1.
Logographic
–
In written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or phrase. Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are logograms, some Egyptian hieroglyphs, the use of logograms in writing is called logography. A writing system that is based on logograms is called a logographic system, in alphabets and syllabaries, individual written characters represent sounds rather than concepts. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not necessarily have meaning by themselves, Writing language in this way is called phonemic orthography. Logographic systems include the earliest writing systems, the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, a more recent attempt is Zlango, intended for use in text messaging, currently including around 300 icons. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the domain is the syllable. For example, Egyptian was used to write both sȝ duck and sȝ son, though it is likely that these words were not pronounced the same apart from their consonants and this can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes, some morphemes are composed of more than one character, for example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was created by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū with the bug determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū can be used separately, in Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse, a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme hjwang meaning king, in modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār flower. These logograms, called hozwārishn, were dispensed with altogether after the Arab conquest of Persia, logograms are used in modern shorthand to represent common words. In addition, the numerals and mathematical symbols used in systems are logograms—1 one,2 two, + plus, = equals, and so on. In English, the ampersand & is used for and and et, % for percent, # for number, § for section, $ for dollar, € for euro, £ for pound, ° for degree, @ for at, etc. All historical logographic systems include a dimension, as it is impractical to have a separate basic character for every word or morpheme in a language. In some cases, such as cuneiform as it was used for Akkadian, many logographic systems also have a semantic/ideographic component, called determinatives in the case of Egyptian and radicals in the case of Chinese. In the case of Chinese, the vast majority of characters are a combination of a radical that indicates its nominal category. The Mayan system used logograms with phonetic complements like the Egyptian, Chinese scholars have traditionally classified the Chinese characters hanzi into six types by etymology. The first two types are single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other characters, single-body pictograms and ideograms make up only a small proportion of Chinese logograms
Logographic
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms.
2.
Old Chinese
–
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables
Old Chinese
–
Zhou dynasty bronze inscription
Old Chinese
–
Seal script on bamboo strips from the
Warring States period
3.
Bronze Age China
–
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
Bronze Age China
–
Chalcolithic copper mine in
Timna Valley,
Negev Desert,
Israel.
Bronze Age China
–
Diffusion of metallurgy in
Europe and
Asia Minor. The darkest areas are the oldest.
Bronze Age China
–
A
Shang Dynasty two-handled bronze gefuding gui (1600–1046 BC).
Bronze Age China
–
Spring and Autumn Period pu bronze vessel with interlaced
dragon design (722–481 BC)
4.
Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters
Chinese characters
–
"Chinese character" in
traditional (left) and
simplified form (right)
Chinese characters
–
Ox scapula with oracle bone inscription
Chinese characters
5.
Chinese language
–
Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
Chinese language
–
The
Tripitaka Koreana, a Korean collection of the
Chinese Buddhist canon
Chinese language
–
Hànyǔ (Chinese) written in
traditional (left) and
simplified (right) characters
Chinese language
–
"
Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion " by
Wang Xizhi, written in
semi-cursive style
6.
Standard Chinese
–
Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
Standard Chinese
–
A poster outside of high school in
Yangzhou urges people to speak Putonghua
Standard Chinese
–
Zhongguo Guanhua (中国官话/中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech"), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by
Étienne Fourmont (with
Arcadio Huang) in 1742
7.
Hanyu Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Hanyu Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak
Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Hanyu Pinyin
–
In
Yiling,
Yichang,
Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
8.
Wu Chinese
–
Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in the whole city of Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu province and bordering areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou/Oujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is only in national popularity to Peking opera, as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer. Wu is also spoken in a number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Shanghai, Qingtian. Suzhou has traditionally been the center of Wu and was likely the first place the distinct variety of Sinitic known as Wu developed. Suzhou dialect is considered to be the most linguistically representative of the family. Due to the influence of Shanghainese, Wu as a whole is incorrectly labelled in English as simply, Shanghainese, among speakers of other Sinitic languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is an idiom in Mandarin that specifically describes these qualities of Wu speech, Ngu nung nioe ngiu, Wu varieties have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghais Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due to their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the history of the Chinese languages. More pressing concerns of the present are those of language preservation, however, many analysts believe that a stable state of diglossia will endure for at least several generations if not indefinitely. Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Romance language and it is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch. They do this by affixing 話 Wo to their locations endonym, for example, 溫州話 Wēnzhōuhuà is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing 閒話 xiánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division, Wu, the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature. Northern Wu, Wu typically spoken in the north of Zhejiang and it by default includes the Xuanzhou division in Anhui as well, however this division is often neglected in Northern Wu discussions. Southern Wu, Wu spoken in southern Zhejiang and periphery, comprising the Oujiang, Wuzhou, Western Wu, A term gaining in usage as a synonym for the Xuanzhou division and modeled after the previous two terms since the Xuanzhou division is less representative of Northern Wu. Shanghainese, is also a common name, used because Shanghai is the most well-known city in the Wu-speaking region. The term Shanghainese is never used by linguists to refer to anything
Wu Chinese
–
Wu (Wú Yǔ) written in
Chinese characters
9.
Hakka Chinese
–
Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintellegible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is classified as a variety of Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features, Taiwan, where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the islands residents, is a center for the study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialects and Mainland Chinas Hakka dialects, even in Taiwan, two local varieties of Hakka exist. The Meixian dialect of northeast Guangdong in China has been taken as the dialect by the Peoples Republic of China. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created a romanization of Moiyen in 1960. The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the variety literally means guest families or guest people, Hak 客 means guest, and ka 家 means family. Among themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa 客家話, Hak-fa, 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa 土廣東話, literally Native Guangdong language, and Ngai-fa 我話, My/our language. The forebears of the Hakka came from present-day Central Plains provinces of Henan and Shaanxi, the presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese varieties, but which have been lost in Mandarin. Due to the migration of its speakers, Hakka may have influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary is found in Hakka, Min, in recent times, many She people have become Hakka speakers. A regular pattern of change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese varieties. Some examples, Characters such as 武 or 屋, are pronounced roughly mwio and uk in Early Middle Chinese, have an initial v phoneme in Hakka, being vu and vuk in Hakka respectively. Like in Mandarin, labiodentalisation process also changed mj- to a sound in Hakka before grave vowels. Middle Chinese initial phonemes /ɲ/ of the characters 人 and 日, among others, for comparison, in Mandarin, /ɲ/ became r-, while in Cantonese, it merged with initial /j/. The initial consonant phoneme exhibited by the character 話 is pronounced f or v in Hakka, the initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with an h approximant in Hakka and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative in Mandarin. Hakka has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers as the majority, some of these Hakka dialects are not mutually intelligible with each other. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan, Dabu, Jiaoling, Xingning, Wuhua, each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest
Hakka Chinese
–
Hak-kâ-fa/Hak-kâ-va (Hakka/Kejia) written in
Chinese characters
10.
Cantonese
–
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
Cantonese
–
Street in
Chinatown, San Francisco. Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese variant among Chinese populations in the Western world.
Cantonese
–
Gwóngdūng Wah / gwong 2 dung 1 waa 6 (Cantonese) written in
traditional Chinese (left) and
simplified Chinese (right) characters
Cantonese
–
Chinese dictionary from Tang dynasty. Modern Cantonese pronunciation is more similar to Middle Chinese from this era than other Chinese varieties.
11.
Jyutping
–
Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
Jyutping
–
Jyutping Romanization.
12.
Southern Min
–
Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
Southern Min
–
Koa-a books, Min Nan written in Chinese characters
Southern Min
–
Distribution of Southern Min.
13.
Hokkien
–
Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia
Hokkien
–
Distribution of Min Nan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.
14.
Chinese script styles
–
In Chinese calligraphy, Chinese characters can be written according to five major styles. These styles are intrinsically linked to the history of Chinese script, the Japanese syllabaries of katakana and hiragana are used in calligraphy, the katakana were derived from the shapes of regular script characters and hiragana from those of cursive script. In Korea, the post-Korean War period saw the use of hangul. The seal script is the script of the Qín system of writing. Today, this style of Chinese writing is used predominantly in seals, most people today cannot read the seal script, so it is considered an ‘ancient’ script, generally not used outside the fields of calligraphy and carved seals. Compared with the seal script, forms are strikingly rectilinear, however, some curvature. Seal script tended towards uniformity of stroke width, but clerical script gave the brush freer rein, most noticeable is the dramatically flared tail of one dominant horizontal or downward-diagonal stroke, especially that to the lower right. This characteristic stroke has famously been called silkworm head and wild goose tail due to its distinctive shape, the clerical script remains common as a typeface used for decorative purposes, but other than in artistic calligraphy, adverts and signage, it is not commonly written. The semi-cursive script approximates normal handwriting in which strokes and, more rarely, in writing in the semi-cursive script, the brush leaves the paper less often than in the regular script. Characters appear less angular and rounder, in general, an educated person in China or Japan can read characters written in the semi-cursive script with relative ease, but may have occasional difficulties with certain idiosyncratic shapes. Entire characters may be written without lifting the brush from the paper at all, strokes are modified or eliminated completely to facilitate smooth writing and to create a beautiful, abstract appearance. Characters are highly rounded and soft in appearance, with a lack of angular lines. The cursive script is the source of Japanese hiragana, as well as many modern simplified forms in Simplified Chinese characters and it emerged from a neatly written, early period semi-cursive form of clerical script. As the name suggests, the script is regular, with each of the strokes placed slowly and carefully. The regular script is also the most easily and widely recognized style, as it is the script to which children in East Asian countries and beginners of East Asian languages are first introduced. In the regular script samples to the right, the characters in the column are in Traditional Chinese while those to the right are in Simplified Chinese. These styles are not taught in Japanese calligraphy schools. Chinese and Korean people can read edomoji, but the style has a distinct Japanese feel to it and it is therefore commonly used in China and Korea to advertise Japanese restaurants
Chinese script styles
–
Chinese characters
Chinese script styles
–
Seal
Chinese script styles
Chinese script styles
15.
Neolithic signs in China
–
However, only isolated instances of these symbols have been found, and they show no indication of representing speech or of the non-pictorial processes that a writing system requires. These sites include those pertaining to the cultures of Yangshao, Liangzhu, Majiayao, proponents of the view that they are early Chinese writing tend to see evidence in comparisons of individual signs with individual oracle bone script characters. Others believe that Neolithic signs are part of an incipient semiotic system that led to the development of mature Chinese writing. As Qiu explains, Only when symbols. are consciously used to record words used to form sentences is there a true sign that the development of script has begun. It is still safe to conclude that the earliest known undisputed examples of writing in China are the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty. The earliest of Chinas Neolithic signs come from Jiahu, Dadiwan, Jiahu is a Neolithic site in Wuyang County, Henan Province, in the basin of the Yellow River, dated to 6600–6200 BCE. This site has yielded turtle plastrons that were pitted and inscribed with markings known as the Jiahu symbols, what did persist through these long periods was the idea of sign use. We should not assume there was a single path or pace for the development of a script. It seems astonishing that they would be connected, We cant call it writing until we have more evidence, Dadiwan is a Neolithic site discovered in Qinan County, in the province of Gansu. Its earliest phase has yielded symbols painted on the surfaces of pottery basins. More recent excavations there have also uncovered a handful of Neolithic symbols and these are reputed to be similar to some of the oracle bone characters, which is to be expected given that the oracle bones, which are true writing, still retain a significant pictorial flavor. As the Banpo symbols were discovered early and are relatively numerous. Still others feel they may be ownership mark or potters marks, finally, some scholars sound a note of caution, calling such conclusions unwarranted or premature. This is because all the Banpo-type symbols occur singly, on pottery and pottery fragments, unlike written words, thus, there is no context from which to conclude that the symbols are actually being used to represent language. Furthermore, there is no evidence of the phonetic loan usage, thus, leading scholar Qiu Xigui argues that, What these symbols represent definitely cannot be a fully formed system of writing, this much is quite clear. Is there any possibility that they are primitive writing and we simply possess no basis for saying that they were already being used to record language. Nor viewed from the standpoint of the symbols of this type that continued to be used following the creation of Chinese script do they even resemble script. Quite a number of people, basing themselves on the Banpo-type symbols, have said that the history of Chinese writing goes back more than 6,000 years
Neolithic signs in China
–
Chinese characters
16.
Chinese bronze inscriptions
–
Early bronze inscriptions were almost always cast, while later inscriptions were often engraved after the bronze was cast. The bronze inscriptions are one of the earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts, for the early Western Zhou to early Warring States period, the bulk of writing which has been unearthed has been in the form of bronze inscriptions. As a result, it is common to refer to the variety of scripts of this period as bronze script, the term usually includes bronze inscriptions of the preceding Shang dynasty as well. In addition, artistic scripts also emerged in the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States, such as Bird Script, also called Bird Seal Script, and Worm Script. 寅 Yín in Four Different Scripts on Shang–Zhou bronzes Of the abundant Chinese ritual bronze artifacts extant today and these have been periodically unearthed ever since their creation, and have been systematically collected and studied since at least the Song dynasty. Examples, Of the 12,000 inscribed bronzes extant today, roughly 3,000 date from the Shang dynasty,6,000 from the Zhou dynasty, and the final 3,000 from the Qin and Han dynasties. As in the oracle bone script, characters could be written facing left or right, turned 90 degrees, for instance, and both represent the modern character xū 戌, while and are both hóu 侯 marquis. This was true of normal as well as extra complex identificational graphs, such as the hǔ 虎 tiger clan emblem at right and these inscriptions are almost all cast, and are relatively short and simple. Western Zhou dynasty characters basically continue from the Shang writing system, although most are not pictographs in function, the early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions have been described as more pictographic in flavor than those of subsequent periods. During the Western Zhou, many begin to show signs of simplification and linearization, with the result being a decrease in pictographic quality. Some flexibility in orientation of graphs continues in the Western Zhou, the graphs start to become slightly more uniform in structure, size and arrangement by the time of the third Zhou sovereign, King Kāng, and after the ninth, King Yì, this trend becomes more obvious. Some have used the term large seal to refer to the script of this period. This term dates back to the Han dynasty, when seal script, in the Eastern Zhou, the various states initially continued using the same forms as in the late Western Zhou. However, regional forms then began to diverge stylistically as early as the Spring and Autumn period, in the same areas, in the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States, scripts which embellished basic structures with decorative forms such as birds or worms also appeared. Some bronzes of the period were incised in a rough, casual manner and it is thought that these reflected the popular writing of the time which coexisted with the formal script. Seals have been found from the Warring States period, mostly cast in bronze and these form an additional, valuable resource for the study of Chinese bronze inscriptions. It is also from this period that the first surviving bamboo, in the early Warring States period, typical bronze inscriptions were similar in content and length to those in the late Western Zhou to Spring and Autumn period. One of the most famous sets of bronzes ever discovered dates to the early Warring States, the total length of the inscriptions on this set was almost 2,800 characters
Chinese bronze inscriptions
–
Inscription on the Song ding, c. 800 BC
Chinese bronze inscriptions
–
Left: Bronze fāng zūn ritual wine container, c. 1000 BCE. The inscription commemorates a gift of cowrie shells to its owner. Right: Bronze fāng yí ritual container c. 1000 BCE. An inscription of some 180 characters appears twice on it, commenting on state rituals that accompany court ceremony, recorded by an official scribe.
Chinese bronze inscriptions
–
Chinese characters
Chinese bronze inscriptions
–
Bronze biānzhōng bells from the early Warring States Tomb of Marquis Yĭ of Zēng
17.
Seal script
–
Seal script is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty script, arising in the Warring State of Qin, there are two uses of the word seal script, the Large or Great Seal script and the lesser or Small Seal Script, the latter is also called simply seal script. The Large Seal script was originally a later, vague Han dynasty reference to writing of the Qin system similar to and it has also been used to refer to Western Zhou forms or even oracle bones as well. There were several different variants of seal script which developed in each kingdom independently during the warring state period and spring, the birds and worms script was used in the Kingdoms of Wu, Chu, and Yue. It was found on several artifacts including the Spear of Fuchai, on one side of the blade of Goujian, eight characters were written in an ancient script. The script was found to be the one called 鳥蟲文 birds and worms characters, initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, 越王 and 自作用劍. As a southern state, Chu was close to the Wu-Yue influences, Chu produced broad bronze swords that were similar to Wuyue swords, but not as intricate. Chu also used the Birds and Worms style, which was borrowed by the Wu, the script of the Qin system had evolved organically from the Zhou script starting in the Spring and Autumn period. Beginning around the Warring States period, it became vertically elongated with a regular appearance and this was the period of maturation of Small Seal script, also called simply seal script. Through Chinese commentaries, it is known that Li Si compiled Cangjiepian and their form is characterized by being less rectangular and more squarish. The first known character dictionary was the 3rd century BC Erya, collated and bibliographed by Liu Xiang and his son Liu Xin, not long after, however, the Shuowen Jiezi, the lifework of Xu Shen, was written. Its 9,353 entries reproduce the standardized small-seal script variant for each entry, entries are categorized under 540 section headers. It has been anticipated that the Small Seal script will some day be encoded in Unicode, codepoints U+34000 to U+368FF have been tentatively allocated. Old Texts Phags-pa Chén Zhāoróng Research on the Qín Lineage of Writing, academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology Monograph. Qin Yun Song, Big Seal Script Banner Script translation Richard Sears on seal script
Seal script
–
Seal script
Seal script
–
Chinese characters
Seal script
–
Small seal script
epigraph on the standard weight prototype of
Qin dynasty. Made from
iron, this prototype was unearthed in 1973 at
Wendeng,
Shandong Province.
18.
Bird-worm seal script
–
Bird-worm seal script is a type of ancient seal script originated in China. The Chinese character 鸟 means bird, the Chinese character 虫 means any creature that looks like a worm, including invertebrate worms and reptiles such as snakes and lizards. The character 篆 means seal script, other names for this kind of seal script, Niao-Chong Script. The Chinese character 书 here means script, the Chinese character 文 here means character. There are two subcategories, Bird seal script In this style, some parts of characters have a bird-like head, the bird style sign is a combination of two parts, a complete seal script character and one bird shape. Worm seal script In this style, some or all the strokes are winding, thus producing a worm-like character and this kind of seal script first appeared in the middle era of the Spring and Autumn period. It then became popular during the late Spring and Autumn period and it was often seen in southern kingdoms, such as the Wu Kingdom, Yue Kingdom, Chu Kingdom, Cai Kingdom, Xu Kingdom, and the Song Kingdom. Each state in China during the Warring States Period had its own variety of script, the bird seal script is often seen on bronze and iron antiques of the Yue Kingdom. The script was used on bronze and iron weapons, like swords, the characters engraved on the famous Sword of Goujian provide a fine example. A few examples of the seal script can be seen in or on containers. The bird seal script was used occasionally in the Han Dynasty seals, as well as a few eaves tiles. The worm seal script is more common, and probably originated from the Wu Kingdom or Chu Kingdom, examples can be seen on antique bronze weapons, containers, jades, and seals, and constructional or decorative parts like tiles, etc. The characters on the famous Spear of Fuchai would be an example of this category of seal script. Bronze inscriptions Seal script Large Seal Script Small Seal Script Seal Shuowen Jiezi, by Xu Shen. 《鸟虫书通考》, by CAO Jinyan, 《鸟虫篆大鉴》, by Xu Gupu, ISBN 7-80569-368-4, Shanghai Bookstore Press
Bird-worm seal script
–
Bird seal script on the
Sword of Goujian and its equivalents in modern Chinese
19.
Large Seal Script
–
The term is in contrast to the name of the official script of the Qin dynasty, which is often called Small or Lesser Seal Script. However, due to the lack of precision in the term, scholars often avoid it and instead refer more specifically to the provenance of particular examples of writing. At that time, there was knowledge of even older, often more complex graphs which differed from the Qin seal script forms. As a result, two terms emerged to describe them, greater seal script for the complex, earlier forms. It is only recently that the term greater seal script has been extended to refer to Western Zhou forms or even oracle bone script. Xu Shen, the author of Shuowen, included these when they differed from the structures of the Qin seal script and this name comes from the name of the book and not the name of a script. Thus, it is not correct to refer to the ca.800 BCE Zhoū dynasty script as Zhòuwén, similarly, the Zhòu graphs are merely examples of large seal script when that term is used in a broad sense. Seal Script Small Seal Script Chén Zhāoróng Research on the Qín Lineage of Writing, academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology Monograph. Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Large Seal Script
–
Large Seal Script
Large Seal Script
–
Chinese characters
20.
Small Seal Script
–
Small Seal Script, formerly romanized as Hsiao-chuan and also known as Seal Script, Lesser Seal Script and Qin Script, is an archaic form of Chinese calligraphy. It was standardized and promulgated as a standard by Li Si, prime minister under Shi Huangdi. Hence coaches, roads, currency, laws, weights, measures, characters which were different from those found in Qin were discarded and Li Sis small seal characters became the standard for all regions within the empire. This policy came in about 220 BC, the year after Qins unification of the Chinese states, the small cursive form clerical script came after the small script. Li Sis compilation is only through Chinese commentaries through the centuries. It is stated to contain 3,300 characters, small Seal Script has been proposed for inclusion in Unicode
Small Seal Script
–
Small Seal Script
Small Seal Script
–
Chinese characters
21.
Clerical script
–
Due to its high legibility to modern readers, it is still used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards, and advertisements. This legibility stems from the rectilinear structure, a feature shared with modern regular script. Clerical script is popularly but mistakenly thought to have developed or been invented in the early Han dynasty from the seal script. Another traditional account is that it was invented by government scribes, in particular involved in the justice. Furthermore, rather than being established by government scribes, it has argued that clerical script was already in popular use. The popularity of this vulgar writing grew as the use of writing became more widespread. The Qín bamboo script is an example of this transition, having evolved from vulgar Qín writing. The etymology of the Chinese name for the script lìshū is uncertain, during Warring States, proto-clerical script emerged in casual, informal usage. During the Qin dynasty it appears to have also used in some scribal capacity. Thus, the evolution from clerical script to standard script was not a step as commonly supposed. Translation of 文字學概論 by Mattos and Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Clerical script
–
Chinese characters
Clerical script
–
Chinese characters for "Clerical Script", in
regular script (left) and clerical script (right).
Clerical script
–
Clerical script from the
Han Dynasty
22.
Regular script
–
Regular script, also called 正楷, 真書, 楷體 and 正書, is the newest of the Chinese script styles, hence most common in modern writings and publications. Regular script came into being between the Eastern Hàn and Cáo Wèi dynasties, and its first known master was Zhōng Yáo and he is known as the “father of regular script”, and his famous works include the Xuānshì Biǎo, Jiànjìzhí Biǎo, and Lìmìng Biǎo. Qiu Xigui describes the script in Zhong’s Xuānshì Biǎo as, …clearly emerging from the womb of early period semi-cursive script. However, other than a few literati, very few wrote in this script at the time, most continued writing in neo-clerical script, or a form of semi-cursive. Thus, regular script has parentage in early semi-cursive as well as neo-clerical scripts and those in between are usually called medium regular script, or zhongkai. What these are relative to other characters, the Eight Principles of Yong are said to contain a variety of most of the strokes found in regular script. The most common printed typeface styles Ming and sans-serif are based on the structure of regular script, the Japanese textbook typefaces are based on regular script, but modified so that they appear to be written with a pencil or pen. They also follow the character forms prescribed in the Jōyō kanji. Zhuyin Fuhao characters, although not true Chinese characters, are always written with regular script strokes. Translation of 文字學概論 by Mattos and Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, regular Script tao te king CHAPTER LVII More on Standard Script In English, at BeyondCalligraphy. com
Regular script
–
Regular script
Regular script
–
Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style. 其數然而天地苞/乎陰陽而易識者/以其有象也陰陽/處乎天地而難窮
Regular script
–
Chinese characters
23.
Cursive script (East Asia)
–
Cursive script, often mistranslated as grass script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it and it functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style. People who can read standard or printed forms of Chinese may not be able to comprehend this script, the character 書 means script in this context, and the character 草 means quick, rough or sloppy. Thus, the name of this script is literally rough script or sloppy script, the same character 草 appears in this sense in the noun rough draft, and the verb to draft. The other indirectly related meaning of the character 草 is grass, cursive script originated in China during the Han dynasty through the Jin period, in two phases. First, a form of cursive developed as a cursory way to write the popular. Faster ways to write characters developed through four mechanisms, omitting part of a graph, merging strokes together, replacing portions with abbreviated forms, or modifying stroke styles. This evolution can best be seen on extant bamboo and wooden slats from the period, on which the use of early cursive, modern cursive evolved from this older cursive in the Wei Kingdom to Jin dynasty with influence from the semi-cursive and standard styles. Beside zhāngcǎo and the cursive, there is the wild cursive which is even more cursive. When it was developed by Zhang Xu and Huaisu in the Tang dynasty, cursive, in this style, is no longer significant in legibility but rather in artistry. Cursive scripts can be divided into the style where each character is separate. Many of the simplified Chinese characters are modeled on the forms of the cursive forms of the corresponding characters. Cursive script forms of Chinese characters are also the origin of the Japanese hiragana script, which developed from cursive forms of the manyōgana script. In Japan, cursive script was considered to be suitable for women, and was called women’s script, whereas the clerical style was considered to be suitable for men, the Art of Japanese Calligraphy,1973, author Yujiro Nakata, publisher Weatherhill/Heibonsha, ISBN 0-8348-1013-1. Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Cursive script (East Asia)
–
Chinese characters
Cursive script (East Asia)
–
Cursive script in
Sun Guoting 's Treatise on Calligraphy.
Cursive script (East Asia)
–
8 different cursive representations of the character 龍 (dragon), from Compilation of Cursive Characters (《草字彙》), authored by Shi Liang (石梁) of the
Qing Dynasty. The artists are: 1 Sun Guoting; 2, 3
Huaisu; 4
Yan Zhenqing; 5
Zhao Mengfu; 6, 7 Zhu Zhishan; 8 anonymous.
24.
Imitation Song
–
Imitation Song is a style of Chinese typefaces modeled after a type style in Linan in the Southern Song Dynasty. They are technically a type of regular script typeface, the name of this kind of typeface varies across regions that use Chinese characters. In Chinese, it is called fǎng Sòngtǐ, in Japanese, it is called Sōchōtai. Characteristics of imitation Song typefaces include, The basic structure of regular script, relatively straight strokes, with horizontal strokes slanting up slightly. Low stroke width variation between horizontal and vertical strokes, with strokes usually being relatively thin, many publishers were established in Linan, including Chén zhái shūjí bù established by Chen Qi, from which publications used a distinct style of regular script with orderly, straight strokes. Modern typefaces of this style are classified as imitation Song typefaces
Imitation Song
–
Chinese characters
Imitation Song
–
A page of a publication from Chén zhái shūjí bù.
25.
Ming (typefaces)
–
Ming or Song is a category of typefaces used to display Chinese characters, which are used in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages. They are currently the most common style of type in print for Chinese and Japanese, in Mainland China, the most common name is Song. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, Ming is prevalent, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, “Song typeface” has been used but “Ming typeface” has increased currency since the advent of desktop publishing. These are a print analog of the slight dot caused by pausing ones brush, the technique, used to reinforce the beginning or ending of a stroke). Often there are different ways to write the same Chinese character, some of the differences are caused by character simplification, while others are purely orthographic differences such as stroke styling. The styling of the used in old Ming typefaces came from the style used in the Kangxi Dictionary. In mainland China, the standardized character forms are specified in the List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese. Some characters in the list differ from the Kangxi forms solely because they are Simplified, others differ because they use a different variant or orthography. In Taiwan, the Standard Form of National Characters specifies the modern standardized forms, unlike the mainland standard, the Taiwan standard uses mostly preexisting character forms. In Korea, most typefaces use the Kangxi forms, there are differences between print and script forms of many Chinese characters, just as there are differences between copperplate and most peoples handwriting. Some of these differences are persistent and specific to a style, none of these variations usually hinder reading. Many publishers were established in Linan, including Chén zhái shūjí pù established by Chen Qi, from which publications used a style of regular script with orderly. Modern typefaces of this style are classified as imitation Song typefaces, in the Ming Dynasty, the straightening of strokes in a reprint of a publication from Linan started a shift to what became the basis of the Ming style. Ming typefaces are the most commonly used style in print in Japan, there are several variations in use, such as the textbook style and the newspaper style. In Korean, a category of typefaces for the Korean alphabet hangul was called myeongjo until recently. A Ministry of Culture-sponsored standardization of typography terms in 1993 replaced myeongjo with batang, the Korean word for “foundation” or “ground”, technically, only Chinese characters can be printed in a Ming typeface. However, most modern typefaces often also include kana glyphs in a matching style, Modern Ming typefaces also incorporate Roman type glyphs for Latin characters, letterlike symbols, and numbers. In its modern role comparable to that of western serif typefaces, east Asian gothic typeface Chinese calligraphy www. kinkido. net – some information on Chinese typefaces, including Ming typefaces
Ming (typefaces)
–
A page from a
Ming Dynasty edition of the
Book of Qi
Ming (typefaces)
–
Chinese characters
Ming (typefaces)
–
A page of a publication from
Zhejiang in a
regular script typeface which resembles the handwriting of
Ouyang Xun.
Ming (typefaces)
–
A page of a publication from Chén zhái shūjí pù.
26.
East Asian sans-serif typeface
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Gothic typefaces are a type style characterised by strokes of even thickness and lack of decorations akin to sans serif styles in Western typography. It is the second most commonly used style in East Asian typography, similar to Ming and Song typefaces, sans-serif typefaces were designed for printing, but they were also designed for legibility. They are commonly used in headlines, signs, and video applications, square sans, the classic sans-serif style in which the lines of the characters have squared ends. Overlapping square sans - This style is similar to the square sans, but in places where strokes overlap, square new book - Uses narrow horizontal and thick vertical strokes, similar to typefaces such as Optima. Round sans, has rounded ends and corners to the lines of the characters, in some cases, short protruding stroke ends at intersections are eliminated to make glyphs look rounder. This is the style of typeface used for Japanese road signs, overlapping round sans - This is similar to the round sans, but in places where strokes overlap, a margin is inserted between the strokes to distinguish the strokes. Rounded new book - Uses narrow horizontal and thick strokes, along with rounded line ends. Mixed art - Curved strokes are replaced by angled strokes with sharp or round corners, in Japanese computing, the use of sans-serif typefaces is common, with a number of default system fonts being sans-serif. Also, many Korean computing environments use Gulim which includes soft curves but is a sans-serif typeface, in Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows XP and older, the default interface typefaces are seriffed, which is inconsistent with the sans-serif styling use in most other regions of the product. Ming Nihongo resources, Japanese typefaces sci. lang. japan FAQ list of Japanese writing styles Sorting It All Out, The big font list in Windows Sorting It All Out, What are the fonts in Vista
East Asian sans-serif typeface
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A passage from the
Thousand Character Classic in sans-serif typeface. The rightmost line is the original Chinese. The middle and the left lines are transliterations in Japanese
kana and Korean
Hangul, respectively.
27.
Stroke (CJKV character)
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CJKV strokes are the calligraphic strokes needed to write the Chinese characters in regular script used in East Asia. CJK strokes are the set of line patterns that may be arranged and combined to form Chinese characters in use in China, Japan, Korea. For example, is classified as a basic stroke because it is a stroke that forms a line moving in one direction. Is classified as a compound stroke because it is a stroke that forms a line that includes one or more abrupt changes in direction. This example is a sequence of three basic strokes written without lifting the instrument from the writing surface. CJK strokes are an attempt to identify and classify all single-stroke components that can be used to write Han radicals, there are some thirty distinct types of strokes recognized in Chinese characters, some of which are compound strokes made from basic strokes. The compound strokes comprise more than one movement of the writing instrument, a basic stroke is a single calligraphic mark moving in one direction across a writing surface. The following table lists a selection of basic strokes divided into two groups, simple and combining. Simple strokes can be written alone, combining strokes never occur alone, but must be paired with at least one other stroke forming a compound stroke. Thus, they are not in themselves individual strokes, note, the basic stroke Diǎn Dot is rarely a real dot. Instead it usually takes the shape of a small line pointing in one of several directions. A compound stroke is produced two or more basic strokes are combined in a single stroke written without lifting the writing instrument from the writing surface. The character 永 eternity described in detail below demonstrates one of these compound strokes. The centre line is a stroke that combines three stroke shapes in a single stroke. Basics for making compound strokes In most cases, concatenating basic strokes together form a compound stroke, for example, Shù combined with Gōu produce. A stroke naming convention sums the names of the basic strokes, an exception to this applies when a stroke makes a turn of 90°. For example, an initial Shù followed by an abrupt turn right produces, in the same way, an initial Shù followed by an abrupt turn right followed by a second turn down produces. Nearly all complex strokes can be named using this simple scheme, organization systems used to describe and differentiate strokes may include the use of roman letters, Chinese characters, numbers, or a combination of these devices
Stroke (CJKV character)
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Chinese characters
Stroke (CJKV character)
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永, a Chinese character with a high variety of strokes.
28.
Stroke order
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Stroke order refers to the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. A stroke is a movement of an instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in forms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean. They are known as Hanzi in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, Chinese characters are basically logograms constructed with strokes. Over the millennia a set of agreed rules have been developed by custom. This promotes writing speed, accuracy, and readability and this idea is particularly important since as learners progress, characters often get more complex. Since stroke order also aids learning and memorization, students are taught about it from a very early age in schools. The Eight Principles of Yong uses the single character 永, meaning eternity, in ancient China, the Jiǎgǔwén characters carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons showed no indication of stroke order. The characters show huge variations from piece to piece, sometimes even within one piece, during the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made, the characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone. In early Imperial China, the script was the Xiaozhuan style. About 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to all of China, imposed Li Sis character uniformisation. Its graphs on old steles — some dating from 200 BC — reveal indications of the order of the time. However, stroke order could not yet be ascertained from the steles. The true starting point of order is the Lìshū style which is more regularized. Kǎishū style — still in use today — is more regularized, the stroke order 1000 years ago was similar to that toward the end of Imperial China. For example, the order of 广 is clear in the Kangxi dictionary of 1716, but in a modern book. The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still the same, however, the stroke orders implied by the Kangxi dictionary are not necessarily similar to nowadays norm. Cursive styles such as Xíngshū and Cǎoshū show stroke order more clearly than Regular Script, the modern governments of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan have standardized official stroke orders to be taught in schools
Stroke order
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Chinese characters
Stroke order
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Stroke order for character 筆 shown by shade going from black to red
29.
Radical (Chinese characters)
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A Chinese radical is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often an indicator, though in some cases the original semantic connection has become obscure. In other cases, the radical may be a component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character. The English term radical is based on an analogy between the structure of characters and inflection of words in European languages, radicals are also sometimes called classifiers, but this name is more commonly applied to grammatical classifiers. In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as the Erya, characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories, in the 2nd century AD, the Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen organized his etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi by selecting 540 recurring graphic elements he called bù. Most were common semantic components, but they also included shared graphic elements such as a dot or horizontal stroke, some were even artificially extracted groups of strokes, termed glyphs by Serruys, which never had an independent existence other than being listed in Shuowen. Each character was listed only one element, which is then referred to as the radical for that character. For example, characters containing 女 nǚ female or 木 mù tree, Mei Yingzuos 1615 dictionary Zihui made two further innovations. These innovations were adopted by the more famous Kangxi Dictionary of 1716. Thus the standard 214 radicals introduced in the Zihui are usually known as the Kangxi radicals and these were first called bùshǒu in the Kangxi Dictionary. Some of the similar radicals are combined in many dictionaries, such as 月 yuè moon. Radicals may appear in any position in a character, for example, the radical 女 appears on the left side in the characters 姐, 媽, 她, 好 and 姓, but it appears at the bottom in 妾. However, there are two radicals that have the shape 阝, but are indexed as different radicals depending on where they appear in the character and these are only loose rules, though, and have exceptions. Many character components are distorted or change in form in order to fit into a block with other components and they may be narrowed, shortened, or may have different shapes entirely. Changes in shape, rather than simple distortion, may result in a reduction in the number of used to write a component. In some cases, these forms may have several variants. The actual shape of the component when it is used in a character can depend on its placement with respect to the elements in the character. Usually, the radical is also the component, but that is not always the case
Radical (Chinese characters)
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Chinese characters
Radical (Chinese characters)
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In the Chinese character 媽 mā "mother", the left part is the radical 女 nǚ "female". In this case the radical is the semantic component of a
phono-semantic compound, while the right part, 馬 mǎ "horse", is the phonetic component.
below said figure. In this case, the modern character is a simplification of an archaic variant 𪛁 (or 𥤚)[17] which is closer to the oracle bone script form - albeit with the insect figure being confused with the similar-looking character for 'turtle' (龜) and the addition of the 禾 component. (Another rarer simplification of 𪛁 is 龝, with 龜 instead of 火).
is the oracle bone script character for 王 wáng ("king").
