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Chinese characters [a] are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the ...
Characters and components may reflect aspects of meaning or pronunciation. The best known exposition of Chinese character composition is the Shuowen Jiezi, compiled by Xu Shen c. 100 CE. Xu did not have access to the earliest forms of Chinese characters, and his analysis is not considered to fully capture the nature of the writing system. [14]
Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. [12] In the People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters. [13]
Chinese characters have been used in several different writing systems throughout history. The concept of a writing system includes both the written symbols themselves, called graphemes—which may include characters, numerals, or punctuation—as well as the rules by which they are used to record language. [2]
The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4500 years, [1] while examples of the writing system that would become written Chinese are attested in a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), [2] [3] with the very oldest dated to c. 1200 BCE.
Kingdom of Characters is the third book authored by Jing Tsu, a professor of comparative literature and East Asian languages and literature at Yale University. [1] Her previous two books, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895-1937 and Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora, also covered Chinese linguistic history.
Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for a Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language.
The first systematic study of the structure of Chinese characters was Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi (100 AD). [32] The Shuowen was mostly based on the small seal script standardized in the Qin dynasty. [33] Earlier characters from oracle bones and Zhou bronze inscriptions often reveal relationships that were obscured in later forms. [34]