Seven Castles

Chinese Characters

                                      

July 8, 2006

 

In Chinese, a word is composed of one or more characters. Contrary to popular belief, only a small number of Chinese characters are pictograms, although many of these are characters for very common words. Most characters are based on other characters that were homonyms at the time the character was created. There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands.

 

There are two forms of Chinese characters, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified is the standard writing form employed in the Chinese mainland and the traditional form is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are total 2,235 simplified characters contained in the "Simplified Character Table" published in 1964 by the Chinese government in an attempt to promote literacy, so the majority of the Chinese characters are the same in the two forms, though the count of commonly used Chinese characters is only about 3,500. There are also a large number of simplified characters whose forms are regularly derived using rules that replace traditional character components with simplified components. A small number of simplified characters, however, are not regularly derived from traditional characters; and some are completely different in form from traditional characters.

 

However, Chinese character simplification predates the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. Cursive written text almost always includes character simplification and simplified forms used in print have always existed, dating back to as early as the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BC), though early attempts at simplification actually resulted in more characters being added to the lexicon.

 

In the years following the May Fourth Movement, many Chinese intellectuals began to propose reform of the Chinese writing system, either by simplification or complete abolishment. Lu Xun declared, "If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will be".

 

China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared briefly, then disappeared.

 

Interestingly, character simplification became associated with the leftists of the Cultural Revolution, culminating in a second round of character simplifications, which were promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities retracted the second round completely. Although no longer recognized officially, some second-round characters appear in informal contexts, as many people learned second round simplified characters in school. I do not use these nonstandard characters.

 

China tends to print material intended for people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. However, simplified characters are gradually gaining popularity among many overseas Chinese communities as more mainland Chinese are emigrating from their homeland.

 

Chinese characters are logograms used in written Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Japanese kanji ("Chinese characters in Japanese") are originally from China so most of them are the same as their corresponding Chinese characters. After World War II, Japan also simplified a number of kanji used in written Japanese. Use of Chinese characters has disappeared from the Vietnamese language, where they were used until the 20th century. In North Korea, they have been completely replaced by Hangul and are used only sparingly in the South. Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification, eventually arriving at the same set of simplified characters as the Chinese mainland. Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the simplified characters used in the Chinese mainland.

 

【作者: zhangliping】【访问统计:】【2006年07月8日 星期六 08:52】【 加入博采】【打印】