Talk:Chinese character
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There is no mention of simplified characters (either the slightly simplified kind used in Japan, or the extremely simplified kind now used in the PRC)...or categories such as 本字, 俗字, 同字, or 古字... (At least these are the terms used in Korean)...This is a little beyond my scope; can Menchi or someone else contribute something along these lines? --Sewing 22:27, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Well, the article (in my opinion) is not really well written. Aboout the four categories, they are simply official form, unofficial form, sysnonyms and ancient form. Do we really need to mention them? --wshun 22:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- I actually haven't read this article. But Simplified Chinese is mentioned on Chinese written language (it's linked as Hanzi in this article's intro. I haven't read that either).
- I think it's worthy to note and give some examples (maybe a table) of the official and verncacular forms. And another comparison of some obsolete forms with the modern forms to show the evolution is informative too. --Menchi 22:41, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- Correction: at home I looked up 본자 (本字) in my dictionary, and it was there. That dictionary is truly useful (確實히 實用하다)! (Get it?) --Sewing 18:23, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
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Something is wrong here
The more I read this entry the more annoying it becomes.
1. For example, after noting that characters are used in different forms in (for instance) China and Japan, and then noting that Chinese itself has both traditional and simplified characters, the article goes on to say that it may be necessary to talk of 'Chinese Chinese characters' (hanzi) and 'Japanese Chinese characters' (kanji). This doesn't make sense! Surely it would be better to make reference to different 'character sets' (Traditional, Simplified, and Japanese Joyo Kanji). The only person to whom a distinction like 'Chinese Chinese characters' and 'Japanese Chinese characters' might make sense is a 'gaijin' learning Japanese who suddenly makes the discovery that 'these here kanjis I've learnt for Japanese are sorta different from them kanjis they use in China'. In fact, all these character sets go back to one tradition, which is the only clean reference point that can be used.
- Playing devil's advocate for a moment (although I generally agree with the sentiments you expressed above), I could understand someone taking the position that despite their common origin and shared linguistic/cultural context during the past millenium, divergence is nonetheless occuring between certain "descendant" character sets. For example, a person who reads the subset of Chinese characters used in Japanese publications (the Jouyou kanji) would often be at a loss to recognize many counterpart characters in the simplified Chinese character set used in the People's Republic of China (at least without further education).
- That said, the common cultural and linguistic bonds between even Japanese on the one hand and the various Chinese character sets (traditional, simplified, etc.) on the other are still stronger than the pressures toward divergence. Furthermore, within the Chinese-speaking world there is a continuum between people who understand either traditional and simplified characters, with a great many Chinese-speakers who read and write in both on a daily basis. This continuum strengthens the unity of the character system where it might otherwise grow rapidly apart, and the further continuum between Chinese and Japanese (and to a lesser extent Korean) reinforces that unity across even those quite different languages.
- --Ryanaxp 17:13, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
- Why not just make it clear that there are traditional characters (not sure how to define this -- Kangxi plus new characters since then?). In everyday life some simplifications, etc. are known in all character-using areas. In recent times the Mainland has come up with simplified characters, used also in Singapore. The Koreans have borrowed Chinese characters and use xxxx number of characters, not simplified. The Japanese have borrowed characters and use xxxxx number of characters (joyo kanji), somewhat simplified from the traditional characters, but not radically so.
- This is somewhat simplified, but captures the essence without talking of 'Japanese Chinese Characters' or 'Chinese Chinese characters' (whatever that means!)
- Bathrobe 22 April 2005
2. The assertion that characters are used for different words or ideas in different languages is also a very messy notion. This notion seems to encompass several different cases: (1) Where characters were taken over to write morphemes that had different meanings from the original Chinese (not sure if there are many of these); (2) characters used to write morphemes that over time came to have different meanings from the original Chinese (e.g. 走); (3) characters used to write words that over time came to have different meanings from the original Chinese (e.g. 勉強, which means 'to be forced' in Chinese and 'study' in Japanese);(4) characters used to write native words that, when read, have a different meaning for Chinese speakers (e.g. 手纸/手紙, where 'shouzhi' means 'toilet paper' in Chinese and 'tegami' is a Japanese word meaning 'letter'); and (5) words that were simply coined differently in China, Japan, and other places (e.g., highway toll booth is 收费站 in Chinese and 料金所 in Japanese. That is not to mention identical characters that were (possibly) made up independently by the Chinese and the Japanese (not sure if there are Korean examples). The whole relationship between characters in different languages seems much more complex than the superficial and misleading treatment offered here.
Indeed, the writer of the article seems to have a very superficial concept of characters, including a sad lack of awareness of the fact that characters are used to write language and not the other way round. Keeping this concept firmly in mind is the only way that all these distinctions can be kept clear. If you take characters as primary, you get yourself tied up in knots about what characters 'mean' in different languages. For instance, the individual characters in 勉強 (an example referred to further down this discussion page) don't appear to me to have different meanings in Chinese and Japanese, nor do the characters in 愛人. But the words 勉強 and 愛人 do have different meanings. A different case is 手紙, which, when perceived as a single unit, has two different meanings in Chinese and Japanese. These should, in fact, be seen as two completely different words (shouzhi and tegami) that happen to be written with the same characters.
Bathrobe 20 April 2005
- I've been bothered by some of these things too, and I've been trying to think of a way to address some of the underlying issues. For example, it's not really accurate to think of a hanzi as having a meaning per se. 啤 is a hanzi, and it doesn't really have a meaning and it isn't a morpheme. It is used exclusively for its phonetic value. 啤酒 has a meaning. Now, consider 学: it's clearly not used for its phonetic value, but it basically never appears independently, outside of a larger word. It's a morpheme, not a word, but it clearly does have a meaning. 酒, on the other hand, is both a morpheme and a word that can stand alone, and most definitely has a specific meaning.
- I've been considering trying to rewrite the article by using analogies with English to get the point across. The trouble is that while I know modern Chinese okay, I know very little about how Japanese and Korean use and used hanzi. The article is called Chinese characters. Should it be primarily about modern standard Mandarin usage, or should it cover Japanese, Korean, 文言, 古文, 方言, and maybe even Vietnamese and Zhuang? --Diderot 08:01, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- A further point: I've seen the word sinogram in print as a literal calque of hanzi/kanji/hanja. It's also the word used in the French Wikipedia. Retitling the article to "Sinogram" so that the word "Chinese" no longer appears in the title might make it easier to actually make this more about cross-language usage. I think it might be objectionable to say that Japanese and Korean use Chinese characters in their writing. I've met plenty of Japanese people who prefer to call them kanji in English to avoid that notion. The downside is that sinogram is a relatively unknown word. --Diderot 08:16, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Frankly, I think renaming the article is a bad idea (although I recognize the concerns you voiced) for numerous reasons, the most immediate reason being that the word "sinogram" is simply almost never used in English. The Wikipedia article naming guidelines call for using the name most frequently used and/or most widely recognized, and for this topic, "Chinese character" is the term almost always used. On the other hand, a subsection in the article discussing the naming problems seems appropriate.
- As for the word "Chinese" providing offense, that seems to be inventing a problem that doesn't exist among actual speakers of Japanese or Korean. While I've no idea who you've met among Korean or Japanese who object to the term "Chinese character," my experience has been the opposite: rather than take asinine offense at historical reality, the speakers of modern languages using Chinese characters I've met are usually quite aware of the origin and history of the writing system (indeed, the very characters used to describe the writing system refer to the Han dynasty of China), and would probably be amused at the suggestion of renaming them to avoid some imaginary violation of political correctness fussed over by English speakers.
- I could add a trite analogy about the need to rename the language we're conversing in "North Americanese" to avoid offending Anglophobes, but that would be pretty cheeky even for me :).
- --Ryanaxp 17:00, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
- I'm not fighting to rename the article - it was just a proposal. But, if this article is called Chinese character but is equally about usage in different languages, we should try to keep consistent about how characters are used in language X at time A, language Y at time B, and language Z at time C. --Diderot 11:24, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I don't want to rewrite this article myself as I have a website that does the same thing and I would probably just follow my own website!
- That said, I suggest that this article should mainly discuss Chinese characters as used in Chinese, which is a complex enough issue. Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese should be covered in their own sections (kanji, etc.). You will probably want to cover all the aspects you've mentioned (文言文 etc) because the article is about Chinese characters, not the modern Chinese writing system. I personally think a historical approach is best because that makes it much easier to understand and explain. Even if you look at Traditional, Simplified, and 'Japanese' Chinese characters, a historical approach (how it got that way) is much clearer than saying, 'oh, and they use kind of different kanji in Japan and they use simplified characters in China and they use more traditional characters on Taiwan.' A historical approach is very clean; a synchronic approach only confuses outsiders who are not already familiar with Chinese characters. That is my suggestion, anyway.
- Bathrobe 22 April 2005
Looking at my comment above, I realise that this article must include Chinese characters as used in Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese because the subject of the article is 'Chinese characters'.
In fact, defining the scope of the article is fairly important when considering how to organise the content.
- Bathrobe 30 April 2005
--- Earlier discussion related to this point
愛人 isn't a good example. This is actually a case where a Chinese word has undergone a change in meaning on the Mainland. 愛人 is still used in Taiwan etc. in the meaning 'lover'. Also, does 情人 mean spouse in Japan? Never heard it myself.
A better example might be 湯, which means 'soup' in Chinese and 'hot water' in Japan.
- In Korean, 湯 means 'soup' too, while it can be also used to call 'bath.' 溫水 is generally used to refer 'hot water' in Korea. And, if what I know is correct, 開水 means 'hot water' in Chinese. --PuzzletChung 17:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- In Mandarin, 开水 refers to boiling water while 热水 refers to hot water. 温水 is also used; however, its meaning is more or less lukewarm water. --Taoster 12:54, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
- For a better example of Chinese-Japanese meaning disparity, I suggest the (Japanese) word "study" (sorry, can't type characters at the moment). The same characters means "to compel" in Chinese. ^_^ madoka 09:35, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
勉強 Exploding Boy 15:30, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
勉強 is not a good example because while the meaning of the word is different, the meaning of the two characters per se is not different. That is, 勉 and 強 both have the same meaning (in general); it's the word 勉強 that has a different meaning. There are plenty of words like that, e.g., 汽車, but I believe that we are talking about characters that have been given different meanings, not words that have different meanings.
Vietnam
Chinese characters are employed to one degree or another in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, as well as Vietnamese before its colonization.
Also after -- the people who take orders at the Vietnamese place my girlfriend and I like use Chinese characters (as I discovered when they got our order wrong) --Charles A. L. 19:28, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)
- A minority of Vietnamese are actually Vietnamese with Chinese ancestry (how ever "far back" or not). I think a number of Vietnamese Americans are like this. These people at the take-out restaurant may therefore be "Chinese-Vietnamese Americans".
- I think this is quite likely. Something that I found is many Vietnamese-Americans actually speak very good Mandarin because they were Sino-Vietnamese and learned Chinese in Chinese school in Vietnam. -RR
- You could make a conversation with them about this. But my understanding is that Vietnamese schools don't teach Chinese anymore, so most have no way to learn them unless their parents know how to and are interested in teaching their children Chinese. --Menchi 02:42, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Or they be just Chinese Americans who happen to specialize in Vietnamese cuisine. I know many sushi stores are actually owned by Chinese. And probably most pizzerias are not owned by Italians. --Menchi 02:47, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Modern Vietnamese does not use Chinese characters. Most people do not know one character from another, save the characters on Chinese chess pieces. The restaurant might be owned by a Chinese person, or is specializing in Chinese cuisine.
Boohoo
Hanja and Kanji get their own articles, but not Hanzi. Actually, much of this article (esp the classification section) focuses on Chinese (really Chinese) characters only ("Chinese scholars classify Han characters..."). How about splitting this article to parallel the Korean and Japanese articles? --Jiang 16:14, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Sounds good to me. How about discuss the common characteristics among C,J,K, and V in this article, then language-specific issues in the separate articles? --Sewing 22:00, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- agreed. This article is very Chinese Chinese character-centric. I also dispute the accuracy of the following statement regarding the character for "east": "All in all it represents a sun rising through trees; this character falls in the radical-radical category." If I'm not mistaken, Kenneth Henshall, while giving the above as a convenient mnemonic, says that in fact this is NOT the character's true etymology.Exploding Boy 13:53, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)
Changed the example for different character meanings. The character for mother in Japanese is also used in Chinese, although its a somewhat formal usage. Roadrunner 05:25, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
South Korea
Of course, Hanja are not used in everyday life the way they are in China or Japan, but they are used more than just "primarily for emphasis and for names." They are used quite a bit in academic literature (much to my frustration, since I don't want to spend 5 minutes looking up a character in an Okpyeon every time I see a new one I don't know, especially when after all my deciphering, it turns out it's a word I knew all along, but only in its Hangul spelling!); and also in dictionaries, railway signs, and anywhere disambiguation is necessary. Perhaps you were thinking of the use of Hanja in newspaper headlines or shop signs, but this is more for the purpose of instant disambiguation and recognition than for emphasis. --Sewing 02:19, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- The Japanese-style form with mixed Hangul and Hanja is still used in the constitution and some important laws. So lawyers study Hanja for work. --Nanshu 03:49, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Just remember that Koreans were using Chinese characters before the Japanese even knew what they were. Up until the 20th century, almost all writing was done exclusively in Hanja. Writing with mixed Hangul and Hanja is called "mixed script," not "Japanese-style" writing. --Sewing 19:34, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That can be called "Japanese-style." There were Classical Chinese and X-eongae but they don't have the mixed writing style. Hangul was used mostly by itself. The new writing style was implanted from Japanese one. So Japanese can guess what old Korean newspapers say. --Nanshu 04:14, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I don't know where to add this, but someone might want to mention that Chinese characters range in complexity from one stroke (一), meaning "one", to sixty-four strokes (Missing image
Tie4b.png
Image:tie4b.png
), an ancient character meaning "Verbose". -Spencer195 19:44, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- It's in Unicode as 𪚥 (U+2A6A5) although I don't think anyone has a font to display the extended Unihan characters yet. DopefishJustin 01:12, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)
- I have now added this. — Chameleon 16:24, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
?
what's this "and other languages" in the img caption? obviously, the intended meaning is "in traditional Chinese script", never mind the language here. 62.167.121.85 22:29, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- It's obviously referring to the other languages which use or formerly used Chinese charcters: Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese — Hippietrail 14:02, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Unclear phrasing
I don't follow the phrasing 'As in all spoken Chinese, each Chinese character is read as a single syllabic unit.' in the intro. What is as in all spoken Chinese? Is this trying to say that Chinese morphemes tend to be monosyllabic? That's the only meaning I can draw from it, but I can't tell if it was intended. Also, I think it would be interesting to point out that the script is not entirely logosyllabic. E.g. the suffix -r is segmental, so 花兒 is a single syllable (at least in Beijing), while 三十 is sometimes abbreviated to a single disyllabic character 卅. (And of course there's a trisyllabic if unofficial character for túshūguǎn 'library'.) Also, about 10% of native Chinese morphemes are disyllabic (insect and plant names, mostly, shānhú 'coral', etc.), so, while the characters used to write them are syllabic, they aren't morphemes. (There are thousands of such examples in the Classics.) I think the article is detailed enough to include such idiosyncracies. Besides, let's face it, they're fun! kwami 20:05, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
Revision has been made on the article in response to your first paragraph. As for the phrase 花兒 (pinyin: hua ér), it should be pronounced with two syllables in Standard Mandarin; huar is the pronunciation of Beijing dialect. The character 卅, meaning thirty, is pronounced sà, while 廿, twenty, and 卌, forty, should be correctly pronounced as niàn and xì respectively. It is true though, that people tend to pronounce these characters in the disyllabic way you have mentioned, because their correct pronunciations are somewhat profound even for native speakers.
And yes, a morpheme can be disyllabic in Chinese; furthermore these disyllabic morphemes have a tendency of sharing the same consonant or vowel. This definitely worth a note.
By the way what is the unofficial trisyllabic character of "library" you mentioned? Never heard of something like that before. Care to upload an image of this? Very curious about it. -- G.S.K.Lee 17:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Let's use these images
Wikimedia Commons has some cool images, included animated ones, of Han characters. Why don't we use them? See Commons:Category:Chinese characters. — Chameleon 15:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)