Chinese character

Chinese characters or Han characters (??/??) are logograms used in the written forms of the Chinese language, and to varying degrees in the Japanese and Korean languages (though the latter only in South Korea). Use of Chinese characters has disappeared from the Vietnamese language ? in which they were used until the 20th century ? and from North Korea, where in normal writing they have been completely replaced by Hangul.

Classification

See also: Chinese character classification

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chinese scholars have traditionally classified Han characters into six types by etymology (??).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first two types are single-body (??), which means that the character was created independent of other Chinese characters preceding it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first type, and the type most often associated with Chinese writing, are pictograms(象形字), which are pictorial representations of the morpheme represented.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The second type are ideograms(??字) that attempt to graphicalize abstract concepts, such as "up" (上) and "down" (下). Also considered ideograms are pictograms with an ideographic indicator; for instance, ? is a pictogram meaning "knife", while ? is an ideogram meaning "blade".

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Although the perception of most Westerners is that these are how most characters are created, pictograms and ideograms actually take up but a small proportion of Chinese logograms.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The next two types are called combined-body (??), or compounds which means that the character was created from assembling other characters together. Note that despite being called "compounds", these logograms are single entities in themselves; they are written so that they take up the same amount of space as any other logogram.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The third type of characters are radical-radical compounds(??字), in which each element (radical) of the character hints at the meaning.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The fourth type is of radical-phonetic compounds(形聲字), in which one component (the radical) indicates the kind of concept the character describes, and the other hints at the pronunciation. This last type accounts for the majority of Chinese logograms.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The final two types are rarer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Changed-annotation characters (??字) are characters which were originally the same character but have bifrucated through orthographic (and often linguistic) drift. For instance, ? and ? were once the same character, meaning "elder person", but ? now means "test" and ? means "old".

Related Topics:
Orthographic - Linguistic - Drift

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fake-borrowed characters (??字) are created when a native spoken word has no corresponding character, and therefore another character with the same or similar sound (and often a vaguely similar meaning) is "borrowed" to represent the new word. Occasionally the new meaning can supplant the old meaning. For instance, the character ? used to be a pictographic word meaning "nose", but was borrowed to mean "self" -- and is now known almost exclusively as "self". However, the "nose" meaning survives in compounds. Note that Japanese Kana can all be considered to be of this type, hence the name "kana" (??, where ? is a simplified form of ?).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Note that due to the long period of language evolution, such component "hints" within characters are often useless and sometimes quite misleading in modern usage. This is particularly true in non-Chinese languages.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Classification has its own problems, as the origins of characters are often obscure. For example, the character for "East" (東; Chinese: dōng, Japanese: higashi and tō), which combines the "tree" radical (木) and the "sun" radical (日), is usually considered a radical-radical compound. Though it appears to represent a sun rising through trees, and this is both an evocative image and a useful mnemonic, the origin and classification of the character are disputed among scholars. While some agree with the radical-radical classification, others see it as a unique character in and of itself — some claim it as being derived from an early pictograph of bundled sticks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As another example, the character for "mother" (媽 in Chinese mā) consists of one component meaning "female" (女) and another one meaning "horse" (馬 mǎ). The first component denotes a female entity, whereas the second suggests the pronunciation by referring to the word for "horse". The reason that "horse" was chosen to represent mother may be that horses — in a historical context — were often used to represent "steadfastness". The majority of Chinese characters, like this example, have one component that suggests the meaning and another that suggests pronunciation. In many cases, even the component intended to suggest pronunciation has an abstract semantic relation to the idea expressed by the character. This is possible because the phonetic system of Chinese allows for many words to have the same pronunciation (homonymy), and because the consideration of phonetic similarity used in a character generally ignores its tone and the manner of articulation of its initial consonant (but not the place of articulation).

Related Topics:
Homonymy - Tone - Manner of articulation - Place of articulation

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~