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.

Rare and complex characters

Often a character which is not commonly used (called "rare" or "variant" characters) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names (see Chinese name, Japanese name, and Korean name respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the 5,000 or so most common characters and exclude the less often used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical characters.

Related Topics:
Chinese name - Japanese name - Korean name

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People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) and Taiwanese singer David Tao (陶喆). Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including trying to create a character from two characters, including a picture, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply omitting the rare character with the hope that the reader will be able to infer who it refers to. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is common practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.

Related Topics:
Wang Chien-shien - Yu Shyi-kun - David Tao - Katakana

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There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is {{Unicode|𪚥}} zhé {{Audio2|zh-zhe2.ogg}} (if the character is not rendered on your browser, refer to the image to the right instead), meaning "verbose" and boasting sixty-four strokes; although it fell from use around the fifth century AD.

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An 84-stroke kokuji (Japanese-created kanji) also exists http://www.mojikyo.gr.jp/gif96/066/066147.gif - composed of 3 clouds (?) on top of ? (3 dragons; the appearance of a dragon walking), it has the kun-yomi odoto, taito and daito.

Related Topics:
Kokuji - Kanji

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The most complex character found in contemporary Chinese dictionaries is ? nàng {{Audio2|zh-nang4.ogg}}, meaning "unclear pronouncing due to snuffle", with "just" thirty-six strokes.

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The most complex character still in use may be 'biáng', with 57 strokes (refer to the image to the right), which refers to Biang Biang Noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character cannot be found in modern Chinese dictionaries.

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In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī, "one", with just one stroke. The most common character is ? de, a grammatical particle usually translatable as "of", with eight strokes. According to Bellassen (1989), the average number of strokes in a character is 9.8 (though it is unclear whether this average is weighted or includes traditional characters).

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