(Redirected from Chinese writing system)
'Written Chinese' refers to the thousands of symbols or
Chinese characters (
traditional/
simplified Chinese: 漢字/汉字;
pīnyīn: hànzì) used to represent
spoken Chinese, along with rules and conventions about how they are arranged and punctuated. Many characters have been definitively traced back to the
商 Shāng Dynasty about 1500
BCE, though the process of creating characters likely began some centuries earlier.
[ Over the millennia, the forms of these characters have evolved into well-developed traditions for Chinese calligraphy.]
When Chinese characters were standardized under the 秦 Qín dynasty (221–206 BCE) [, the spoken language was fairly uniform. Since then, however, it has diverged into numerous dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible. The characters, which have remained comparatively constant over that time, have thus served as a way for Chinese speakers in disparate dialect groups to communicate in writing. Educated Chinese know roughly 4,000 characters.][ Some Chinese characters have also been adopted as part of the writing system in some other East Asian languages, such as Japanese and Korean.]
Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Instead, they are built up from simpler parts representing objects or abstract notions [, although most characters do contain some indication of their pronunciation.][ Nonetheless, the great number of Chinese characters has given rise to the adoption of Western alphabets as an alternative for representing Chinese.]
The role of Chinese characters
Written Chinese developed as a way of representing spoken Chinese, rather than the other way around. In the early stages of written Chinese, spoken Chinese was a monosyllabic language. That is, Chinese words representing independent concepts (objects, actions, relations, and so forth) were generally each one syllable in spoken Chinese.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
Since then, the Chinese language has diversified into many dialects; furthermore, these dialects have become more or less polysyllabic, so that many—often most—independent concepts are expressed with more than one syllable; the old syllables, in many cases, no longer stand on their own, in the same way that ''pre-'' "earlier" cannot typically be used on its own as an English word.[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ] However, since the meanings of the modern Chinese words can be analyzed in terms of the old Chinese syllables that constitute them, written Chinese has been continuously used to represent individual Chinese syllables. Each of these syllables represents a morpheme, or semantic unit, so written Chinese is generally (though not universally) considered to be logographic; at least one scholar considers it essentially a large, inefficient phonetic script.[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ]
Chinese dialects vary not only by pronunciation, but to a lesser degree also vocabulary and syntax. For this reason, many scholars eschew the word "dialect" in favor of more neutral terms such as "regionalect".[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ] Since these terms are usually familiar only to specialists, this article will use the somewhat contentious but more familiar term "dialect".
Because dialects differ in their vocabulary and syntax, a single written Chinese standard cannot represent all dialects equally well. Modern written Chinese, which became the written standard as an indirect result of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, is not, strictly speaking, bound to any single dialect; however, it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin, by far the most widespread Chinese dialect in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ] Nonetheless, this version of written Chinese is usually given the non-denominational name of Vernacular Chinese, or 白話/白话 báihuà (literally, "clear tongue").[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
Prior to the development of Vernacular Chinese, the prevailing written standard denoted a vocabulary and syntax rooted in Chinese as spoken around the time of Confucius (about 500 BCE), called Classical Chinese, or 文言 wényán. Over the centuries, Classical Chinese gradually acquired features from various dialects. However, this accretion was generally slow and minor, so that just before it was supplanted by Vernacular Chinese, Classical Chinese was distinctly different from any contemporary dialect.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
Classical Chinese retained much of the vocabulary and syntax of the two-millennia-old version of spoken Chinese it was derived from, so it had to be taught separately from ones native dialect. Once learned, however, it served as a viable common medium for communication between people speaking different dialects—dialects that often came to be mutually unintelligible by the end of the first millennium CE.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ] A Mandarin speaker might say yī, a Cantonese yat, and a Hokkienese tsit, but all three will understand the character 一 "one".[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ] Despite its ties to the dominant Mandarin dialect, Vernacular Chinese serves the same function to a degree, limited by the fact that Vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic in many of the non-Mandarin dialects. This role may not differ substantially from the role of other lingua francas such as Latin: For those trained in written Chinese, it serves as a common medium; for those untrained in it, the graphic nature of the characters is in general no aid to common understanding (characters such as "one" notwithstanding).[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ]
The variation in vocabulary among dialects has also led to the informal use of "dialectal characters", as well as standard characters that are nevertheless considered archaic by today's standards. Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a written colloquial standard, used in Hong Kong and overseas, with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this dialect.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ] Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use standard written Chinese.[ Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations, Wan Shun Eva Lam, , , Learning, Language, and Technology, 2004 ]
Chinese characters in other languages
Main articles: Kanji, Hanja
Chinese characters were first introduced into Japanese sometime in the first half of the first millennium CE, probably from Chinese products imported into Japan.[[1] Simon Ager (2007). "Japanese (Nihongo)". Omniglot. Retrieved 2007-09-05.] At the time, Japanese had no native written system, and the characters were used for the most part to represent Japanese words with the corresponding meanings, rather than similar pronunciations. A notable exception to this rule was the system of manyogana, which used a small set of Chinese characters to help indicate pronunciation. The manyogana later developed into the phonetic alphabets, hiragana and katakana.[ ]
The Chinese characters imported into Japanese were called hànzì, after the 漢/汉 Hàn Dynasty of China; in Japanese, this was pronounced kanji. In modern written Japanese, kanji are used for nouns, verb stems, and adjective stems, while the hiragana are used for prefixes and suffixes. The katakana are used exclusively for sound symbols, and for loans from other languages. In all, the Jōyō Kanji, a list of kanji for common use standardized by the Japanese government, contains 1,945 characters—about half the number of characters commanded by literate Chinese.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ]
The role of Chinese characters in Korean, by contrast, is much more limited today. At one time, many Chinese characters (called hanja, a term cognate to both hànzì and kanji) were introduced into Korean for their meaning, just as in Japanese.[ However, today, written Korean relies almost exclusively on the phonetic Hangul script, in which each syllable is written with two or three phonetic symbols that combine to form a single character.][ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
The structure of Chinese characters
Written Chinese is unusual in being the only major modern-day writing system not based predominantly on an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Instead, Chinese characters are glyphs whose parts may depict objects or represent abstract notions. These parts may occasionally stand alone as independent characters; far more typically, they are combined, using a variety of different principles, to form more complex characters. The most popularly known exposition of Chinese character composition is the 說文解字/说文解字 Shuōwén Jiězì, compiled by 許慎/许慎 Xǚ Shèn around 120 CE. Since Xǚ Shèn did not have access to Chinese characters in their earliest forms, his analysis, based as it is on somewhat later forms, cannot be taken as authoritative.[ ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, Axel Schuessler, , , University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, ] Nonetheless, no later work has supplanted the Shuōwén Jiězì in terms of breadth, so it remains the most accessible source for non-specialists, via its various redactions.[ Chinese Characters, L Wieger, , , Paragon Book Reprint Corp and Dover Publications, Inc (1965 reprint), 1915, ]
According to the Shuōwén Jiězì, Chinese characters are developed on six basic principles.[ Chinese Characters, L Wieger, , , Paragon Book Reprint Corp and Dover Publications, Inc (1965 reprint), 1915, ] (These principles, though popularized by the Shuōwén Jiězì, must have been developed earlier; the oldest known mention of them is in the 周禮/周礼 Zhōulǐ—literally, "Rites of Zhou"—a text from about 150 BCE.) The first two principles produce simple characters, known as 文 wén:
- 像形 xiàngxíng: Pictographs, in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes. Examples: 人 rén "person", 日 rì "sun", 木 mù "tree/wood".
- 指事 zhǐshì: Indicatives, or ideographs, in which the character represents an abstract notion. Examples: 上 shàng "up", 下 xià "down", 三 sān "three".
The remaining four principles produce complex characters historically called 字 zì (although this term is now generally used to refer to all characters, whether simple or complex). Of these four, two construct characters from simpler parts:
- 會意/会意 huìyì: Logical aggregates, in which two or more parts are used for their meaning. This yields a composite meaning, which is then applied to the new character. Example: 東/东 dōng "east", which represents a sun rising in the trees.
- 形聲/形声 xíngshēng: Phonetic complexes, in which one part indicates the general semantic category of the character (such as water-related or eye-related), and the other part is another character, used exclusively (in most cases) for its phonetic value. Example: 晴 qíng "clear/fair (weather)", which is composed of 日 rì "sun", and 青 qīng "blue/green", which is used solely for its pronunciation.
In contrast to the popular conception of Chinese as a primarily pictographic or ideographic language, by far the vast majority of Chinese characters (about 95 percent of the characters in the Shuōwén Jiězì) are constructed as either logical aggregates or, more often, phonetic complexes.[ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ] In fact, some modern phonetic complexes were originally simple pictographs that were later augmented by the addition of a semantic root. An example of this is 炷 zhù "candle", which was originally a pictograph 主, a character that is now pronounced zhǔ and means "host". The character 火 huǒ "fire" was added to indicate that the meaning is fire-related.[ Chinese Characters, L Wieger, , , Paragon Book Reprint Corp and Dover Publications, Inc (1965 reprint), 1915, ]
The last two principles do not produce new written forms; instead, they transfer new meanings to existing forms:
- 轉注/转注 zhuǎnzhù: Transference, in which a character, often with a simple, concrete meaning takes on an extended, more abstract meaning. Example: 網/网 wǎng "net", which was originally a pictograph depicting a fishing net. Over time, it has taken on an extended meaning, covering any kind of lattice. Today, in fact, it can be used to refer to a computer network; the word 網上/网上 wǎngshàng means "on the Internet".
- 假借 jiǎjiè: False borrowing, in which a character is used, either intentionally or accidentally, for some entirely different purpose. Example: 哥 gē "older brother", which is written with a character originally meaning "song/sing", now written 歌 gē. At one point, there was no character for "older brother", so an otherwise unrelated character with the right pronunciation was borrowed for the purpose.
Chinese characters are generally written to fit into a square (except for simple characters such as 一 yī "one" for which this is not possible), even when they are composed of two simpler forms written side by side or top to bottom. In such cases, each form is compressed appropriately so that the entire character continues to fit into a square.
Chinese written forms
Main articles: Chinese calligraphy
Although most Chinese characters have a canonical form, there is nonetheless considerable variation in how they are written or printed on a page, a variation that goes beyond the familiar notion of typeface or font for alphabetic languages. Today, there are five recognized written traditions for Chinese writing style.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ] These five categories are not sharply delineated, so that one may write Chinese that is, for example, halfway between two styles:
# 篆書/篆书 zhuànshū: Seal script, which represents the oldest forms of Chinese characters surviving to 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.
# 隸書/隶书 lìshū: Clerical script, which was developed during the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE). Like seal script, clerical script is in limited use (often in restaurant menus) and has a distinctively antiquated appearance.
# 行書/行书 xíngshū: Running script, a semi-cursive form, in which the character parts begin to run into each other, although the characters themselves generally remain separate. There are many conventions in which some characters deviate from their canonical forms in a consistent manner.
# 草書/草书 cǎoshū: Grass script, a fully cursive form, in which the characters are often entirely unrecognizable by their canonical forms. Grass script gives the impression of anarchy in its appearance, and there is indeed considerable freedom on the part of the calligrapher, but this freedom is circumscribed by conventional "abbreviations" in the forms of the characters.
# 楷書/楷书 kǎishū: Regular script, a non-cursive form, in which each stroke of each character is clearly drawn out from the others. Even though both the running and grass scripts appear to be derived as semi-cursive and cursive variants of regular script, it is in fact the regular script that was the last to develop.
 200x200px |  150x200px |  150x200px |  150x200px |  150x200px |
| Seal | Clerical | Running | Grass | Regular |
Regular script, as its name suggests, is considered the archetype for 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.[ Reading and Writing Chinese, William McNaughton and Li Ying, , , Tuttle Publishing, 1999, ] (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 木 mù "wood" cannot be written in just any fashion. Instead, the horizontal stroke must be written first, from left to right; next, the vertical stroke, from top to bottom, with a small hook toward the upper left at the end; next, the left diagonal stroke, from top to bottom; and lastly the right diagonal stroke, from top to bottom.
Earlier forms
The seal script, though the earliest surviving form of Chinese writing, does not represent the embryonic stage of Chinese writing. The first indisputable evidence of Chinese writing, dating back to the Shāng Dynasty in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, comes to us in the form of so-called oracle bones (primarily ox scapulae and turtle shells), used for divination. Characters were inscribed on the bones in order to frame a query; the bones were then heated over a fire, and the resulting cracks were interpreted to determine the answer to the query. Such characters are called 甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén "shell-bone script" or oracle bone script.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
After the Shāng Dynasty, Chinese writing modified somewhat into the form found on bronzeware made during the Western 周 Zhōu Dynasty (c 1066–770 BCE) and the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE), a kind of writing called 金文 jīnwén "metal script". Jīnwén shows a gradual mutation from the embellished script of the oracle bone script toward a more regular and angular shape. Later, in the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE), the script became still more regular, and settled on a form called 六國文字/六国文字 liùguó wénzì "script of the six states" that would later find its way as Xǔ Shèn's source material in the Shuōwén Jiězì. These characters were later embellished and stylized to yield the seal script characters, which in turn begat the various other styles described above.
Hénán province in central China
In 2003, tentative evidence was found at 賈湖/贾湖 Jiǎhú, an archaeological site in the 河南 Hénán province of China, for a still earlier form of Chinese writing. Some symbols were found that bear striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as 目 mù "eye". Since the Jiǎhú site dates from about 7000 to 5800 BCE, it predates the earliest confirmed Chinese writing by well over 3,000 years. The nature of this finding—in particular, whether it represents true writing (that is, a general mechanism for expression) or simply proto-writing (which comprises a limited set of symbols)—is still disputed. Critics contend that if the Jiǎhú finding really represented a direct ancestor of modern Chinese writing, it would indicate that Chinese writing remained relatively static for three millennia, at a time when China was sparsely populated.[[2] Paul Rincon (2003). "'Earliest Writing' Found in China". BBC. Retrieved 2007-09-05.]
Simplified and traditional Chinese
Main articles: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
In the 20th century, written Chinese divided into two canonical forms, called 簡體字/简体字 jiǎntǐzì (simplified Chinese) and 繁體字/繁体字 fántǐzì (traditional Chinese). Simplified Chinese was developed in the People's Republic of China (mainland China) in order to make the characters faster to write (especially as some characters had as many as a few dozen strokes) and also easier to memorize. The People's Republic of China has claimed that both goals have been achieved, but some external observers disagree. Little systematic study has been conducted on how simplified Chinese has affected the way Chinese people gain literacy; the only studies conducted before it was standardized in mainland China seem to have been statistical ones regarding how many strokes were saved on average in samples of running text.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ]
Traditional and simplified Chinese versions of the Chinese word
hànzì.
The simplified forms have been criticized for being inconsistent. For instance, traditional 讓 ràng "allow" is simplified to 让, in which the phonetic on the right side is reduced from 17 strokes to just three. (The speech radical on the left has also been simplified.) However, the same phonetic is used in its full form, even in the simplified script, in such characters as 壤 rǎng "soil" and 齉 nàng "snuffle"; these forms remained uncontracted because they were relatively uncommon and would therefore represent a negligible stroke reduction.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ] On the other hand, some simplified forms are simply calligraphic abbreviations of long standing, as for example 万 wàn "ten thousand", for which the traditional Chinese form is 萬.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ]
Simplified Chinese is standard in the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese is retained in Hong Kong, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Macau.[ ] Throughout this article, Chinese text is given in both simplified and traditional forms when they differ, with the traditional forms being given first.
Layout of written Chinese
Chinese characters conform to a roughly square frame and are not usually linked to one another, so they can conceivably be written in any direction in a square grid. Traditionally, Chinese is written in vertical columns from top to bottom; the first column is on the right side of the page, and the text runs toward the left. Text written in Classical Chinese also uses little or no punctuation.[ ] In such cases, sentence and phrase breaks are determined by context, rhythm, and in the instance of famous passages, memory as well.
In modern times, the familiar Western layout of horizontal rows from left to right, read from the top of the page to the bottom, has become more popular, especially in the People's Republic of China, with the rise of Vernacular Chinese. Punctuation has also become more prevalent, whether the text is written in columns or rows. The punctuation marks are clearly influenced by their Western counterparts, although some marks are particular to Chinese: in particular, the quotation marks, the hollow period (which is otherwise used just like an ordinary full stop), and a special kind of comma that is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to clauses in a sentence.
Signs are often a particularly challenging aspect of written Chinese layout, since they can be written either left to right or right to left (the latter can be thought of as the traditional layout with "columns" of height one), as well as from top to bottom. It is not unusual to encounter all three orientations on signs on neighboring stores. However, in 2004, Taiwan mandated a Western, left-to-right layout of Chinese for most texts (excluding arts and literature).[[3] "Taiwan Law Orders One-Way Writing". BBC. Retrieved 2007-09-05.]
Literacy
Because the majority of modern Chinese words are polysyllabic (and therefore multi-character), there are at least two measuring sticks by which Chinese literacy can be measured: the number of characters known, and the number of words (character combinations with specific meanings) known. John DeFrancis, in the introduction to his ''Advanced Chinese Reader'', suggests that a typical Chinese college graduate recognizes perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words.[ Advanced Chinese Reader, John DeFrancis, , , The Murray Printing Co, 1968, ] Jerry Norman, in ''Chinese'', places the number of characters somewhat lower, at 3,000 to 4,000.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ]
These counts are complicated by the tangled development of Chinese characters. In some cases, two or more characters, etymologically distinct, merged into a single one, much as English "set" represents two distinct roots: one akin to "sit" (leading to phrases such as "set down") and another akin to "sect" (as in "divide into sets"). Thus, we have 行 xíng "walk", which is also used for háng "row (line)/strong". In other cases, a single character came to be written in multiple ways, as with English "color/colour". This latter development was stemmed to some degree during the Qín dynasty, when 李斯 Lǐ Sī promulgated the seal script as the standard throughout the newly unified Chinese empire [ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ], but soon started again: Although the Shuōwén Jiězì lists 10,516 characters—9,353 of them unique (some of which may already have been out of use by the time it was compiled) plus 1,163 graphic variants—the 集韻/集韵 Jíyùn of the Northern 宋 Sòng Dynasty, compiled in 1039, contains no fewer than 53,525 characters, most of them graphic variants.[ Chinese, Jerry Norman, , , Cambridge University Press, 1988, ] Examples of this phenomenon remain in common use to this day, as for instance 雞/鸡 jī "rooster", whose right side can also be written as 鳥/鸟 niǎo (in fact, the simplified character is already written that way). The two alternative right halves are different characters for "bird".
Chinese dictionaries
Main articles: Chinese dictionary
As Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary, a Chinese dictionary cannot be straightforwardly lexically ordered as English dictionaries are, for instance. The task of arranging Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to a considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters.
A common, traditional mechanism is the method of radicals, which uses a set of character roots. These roots, or radicals, generally but imperfectly align with the parts used to compose characters by means of logical aggregation and phonetic complex. A canonical set of 214 radicals was developed during the rule of the 康熙 Kāngxī emperor (around the year 1700), and hence is sometimes termed the Kāngxī radicals. The radicals are ordered first by stroke count (that is, the number of strokes required to write the radical); within a given stroke count, the radicals also have a prescribed order.[ Chinese Characters, L Wieger, , , Paragon Book Reprint Corp and Dover Publications, Inc (1965 reprint), 1915, ]
Every Chinese character is designated to fall under the heading of exactly one of these 214 radicals. In many cases, the radicals are themselves characters, which naturally come first under their own heading. All other characters under a given radical are ordered by the stroke count of the character. Usually, however, even this level of division leads to numerous characters with a given stroke count under a given radical. At this point, characters are not given in any recognizable order; the user must locate the character by going through all the characters with that stroke count, typically listed for convenience at the top of the page on which they occur.
The advantage of this method is that one need not know how to pronounce a character before looking it up; the entry, once located, usually gives the pronunciation. A disadvantage is that which of the various roots of a character is the proper radical is not always immediately obvious. Accordingly, dictionaries often include a list of hard to locate characters, indexed by total stroke count, near the beginning of the dictionary.
Other methods of organization exist, often in an attempt to address the shortcomings of the radical method, but are less common. An exhaustive list is not possible; however, a selection follows:
★ By pronunciation: Characters are listed in lexical order by pronunciation, expressed typically in either 漢語拼音/汉语拼音 hànyǔ pīnyīn or 注音符號/注音符号 zhùyīn fúhào. It is common for a dictionary ordered principally by the Kāngxī radicals to have an auxiliary index by pronunciation; this index points to the page in the main dictionary where the desired character can be found.
★ The four-corner method: This method takes advantage of the fact that most characters fit into a roughly square shape. Characters are indexed according to the kinds of strokes located nearest the four corners (hence the name of the method). One does not need to know which part of the character constitutes the radical in order to use this method.
★ The 倉頡/仓颉 Cāngjié method: Characters are built up using a set of 24 basic components, which map more or less conveniently to the letters on a keyboard (this method was originally developed to aid computer input). The advantage of this method is that the entire character is used, so that again, one does not need to identify the proper radical; in fact, one may denote wholly fictitious characters using the Cāngjié method. However, many of the 24 character components have variant forms, and these must be memorized in order to use Cāngjié effectively.
Transliteration and romanization
Main articles: Pinyin, Zhuyin, Wade-Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Chinese characters do not unambiguously indicate their pronunciation, even for any single dialect. There is therefore considerable appeal in transliterating a dialect of Chinese so that it may be read by those who are not literate in either the traditional or simplified scripts. In the modern world, the overwhelming dominant candidate for such transliteration is Mandarin, as roughly two-thirds of the Chinese population speaks some variety of Mandarin. (There exist variations throughout the Mandarin dialect region of China, but these variations do not generally impact mutual intelligibility.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ])
Transliteration was not always considered simply a way to record the sounds of any particular dialect of Chinese; it was once also considered a potential replacement to the millennia-old script. Such feeling was first prominently voiced during the May Fourth Movement, and it gained further support with the victory of the Communists in 1949. Immediately afterward, the mainland government began two parallel programs relating to written Chinese. One was the development of an alphabetic script, and one was the simplification of the traditional characters—a process that would eventually lead to simplified Chinese. The latter was not viewed as an impediment to the former; rather, it would ease the transition toward the exclusive use of an alphabetic (or at least phonetic) script.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ]
By 1958, however, priority was given officially to simplified Chinese; a phonetic script, called pīnyīn, had been developed, but its deployment to the exclusion of simplified characters was pushed off to some distant future date. The tight binding between Mandarin and pīnyīn (in full, hànyǔ pīnyīn to distinguish it from other pīnyīn systems, but abbreviated to just pīnyīn hereafter), even more pronounced than with Vernacular Chinese, may have contributed to this deferment.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ] It seems unlikely that pīnyīn will supplant Chinese characters anytime soon as the ''sole'' means of representing Chinese.[ The Languages of China, S Robert Ramsey, , , Princeton University Press, 1987, ]
Pīnyīn uses the Latin alphabet, along with a few diacritical marks, to represent the sounds of Mandarin in standard pronunciation. For the most part, pinyin uses vowel letters in much the same way they are used in Romance languages (and also in IPA). Most pinyin consonant letters are similar to English; however, where 'b' and 'p', for instance, represent the voice/unvoiced distinction in English, they represent the unaspirated/aspirated distinction in Mandarin; Mandarin largely lacks voiced consonants.[ Pīnyīn also uses some letters or digraphs, such as 'q', 'x', and 'zh', that do not correspond to spellings in other languages that are written in the Latin alphabet. It is not the sole transliteration scheme for Mandarin—for instance, there is the zhùyīn fúhào system that was developed in 1913 and influenced pīnyīn to some extent, and Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh are other Romanizations—but it is dominant in the Chinese-speaking world.][ The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis, , , University of Hawaii Press, 1986, ] All transliterations in this article use the pīnyīn system.
References
External links
★ Zhongwen.com Chinese characters and culture
★ blabi.com Searchable database of characters and radicals, with stroke-order animations and phonetic representations
★ Yue E Li and Christopher Upward. "Review of the process of reform in the simplification of Chinese Characters". (Journal of Simplified Spelling Society, 1992/2 pp14-16, later designated J13)
★ Pinyin Annotator Add pinyin on ''top'' of any Chinese text. Mouse over any word to see English translation. Save output to OpenOffice Writer format. Prints nicely. Also adds pinyin to any Chinese web page.
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