Characters

toc Chinese Characters  1) See below for an introduction to characters 2) See below for types of characters 3) See below for evolution of characters 4) Click here [|Chinese Characters.pps] for a slide show about how some characters came about, and here [|Fun with Character Components.pps] for one about repeated components. 5) Go here for a fun customizable quiz on characters.

Introduction
The subject of Chinese characters is a big one, and goes back several thousands of years. The first record we have of characters is the oracle bones, characters carved into tortoise shells and used for divination. The earliest characters are pictographs, i.e. drawings of things.

Characters are made up of components, which are themselves made up of strokes (see Strokes). The components recur throughout, i.e. there are no unique components that only occur once. Some of these elements carry meaning - the 214 radicals (see Radicals) by which dictionaries are organized. Some of the elements carry a phonetic, though these are no longer consistent or reliable, and carry no tone information.

There are upwards of 50,000 characters, but most are now obsolete. The minimum for true literacy is 3,000, though a highly educated person is likely to know closer to 6,000. (More important than the number of characters is the number of terms, most of which are made up of 2 characters.) Most good dictionaries have around 10,000.

Characters range in number of strokes from 1 to 64 (though characters with more than 30 or so strokes are now obsolete).

An introduction from ActiveChinese.com ActiveChinese character practice http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/games/

Types
There are generally considered to be six types of characters (see [|www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/script.html] and http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_types.htm for more; more examples here: http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jliou/ch_written_system/written.htm here; another explanation here http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/cll/chinese/introduction.html.)

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Pictographs 象形 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">These are characters that actually resemble the object. There are only about 600 of them. Examples: 日 meaning sun; 月 meaning moon; 女 meaning woman; 木 meaning tree. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">The following, from http://www.yutopian.com/religion/words/ shows: moon; sun; mountain; water; horse; bird; person; mouth. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Here are some renditions of the changes some of these characters have gone through.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Nice examples of pictographs here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Ideographs 指事 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">These are characters that depict an idea or situation. Examples: 上 meaning above; 下 meaning below; 本 meaning root or origin; 中 meaning middle. There are very few simple ideographs, perhaps 150.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Associative Compounds/Compound Ideographs 会意 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">These are characters that describe a concept by virtue of the combination of elements. Examples: 明 the sun and moon together mean bright; 信 and man and his word means trust. 休 means to rest and is a man leaning against a tree.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Here are some nice explanations of characters from www.zhongwen.com

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Extended Meaning 轉注 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">These are created from other characters with a similar meaning but different pronunciation. Examples: 老 old and 考 aged.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Phonetic Loan 假借 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> These were borrowed from other characters with identical pronunciation but unrelated meaning. Examples: 我 for 'I' came from a type of spear; 来 'to come' came from the character for wheat.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Phonetic Compound 形聲 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">These are a combination of a meaning element and a sound element. 85% of the characters in use today fall into this category. Examples: All share the pronunciation 'bao' from 包. 饱 plus the food radical means full;胞 plus the flesh radical mean placenta;苞 plus the grass radical means; 抱 plus the hand radical means to hold or carry; 龅 plus the tooth radical means protuberant teeth; 鲍 plus the fish radical means abalone;刨 plus the knife radical means carpenter's plane. In each case, the spoken word already existed and the character was made from the two elements. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Note the following list of characters which share the same phonetic element - qing - but different radicals and thus meanings : 请 invite 清 clear 情 feelings 青 blue 晴 clear sky 鲭 mackerel 圊 toilet 蜻 dragonfly

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Evolution
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">(from [|www.omniglot.com]) The images below illustrates how a number of Chinese characters have changed over time from their earliest known pictographic forms, to the versions used today.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">The Large Seal and Small Seal scripts are still used to write names on personal name chops, and are also occasionally used to write company names on buildings, stationery, namecards, etc. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">The Grass script (a.k.a. Cursive script) is used mainly for Chinese calligraphy. Each character is written with one continuous stroke, which enables very rapid writing, though characters written in this way are difficult to read. Legibility is not a primary concern for Chinese calligraphers, instead they aim to produce calligraphy that is aesthetically pleasing.