The number of Chinese characters has increased with the passing of time. The oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin dynasty totaled some 3,000. In the Ts'ang Chien P'ien of Han times, one of the earliest Chinese dictionaries, there were 3,300 characters. This dictionary was a combination of three works - Ts'ang Chieh by Prime Minister Li Szu of Ch'in, Yuan Li by Chief Imperial Charioteer Chao Kao and Po Hsueh by Historiographer Hu-Mu Ching ("Hu-Mu" is a double- character family name, and is similar to "MacMillan" or "O'Hara" of the West). Ch'ueh-li Shu-shih, the compiler, divided the collection into 55 chapter of 60 characters each. The number of characters was increased to 9,353 in Hsu Sheng's Shuo-wen Chieh-tzu and to 31,319 in the Lui P'ien compiled by Wang Chu and Hu Su in 1066 during Sung times.
Until the 16th century, there was no real system of classifying the characters. In his Tzu Hui published in 1615 toward the end of the Ming dynasty, Mei Ying-tsu classified 33,179 characters into 214 radical entries. Each entry had from one to 17 radical components. For example, the character 丁 (male adult) was entered under the radical 一 (one), a one-stroke horizontal line; 好 (good) 女 (woman), a three-stroke left-hand component; 竿 (pole) under 竹 (bamboo), a six-stroke superincumbent component; and 頂 (top) under 頁 (head), a nine-stroke right-hand component. Most Chinese dictionaries of later times, including those published in Japan and other countries, have followed the radical entry system of the Tzu Hui.
The K'ang-hsi Tzu-tien, Chinese equivalent of Dr. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1716 in 42 volumes and contained 49,030 characters, of which 1,995 were classified as obsolete. Lexicography was undertaken by 30 scholars under the auspices of K'ang Hsi, second emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty, beginning in 1710. This is the largest dictionary ever published in China and is still used by scholars of the classics.
Another work worth mentioning is the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, or Great Chinese-Japanese Dictionary, compiled by Morobashi Tetsuji, a Japanese Sinologist. Morobashi devoted 30 years to the project and published the last of the 13 volumes in 1960. This dictionary contains 48,902 characters. Because the work also includes biographical sketches of famous persons and explanations of the names of places, books and official titles, a Chinese scholar has suggested that the dictionary should be called an "Encyclopedia of Chinese Culture".
Increases in the number of characters reflect the cultural changes of the times. For example, new characters created in the Han dynasty were used to identify the fu, prose poetry, and those in the Six Dynasties (222-589) to elaborate the p'ien-t'i wen, a euphemistic antithetical writing in four-and six-syllable phrases. During the Tang period (618-907), characters were added for the composition of poems and the translation of the Buddhist Sutras. From the Sung (960-1280) and onward, new terms were needed for the writing of the ts'u, poems for singing, and ch'u, dramatic verses, and novels. Since Ch'ing times, most additions have been to facilitate the translation of Western scientific terminology. Because the Chinese have created so many characters, the Japanese often call China, both admiringly and sarcastically, moji-no kuni - a country of characters.
Because the written Chinese language abounds in characters, it is often supposed that a knowledge of many thousands is necessary in order to read the classics. To the contrary, most books written in ancient China contained fewer than 3,000 characters. There are two principal reasons for this. First, the number of characters was limited in olden times. A writer often gave a character several meanings to serve his purposes. Variants and simplified forms did not exist. Nor did many characters frequently used in modern writing, such as 妳 ("you" for female), 她 (she), 們 (a character suffixed to a singular pronoun to form the plural number, as 她們 for "elles" in French), 腺 (gland), 噸 (ton) and 颱 (typhoon). Second, as in other languages, classical writing was terser than the modern form in sentence structure. For example, the archaic English expression "He knows not" is terser than the modern "He does not know". The Chinese equivalents are " 彼不知 " in classical style and "他不知道" in modern form. For further comparison, passages are taken from the Lun Yu, the Analects of Confucius, Meng Tzu, the Works of Mencius, and Sun Tzu, the Art of War of Sun Tzu, in the following:
Lun Yu: "Is it not delightful to have friends from afar?"
Classical Chinese: 有朋自遠方來不亦樂乎。
Modern Chinese: 有朋友從遙遠的地方來，不覺得很開心嗎?
Meng Tzu: "There are three things which arc unfilial, and the greatest of them is to have no posterity."
Classical Chinese: 不孝有三無後為大。
Modern Chinese: 不孝順有三種，其中最大的是沒有後裔。
Sun Tzu: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
Classical Chinese: 知彼知己百戰不殆。
Modern Chinese: 假如你對於對方和自己的情況知道得很清楚,你打了一百次的仗也不會有危險的。
The classical versus modern word ratio is 10 to 17 in the first example, 8 to 16 in the second and 8 to 37 in the third. Classical Chinese had no punctuation marks and subject as well as auxiliary particles were often omitted. For example, the eight words in the Sun Tzu example literally mean "know him know oneself hundred battles no danger". Because of the economy of wordage, most Chinese cables are dispatched in the classical language.
The following table shows the number of characters used in some of China's most famous classics:
Book Wordage Characters Used
Book of Odes 39,234 2,939
Book of History 25,700 1,938
Book of Changes 24,107 1,595
Book of Rites 99,010 2,367
Analects of Confucius 11,705 1,512
Works of Mencius 34,685 1,959
Works of Lao Tzu 5,302 1,072
In most of the large Chinese-Japanese dictionaries published in Japan before 1946, there are some 140 characters marked with kokuji, or "national characters", meaning that they are of Japanese origin. These are also called Wasei Kanji, or "Japanese-made Han characters". Of the 140, more than 20 per cent is related to the names of fish, 14 per cent to trees and 7 per cent to birds. Characters indigenous to continental China could not meet all the needs of insular Japan. Modern lexicographers note that some Wasei Kanji are duplicated by characters invented in China. In importing the Chinese characters, the Confucian scholars and Buddhist monks of Japan did not always have a clear understanding of nomenclature. Japan's fishermen, horticulturalists and ornithologists had to write about their own environment without knowledge that China had the same fish, trees and birds.
The first dictionary to contain Wasei Kanji was the 12-volume Shinsen Jikyo, or "New Compilation of Characters", completed in 892 by Shoju, a Buddhist monk. In an appendix, Shoju collected some 400 characters that were unknown in China. Most of them are believed to have been created in Japan during the early years of the Heian period (781-1185). Among them are such still widely used characters as 榊 (sakaki, "sacred tree" for sacrifices at the Shinto shrine) and 鯰(namazu, sheatfish). During the Edo era that lasted from 1605 until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a sizable number of Wasei Kanji was created. Interestingly, many of them were related to the life of samurai. Typical were (kamishimo, a ceremonial dress worn by samurai), (shitsuke, breeding or discipline), 峠(toge, mountain pass) and 辻(tsuji, crossroads). In samurai tales, many battles took place in a mountain pass or at crossroads. When Western science was introduced in a large scale after the Meiji Restoration, scholars coined 糎(cenchimeitoru) for the French term "centimetre", 瓩 (kiroguramu) for "kilogramme" and 腺 (sen) for the English "gland". The character 鰉 denotes "sturgeon" in China. Since the Meiji era, that character with the right-hand radical of 皇(emperor) has been borrowed to denote the higai, a kind of eel indigenous to Lake Biwa near Kyoto, because the fish was a favorite of the Emperor Meiji and did not have a name in the Han characters.
In the written language reform of 1946, only three of the 140 Wasei Kanji - 働(hataraki, work), 峠 (toge, mountain pass) and 畑 (hatake, dry field) 腺 were recognized for daily use. Another character, 磨 (maro, used only in masculine given names), was added in 1950.
Most of the Wasei Kanji were created according to the principle of hui i, or "compound ideogram". Typical examples are given below:
俥 (kuruma, ricksha) = イ (man)+ 車 (cart)
働 (hataraki, work) = イ (man) + 動 (move)
榊 (sakaki, sacred tree) = 木 (tree)+ 神(god)
畑 (hatake, dry field) = 火 (fire)+ 田 (field)
腺 (sen, gland)= 月 (月=肉, flesh)+:泉(fountain)
瓩 (kiroguramu, kilogramme) = 瓦(ga, transliteration of the French "gramme") +千 (a thousand)
( )(kamishimo, a ceremonial dress worn by samurai) = 衣 (clothes) + 上 (up, =upper garment) + 下 (down, = kilts)
鰯 (iwashi, sardine) = 魚 (fish)+ 弱 (weak)
Since the early 19th century, when the Middle Kingdom was visited by an increasing number of Western merchants and missionaries, the Chinese have created some 200 new characters to meet the needs of the times. Of these, more than four-fifths is related to science terminology or to weights and measures. Others are personal pronouns and proper nouns. In most cases, the new characters are compound ideographs. Some are transliterations of English, French or Latin sounds. Others are translations of meanings. A third category combines transliteration and translation. The most frequently used radicals are 金 (metal) for chemical elements and 口 (mouth) for the Anglo-American system of weights and measures. Here are typical examples:
1. Transliteration of sounds
Aluminum = 鋁 = 金 (metal) + 呂 (the sound lu)
Manganese = 錳 = 金 (metal) + 孟 (meng)
Helium = 氦 = 气 (air) + 亥 (hai)
English Term Inch
Chinese Translation 吋
Chinese Equivalent 寸
(=1.26 in.)
Silicon = 矽 = 石 (stone)+ 夕 (hsi)
Tungsten (wolfram)= 鎢 = 金 (metal) + 烏 (wu)
Pound (currency) 鎊 + 金 (metal)+ 旁 (pang)
Pound (weight) = 鎊 = 石 (stone) + 旁 (pang)
Ton 鐓 = 金 (metal) + 敦 (tun) or 噸 = 口 mouth + 頓 (tun)
Ping-pong = 乒乓 = 乒 (p’ing) + 乓 (p’ang). These two characters came from the same source- 兵 (ping)-, which means a "soldier".
2. Translation of meanings
Bromine = 溴 = 氵 (water) = 臭 (stinking)
Carbon = 碳 = 石 (stone) = 炭 (charcoal)
Platinum (white gold) = 鉑 = 金 (metal) + 白 (white)
Ounce= 啢 = 口 (mouth) + 兩 (tael)
Foot (length) 呎 = 口 (mouth) + 尺 (a measure of length, similar to the English "foot")
Mile 哩 = 口 (mouth) + 里 (a measure of length, similar to the English "mile") Nautical mile 浬 = 氵(water) + 里 (a measure of length)
3. Combination of transliteration and translation
Meter = 粎 = 米 (mi) + 尺 (a measure of length, similar to the English "foot")
Liter = 竔 = 立 (li) + 升 +(a measure of liquid capacity, similar to the English "pint")
Of these examples, 鎊 (pound, for currency), 磅 (pound, for weight) and 哩 (mile) had existed in China before the translations. The original meanings of the three characters, in order, were "to scrape", "the noise of stones crashing" and "a particle suffixed to a dialogue to imply that something remains unsaid". In modern usage, the three characters have virtually lost their original meanings.
Until the late 1920s, most Chinese merchants used the Anglo-American system of weights and measures in international trade because foreign firms then in China were predominantly British and American. English terms of units having equivalents or quasi-equivalents in Chinese were translated into their Chinese counter- parts by adding a mouth (口) radical at the left. Those without equivalents were transliterated. A comparison of the measures of length is given below:
English Term Foot Fathom Mile
Chinese Translation 呎 噚 哩
Chinese Equivalent 尺 尋 里
(= 1.05 ft.) (=8.4 ft.) (=0.36 miles)
No Chinese dictionary provides a pronunciation guide to these four examples of Chinese translation. Most people pronounce them in the ordinary way: 寸 (ts'un), 尺 (ch'ih), 尋 (hsin) and 里 (li). To avoid the confusion of homonyms, some people prefer to prefix (ying, first of the three-character transliteration- 英吉利-for "English" or "England") to each term in both speaking and writing.
English terms without Chinese equivalents, such as "link", "yard", "pole", "chain", "nautical fathom" and "nautical mile", were rendered as or 令克 , (or 令), 依亞 (or 碼), 布耳 (or 桿 ) and 奢因 (or 鎖 ), 海尋 (or潯 ), 海里 (or 浬 ), respectively.
The French metric system of weights and measures was adopted for official use in 1929. Until then, there were no generally accepted Chinese translations of French terms. Take "centimetre" as an example. Some people transliterated it into 生的邁當 (sheng-ti mai-tang), 生的米突 (sheng-ti mi-t’u) or 生的密達 (sheng-ti mi-ta); others borrowed the character newly coined by the Japanese- 糎. In the official translations promulgated by the National Government in 1929, each term was prefixed by the character 公 (kung), meaning "public" or "official". The new term for "centimetre" was 公分 (kung fen). For its abbreviation in one character 粉 , however, the left-hand radical employed : 米 (mi, for the sound of "metre"). The following are the translations and their abbreviations for the linear measure:
French Chinese Abbreviation
Millimetre 公釐 糎
Centimetre 公分 粉
Decemetre 公寸 籿
Metre 公尺 粎
Decametre 公丈 粀
Hectometre 公引 粌
Kilometre 公里 粴
The abbreviations for liquid measure have the left-hand radical of 立 (li, for the sound of "litre") and those for weights 克 (k'e, for "gramme").
Linguistically, each Chinese character constitutes a syllable. Hence the two characters 公尺 (metre) are pronounced in the two syllables of kung ch'ih. When reading the one-character abbreviation - 粎 -, however, most people still pronounce it in the two syllables of kung ch'ih because none of the Chinese dictionaries has a pronunciation guide for the metric system abbreviations. In a practical sense, these abbreviations are familiar only to Chinese lexicographers. Many students of science and engineering do not know of their existence because the abbreviations are rarely used in most publications.
In line with the promotion of writing in the pai hua or spoken language, linguists in the early years of the Republic created these personal pronouns: 妳 (feminine "you"), 她 (she), 牠 (it) and 祂 (God, used only in the Christian Bible). The feminine "you" was coined after the masculine "you" 你 with the left-hand radical イ (=人,"man") replaced by 女 (woman) . In like manner, the three third person pronouns were derived from 他 (he) by changing the left-hand radicals into 女 (woman), 牜(animal) and (god), respectively. All the second person pronouns are read ni and the third person t'a.
Examples of characters coined for other purposes are:
嘜 ma, for shipping "mark".
喲 yo, a particle suffixed to a dialogue to express surprise or excitement.
嗶 pi, suffixed by 嘰 (chi) to form "beige"
啤 pi, suffixed by 酒 (wine) to form "beer".
Of the total of nearly 50,000 Chinese characters, more than 80 per cent has become obsolete or archaic and less than 10,000 characters are still in use. Most Chinese dictionaries published in China since the establishment of the Republic in 1912 contain from 8,000 to 13,500 characters. In most of the Chinese - Japanese dictionaries that have come off the press since the Showa era beginning in 1926, the number ranges between 8,000 and 12,000.
Among Chinese communities the world over, the number of characters used in daily communication will not exceed 5,000. Figures in Japan and Korea are even lower. The Japanese also use the kana syllabaries and the Koreans the hangul alphabet. This hypothesis of 5,000 is based on the number of characters used in textbooks, juvenile writings and various publications and official documents.
In Chinese primary schools, pupils begin to learn the Han characters from the 1st grade. Phonetic symbols of the Mandarin (or Peiping) dialect are also taught, but they are used mainly to help pupils pronounce each character correctly. Spurred by the Latinization of Chinese characters devised by Dragunov of the U.S.S.R. during 1929 and 1931, some linguists advocated that all the Han characters and the phonetic symbols of the Mandarin dialect be abolished. The attempt ended in failure, however, because the Chinese language has too many homonyms.
A study of the number of characters in common use was undertaken for the first time by Ch'en Ho-ch'in in 1921. He collected 554,478 words from juvenile books, children's compositions, newspapers, magazines, popular fiction and other materials and found they were written with only 4,261 characters. The result of the second large-scale survey, made by Wang Wen-hsin, was published in 1930. His sources were children's compositions and grade school Mandarin textbooks. From pupils of 64 schools in the five provinces of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Chekiang, Kiangsu and Hopei, Wang collected 2,687 compositions totaling 207,246 words. The textbooks included 36 volumes of three editions with wordage of 303,941. Wang obtained 2,954 different characters from the compositions and 4,279 from the textbooks. After omitting duplicated characters and using Ch'en's report as a reference, Wang selected 3,799 characters as a vocabulary for primary pupils according to the following scale:
Grade No. of Characters Grade No. of Characters
1 541 2 558
2 654 4 793
3 622 6 631
In 1935, the Ministry of Education promulgated 2,711 characters as a standard vocabulary for junior primary school (1st through 4th grade) pupils. Of the total, 566 characters were for the 1st grade, 644 for the 2nd, 737 for the 3rd and 764 for the 4th. Until recently, all the Mandarin textbooks were compiled within these limits.
Considering that the standard vocabulary was promulgated nearly three decades before and that there had been many political, economic, military and cultural changes, the Ministry of Education initiated in 1963 a study of the characters most frequently used in juvenile reading materials. Under the auspices of the National Institute for Compilation and Translation in Taipei, an ad hoc committee collected 753,940 words from primary and night school textbooks, children's compositions, extracurricular reading materials, newspapers and manuscripts of broadcasting stations. Of primary school textbooks, those on Mandarin and arithmetic were excluded because most characters in Chinese readers came from those promulgated in 1935 and the vocabulary in arithmetic was largely made up of Arabic numerals and unit terms. The wordage of 753,940 included 4,864 characters minus 156 variants. Of the 4,864, 566 were used only once. Interestingly, 37 of the 2,711 characters promulgated in 1935 were not to be found.
According to a 1930 survey, the wordage of the San Min Chu I, known in the West as Dr. Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People", totaled 163,296. The character count was 2,134. A survey made in 1947 showed the Constitution of the Republic of China promulgated in that year was written in 8,292 words with 682 characters.
In Taiwan, most newspapers and large printing louses have foundries to cast character-types for handsetting. The number varies. However, the count for ordinary use is still under 5,000. Take the stocks of two Chinese-language newspapers in Taipei as an example:
Shin Sheng Pao (an organ of the Taiwan Provincial Government)
Types for ordinary use 4,200 characters
Types for editorials, literary
supplements, features
and advertisements 2,000 characters
Total 6,200 characters
Mandarin Daily News (an affiliate of the Mandarin Promotion Committee)
Types for ordinary use 5,000 characters
Types for supplementary use 2,500 characters
Total 7,500 characters
Presumably the number of types used by the Mandarin Daily News should be smaller than that of the Shin Sheng Pao because readers of the former are mostly primary school pupils. The Mandarin Daily News has a larger foundry because it also prints adult magazines and a series of folders entitled Ku-chin Wen-hsuan, an Anthology of Classical and Modern Chinese Writings, for students of secondary and college level.
Another Chinese-language newspaper of Taipei, the United Daily News, uses only 2,376 characters for news stories. This vocabulary is the smallest in the Taiwan printing industry because this newspaper sets type by machine and the number of keys is limited. (Details of Chinese printing will be discussed in a separate article.)
Chinese-and Japanese-language typewriters have no keyboard resembling that for the Roman alphabet. Some 2,000 character-types are arranged according to their radicals in a square case. A pick-up device is moved over the types in any direction. The operator locates the wanted character and positions and actuates the device, which picks up and imprints the character on the paper. The process is slow. Typewriters available in Taiwan have the following number of character-types:
1. Chinese-language typewriter
Most frequently used types 894 characters
Frequently used types 1,352 characters
Rarely used types 4,115 characters
Total 6,361 characters
2. Japanese-language typewriter
Most frequently used types 906 characters
Frequently used types 1,348 characters
Rarely used types 3,030 characters
Total 5,284 characters
In Taiwan, telegrams are dispatched in coded four-digit Arabic numerals, each representing a character. The number of the coded characters, totaling 8,978, is larger than that in ordinary use. In Japan and Korea, telegrams are sent in kana and hangul, respectively.
The number of Chinese characters used in Japan has been decreasing since the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Influenced by the rapid development of Western nations, several leaders of the Restoration movement suggested that Japan substitute the Roman alphabet for the Chinese characters and the kana syllabaries. Others contented themselves with urging a reduction in the number of characters. No concrete measures were taken until 1900. In that year, the Ministry of Education selected 1,200 characters for use in primary schools. In 1922, the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun announced limitation of the number of Chinese characters to 3,580 and the Hochi Shimbun set a limit of 3,609. Since then, there have been several changes, as follows:
Year Sponsor No. of Characters
1923 Ministry of Education 1,962
1925 Asahi Shimbun, Osaka
Mainichi Shimbun 2,490
1931 Ministry of Education 1,858
1936 Kana Syllabary Association 500
1942 Ministry of Education 2,528
1946 Ministry of Education 1,850
In 1948, the Ministry of Education selected 881 out of the 1,850 characters promulgated two years be fore and called kyoiku kanji, literally "educational characters", for teaching in the six years of elementary education. According to guidelines announced in 1958, the kyoiku kanji should be taught according to the following schedule:
Grade No. of Characters Grade No. of Characters
1 46 2 105
3 187 4 205
5 194 6 144
Until the end of World War II, reduction in the number of Chinese characters was not strictly observed except in Japanese primary and secondary schools. All official documents, many personal letters and parts of publications were written in classical Japanese. To simplify writing and minimize the difference between the spoken and written languages, the Cabinet in 1946 decreed that the number of Chinese characters used by government organizations, schools and in publications should be limited to 1,850. This figure included all the characters, totaling 566, used in the Constitution promulgated in 1946.
This drastic measure was opposed by many Sinologists and writers because a considerable number of simplified forms was introduced and it was impossible adequately to understand prewar publications with such a small Chinese vocabulary. In view of the impracticability of the kyoiku kanji, the Japanese Government is considering an increase to 1,000 characters.
In usual present-day publications, the ratio of kana syllabaries to Chinese characters is estimated at 10 to 6. The percentage of the characters used varies in proportion to the level of educational background--the higher the number, the more educated. The following figures show the percentage of Chinese characters in publications of various levels:
Juvenile literature 19.9
Popular fiction 32.6
Literary works 35.8
Junior high school textbooks 30.2
Senior high school textbooks 36.0
General magazines 39.5
Academic theses 45.5
The percentage of Chinese characters in the editorials of the Asahi Shimbun ranges from 15 to 40.
Before Korea's annexation by Japan in 1910, all official documents were written in classical Chinese. Although the hangul alphabet was invented in 1446, it was used mostly by women and those with minimal education. During the 35 years of Japanese rule, the Koreans were discouraged from using either their spoken or written language. In 1945, hangul was adopted as the written language of Korea. The use of Japanese has been prohibited and that of the Chinese characters discouraged. In primary schools, only 600 characters are taught, 200 each for the 4th through 6th grades. Seven hundred more are taught in secondary schools. The number of Chinese characters in practical use is much larger, especially in academic circles. Many historical names and much academic nomenclature are homonymous and lead to confusion when rendered in hangul. In newspapers, the Chinese characters are retained on the political and economic pages. Social news and literary supplements are written mostly in hangul.