Chinese characters
Chinese characters[a] are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Chinese characters have a documented history spanning over three millennia, representing one of the four independent inventions of writing accepted by scholars; of these, they comprise the only writing system continuously used since its invention. Over time, the function, style, and means of writing characters have evolved greatly. Informed by a long tradition of lexicography, modern states using Chinese characters have standardised their forms and pronunciations: broadly, simplified characters are used to write Chinese in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, while traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
"Hanzi" redirects here. For the Chinese philosopher also known as "Hanzi", see Han Fei. For the anthology attributed to him, see Han Feizi.
Chinese characters
c. 13th century BCE – present
- Left-to-right
- Top-to-bottom, columns right-to-left (historical)
- Chinese characters
Hani (500), Han (Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja)
Han
U+4E00–U+9FFF CJK Unified Ideographs (full list)
汉字
漢字
Han characters
hànzì
hànzì
ㄏㄢˋ ㄗˋ
hanntzyh
han4-tzu4
hàn-zìh
خًازِ
[høz]
hon5-ci5
hon55 sii55
hon-jih
hon3 zi6
hàn-jī
hàn-jī
hang3 ri7
háng-cê
xanCdzɨC
- chữ Hán
- chữ Nho
- Hán tự
- 𡨸漢
- 𡨸儒
漢字
อักษรจีน
- 𭨡倱[1]
- Sawgun
한자
漢字
hanja
hanja
hancha
漢字
kanji
kanji
kanzi
តួអក្សរចិន
After being introduced to other countries in order to write Literary Chinese, characters were eventually adapted to write the local languages spoken throughout the Sinosphere. In Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, Chinese characters are known as kanji, hanja, and chữ Hán respectively. Each of these countries used existing characters to write both native and Sino-Xenic vocabulary, and created new characters for their own use. These languages each belong to separate language families, and generally function differently from Chinese. This has contributed to Chinese characters largely being replaced with alphabets in Korean and Vietnamese, leaving Japanese as the only major non-Chinese language still written with Chinese characters.
Unlike in alphabets, where letters correspond to a language's units of sound, called phonemes—Chinese characters correspond to morphemes, a language's smallest units of meaning. Writing systems that function this way are known as logographies. Morphemes in Chinese are usually a single syllable in length, but characters may represent morphemes comprising multiple syllables as well. Chinese characters are not ideographs, as they correspond to the morphemes of a particular language, but not the abstracted ideas themselves. Most characters are made of smaller components that may provide information regarding the character's meaning or pronunciation.
Special cases[edit]
Contractions and abbreviations[edit]
Some compound words and set phrases have been represented by single-character contractions, often considered ligatures instead of characters representing a single morpheme. They are often used in handwriting or for decorative purposes, but are sometimes seen in print. They are sometimes called 合文 (héwén) in Chinese. An example is the 'double happiness' character 囍 (xǐ) formed as a ligature of 喜喜, and referred to by its disyllabic name 双喜; 雙喜 (shuāngxǐ).[G] Numerals are also sometimes written as ligatures—e.g. 廿 (niàn; 'twenty'), normally read as 二十 (èrshí) in Standard Chinese.[H] In oracle bone script, personal names, ritual items, and even whole phrases were contracted into single characters: for example, 受又 (shòu yòu; 'receive blessings') becomes 祐 (yòu). An example found in medieval manuscripts writes 'bodhisattva' (菩薩; púsà) as a contracted character, composed of four 十 arranged in a 2×2 grid, derived from the 艹 'GRASS' components within the original characters. Another example is 𱕸; 圕 (tuān), a contraction of 图书馆; 圖書館 (túshūguǎn; 'library').[148]
Multi-syllable morphemes[edit]
A handful of native Chinese morphemes are two syllables in length; some of these date back to the Classical period.[149] They are often written with a pair of phono-semantic compounds that share a common semantic component. For example, the first character of 蝴蝶 (húdié; 'butterfly') and the second character of 珊瑚 (shānhú; 'coral') use ⾍ 'INSECT' and ⽟ 'JADE' for their respective semantic components, while sharing the phonetic component 胡 (hú). None of these characters are used independently, except as poetic abbreviations.[I][150] Another example is the name for the pipa, a type of lute. The characters 枇杷 were used to write the names of both the instrument and of the loquat, a fruit named for its similar shape to the instrument. These characters use the semantic 扌 'HAND' component, referencing the upward and downward strokes made while playing the instrument. For the fruit's name, the semantic component was later switched to ⽊ 'TREE' to form 枇杷, while the instrument's name became 琵琶, incorporating the top half of 珡 ('guqin') into both characters.[J]
The erhua phenomenon in some varieties of Mandarin is reflected in writing by means of a 儿; 兒 (ér) suffix. As such, some monosyllabic words may be written with two characters, such as huār (花儿; 花兒; 'flower').[151]
Rare and complex characters[edit]
Extremely stroke-rich characters tend to be rare. One of the most complex characters included in modern Chinese dictionaries is 齉 (nàng; 'snuffle') with 36 strokes.[K] Stroke-rich characters are often composed of other characters in triplicate or quadruplicate, such as the triplicated 靐 (bìng) with 39 strokes, and the quadrupled 䨻 (bèng) with 52, both meaning 'the loud noise of thunder'. 龘 (dá; 'appearance of a dragon in flight') consists of the ⿓ 'DRAGON' radical in triplicate, for a total of 48 strokes. In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists: 𱁬, normally read taito. It is composed of the 'cloud' character 䨺 atop the aforementioned triple-'dragon' character, also meaning 'appearance of a dragon in flight'.[152][153]