Utente:Kinooo/Carattere
Un Carattere cinese (汉字 Hànzì) è un logogramma usato nel sistema di scrittura del cinese, giapponese, a volte nel coreano, e in passato anche nel vietnamita. Un sistema di scrittura completo in caratteri cinesi apparve già 3200 anni fa, e questo lo rende forse il più antico sistema di scrittura tra quelli ancora utilizzati. Diversi segni risalenti all'epoca neolitica, datati fino al 7000 a.C., sono stati rinvenuti nell'attuale Cina e sono considerati possibili precursori dei caratteri oggi usati, anche se fino ad oggi non è stato ancora stabilito un collegamento diretto tra i due sistemi.
Il 4% circa dei caratteri cinesi deriva direttamente da singoli pittogrammi (象形字 xiàngxíngzì) e molto spesso al lettore odierno la relazione tra i due non appare necessariamente chiara. Il restante 96% è costituito dagli aggregati logici (会意字 huìhìzì), caratteri combinati da più elementi che ne indicano il significato, e dai composti fonetici (形声字 xíng-shēngzì), caratteri composti da due elementi uno dei quali indica l'area semantica di appartenenza e l'altro la sua pronuncia, anche se questa è spesso solo simile a quella odierna a causa dei cambiamenti susseguitisi nel tempo e dalla differenza tra le lingue d'origine. I caratteri cinesi contenuti nel Dizionario Kangxi sono circa 47.035, anche se un gran numero di questi sono varianti di raro utilizzo accumulatesi nel corso dei secoli. In Cina la conoscenza di 2000 caratteri costituisce la soglia dell'alfabetizzazione.
Tradizionalmente in Cina ad ogni carattere corrisponde un'unica sillaba. Molte parole in tutte le moderne varietà della lingua cinese sono polisillabiche e richiedono quindi la scrittura di due o più caratteri. Parole con una radice etimologica comune appartenenti a diverse lingue o dialetti cinesi con lo stesso (o simile) significato ma diversa pronuncia vengono scritte con lo stesso carattere. Inoltre, molti caratteri sono stati adottati in cinese con il significato che hanno assunto in giapponese o coreano per esprimere concetti propri di quelle civiltà, trascurandone totalmente la pronuncia. L'assenza di una stretta relazione tra pronuncia e scrittura dei caratteri ha così reso possibile il loro utilizzo in lingue tra loro molto diverse e senza altri punti di contatto.
Proprio come le lettere dell'alfabeto latino hanno forme caratteristiche (con le minuscole che occupano un'area tondeggiante con tratti ascendenti e discendenti in alcune di esse), i caratteri cinesi occupano più o meno un'area quadrata. I caratteri costituiti da più elementi schiacciano queste parti tra loro in modo da mantenere una forma e una dimensione omogenee; questo è il caso soprattutto di caratteri scritti in stile Song (宋体 sòngtǐ). Per questo motivo i principianti spesso si esercitano in fogli con celle quadrate e i cinesi usano a volte il termine "caratteri quadrati" (方塊字 fāngkuàizì).
La forma attuale di molti Caratteri cinesi cambia in alcune culture. Nella Repubblica Popolare Cinese nel 1956 sono stati adottati i caratteri cinesi semplificati, ma i caratteri cinesi tradizionali sono ancora usati a Taiwan e Hong Kong. Il Giappone usa un insieme di caratteri meno drasticamente semplificati dal 1946, mentre la Corea ne ha limitato l'uso e il Vietnam li ha completamente aboliti a favore della scrittura con l'alfabeto latino.
I caratteri cinesi sono noti anche come sinogrammi e il sistema di scrittura cinese come sinografia. Le lingue non cinesi che hanno adottato la sinografia, e attraverso l'ortografia un grande numero di prestiti dalla lingua cinese, sono note come sinoxeniche, indipendentemente dal fatto che l'uso dei caratteri continui o meno ai giorni nostri. Il termine non implica nessuna parentela linguistica con il cinese. Le maggiori lingue sinoxeniche sono generalmente considerate il giapponese, il coreano e il vietnamita.
Storia
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]Le più antiche iscrizioni cinesi considerabili indiscutibilmente come scrittura sono i responsi oracolari su ossa (甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén). Essi venivano realizzati con un sistema di scrittura completamente sviluppato, attestato dalla tarda Dinastia Shang (1200-1050 A.C.) nello Anyang e dal 1600 a.C. nello Zhengzhou. Inoltre ci sono i pochissimi logogrammi rinvenuti su cocci di vasellame e incisi sui bronzi, il cui sistema di scrittura (金文 jīnwén) è molto simile ma più complesso e pittorico di quello su ossa. Solo 1400 circa dei 2500 logogrammi su ossa conosciuti posso essere messi in corrispondenza di successivi caratteri cinesi e quindi facilmente letti. E' comunque degno di nota che parecchi di questi 1400 logogrammi includano molti dei più comunemente usati.
Secondo la leggenda, comunque, i caratteri cinesi furono inventati prima da Cangjie (c. 2650 a.C.), un funzionario del leggendario imperatore Huangdi. La leggenda narra che Cangjie stava cacciando sul Monte Yangxu (nell'odierno Shanxi) quando vide una tartaruga le cue venature sulla corazza catturarono la sua curiosità. Ispirato dalla possibilità di una logica relazione tra quelle venature egli si mise a studiare gli animali del mondo, il paesaggio della terra e le stelle del cielo, ed inventò un sistema simbolico chiamato zi, i caratteri cinesi. Si dice che nel giorno in cui nacquero i caratteri i cinesi sentirono il diavolo mettersi a lutto e videro i raccolti piovere dal cielo, in quello che era l'inizio di una civiltà, nel bene e nel male.
Segni Neolitici
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]I primi segni neolitici vengono da Jiahu, un sito neolitico nel bacino del Fiume Giallo nella provincia dello Henan, risalente al 6500 a.C. circa. Vi sono stati rinvenuti carapaci di tartaruga dipinti e recanti simboli incisi. In seguito alle scoperte fatte a Jiahu l'uso di segni neolitici in Cina fu retrodatato di due millenni rispetto a quanto ritenuto in precedenza. L'uso dei segni, comunque, non può essere facilmente fatto coincidere con l'origine della scrittura, della quale essi rappresentano uno stadio primitivo. Secondo le parole degli archeologi autori della scoperta:
- "Qui abbiamo segni del settimo millennio a.C. che sembrano essere in relazione con i più tardi caratteri cinesi e potebbero essere considerati parole. Non interpretiamo questi segni stessi come scrittura, ma come vestigia di un lungo periodo di tempo in cui essi furono usati, che alla fine portò a un sistema di scrittura pienamente maturo. Lo stato attuale della ricerca archeologica in Cina, che non è mai stata oggetto di intensivi studi come, per esempio, per le civiltà greca o egiziana, non ci permette di dire esattamente in quale periodo del neolitico i cinesi inventarono la loro scrittura. Ciò che effettivamente persistette attraverso questi lunghi periodi fu l'idea dell'uso dei segni. Per quanto sia impossibile a questo stato di cose tracciare una diretta connessione tra i segni di Jiahu e i caratteri Yinxu noi propendiamo proprio per questi lenti processi evolutivi legati alla cultura, adottando l'idea dell'uso dei segni in diverse realtà lungo il Fiume Giallo. Non sarebbe corretto affermare che ci fosse un unico percorso verso lo sviluppo di un sistema di scrittura."[1]
Later excavations in eastern China's Anhui province and the Dadiwan culture sites in the eastern part of northwestern China's Gansu province uncovered pottery shards, dated to c. 5000 BC, inscribed with symbols [1][2]. It is unknown whether these symbols formed part of an organized system of writing, but many of them bear resemblance to what are accepted as early Chinese characters, and it is speculated that they may be ancestors to the latter.
Inscription-bearing artifacts from the Dawenkou culture culture site in Juxian County, Shandong, dating to c. 2800 BC, have also been found [3]. The Chengziyai site in Longshan township, Shandong has produced fragments of inscribed bones used to divine the future, dating to 2500 - 1900 BC, and symbols on pottery vessels from Dinggong are thought by some scholars to be an early form of writing. Symbols of a similar nature have also been found on pottery shards from the Liangzhu culture (良渚) of the lower Yangtze valley.
Although the earliest forms of primitive Chinese writing are no more than individual symbols and therefore cannot be considered a true written script, the inscriptions found on bones (dated to 2500 - 1900 BC) used for the purposes of divination from the late Neolithic Longshan (龍山/龙山) Culture (c. 3200 - 1900 BC) are thought by some to be a proto-written script, similar to the earliest forms of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It is possible that these inscriptions are ancestral to the later Oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty and therefore the modern Chinese script, since late Neolithic culture found in Longshan is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists to be ancestral to the bronze age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou Dynasties.
Written Styles
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]
There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used.
The Oracle Bone and Bronzeware scripts being no longer used, the oldest script that is still in use today is the Seal Script (篆書/篆书, zhuànshū). It evolved organically out of the Zhou bronze script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now only used in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style.
Scripts that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (隸書/隸书, lìshū) of the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, the Weibei (魏碑, wèibēi), the "Regular Script" (楷書/楷书, kǎishū) used for most printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (行書/行书, xíngshū) used for most handwriting.
The Cursive Script (草書/草书, cǎoshū) is not in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the Simplified Chinese characters adopted by the People's Republic of China, and some of the simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the Cursive Script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script.
There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the standard scripts described above.
Formation of Characters
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]
The early stages of the development of Chinese characters were dominated by pictograms, in which meaning was expressed directly by the shapes. The development of the script, both to cover words for abstract concepts and to increase the efficiency of writing, has led to the introduction of numerous non-pictographic characters.
The various types of character were first classified c. 100 CE by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen, whose etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字/说文解字) divides the script into six categories, the liùshū' (六書/六书). While the categories and classification are occasionally problematic and arguably fail to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, the system has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.[4]
1. Pictograms (象形字 xiàngxíngzì)
Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. While characters in this class derive from pictures, they have been standardized, simplified, and stylised to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 (rì) for "sun", 月 (yuè) for "moon", and 木 (mù) for "tree".
There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen (c. 100 CE) estimated that 4% of characters fell into this category.
2. Pictophonetic compounds (形聲字/形声字, Xíngshēngzì)[2][3]
Also called semantic-phonetic compounds, or phono-semantic compounds, this category represents the largest group of characters in modern Chinese. Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character represents.
Examples are 河 (hé) river, 湖 (hú) lake, 流 (liú) stream, 沖 (chōng) riptide, 滑 (huá) slippery. All these characters have on the left a radical of three dots, which is a simplified pictograph for a water drop, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 沖 (chōng), the phonetic indicator is 中 (zhōng), which by itself means middle. In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character has diverged from that of its phonetic indicator; this process means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today. Further, the choice of radicals may also seem arbitrary in some cases; for example, the radical of 貓 (māo) cat is 豸 (zhì), originally a pictograph for worms, but in characters of this sort indicating an animal of any sort.
Xu Shen (c. 100 CE) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 CE) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.
3. Ideograph (指事字, zhǐshìzì)
Also called a simple indicative, simple ideograph, or ideogram, characters of this sort either add indicators to pictographs to make new meanings, or illustrate abstract concepts directly. For instance, while 刀 (dāo) is a pictogram for "knife", placing an indicator in the knife makes 刃 (rèn), an ideogram for "blade". Other common examples are 上 (shàng) for "up" and 下 (xià) for "down". This category is small, as most concepts can be represented by characters in other categories.
4. Logical aggregrates (會意字/会意字, Huìyìzì)
Also translated as associative compounds, characters of this sort combine pictograms to symbolize an abstract concept. For instance, 木 (mu) is a pictogram of a tree, and putting two 木 together makes 林 (lin), meaning forest. Combining 日 (rì) sun and 月 (yuè) moon makes 明 (míng) bright, which is traditionally interpreted as symbolizing the combination of sun and moon as the natural sources of light.
Xu Shen estimated that 13% of characters fall into this category.
5. Associate Transformation (轉注字/转注字, Zhuǎnzhùzì)
Characters in this category originally represented the same meaning but have bifurcated through orthographic and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 (kǎo) to verify and 老 (lǎo) old were once the same character, meaning "elderly person", but detached into two separate words. Characters of this category are rare, so in modern systems this group is often omitted or combined with others.
6. Borrowing (假借字, Jiǎjièzì)
Also called phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 (zì), which has lost its original meaning of nose completely and exclusively means oneself, or 萬 (wan), which originally meant spider but is now used only in the sense of ten thousand.
This technique has become uncommon, since there is considerable resistance to changing the meaning of existing characters. However, it has been used in the development of written forms of dialects, notably Cantonese and Taiwanese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, due to the amount of dialectal vocabulary which historically has had no written form and thus lacks characters of its own.
Written Variants
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]Orthography
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs for any character, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. The widespread usage of the characters in several different nations has prevented any one system becoming universally adopted; consequently, the standard shape of any given character in Chinese usage may differ subtly from its standard shape in Japanese or Korean usage, even where no simplification has taken place.
Usually, each Chinese character takes up the same amount of space, due to their block-like square nature. Beginners therefore typically practice writing with a grid as a guide. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, stroke placement, and the order in which they are written (stroke order). Most words can be written with just one stroke order, though some words also have variant stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts; certain characters are also written with different stroke orders in different languages.
Reforms: Simplification
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]- Main articles: Simplified Chinese character, Shinjitai
Simplification in China
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]The use of traditional characters versus simplified characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Because character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally a result of caoshu writing or idiosyncratic reductions, traditional, standard characters were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the PRC has officially adopted a simplified script, while Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan retain the use of the traditional characters. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer. In addition there is a special system of characters used for writing numerals in financial contexts; these characters are modifications or adaptations of the original, simple numerals, deliberately made complicated to prevent forgeries or unauthorized alterations.
Although most often associated with the PRC, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the CCP) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script, in imitation of the Roman alphabet, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
The PRC issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or "second round simplified characters") was promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely, while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng.
Many of the simplifications adopted had been in use in informal contexts for a long time, as more convenient alternatives to their more complex standard forms. For example, the traditional character 來 lái (come) was written with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隸書 lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses two fewer strokes, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún (cloud) was written with the structure 云 in the oracle bone script of the Shāng dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of to say. The simplified form reverted to this original structure.
Southeast Asian Chinese communities
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. These resulted in some simplifications that differed from those used in mainland China. It ultimately adopted the reforms of the PRC in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system.
Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the Mainland China simplifications; here, however, the simplifications were not generally widely adopted, as the Chinese educational system fell outside the purview of the federal government. However, with the advent of the PRC as an economic powerhouse, simplified characters are taught at school, and the simplified characters are more commonly, if not almost universally, used. However, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation use the traditional characters. Chinese newspapers are published in either set of characters, with some even incorporating special Cantonese characters when publishing about the canto celebrity scene of Hong Kong.
Japanese Kanji
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]In the years after World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified forms called Shinjitai 新字体 (lit. "new character forms"; the older forms were then labelled the Kyūjitai 旧字体 , lit. "old character forms"). The number of characters in common use was restricted, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established, first the 1850-character Tōyō kanji 当用漢字 list in 1945, and later the 1945-character Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 list in 1981. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the former, see Jinmeiyō kanji).
| Traditional | Chinese simp. | Japanese simp. | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified in Chinese, not Japanese | 電 | 电 | 電 | electricity |
| 開 | 开 | 開 | open | |
| 東 | 东 | 東 | east | |
| Simplified in Japanese, not Chinese | 佛 | 佛 | 仏 | Buddha |
| 惠 | 惠 | 恵 | favour | |
| 拜 | 拜 | 拝 | kowtow, pray to, worship | |
| Simplified in both, but differently | 圖 | 图 | 図 | picture, diagram |
| 轉 | 转 | 転 | turn | |
| 廣 | 广 | 広 | wide, broad | |
| Simplified in both in the same way | 學 | 学 | 学 | learn |
| 體 | 体 | 体 | body | |
| 點 | 点 | 点 | dot, point |
Note: this table is merely a brief sample, not a complete listing.
Dictionaries
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]The design and use of a Chinese dictionary of characters presents interesting problems. Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for the Chinese characters. The great majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals.
Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several different ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes. Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well.
For instance, to look up the character 松 (pine tree) in a typical dictionary, the user first determines which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number "4" for radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page directly.
Another popular dictionary system is the four corner method, where characters are classified according to the "shape" of each of the four corners.
Most Chinese-English dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the radical lookup method combined with an alphabetical listing of characters based on their pinyin romanization system. To use one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character's entry will have the character's pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically, just as if it were an English dictionary.
This system has also been reborrowed by Chinese-language dictionary editors, giving rise to dictionaries with the traditional radical-based character listings in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary carries character listings by their pronunciation listed alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling.
Sinoxenic Languages
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]Besides Japanese and Korean, a number of Asian languages have historically been written using Han characters, with characters modified from Han characters, or using Han characters in combination with native characters. They include:
- Iu Mien language
- Jurchen language (ja:女真文字)
- Khitan language (ja:契丹文字)
- Miao language
- Nakhi (Naxi) language (Geba script)
- Tangut language (fr:Tangoute, zh:西夏文, [5], [6])
- Vietnamese language (Chữ nôm)
- Zhuang language
In addition, the Yi script is similar to Han, but is not known to be directly related to it.
Number of Chinese characters
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]What is the total number of Chinese characters from past to present? The answer remains unknowable because new ones are developed all the time; characters are theoretically an open set. The number of entries in major Chinese dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory.
Number of characters in Chinese dictionaries[4]
|
Comparing the Shuowen Jiezi and Hanyu Da Zidian reveals that the overall number of characters has increased 577 percent over 1,900 years. Depending upon how one counts variants, 50,000+ is good approximation for the current total number. This correlates with thee most comprehensive Japanese and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters; the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten has some 50,000 entries, and the Han-Han Dae Sajeon has over 57,000. One recent dictionary, the 1994 Zhonghua Zihai, advertises as many as 85,000 characters, but that remains unverified.
Modified radicals and obsolete variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person pronoun tā (他 "he; she; it"), which is written with the "person radical," illustrates modifying significs to form new characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 "she") with the "woman radical" and tā (牠/它 "it") with the "animal/roof radical". One consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和 "harmony; peace", which combines the "grain radical" with the "mouth radical", has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the "flute radical".
Chinese
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]It is usually said that about 3,000 characters are needed for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters. Note that it is not necessary to know a character for every known word of Chinese, as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are bimorphemic compounds, that is, they are made up of two, usually common, characters.
In the People's Republic of China, which uses Simplified Chinese, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语常用字表; Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表; Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. GB2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China, has 6,763 code points. GB18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi proficiency test covers approximately 5,000 characters.
In the Republic of China (Taiwan), which uses Traditional Chinese, the Ministry of Education's Chángyòng Guózì Biāojǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāojǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表; Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters, while the most widely-used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13,053.
In Hong Kong, which uses Traditional Chinese, the Education and Manpower Bureau's Soengjung Zi Zijing Biu (常用字字形表), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759 characters.
In addition, there is a large corpus of dialect characters, which are not used in formal written Chinese but represent colloquial terms in non-Mandarin Chinese spoken forms. One such variety is Written Cantonese, in widespread use in Hong Kong even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration's recognition of Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also an informal body of characters used to represent the spoken Min Nan dialect.
Japanese
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]In Japanese there are 1945 Jōyō kanji (常用漢字 lit. "frequently used kanji") designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education; these are taught during primary and secondary school. The list is a recommendation, not a restriction, and many characters missing from it are still in common use.
The one area where character usage is officially restricted is in names, which may contain only government-approved characters. Since the Jōyō kanji list excludes many characters which have been used in personal and place names for generations, an additional list, referred to as the Jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字 lit. "kanji for use in personal names"), is published. It currently contains 983 characters, bringing the total number of government-endorsed characters to 2928. (See also the Names section of the Kanji article.)
Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3500 kanji. The Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests a speaker's ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests on 6000 kanji, though in practice few people attain or need this level.
Korean
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]In Korea, 한자 Hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by totally abandoning their use. These individuals encourage the exclusive use of the native Hangul alphabet throughout Korean society and the end to character education in public schools.
In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by education ministers' personal opinions. At times, middle and high school students have been formally exposed to 1,800 to 2,000 basic characters, albeit with the principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper-literacy. Since there is little need to use Hanja in everyday life, young adult Koreans are often unable to read more than a few hundred characters.
There is a clear trend toward the exclusive use of Hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy. Hanja is also extensively used in situations where ambiguity must be avoided, such as academic papers, high-level corporate reports, government documents, and newspapers; this is due to the large number of homonyms that have resulted from extended borrowing of Chinese words.
The issue of ambiguity is the main hurdle in any effort to "cleanse" the Korean language of Chinese characters. Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn hints at meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the phonetic entry for 기사 gisa yields more than 30 different entries. In the past, this ambiguity had been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated hanja.
In modern Korean writing system based on Hangul, Chinese characters are not used any more to represent native morphemes
In North Korea, the government, wielding much tighter control than its sister government to the south, has banned Chinese characters from virtually all public displays and media, and mandated the use of Hangul in their place.
Vietnamese
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]Although now nearly extinct in Vietnamese, varying scripts of Chinese characters (hán tự) were once in widespread use to write the language, although hán tự became limited to ceremonial uses beginning in the 19th century. Similarly to Japan and Korea, Chinese (especially Classical Chinese) was used by the ruling classes, and the characters were eventually adopted to write Vietnamese. To express native Vietnamese words which had different pronunciations from the Chinese, Vietnamese developed the Chu Nom script which used various methods to distinguish native Vietnamese words from Chinese. Vietnamese is currently exclusively written in the Vietnamese alphabet, a derivative of the Latin alphabet.
Rare and complex characters
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]
Often a character not commonly used (a "rare" or "variant" character) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common characters and exclude the less oft-used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters.
People who have run into this problem include Taiwanese politicians Wang Chien-shien (王建煊, pinyin Wáng Jiànxuān) and Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃, pinyin Yóu Xīkūn), ex-PRC Premier Zhu Rongji (朱镕基 Zhū Róngjī), and Taiwanese singer David Tao (陶喆 Táo Zhé). Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar characters, including a picture of the personality, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, simply substituting a homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead of kanji, and it is accepted practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.
There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is zhé (pictured right, top), meaning "verbose" and boasting sixty-four strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while boasting the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it simply requires writing the same sixteen-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. "dragon") four times in the space for one.
The most complex character found in modern Chinese dictionaries is 齉 nàng (pictured right, middle), meaning "snuffle" (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with "just" thirty-six strokes. The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New Phonetic IMA 2002a for Traditional Chinese is 龘 tà "the appearance of a dragon in flight"; it is composed of the dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48.
In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists [7]— it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters on top of the abovementioned triple "dragon" character (龘). Also meaning "the appearance of a dragon in flight", it is pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.
The most complex character still in use may be biáng (pictured right, bottom), with 57 strokes, which refers to Biang Biang Noodles, a type of noodle from China's Shaanxi province. This character along with syllable biang cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Mandarin word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.
In contrast, the simplest character is 一 yī ("one") with just one horizontal stroke. The most common character in Chinese is 的 de, a grammatical particle functioning as an adjectival marker and as a clitic genitive case analogous to the English ’s, with eight strokes. The average number of strokes in a character has been calculated as 9.8;[5] it is unclear, however, whether this average is weighted, or whether it includes traditional characters.
Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".[6] Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes.
Chinese calligraphy
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]
The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China, Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
See also
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]- Wiktionary:Chinese total strokes index
- Chinese character encoding
- Chinese input methods for computers
- Chinese world
- Han unification
- Chinese written language
- Transliteration into Chinese characters
- Chinese characters for chemical elements
- Xiandai Hanyu changyong zibiao (现代汉语常用字表, List of Frequently-Used Characters in Modern Chinese)
- Stroke order
- Eight Principles of Yong
- Earthly Branches
- Heavenly Stems
- East Asian calligraphy
- Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
- Blissymbols (an international auxiliary logographic script)
- Sinoxenic
References
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]- ^ Xueqin Li, Garman Harbottle, Juzhong Zhang, Changsui Wang: The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China. Antiquity 77, 295 (2003): 31-45 (31 and 41)
- ^ Mandarin Chinese: Introduction, Mobo C.F. Gao, Oxford, P.84, ISBN 0-19-554002-6
- ^ "漢字例話", author: 左民安.
- ^ Updated from Norman, Jerry. Chinese. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1988, p. 72. ISBN 052122809
- ^ Bellassen, Joël & Zhang Pengpeng (1989). Méthode d'Initiation à la Langue et à l'Écriture chinoises. La Compagnie. ISBN 2-9504135-1-X
- ^ Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume III
External links
[modifica | modifica wikitesto]
Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Kinooo/Carattere- Articles on Chinese Characters
- History of Chinese writing
- Zhongwen.com: a picture-based etymological dictionary of Chinese characters
- Unihan Database: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean references, readings, and meanings for all the Chinese and Chinese-derived characters in the Unicode character set
- Chinese character writing Comparing writing systems
![[7]](http://www.mojikyo.gr.jp/gif96/066/066147.gif){kind=link}
{{Link FA|de}} {{Link FA|zh}} {{Link FA|pl}}