Chinese characters

U 4 E00 .. U 9 FAF U 3400 .. U 4 DBF U 20000 .. U 2 A6DF

The Chinese characters (Chinese汉字/汉字listen, pinyin hanzi? / I) are the characters of Chinese writing. A Chinese character represents a syllable of the Chinese language.

Chinese characters are also in the Japanese Kanji script as, in the Korean Hanja writing as and formerly used in the Vietnamese writing as Hán Tự.

Number of characters

The most extensive historical character dictionary Zhōnghuá Zìhǎi中华 字 海/中华 字 海of 1994 contains approximately 87,000 different characters. Approximately 85 percent of them are no longer used today. The majority of these characters thus occurs only in the old literature. In addition, there are characters that are used only in geographical terms or in dialects, or are considered to be variants. The sign浬li ( nautical mile ), mostly by the composition海里hǎili (sea mile) is replaced, for example, today. Some characters appear only in a single context. The sign坜lì is used only on behalf of the Taiwanese city中 坜Chungli.

Because of the many homophones in the Chinese language synonyms two characters are usually used together to create greater clarity. The resulting word can be understood as a synonym of its two elements again. These illustrate the basic words was not yet given in classical Chinese. A consequence of this is, inter alia, Verzweisilbigung reducing the number of characters required. So lists an average dictionary only about 10,000 characters, of which 3,000 already enough to be able to read most of it.

There are a large number of trivial characters that represent absolutely no learning curve, because their pronunciation is identical to its phonetic element. So the sign锗stands for the chemical element germanium, and is just like者( zhe ) read. It contains the radical金(gold), which also occurs in the sign for all metals ( except mercury ).

Frequency and importance

The question of how many characters you have to know in order to understand a Chinese text, can not be answered sense. The meaning of the text reveals itself only through the understanding of words, which usually consist of two Chinese characters. A native speaker of Chinese, who knows the pronunciation of a character, a text can therefore not only read, but due to its lexical knowledge and understanding, even if it is not known to each character. According to a study by Jun Da comply with informational texts in modern Chinese, the 1948 most common characters to read 98 % of a text, 2445 characters suffice for 99 % and 99.5 % in 2987 for a text. In modern literary texts in contrast 3632 characters required for a coverage of 99.5%; in texts that were written before 1911, there are even 5,095 characters.

This suggests that native speakers of Chinese may be considered as literate with a knowledge of 2000-3000 characters. In older texts, however, still 0.55% of all the characters we know the 5000 most common characters, so remain unknown. In modern literary texts, the figure is 0.09 % and informational texts at 0.05 %. This is about every two thousandth characters on average. The total number of recognized characters was different in the corpus of modern Chinese at 9,933; in the older texts there were 11,115, and in the overall corpus of more than 258 million characters, there were 12,041 different. How many of them a native speaker actually knows, therefore crucially depends on the scope and nature of his reading.

At the schools in China, Taiwan or Hong Kong, about 2500-3000 characters are formally taught according to different specifications. But considering that a modern novel can easily contain more than 3000 different signs, it is clear that these 3000 numbers represent only a first literacy. Other characters can be easily recognized by a native speaker in context and with time he will then also be able to actively use. The same is true for Japan and Korea. The list of the Japanese Ministry of Education comprises 2136 (since 2010) in common use kanji (常用 汉字Jōyō kanji) that are taught in the elementary and middle school. In addition, there is a state list of characters for geographic names and personal names ( jinmeiyō kanji人名 用 汉字) which comprises 2928 characters. Students at the middle and high schools in Korea to learn about 1800-2000 Chinese characters.

In foreign language Chinese- learners there is no direct relationship between the knowledge of a certain number of characters and the text comprehension. However, the knowledge of the signs are necessary for learning basic vocabulary and thus an indirect measure of reading ability. Listed here are the level of ambition "Chinese vocabulary and Chinese characters " (汉语 水平 词汇 与 汉字 等级 大纲/汉语 水平 词汇 与 汉字 等级 大纲) for Chinese as a foreign language at A level 800 characters, for stage B additional 804 characters for which Level C more 601 and more for the level D 700 characters, so in total 2905 characters. The corpus-based study from Jun As recommended for the beginner level the placement of 1500 characters, for the average level in 2500 and advanced 3500-5000 characters with a vocabulary of about 10,000 words.

Classification of characters

Characters are divided into six categories in China (Chinese六 书/六 书, pinyin Liushu ):

System

The oldest lexicon for Chinese characters is the Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字/说文解字, German declaration of the simple signs and explanation of the composite mark) in the year 121 AD The characters are there for a system of elementary signs, the so-called radicals, divided.

This classification of the characters by radicals has been preserved until today. The number of radicals, which amounted to Shuowen jiezi still 512, but was gradually reduced, so that the most widely used today list of traditional radicals used 214 class characters. This classification was supported primarily by the Kangxi zidian (康熙字典, Kangxi Dictionary ) from 1716, which already contains about 49,000 characters. Dictionaries for simplified characters to use a different number of free radicals, often times there are 227 radicals.

For a systematic arrangement of Chinese words in telephone books and encyclopedias general (as opposed to special characters lexicons ), the arrangement is usually used according to the Pinyin today. In Taiwan will continue to order in many cases based on the radical or Zhuyin. In Korean and Japanese, however, the words according to the actual pronunciation of the word, not the character, sorted in Hangul and Kana are.

The word " library " (图书馆/图书馆, túshūguǎn, Japanese図 书馆,としょかんToshokan, Korean图书馆, 도서관 ) would be found in a dictionary as follows:

• In a Chinese dictionary searches to the syllable tú, among which is found the character图. Then found as a sub-entry, the word图书馆, in which the pronunciation is given túshūguǎn.
• In Taiwan, the radical 31 (囗) is first struck, in the then 11 additional strokes to find the character图. As a sub-entries can be found then the word图书馆, together with the reading ㄊ ㄨ ㄕ ㄨ ㄍ ㄨ ㄢ in Zhuyin. In more recent dictionaries is also often found Pinyin. Bilingual dictionaries for foreigners, however, use the Chinese version.
• In Japanese dictionaries the word is not sorted by character, but according to the Word. It is, therefore, just as in German dictionaries, the first pitched the initial syllableと, and then searched the wordとしょかん. Then the letters in Kanji (図 书馆) in parentheses, and an explanation is given. It is then found, for example, between the other two words土 性骨doshōbone and徒 食toshoku.
• In Korea the same order as in Japan, is being used. First, the Hangul ㄷ is pitched at which can then find 도서관. As in Japanese dictionaries the Hanja and the explanation are then listed after the Hangul.

Also in Chinese sorting such as Korean or Japanese would be theoretically possible, which, however, has not enforced much. If you do not know either the reading or the radical of a character can be additional tables in the dictionary to find the readings or the running of the character number.

Computer Internal representation of Chinese characters

Chinese characters can be represented by a 1- bit raster graphics. For a correct display of Chinese characters, which consist of many strokes, this must be at least 16 × 16 pixels are used. Letters of the Latin alphabet can be, however, with fewer pixels readable display; so screens were operated in the early days of computers with 8 × 8 pixels and 8 × 16 pixels in text mode.

Chinese characters outside of China

In the context of cultural transfer, conquest and proselytizing by Buddhism, came the Chinese characters over the centuries to Korea ( in the 2nd century ), Japan ( 3rd century ) and Vietnam ( in the 1st century ).

In Japan, where even today called Chinese characters, kanji, used partially in Japanese simplified variants of the traditional characters, Chinese characters were complemented by in-house developments and the resulting Kokuji of Chinese characters Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries.

In Korea was initially written with Chinese characters. In 1446 we led parallel to one of the newly developed, phoneme -based writing Hangeul. In South Korea, is to this day in some printing works a mixed system of Chinese characters ( there called Hanja ) and Hangeul used in North Korea, the Chinese characters were abolished as part of a writing reform. My character on the Chinese model hot Gukja.

Even Vietnam used Chinese characters, called Chu Hán, and own developments on the Chinese model ( chu nom ). Later abandoned after the end of French colonial rule on the Chinese writing; here it was replaced by a variety of diacritics added to the Roman script. See also: Vietnamese language.

Variants and standardization

Due to the long history of Chinese characters, numerous variants have (Chinese异体 字/异体 字, Pinyin yìtǐzì, Japanese异体 字itaiji ) developed. These are often due to handwritten variants or copyists in calligraphy. In some cases, these variants have been recognized as an official form.

Conventional spellings (Chinese正字, Pinyin zhèngzì, Japanese seiji ) correspond to the characters in the Kangxi Dictionary. The contrast, ordinary characters (Chinese俗字, Pinyin Suzi, Japanese zokuji ).

Particularly in the 20th century, a standardization was carried out in many cases. This differs depending on the region, and in some cases, different variants have been established as the standard. Along with these lists is often a simplification takes place (simplified characters in China and Shinjitai in Japan).

The following lists are officially used in the different regions:

• Japan: Jōyō Kanji
• Taiwan: Guozi Biaozhun Ziti
• China: Xiandai Hanyu Changyong Zibiao
• Korea: Kangxi Dictionary ( de facto)

The actual use is very different. In Japan and China the fonts actually used are similar to the official form in Taiwan, however, different fonts which are still used.