Chinese language

Written Chinese

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The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. This complexity is compounded by the fact that the numerous variations of spoken Chinese have gone through centuries of evolution since at least the late Han Dynasty, while written Chinese has changed much less.

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Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wényán (文言), translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any of the spoken varieties of Chinese in much the same way that Classical Latin is different from modern Romance languages. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the formal standard for written Chinese was changed to báihuà (白話/白话), or Vernacular Chinese, which, while not completely identical to the grammar and vocabulary of Mandarin, was based mostly on it. The term standard written Chinese now refers to Vernacular Chinese.

Related Topics:
Classical Chinese - Classical Latin - Romance language - May Fourth Movement - 1919 - Vernacular Chinese

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Chinese characters are understood as morphemes that are independent of phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese word and still share an identical character ("一"). Nevertheless, the orthographies of Chinese dialects are not completely identical. The vocabularies used in the different dialects have diverged. In addition, while literary vocabulary is often shared among all dialects, colloquial vocabularies are often different. Colloquially written Chinese usually involves the use of "dialectal characters" which may not be understood in other dialects or characters that are considered archaic in standard written Chinese.

Related Topics:
Morpheme - Mandarin - Cantonese - Hokkien

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Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a widely used written colloquial standard with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this variety of Chinese. By contrast, the other regional languages do not have such widely used alternative written standards. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use standard written Chinese.

Related Topics:
Regional language - Chat room - Instant messaging

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Also, in Hunan, some women wrote their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, thought to be a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside of China.

Related Topics:
Nü Shu - Syllabary - Chinese character - Dungan language - Cyrillic - Arabic alphabet - Dungan - China

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Chinese characters

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The Chinese written language employs Chinese characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin: hànzì), a system based on logograms, where each symbol represents a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language).

Related Topics:
Chinese character - Pinyin - Logogram - Morpheme

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There is no concrete record on the origin of characters. Legend suggests that Cangjie, a bureaucrat of Huangdi, legendary emperor of China in about 2600 BCE, invented Chinese characters, but the archaeological evidence, mainly the oracles found in the 19-20th centuries, only dates Chinese characters back to the Shang dynasty in 1700 BCE.

Related Topics:
Cangjie - Huangdi - 2600 BCE - 19 - 20th centuries - Shang dynasty - 1700 BCE

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The vast majority of oracle bone inscriptions were found in Yinxu of the Shang Dynasty, but there have been Zhou dynasty related oracle inscriptions found also, but their numbers are significantly few. The forms of the characters in the inscriptions changed over the two to three hundred years of usage, and scholars can date the inscriptions of the Shang to the ruler by the content, particularly from the name of the diviners who inscribed the shell or bone artifacts.

Related Topics:
Yinxu - Zhou dynasty

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Contemporaneous with the end of Shang and Western Zhou periods are the bronze inscriptions. Over the last century, a great many ancient bronze artifacts have been unearthed in China which show dedicational texts of the Zhou aristocrats where the characters themselves show similarities and innovations compared to the oracle inscriptions.

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It is said that during the reign of Zhou King Xuan (宣王 827-782 BCE), a revision in the form of written characters were undertaken, and these became refered to as the "greater seal script" or dazhuan.

Related Topics:
827 - 782 BCE - Greater seal script

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One of the misconceptions about Chinese characters is to think that a character is only a pictograph. Initially, characters were pictures of their meanings with and without much abstract meaning, but as time passed the characters evolved to express a more complex language as well as becoming highly stylized. In 100 AD, Xushen, a famed scholar in the Han Dynasty, classified characters into 6 categories, only 4% of them are pictographs, while 82% are phonetic complexes, which consists of one element (the radical) that gives an indication of meaning, and another element (the phonetic) that gives (or at least once gave) an arguably good indication of the pronunciation.

Related Topics:
Pictograph - 100 - Xushen - Han Dynasty

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There are currently two standards for Chinese characters. One is the traditional system, essentially a streamlined styling of its forerunner, kaishu (indeed, kaishu serves as the model from which all modern characters are derived). It is still in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.

Related Topics:
Traditional system - Kaishu - Hong Kong - Taiwan - Macau

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When the 20th century began, however, the fall of Chinese Empire sparked the reform of Chinese culture. In 1950s, after the Communist Party took control of Mainland China, the simplified system was adopted. It reduced the number of strokes needed to write certain radicals as well as reducing the number of synonymous characters. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first and only foreign country to recognize and officially adopt the simplified characters.

Related Topics:
Reform of Chinese culture - 1950s - Mainland China - Simplified system - Singapore

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To add to the complexity, various written styles are used in Chinese calligraphy, including zhuanshu (篆書, "seal-script"), caoshu (草書, "grass script"), lishu (隸書, "official script") and kaishu (楷書, "standard script"). Calligraphers can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for the traditional art.

Related Topics:
Chinese calligraphy - Zhuanshu - Caoshu - Lishu - Kaishu

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As with Latin script, a wide variety of fonts exist for printed Chinese characters, a great number of which are often based on the styles of single calligraphers or schools of calligraphy.

Related Topics:
Latin script - Fonts

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