Chinese characters are all Greek to most Westerners. Nevertheless, this non-alphabetical system of written communication is used by far more people than any other in the world. Because of the global distribution of the overseas Chinese population, it is also the most widely disseminated. Chinese newspapers are found in the United States as well as throughout Southeast Asia. Those who use the characters to read the various Chinese dialects and other languages include more than 700 million Chinese, 100 million Japanese, and 40 million Koreans. Vietnam formerly used the characters and its classical scholars are still skilled in the Chinese way of writing.
The Japanese and Koreans have their own systems of writing called the kana syllabary and the hangul alphabet. However, many Japanese and Korean words, especially nouns, are written in Chinese. This is because the two phonetic systems of writing, invented long after the importation of the Chinese characters, have been used primarily for the transcription of native sounds.
The Chinese characters also constitute the oldest way of writing a language still in existence. At one time the characters were contemporaneous with such written languages as Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. These long have been "dead languages", whereas the ideographic characters of China have never become obsolete. Many characters inscribed on bamboo and wooden strips thousands of years ago are still meaningful to primary school pupils of today.
The origin of written Chinese is lost in antiquity. According to legend, the first characters were created by Ts'ang Chieh (倉頡), a historiographer of Huang Ti (黃帝), the Yellow Emperor, around 2700 B.C. The origin of Ts'ang Chieh's pictograms is said to have been pa-kua (八卦), or eight trigrams. The trigrams, in turn, are traced to Fu His (伏羲), first of five mythological emperors of China, who based them on the hexagons of tortoise shells about 3000 B.C.
The Chinese system of writing supposedly was taken to Korea in 1122 B.C. when the Shang (商), China's second dynasty of record, was overthrown by King Wu (武王) of the Chou (周) dynasty. In that year, a young noble of the Shang court named Chi-tzu (箕子), Kija in Korean, is said to have refused to serve the new dynasty and to have emigrated to Korea with 5,000 followers.
In 285 A.D., a scholar of Paekche (百濟), Kudara in Japanese, one of the three Korean kingdoms, named Wang In (王仁) , Wa-ni in Japanese, presented 10 copies of the Confucian Analects (論語) and a copy of the Thousand-Character Classic (千字文) to Emperor Ojin (應神) of Japan. These are said to have been the first books known to the Japanese.
Korean Alphabet
The kana syllabary, derived from Chinese characters, was invented by Confucian scholars and Buddhist monks of Japan in the eighth and ninth centuries. The hangul alphabet, originally called hunmin chongum (訓民正音) or onmun (諺文) , was invented by Korean scholars under the auspices of Sejong (世宗) , fourth king of the Yi (李) dynasty. It was promulgated in 1446. Despite the invention of these supplementary ways of writing, books written in Japan and Korea were often wholly in Chinese until well into the 20th century.
In recent years, the Japanese and Korean governments have encouraged use of their own written languages. Nevertheless, the results are not entirely satisfactory because the two languages have many homonyms that are difficult to distinguish by phonetic letters. For example, both 器官 (organ) and 氣管 (windpipe) are pronounced kikan in Japanese and kigwan in Korean. To avoid confusion, a considerable stock of Chinese characters must be used.
Since World War II, English has become an important means of communication among the three peoples. However, its use is largely limited to political, academic, and trade circles. When neither of the parties speaks the language of his companion nor a third language, they commonly converse in written Chinese.
Han Characters
The ideographic characters are called han-tzu in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, and hanja in Korean, all meaning the Han characters (漢字). As a result of lack of knowledge about the Chinese system of writing, many Westerners are of the impression that the characters are incredibly difficult to learn.
In fact, a beginner can master a considerable number of ideographic characters in an hour. For example, each of the cardinal numbers "one", "two", and "three" has a number of horizontal strokes equivalent to its numerical value. Thus they are written 一, 二, and 三. Each stroke runs from left to right, and the compound-stroke characters are written from top to bottom. There is no rigid rule about the length of a stroke. In typography, however, the lower stroke of "two" is always longer than the upper one. For "three", the top stroke is of medium length, the second is short, and the bottom is long.
Examples of other simple characters are 人 (man, standing with two legs apart), 口 (mouth, from the actual shape), 山 (mountain, the three vertical strokes denoting peaks), and 川 (river, flowing streams of water). Because of the pictographic basis, many Chinese characters are more easily memorized than their equivalents in a phonographic system.
Easy to Remember
Of course, not all Chinese characters can be written as easily as the preceding examples. In some extreme cases, the strokes of a character may total 30 or more. However, characters of more than 20 strokes are rarely used. As with other languages, simple forms are more widely used than the complex.
One advantage of the Chinese characters is that once learned, they are not easily forgotten. The "radical" or main stem of each character suggests its meaning. For example, the names of all trees are based on the radical 木 (tree) and those of fishes on 魚 (fish). Hence, 木 + 嬰 (female breast) = 櫻 (cherry) and 魚 + 京 (great) = 鯨 (whale).
Such English scientific terms as "pediatrics", "psychology", and "demography" are not usually known by grade school children. But their Chinese equivalents of 小兒科 (literally, small-child-department), 心理科 (literally, mind-reason-study), and 人口統計 (literally, man-mouth-lineage-calculation) are learned as soon as the child masters the basic characters that make up the more complicated concepts.
The Chinese characters are a combination of pictograms, ideograms, and phonograms. Each character consists of from one to 30 strokes. Regardless of the number of strokes, each character has a squarish appearance and is considered to be a single unit. The strokes are written from left to right and from top to bottom. In most publications, the text is read vertically from top to bottom and the lines from right to left. This difference from the West has a pragmatic origin. In ancient China, the characters were inscribed vertically on bamboo or wooden strips and then joined in scrolls from right to left. Scientific publications are read horizontally from left to right.
Picture Writing
The pictograms are pictures of objects — the human body, animals, vegetables, tools, and so on. For example, "sun", now written 日, and "moon" 月, came from these program:
Ideograms are simple and compound. The simple ideograms are symbolic representations of such abstract concepts as position, motion, and relationship. For example, a dot above a horizontal line originally meant "above" or "up". It is now written 上.
In like manner, the sun just above the horizon 旦 is "dawn". A dot below the horizon is 下 "below" or "down". "Tree" is written 木. When the lower part has a short horizontal line 本, the character means "root", "base" or "foundation".
Use of Radicals
The compound ideograms are composite symbols representing a further concept. For example, if "sun" and "moon" shone together, everything should be bright and clear. Hence the character 明 means "bright", "clear", "understand", and "intelligent". As a radical, "sun" is basic to some 150 characters and "moon" to about 20.
Of more than 40,000 Chinese characters, about 1 per cent has 口 (mouth) as the radical. The combination of "mouth" and 鳥 (bird) —鳴— is the "singing of a bird" or "bird song". When the same radical is connected with 犬 (dog) — 吠—, the meaning is "bark". When a man opens his mouth at somebody's door門 —問—, it means he "asks" for something.
The radical 木 (tree) is found in 300 characters. When the radical is doubled - 林 - the meaning is "grove". If tripled —森— the result is a "forest". Not all radicals can be doubled or tripled. Here are examples:
Single Double Triple
火(fire) 炎(flames) 焱(glow)
水(water) - 淼(ocean)
土(earth) 圭 (fertile land) 垚(high land)
石(stone) 砳(sound produced
by friction of two stone) 磊(a heap of stones)
毛(hair) - 毳(down of birds)
車(cart) - 轟(rumbling of carts)
It supplies the radical for some 200 characters and is probably the most versatile sign in the Chinese thesaurus. Most characters related to femininity have this radical. In addition, it provides the basis for characters describing both good and evil. These are examples:
Elder sister (姉) is woman (女) + market (市), because a market is a place where people come one after another. Hence a woman who has a number of followers is an "elder sister".
Younger sister (妹) is woman (女) + immature (未).
Marry (嫁) is woman (女) + broom (帚)·
Widow (孀) is woman (女) + frost (霜). Surname (姓) is woman (女) + birth (生).
Good (好) is woman (女) + child (子). Wicked (奸) is woman (女) + offend (干).
Jealous (妒) is woman (女) + door (戶). A woman peeping at the door is presumably "jealous".
Fascinating (媚) is woman (女) + eyebrow (眉).
The character for male (男) is a combination of field (田) and strength (力).
Homonym Problems
The phonograms are compound characters in which the most important radical represents a sound. For example, both 晴 and 清 are pronounced ch'ing in Chinese, set in Japanese, and chong in Korean after the right-hand radical 青 (blue). But their meanings are different:
晴: sun + blue = (weather is) fine
清: water + blue = (water is) clear
The first part of the character distinguishes one from the other. The following characters bearing the radical Ware pronounced the same but the meanings are indicated by the other radicals:
Ch'ing in Chinese: 凊 (cool), 情 (affection), 請 (request), 鯖 (mackerel), 蜻 (dragon-fly) .
Sei in Japanese: 請 (request), 蜻 (dragon-fly), 倩 (pretty), 菁 (flower of the leek), 靖 (pacify), 精 (essence), 靜 (quiet).
Chong in Korean: 情 (affection), 請 (request), 精 (essence), 靜 (quiet).
About four-fifths of Chinese characters are formed on this principle.
In the phonetic writing systems of the West, the beginner may be confused by the spelling of such homonyms as "two", "to", and "too", "son" and "sun", and "wait" and "weight" in English, or "et" and "est", "faire" and "fer", and "pêne" and "peine" in French. This difficulty does not exist in Chinese writing. Again take 晴 (fine) and 清 (clear) as an example. The characters are not confused, because the reader will think of the "sun" in relation to weather and of "water" when he talks about a river.
Chinese characters are not inflected. Except for some variants which are used mainly for simplified, easier writing (as "tonite" for "tonight" and "thru" for "through" in English), the form of characters is never changed. For instance, the character 人 may mean either "man" or "men" depending upon the context. Hence "a man" is written 一人 and "two men" 二人. In science publications, Arabic numerals are used.
Writing of Dates
The writing of ordinal numbers in Chinese is easier than in English. Any cardinal number can be changed into an ordinal by merely prefixing 第 (sequence, ti in Chinese, dai in Japanese, and che in Korean). Thus, the first three ordinal numbers are written 第一, 第二, and 第三. This is similar to the French system of suffixing 'ième" for each ordinal number, and is simpler than changing from "one", "two", "three" to "first", "second", and "third" in English.
Dates are written in the same sequence — year, month, day — in China, Japan, and Korea. For example, "January 23, 1967" is written as 1967 年 1 月 23 日 . Because there are no specific Chinese words corresponding to "January", "February", etc., they are written 1 月, 2 月, meaning the first and second months. The character 第 (sequence) is not used in dating.
Conjugation of verbs differs in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. However, the verb-root alone is sufficient for understanding. For example, 來 (lai in Chinese, rai in Japanese, and rae in Korean) means "come". In Chinese, lai may mean "come", "came" or "shall come" depending upon the context. In Japanese and Korean, there are several colloquial ways to express "come". Nevertheless, 來 and most other verb-roots are familiar to the educated person of Japan and Korea.
The number of Chinese characters has increased with the passing of time. The chiaku wen (甲骨文) of the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.) discovered in An-yang county in Honan province in 1899 and known as the "oracle bone inscription" in the West, contained some 2,000 characters. The Shuo-wen chieh-tzu (說文解字), Explanation of Writing and Analysis of Words, an etymological work by Hsu Shen (30-124 A.D.), listed 9,353 characters under 540 radicals. In the K'ang-hsi tzu-tien (康熙字典) , the Chinese equivalent of Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary and compiled in 1716 under the auspices of K'ang-hsi, second emperor of the Ch'ing or Manchu dynasty, there were more than 40,000 characters. A considerable stock of new characters and variants has been added since.
Of the estimated total of nearly 50,000 characters, however, more than four-fifths are rarely used. In daily life, the Chinese use fewer than 5,000 characters and the Japanese and Koreans about 2,000. In six years of elementary school, Chinese pupils learn about 3,400 characters, Japanese 900 and Koreans 600.
New Usages
As the Chinese characters have been used in Japan and Korea for many centuries, peoples of the two countries, especially the Japanese, have coined characters and variants and developed new usages that are strange to the Chinese. For example, 榊 is a combination of 木 (tree) and 神 (god), meaning the "sacred tree" for sacrifice on the Shinto shrine. 択 is a variant for 擇 (choose). 八折 is the Japanese translation of "octavo" in the printing industry. These two characters also are used in China but with the entirely different meaning of "20 per cent discount". The term 教書 is "presidential message" in Japanese and Korean. But in Chinese it is "teaching". These phenomena are similar to the so-called "faux amis" between French and English — French on for English somebody, parent for relative, and pour for for.
Clippings from Chinese (left), Japanese (center), and Korean (right) newspapers. All the texts are read vertically from top to bottom and the lines from right to left. (File photo)
Before Korea was annexed to Japan in 1910, Korean official documents were written in classical Chinese. During the Japanese occupation, the Koreans were compelled to write in the Japanese way. Since regaining independence in 1945, Korea has used the hangul alphabet plus a couple of thousand Chinese characters. Except in fiction, most Korean nouns are still published in Chinese characters in the Japanese way. New terms have been coined by the Koreans to meet their own needs and Korean has a larger Chinese vocabulary than Japanese. The following are examples of the same nouns expressed differently in the three languages.
English Chinese Japanese Korean
Ministry of
Education 教育部 文部省 文教部
Minister
(of cabinet) 部長 大臣 長官
Colonel 上校 大佐 大領
Wholesale 批發 卸売 都賣
Mr.(salutation) 先生 樣 貴下
Most Japanese and Koreans do not know such new characters as 她 (she), 它 (it), 乒乓 (pingpong), 鋁 (aluminum), and 氧 (oxygen), which have come into use in this century. This is a minor matter, however. Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese continue to understand each other best in written Chinese. As the three peoples study the others' languages and cultures, their efforts will continue to center on the centuries-old Chinese characters.