Chinese characters or Han characters (Traditional: 漢字; Simplified: 汉字; Hanyu Pinyin: Hànzì) are logograms used in the written forms of the Chinese language, and to varying degrees in the Japanese and Korean. Use of Chinese characters has disappeared from the Vietnamese language — where they were used until the 20th century — and from Korea, where they ha ...

Including:

• Chinese character - Origin
• Chinese character - Styles
• Chinese character - Radicals
• Chinese character - Classification
• Chinese character - By etymology
• Chinese character - Radical system
• Chinese character - Orthography
• Chinese character - Reforms
• Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities
• Chinese character - Japanese Kanji
• Chinese character - Dictionaries
• Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters
• Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters
• Chinese character - Chinese
• Chinese character - Japanese
• Chinese character - Korean
• Chinese character - Vietnamese
• Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

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The design and use of a dictionary of Chinese characters presents interesting problems. Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for the Chinese characters. The great majority of these schemes — beloved by their inventors but nobody else — 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 characte ...

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

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Chinese character tattoos are tattoos consisting of Chinese characters (hanzi or kanji) otherwise known as kanji tattoos. Despite allegedly being based on the Chinese or Japanese writing system, these tattoos are almost unheard of in China and Japan, instead being a relatively recent phenomenon originating in Western countries which do not use Chinese characters. Many kanji tattoos are unreadable or nonsense in the original language, and the forms of the Chinese characters are also often mistaken. The online blog Hanzi Smatter gives man ...

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Chinese scholars have traditionally classified Chinese characters into six types by etymology. The first two types are "single-body", meaning that the character was created independently of other Chinese characters. Although the perception of most Westerners is that most characters were derived in single-body fashion, pictograms and ideograms actually take up but a small proportion of Chinese logograms. More productive for the Chinese script were the two "compound" methods, i.e. the character was created from assembling differe ...

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Logogram, Logogram - Logographic systems, Logogram - Ideographic and phonetic dimensions, Logogram - Chinese characters, Logogram - Advantages and disadvantages, Logogram - External link

Read more here: » Logogram: Encyclopedia II - Logogram - Chinese characters

Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms, but their own linguistic tradition divides characters into at least five categories, of which "ideograph" is a plausible translation of only one or two. The Chinese classifications are (roughly translated) pictogram, ideogram, indicative, shape-sound compound, and borrowed. Borrowed characters are homophones used when no more "inventive" character emerges in common use. Pictograms are characters that have derived from literal pictures of the objects they origi ...

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Ideogram, Ideogram - Chinese characters, Ideogram - Japanese characters, Ideogram - Terminological objections

Read more here: » Ideogram: Encyclopedia II - Ideogram - Chinese characters

There are several kinds of Chinese characters, including a handful of pictograms (象形; xiàngxíng) and a number of ideograms (指示; zhǐshì), but the vast majority are phono-semantic compounds (形聲; xíngshēng). Although Chinese characters are often called ideograms, only a handful fit this category in any sense, and sinologists and linguists discourage referring to Chinese characters as ideograms. Chinese character classification - The different classes of Chinese cha ...

Including:

• Chinese character classification - The different classes of Chinese characters
• Chinese character classification - Pictograms
• Chinese character classification - Simple Ideograms
• Chinese character classification - Composed Ideograms
• Chinese character classification - Phono-semantic compound characters
• Chinese character classification - False friends
• Chinese character classification - Derived characters

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Four-character idioms, or chéngyǔ (成语/成語, literally "to become (part of) the language") are widely used in 文言 Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity to until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today. Classical Chinese can be compared to the way Latin was used in the Western world in science until recently. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chéngyǔ ...

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• Four-character idiom - Chinese examples
• Four-character idiom - Japanese examples

Read more here: » Four-character idiom: Encyclopedia - Four-character idiom

Chữ Nho (字儒) is the Vietnamese term for classical Chinese writing produced in Vietnam. Chữ Nho was one of the official writing systems in ancient Vietnam and is also known as Chữ Hán. Its written form uses Chinese characters (漢字, Vietnamese hán tự) and is not distinguishable from classical Chinese works produced in China, Korea, or Japan. The original reading of these characters is based on Old Chinese. Since the original pronunciation is unknown today, classical Chinese is read with the pronunciation specific to the readers own language such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese ...

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The Chinese written language consists of a writing system stretching back nearly 4000 years. Its logographic writing system employs a large number of symbols, known as characters, to represent individual words or morphemes. The writing system is considered to have also been a unifying force for much of Chinese history, transcending differences in spoken language. From the time of the Qin Dynasty onwards, a standard written language (at first Classical Chinese and later Vernacular Chinese) has always been in place to bridge the diverge ...

Including:

• Chinese written language - Written standards
• Chinese written language - Transcending intelligibility of speech
• Chinese written language - Chinese characters
• Chinese written language - Character forms
• Chinese written language - Writing direction

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The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ, 华语/華語, Huáyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén) forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. In general, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. However, Chinese is also distinguished for a high level of internal diversity. Regional variation between different variants/dialects is comparable t ...

Including:

• Chinese language - Spoken Chinese
• Chinese language - Language or language family?
• Chinese language - Written Chinese
• Chinese language - Chinese characters
• Chinese language - History
• Chinese language - Influence on other languages
• Chinese language - Sounds
• Chinese language - Romanization
• Chinese language - Other Transcriptions
• Chinese language - Morphology
• Chinese language - Loanwords
• Chinese language - Grammar

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A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to other writing systems, such as syllabaries, abugidas, abjads, and alphabets, where each symbol primarily represents a sound or a combination of sounds. In stenography, a logograph or logogram is a single character which represents a word. Chinese characters, used in Chinese and Japanese, make up a logographic system. Written Korean used a subset of Chinese charac ...

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• Logogram - External link

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Bases Base 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,16, 20, 24, 26, 27, 30, 32, 36, 60, 64 Today, speakers of Chinese use three numeral systems: the ubiquitous system of Hindu-Arabic numerals, along with two ancient Chinese numeral systems. The huama (Chinese: 花碼; Hanyu Pinyin: huāmǎ, lit. "flowery or fancy numbers") system has gradually been supplanted by the Arabic system in writing numbers. T ...

Including:

• Chinese numerals - Written numbers
• Chinese numerals - Numeral characters
• Chinese numerals - Constructing numbers
• Chinese numerals - Large number systems
• Chinese numerals - SI prefixes
• Chinese numerals - Suzhou 蘇州 or huāmǎ 花碼 numerals
• Chinese numerals - Hand gestures
• Chinese numerals - Miscellaneous

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CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which comprise the main East Asian languages. The term is used in the field of software and communications internationalization. The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which used Chinese characters prior to adopting quốc ngữ (see Vietnamese alphabet). These languages all have a shared characteristic: Their writing systems are partly or entirely based on Chinese characters—hànzì in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and chữ nô ...

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(新唐書), compiled in 1045-1060, which is the year favored by modern historians. The year of birth deducted from the Book of Tang (舊唐書), compiled in 941-945, is 623. The year of birth deducted from the Comprehensive Mirror compiled in 1065-84, is 624. 2. Was given this name by Emperor Taizong in the late 630s after she had entered the imperial palace (see inside article). 3. Had this Chinese character created in December 689 and ...

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• Empress Wu - Zhou Dynasty 690 - 705

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Zhang (Traditional Chinese: 張, Simplified Chinese: 张, pinyin: Zhāng, Wade-Giles: Chang, Yale: Jeung, Jyutping: Zoeng1, Hong Kong Government: Cheung) is among the most common Chinese surnames. There are currently well over 100 million people worldwide with this surname. The use of this surname dates back to about 4,700 years ago. This surname is often mispronounced by American English speakers as IPA [ʒæŋ]; its actual pronunciatio ...

Including:

• Zhang surname - Character Analysis
• Zhang surname - History of the Surname 張
• Zhang surname - Prominent people with Chinese family name 張/张
• Zhang surname - Prominent people with Chinese family name 章
• Zhang surname - Prominent people with Korean family name 장 張/章
• Zhang surname - Prominent people with Vietnamese family name Trương 張
• Zhang surname - Prominent people with Vietnamese family name Chương 章

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See also: Chinese character classification Chinese character - By etymology. Chinese scholars have traditionally classified Han characters into six types by etymology (六書). The first two types are 獨體 dútǐ single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other Chinese characters. Although the perception of most Westerners is that most characters were derived in single-body fashion, pictograms and ideograms actually take up but a small proporti ...

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

Read more here: » Chinese character: Encyclopedia II - Chinese character - Classification

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 ...

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

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Main article: radical Each character has at least one fundamental component, or radical (部首 bù shǒu, lit. "part and initial"), and this design principle is used in Chinese dictionaries to logically order characters in sets. The number of radicals is commonly recognized to be 214. Full characters are ordered according to their main radical, and are then subcategorised by their total number of strokes. ...

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

Read more here: » Chinese character: Encyclopedia II - Chinese character - Radicals

Usually Chinese characters each take up the same amount of space, due to their block, square nature. One of the easiest ways for beginners to ensure a proper push-off is, hence, to practise writing with a grid as a guide, which is indeed standard practice in primary schools for both normal exercises and calligraphy training. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, stroke placement, and the order in w ...

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Chinese character, Chinese character - Origin, Chinese character - Styles, Chinese character - Radicals, Chinese character - Classification, Chinese character - By etymology, Chinese character - Radical system, Chinese character - Orthography, Chinese character - Reforms, Chinese character - Southeast Asian Chinese communities, Chinese character - Japanese Kanji, Chinese character - Dictionaries, Chinese character - Derivatives of Han characters, Chinese character - Number of Chinese characters, Chinese character - Chinese, Chinese character - Japanese, Chinese character - Korean, Chinese character - Vietnamese, Chinese character - Rare and complex characters

Read more here: » Chinese character: Encyclopedia II - Chinese character - Orthography