Written Chinese


Written Chinese is a writing system that transcribes the varieties of Chinese language using logograms — known as characters — and other symbols such as punctuations. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rather, the writing system is morphosyllabic: characters are one spoken syllable in length, but generally correspond to morphemes in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word. Most characters are constructed from smaller components known as radicals or pianpang that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000 characters. This has led in part to the modern adoption of complementary phonetic transcription systems such as Pinyin and Bopomofo to transliterate the pronunciation of each character.
Chinese writing is first attested during the late Shang dynasty in the form of oracle bone script, but the process of creating character-like symbols is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. During the Zhou dynasty, Chinese characters evolved into the more mature bronze script and seal script, which were standardized under the short-lived Qin dynasty and further consolidated into the more convenient clerical script during the subsequent Han dynasty. Over the following millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of Chinese calligraphy, from the formal regular script to the more casual running script and cursive script. As the different Sinitic varieties diverged, a situation of diglossia developed, with speakers of otherwise mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using Literary Chinese. In the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with written vernacular Chinese, largely corresponding to the grammar of modern Standard Chinese, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Although most other Chinese varieties are not written in their own vernacular styles, there are local traditions of written Cantonese, written Shanghainese and written Hokkien, among others.

Structure

Written Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary. Most characters can be analyzed as compounds of smaller components, which may be assembled according to several different principles. 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. 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. Nevertheless, no later work has supplanted the Shuowen Jiezi in terms of breadth, and it is still relevant to etymological research today.

Derivation of characters

According to the Shuowen Jiezi, Chinese characters are developed on six basic principles. The first two principles produce simple characters, known as :

  1. Pictographs : in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes.
  2. Indicatives : in which the character represents an abstract notion.
The remaining four principles produce complex characters historically called, though this term is now generally used to refer to all characters, whether simple or complex. Of these four, two construct characters from simpler parts:

  1. Ideographic compounds : in which two or more parts are used for their meaning. This yields a composite meaning, which is then applied to the new character.
  2. Phono-semantic compounds : in which one part—often called the radical—indicates the general semantic category of the character, such as being related to water or eyes, with the other part being another character used for its phonetic value.
The last two principles do not produce new written forms; they instead transfer new meanings to existing forms:

  1. Transference : in which a character, often with a simple, concrete meaning takes on an extended, more abstract meaning.
  2. Loangraphs : in which a character is used, either intentionally or accidentally, for some entirely different purpose.
In contrast to the popular conception of written Chinese as ideographic, the vast majority of characters—about 95% of those in the Shuowen Jiezi—either reflect elements of pronunciation, or are logical aggregates. In fact, some phonetic complexes were originally simple pictographs that were later augmented by the addition of a semantic root. An example is, now archaic, which was originally a pictograph of a lamp stand, a character that is now pronounced and means 'host', or the character was added to indicate that the meaning is fire related.
Chinese characters are written to fit into a square, even when composed of two simpler forms written side-by-side or top-to-bottom. In such cases, each form is compressed to fit the entire character into a square.

Strokes

Character components can be further subdivided into individual written strokes. The strokes of Chinese characters fall into eight main categories: "horizontal", "vertical", "left-falling", "right-falling", "rising", "dot", "hook", and "turning",,.
There are eight basic rules of stroke order in writing a Chinese character, which apply only generally and are sometimes violated:
  1. Horizontal strokes are written before vertical ones.
  2. Left-falling strokes are written before right-falling ones.
  3. Characters are written from top to bottom.
  4. Characters are written from left to right.
  5. If a character is framed from above, the frame is written first.
  6. If a character is framed from below, the frame is written last.
  7. Frames are closed last.
  8. In a symmetrical character, the middle is drawn first, then the sides.

    Layout

As characters are essentially rectilinear and are not joined with one another, written Chinese does not require a set orientation. Chinese texts were traditionally written in columns from top to bottom, which were laid out from right to left. Prior to the 20th century, Literary Chinese used little to no punctuation, with the breaks between sentences and phrases determined largely by context and the rhythms implied by patterns of syllables.
In the 20th century, the layout used in Western scripts—where text is written in rows from left to right, which are laid out from top to bottom—became predominant in mainland China, where it was mandated by the Chinese government in 1955. Vertical layouts are still used for aesthetic effect, or when space limitations require it, such as on signage or book spines. The government of Taiwan followed suit in 2004 for official documents, but vertical layouts have persisted in some books and newspapers.
Less frequently, Chinese is written in rows from right to left, usually on signage or banners, though a left to right orientation remains more common.
The use of punctuation has also become more common. In general, punctuation occupies the width of a full character, such that text remains visually well-aligned in a grid. Punctuation used in simplified Chinese shows clear influence from that used in Western scripts, though some marks are particular to Asian languages. For example, there are double and single quotation marks, and a hollow full stop, which is used to separate sentences in an identical manner to a Western full stop. A special mark called an enumeration comma is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to the clauses in a sentence.

History

Written Chinese is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems. The earliest examples universally accepted as Chinese writing are the oracle bone inscriptions made during the reign of the Shang king Wu Ding. These inscriptions were made primarily on ox scapulae and turtle shells in order to record the results of divinations conducted by the Shang royal family. Characters posing a question were first carved into the bones. The question's answer was then divined by heating the bones over a fire and interpreting the resulting cracks that formed. The interpretation was then carved into the same oracle bone.
In 2003, 11 isolated symbols carved on tortoise shells were found at the Jiahu archaeological site in Henan—with some bearing a striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as. The Jiahu site dates from, predating the earliest attested Chinese writing by more than 5,000 years. Garman Harbottle, who had headed a team of archaeologists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui—has suggested that these symbols were precursors to Chinese writing. However, the palaeographer David Keightley argues instead that the time gap is too great to establish any connection.
From the Late Shang period, Chinese writing evolved into the form found in cast inscriptions on ritual bronzes made during the Western Zhou dynasty and the Spring and Autumn period, a form of writing called bronze script. Bronze script characters are less angular than their oracle bone script counterparts. The script became increasingly regularized during the Warring States period, settling into what is called, that Xu Shen used as source material in the Shuowen Jiezi. These characters were later embellished and stylized to yield the seal script, which represents the oldest form of Chinese characters still in modern use. They are used principally for signature seals, or chops, which are often used in place of a signature for Chinese documents and artwork. Li Si promulgated the seal script as the standard throughout China, which had been recently united under the imperial Qin dynasty.
The initial adaptation of seal into clerical script can be attributed to scribes in the state of Qin working prior to the wars of unification. Clerical script forms generally have a "flat" appearance, being wider than their seal script equivalents. In the semi-cursive script that evolved from clerical script, character elements begin to run into each other, though the characters themselves generally remain discrete. This is contrasted with fully cursive script, where characters are often rendered unrecognizable by their canonical forms. Regular script is the most widely recognized script, and was considerably influenced by semi-cursive. In regular script, each stroke of each character is clearly drawn out from the others.
Regular script is considered the archetypal Chinese writing and forms the basis for most printed forms. In addition, regular script imposes a stroke order, which must be followed in order for the characters to be written correctly. Strictly speaking, this stroke order applies to the clerical, running, and grass scripts as well, but especially in the running and grass scripts, this order is occasionally deviated from. Thus, for instance, the character must be written starting with the horizontal stroke, drawn from left to right; next, the vertical stroke, from top to bottom; next, the left diagonal stroke, from top to bottom; and lastly the right diagonal stroke, from top to bottom.