• WinVNKey [10], a Windows-based Vietnamese multilingual keyboard driver that supports typing chữ Nôm in
addition to Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
Chữ Nôm fonts include:
• VietUnicode, a Unicode font including chữ Nôm characters. It is hosted at SourceForge. The project's main page
is http://vietunicode.sourceforge.net/.Downloadable TrueType fonts are available at http://sourceforge.net/
projects/vietunicode/(download hannom.zip file).
• Mojikyo
References
[1] DeFrancis 1977:21-23.
[2] DeFrancis 1977:23-24.
[3] DeFrancis 1977:44-46.
[4] Wm. C. Hannas (1997). Asia's orthographic dilemma (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=aJfv8Iyd2m4C& pg=PA84& dq=vietnamese+
alphabet+ chinese& hl=en& ei=KYgbTfyWC4H98Aa8xvGbDg& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=8&
ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage& q=chinese suzerainty borrowed french suppress the script nationalist& f=false). University of Hawaii
Press. p. 83. ISBN 082481892X. . Retrieved 2010-11-28.
[5] DeFrancis 1977:179.
[6] Pulleybank, E. Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (1991)
University of British Colombia ISBN 0-7747-0366-5
[7] DeFrancis 1977:101-105.
[8] http:/ / viethoc. com/ hannom/ bango_intro. php
[9] http:/ / homepage. mac. com/ herr/
[10] http:/ / winvnkey. sourceforge. net/
Chữ Nôm 76
Further reading
• DeFrancis, John (1977). Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam . The Hague: Mouton.
• Hannas, Wm. C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Chapter 4, "Vietnamese". Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1842-3
• Schneider, Paul 1992. Dictionnaire Historique Des Idéogrammes Vietnamiens / (licencié en droit Nice, France :
Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, R.I.A.S.E.M.)
• Zhou Youguang 周有光 (1998). Bijiao wenzi xue chutan (比較文字学初探 "A Comparative Study of Writing
Systems"). Beijing: Yuwen chubanshe.
• Chʻen, Ching-ho (n. d.). A Collection of Chữ Nôm Scripts with Pronunciation in Quốc-Ngữ. Tokyo: Keiô
University.
• Nguyễn, Đình Hoà (2001). Chuyên Khảo Về Chữ Nôm = Monograph on Nôm Characters. Westminster, CA:
Institute of Vietnamese Studies, Viet-Hoc Pub. Dept.. ISBN 0971629609
• Nguyễn, N. B. (1984). The State of Chữ Nôm Studies: The Demotic Script of Vietnam. Vietnamese Studies
Papers. [Fairfax, VA]: Indochina Institute, George Mason University.
• O'Harrow, S. (1977). A Short Bibliography of Sources on "Chữ-Nôm". Honolulu: Asia Collection, University of
Hawaii.
External links
• Nom Preservation Foundation (http://www.nomfoundation.org/)
• Chữ Nôm (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chunom.htm), Omniglot
• Tự điển Hán Nôm (http://www.nomna.org/), Nôm Na Hanoi
• The Vietnamese Writing System (http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writsys/writviet.html), Bathrobe's
Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese Writing Systems
• Chữ Nôm character index (http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/viet.php), James Campbell
• (Vietnamese) Tự Điển Chữ Nôm Trích Dẫn (http://viethoc.com/hannom/tdnom_chidan.php), Viện Việt-Học
• (Vietnamese) Vấn đề chữ viết nhìn từ góc độ lịch sử tiếng Việt (http://ngonngu.net/index.php?fld=nnh&
sub=nguam&pst=cv_lstv_01), Trần Trí Dõi
Khitan scripts 77
Khitan scripts
Khitan scripts
Bronze mirror with a Khitan small script inscription

Type Large script is Logographic, small script logographic, syllabary and possibly some phonograms.
Spoken languages Khitan language

• Seal Script
• Clerical Script
• Khitan scripts
Child systems Jurchen script
Sister systems Simplified Chinese, Kanji, Hanja, Chữ Nôm, Zhuyin
The Khitan scripts were the writing systems for the now-extinct Khitan language, used in the 10th-12th century by
the Khitan people. who had created the Liao Empire in north-eastern China. There were two scripts, known as the
large script and the small script. These were functionally independent and appear to have been used
simultaneously. The Khitan scripts continued to be in use to some extent by the Jurchens for several decades after
the fall of the Liao Dynasty, until the Jurchens fully switched to a script of their own. Examples of the scripts
appeared most often on epitaphs and monuments, although other fragments sometimes surface.
Many scholars recognize that the Khitan scripts have not been fully deciphered, and that more research and
discoveries would be necessary for a proficient understanding of them.[1] [2]
Our knowledge of the Khitan language, which was written by the Khitan script, is quite limited as well. Although
there are several clues to its origins, which might point in different directions, the Khitan language is most likely a
descendant of Pre-Proto-Mongolic (and thus related to the Mongolic languages).
Large Script
Abaoji of the Yelü clan, founder of the Khitan, or Liao, Dynasty, introduced the original Khitan script in 920 CE.
“Large script”, or “big characters" (大字), as it was referred to in some Chinese sources, was established to keep the
record of the new Khitan state.
The Khitan large script was considered to be relatively simple. The large script characters were written equally
spaced, in vertical columns, in the same way as the Chinese has been traditionally written. Although large script
mostly uses logograms, it is possible that ideograms and syllabograms are used for grammatical functions. The large
script has a few similarities to Chinese, with several words taken directly with or without modifications from the
Chinese (e.g. characters 二,三,十,廿,月,日, which appear in dates in the apparently bilingual Xiao Xiaozhong muzhi
inscription from Xigushan, Jinxi, Liaoning Province).[3] Most large script characters, however, cannot be directly
related to any Chinese characters. The meaning of most of them remains unknown, but that of a few of them
(numbers, symbols for some of the five elements and the twelve animals that the Khitans apparently used to
Khitan scripts 78
designate years of the sexagenary cycle) has been established by analyzing dates in Khitan inscriptions.[4]
While there has long been controversy as to whether a particular monument belong to the large or small script,[5]
there are several monuments (steles or fragments of stelae) that the specialists at least tentatively identify as written
in the Khitan large script. However, one of the first inscriptions so identified (the Gu taishi mingshi ji epitaph, found
in 1935) has been since lost, and the preserved rubbings of it are not very legible; moreover, some believe that this
inscription was a forgery in the first place. In any event, the total of about 830 different large-script characters are
thought to have been identified, even without the problematic Gu taishi mingshi ji; including it, the character count
rises to about 1000.[6]
Small Script
The Khitan small script was invented in about 924 or 925 CE by a scholar named Diela. He drew his inspiration
from “the Uyghur language and script,”[1] which he was shown by a visiting Uyghur ambassador at the Khitan court.
For this reason, Khitan small script was originally thought to be a daughter script of the Uyghur alphabet.
Using a smaller number of symbols than large script, small script was less complex, yet still “able to record any
word.”[2] While small-script inscriptions employed some logograms as well, most words in small script were made
using a blocked system reminiscent of the later Hangul writing of Korea, meaning that a word is represented by one
group (square block) composed of several glyphs with individual phonetic meanings (somewhat similar to the jamo
units of Hangul). Unlike Hangul's jamo, a Khitan phonetic symbol could represent not just a single vowel or
consonant, but a CV or VC pair as well.[7] Each block could incorporate two to seven such "phonetic element"
characters, written in pairs within the block, with the first half of the pair on the left. If there were an odd number of
characters in a block, the unpaired character would be centered below the preceding pair.
Although there is some speculation, it appears there are no characters that both scripts share. Periodically, epitaphs
written using small script will be written using the large script method of linearity. Although small script had some
similarities to Chinese, Khitan characters were often used to record Chinese words. The appearance of a likeness
between a small script and a Chinese character does not aide in the reading of Khitan. For example, the Chinese
character for ‘mountain’(山) is the same as the Khitan small script logogram for ‘gold’(and, thus, the name of the Jin
Dynasty).[1] [8]
Of the 378 known small script characters, 125 are semantic, 115 are phonetic, and the remainder have not been
deciphered.[2] (Usually, it was possible to guess the phonetic value of an element if it has been used to transcribe a
Chinese loanword in a Khitan inscription; otherwise, such phonetic values are hard to determine, as very little of the
Khitan language is known.[9] ) Small script uses a mixture of logograms, syllabograms, and, as some as sources
claim, a few single sound phonograms. Sometimes suffixes were written with syllabograms, just as single syllables
sometimes were written with three syllabograms (with one each for the initial, medial, and final sounds of the
syllable). Sometimes the initial consonants of syllables are indicated to be dental, labial, Guttural, or nasal etc., based
on the syllabograms involved. Additionally, vowels are sometimes indicated to be labial or non-labial, or
pronounced in the front or back of the mouth.
Much of this information came from the "Khitan Script Research Group", led by the Mongolian scholar named
Činggeltei, who used monuments, calendar, and similar Chinese texts to decipher sections of small script.[10] A
particularly valuable object of their study was the inscription on the Da Jin huangdi dotong jinglüe langjun xingji
(大金皇帝都统经略郎君行记) stele, which is the only known bilingual Chinese-Khitan inscription. Produced
during the Jurchen Jin Dynasty it, ironically, was originally (before the discovery of other Khitan inscriptions in
1922) thought to be in Jurchen.[11]
Khitan scripts 79
Jurchen
Some of the characters of the Jurchen scripts have similarities to Khitan large script. According to some sources, the
discoveries of inscriptions on monuments and epitaphs give clues to the connection between Khitan and Jurchen.[12]
After the fall of the Liao Dynasty, the Khitan (small-character) script continued to be used by the Jurchen people for
a few decades, until fully replaced with Jurchen script and, in 1191, suppressed by imperial order.[1]
Corpus
There are no surviving examples of printed texts in the Khitan language, and aside
from five example Khitan large characters with Chinese glosses in a book on
calligraphy written by Tao Zongyi (陶宗儀) during the mid 14th century, there are
no Chinese glossaries or dictionaries of Khitan.
The main source of Khitan texts are monumental inscriptions, mostly comprising
memorial tablets buried in the tombs of Khitan nobility.[13] There are about 17
known monuments with inscriptions in the Khitan large script, ranging in date from
986 to 1176, and about 33 known monuments with inscriptions in the Khitan small
script, ranging in date from 1053 to 1171. The two scripts are mutually exclusive
(never occurring together on the same monument), but it is not known why the
Khitan people used two different scripts, or what determined the choice of which
script to use.
In addition to monumental inscriptions, short inscriptions in both Khitan scripts have

also been found on tomb murals and rock paintings, and on various portable
artefacts such as mirrors, amulets, paiza (tablets of authority given to officials and
envoys), and special non-circulation coins. A number of bronze official seals with
the seal face inscribed in a convoluted seal script style of Khitan characters are also
known. Bronze 'fish tally' with small
Khitan inscription owned by
Stephen Wootton Bushell
References
[1] Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (1996), The World’s Writing Systems, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 230–234
[2] Kara, György (1987), "On the Khitan Writing Systems", Mongolian Studies, 10: 19–23
[3] Kane (1989), p. 12
[4] Kane (1989), p. 11-13
[5] Kane (1989), pp. 6-7
[6] Kane (1989), pp. 6, 12
[7] Kane (1989), p. 15.
[8] Kane (1989), p. 17
[9] Kane (1989), p. 16
[10] According to Kane (1989) (p. 13), the most complete publication on the Khitan small script as of that time was the book by Činggeltei et al.
(1985). It contained the complete corpus of inscriptions in that script known to date, summary of research done on the subject in China and
elsewhere, and a complete bibliography.
[11] Kane (1989), pp. 4-5, 13-20
[12] Kiyose, Gisaburo N. (1985), "The Significance of the New Kitan and Jurchen Materials", Papers in East Asian Languages: 75–87
[13] Kane 2009, p. 4
Khitan scripts 80
Further reading
• Kane, Daniel (2009), The Kitan Language and Script (http://books.google.com/books?id=BnsZjpIa-cYC),
Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-16829-9
• Činggeltei (Chinggeltei, 清格尔泰), Chen Naixiong (陈乃雄), Xing Fuli (邢复礼), Liu Fengzhu (刘凤翥), Yu
Baolin (于宝林). Qidan xiao zi yanjiiu (契丹小字研究, 'Research on the Khitan small script'), China Social
Science Publishers 中国社会科学出版社), 1985. (Chinese)
• Daniel Kane, The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. (Uralic and Altaic Series, Vol. 153).
Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Bloomington, Indiana, 1989. In particular, Chapter
3, "Khitan script" (pp. 11–20).
External links
• Khitan script on Omniglot (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/khitan.htm)
• Linguist List - Description of Kitan (http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=zkt)
Article Sources and Contributors

Chinese character Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=421594351 Contributors: -Majestic-, 041744, 100110100, 7kingis, ABF, Acidtoyman, Addshore, AdjustShift, Adjusting,
Aecis, Againme, AimarYang, Alanmak, Alansohn, Algorithme, Allan.Simon, An Siarach, Andre Engels, Andrew Eng, Andrewa, Angelofdeath275, Angr, AnonMoos, Anthony Appleyard,
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Chinese Characters History

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Chinese Characters History

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Quốc ngữ Hán Tự (Sino-Viet.)

Spoken languages Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese

Time period Bronze Age China to present

Parent systems Oracle Bone Script

ISO 15924 Hani, Hans, Hant

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

Oracle bone script

Bronze Age: Parallel script forms and gradual evolution

Proto-clerical evolving to clerical

Clerical & clerical cursive

Wèi to Jìn period

Dominance and maturation of regular script

briefly, then disappeared.

Chinese character classification

Phono-semantic compounds 82%

Ideogrammic compounds 13%

Ideograms Few (less than 1%)

Transformed cognates Few

The presumed methods of forming characters were first classified c.

Four percent of Chinese characters are derived directly from individual

animal of any kind.

• The Standard Form of National Characters for Taiwan.

The Song typeface (宋体 / 宋體, sòngtǐ) is also known as Minchō

Regular script typefaces are also commonly used, but not as

Southeast Asian Chinese communities

Comparisons of Traditional, Simplified, and Kanji

Comparisons of Traditional characters, Simplified

Traditional Chinese simp. Japanese Kanji meaning

Simplified in mainland China, not Japan

Simplified in Japan, not Mainland China

(In some cases this represents the adoption

of different variants as standard)

Simplified in Mainland China and Japan,

Simplified in Mainland China and Japan

in the same way

often allow other search methods as well.

The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from

Number of Chinese characters

Number of characters in Chinese dictionaries[4] [5]

100 Shuowen Jiezi 9,353

543? Yupian 12,158

601 Qieyun 16,917

997 Longkan Shoujian 26,430

1011 Guangyun 26,194

1039 Jiyun 53,525

1615 Zihui 33,179

1675 Zhengzitong 33,440

1716 Kangxi Zidian 47,035

1916 Zhonghua Da Zidian 48,000

1989 Hanyu Da Zidian 54,678

1994 Zhonghua Zihai 85,568

2004 Yitizi Zidian [6]

Number of Chinese characters in non-Chinese dictionaries

2003 Japan Dai Kan-Wa jiten 50,000+

2008 South Korea Han-Han Dae Sajeon 53,667

Rare and complex characters

References Chinese calligraphy of mixed styles written by Song

Traditional Chinese characters

Spoken languages Chinese

Time period Since 5th century AD

Parent systems Oracle Bone Script