Chinese writing. The mysterious writing of China: how many characters are there in the Chinese language

Chinese is considered one of the oldest existing languages. In addition, Chinese writing is the oldest of those systems that continue to be used to this day.

Basics of Chinese writing

The main difference between Chinese writing is that it consists not of letters, but of hieroglyphs. For recording Chinese word it requires as many hieroglyphs as there are syllables in it. Each hieroglyph is a separate syllable and a separate morpheme. Total quantity There are more than 80 thousand characters, but most of them can be found only in works of classical Chinese literature, that is, most of them, namely approximately 70 thousand characters, are not used by average native speakers.

For a comfortable everyday life in China, it is enough to master 3000 - 5000 of the most frequently used (frequency) hieroglyphs, having mastered such vocabulary You will be able to read newspapers and non-professional magazines, calmly buy groceries in a store, place an order in a cafe and be considered a confident Internet user. By the word “master” the author means the ability to read and write a specific hieroglyph and distinguish it in the text.

Features of Chinese writing

Chinese characters are, roughly speaking, schematic, simplified drawings (yes, in those ancient times, people, for obvious reasons, could not come up with anything more complicated).

For example, the most common Chinese character for "one" and the most complex character is biáng, consisting of 57 strokes.

One of the most difficult hieroglyphs biang

Hieroglyphs consist of graphemes - individual simplified elements, of which there are about 316 in total, and graphemes consist of lines - from 1 to 24 in one grapheme. Mastering graphemes makes it easier and faster to master writing hieroglyphs.

Chinese language keys

It is worth mentioning the key elements or, as they are usually called, keys. A key is a graphic element (grapheme) or a simple hieroglyph with a specific meaning. Being integral part complex hieroglyph, the key acts as a semantic indicator, indicating which area this hieroglyph belongs to.

There are a total of 214 key signs. Knowing the keys simplifies the study of hieroglyphs, and also suggests its meaning, which can be very convenient, because you can guess the meaning of a word without resorting to the help of a dictionary. Today there are 2 variants of writing Chinese characters.

simplified (the number of strokes is reduced to a minimum), such hieroglyphs are used by residents of mainland China;
traditional (in its original complex form), this option is common in Hong Kong, Taiwan and some other countries.

Just until recently, the Chinese wrote characters from top to bottom, and the columns went from right to left. Nowadays in China they mostly write horizontally, from left to right, as in European languages; vertical writing continues to be used in Taiwan along with horizontal writing. However, in mainland China, vertical writing and pre-reform hieroglyphs (traditional, full forms characters) are still used as a reference to traditional Chinese culture.

Learning writing

Now the most difficult question: how to learn and remember at least 3000 Chinese characters and use them in writing. The answer is terribly simple and banal: only hard work Every day, writing several pages, or better yet, notebooks with hieroglyphs, reading various texts, inventing and writing small essays, in general, trying to make the most of the words you have learned so that they become firmly entrenched in your head.

I recommend everyone interested in studying hieroglyphs to read Storozhuk’s book "Introduction to Chinese characters". In this textbook contains very detailed information about the rules for writing basic keys. In the manual "Introduction to Hieroglyphics" Kondrashevsky very well describes the theoretical component of the foundations of Chinese hieroglyphs.

Finally, I got to the Chinese characters! Today I invite you to understand Chinese scripts. You might be surprised, but the Chinese can write not only with their strange squiggles - hieroglyphs. There are also simplified hieroglyphs. Yes, yes, simplified! How they differ from each other and how else the Chinese write, you will find out below. Let's get started!

General information about Chinese

I think many people already know that Chinese is a tone language. In the official Chinese language, 普通话, there are 4 tones and there is also a 5th tone - neutral, which is rare. This means that each syllable in speech has its own intonation (1 out of 5). It is noteworthy that the tones are meaningful. The figure shows the movement of the voice in each of the tones. The tones themselves are not reflected in hieroglyphic writing; this is one of the difficulties of learning the Chinese language. The main writing system is hieroglyphic. I think you have all seen Chinese characters more than once. The characters in Chinese are called 汉字. And we will start with a simple one, with the Latin alphabet.

Pīn Yīn 拼音

In short, Pin Yin is a transliteration system for the Chinese language. It uses the Latin alphabet without the letter V, but with one additional letter ü (U with umlaut) and has official status in the PRC, i.e. on mainland China. The table below lists all possible syllables in Chinese. As you can see, there are not that many of them, 414 syllables to be exact. Many of the syllables have 4 tones, but not all. Taking into account the tones, the result is 1297 syllables. The picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.

This system uses tone notations. Using diacritics dóng or numbers with tone number dong2, dong². These icons are placed above the vowels. Here is an example with a letter a: ā, á, ǎ, à. The advantage of using the Latin alphabet is that it is familiar to almost the whole world. The disadvantage is that the meaning of the Chinese text written by Pin Yin cannot always be accurately understood, because There are a lot of homophones in the Chinese language - words with the same sound but different meanings. Look at the example text, there are diacritics above almost every syllable.

Example text:

Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlǜ píngdĕng. Tāmen fùyŏu lĭxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yĭ xīongdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài.

BoPoMoFo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) 注音符号

This type of writing is called Zhùyīn Fúhào (ZhuYin FuHao) or simply Zhùyīn. It is also common to call BoPoMoFo, based on the first 4 letters of this alphabet. This is the national phonetic system of Fr. Taiwan for learning Chinese. It consists of 37 characters. Usually this system is used to sign the readings of hieroglyphs. The application is very similar to Furigana in Japanese writing (I will write a separate post about Japanese writing). The picture shows a comparison table of the ZhuYin and PinYin systems. The 1st tone is not indicated in any way, tones 2, 3 and 4 are depicted as in PinYin, the neutral one is marked with a dot.

Example text:

Traditional Chinese script 繁體字

Now we’ve reached the hieroglyphs, let’s look at them in more detail. There are 2 types of Chinese characters: traditional And simplified. Traditional ones are used mainly in the provinces of GuangZhou, Hong Kong, Macau and the island. Taiwan. They look quite complex and have a characteristic square shape. Look at the example text, they often appear there complex signs with a lot of features. All hieroglyphs consist of standard parts, they are called radicals. Many radicals are keys. Also, simple hieroglyphs are often keys and ultimately become part of more complex ones.

And these are examples of composing hieroglyphs from radicals.
女+子=好, 日+木=東, 田+力=男, 日+月=明, 木+木=林, 木+林=森, 目+儿=見, 今+心=念, 人(亻)+木=休

Example text:

人人生而自由﹐在尊嚴和權利上一律平等。他們賦有理性和良心﹐並應以兄弟關係的精神互相對待。

Simplified Chinese 简体字

Simplification of hieroglyphic writing was proposed at the beginning of the 20th century, because complex writing was seen as one of the reasons for China's economic lag, but in fact simplified hieroglyphs already existed. They appeared, among other things, thanks to cursive writing. As part of the reform, the spelling of 2235 hieroglyphs, which have the most complex outline, was changed.

Here are some examples of simplification:

見 → 见; 學 → 学; 風 → 风; 廣 → 广; 語 → 语; 書 → 书; 長 → 长; 馬 → 马; 門 → 门; 問 → 问; 開 → 开; 對 → 对; 觀 → 观; 潔 → 洁; 鄰 → 邻; 極 → 极; 寧 → 宁; 滅 → 灭; 涙 → 泪; 網 → 网; 傑 → 杰; 體 → 体; 塵 → 尘; 竃 → 灶; 驚 → 惊; 膚 → 肤; 餘 → 余; 穀 → 谷; 後 → 后; 閉 → 闭; 關 → 关; 髮 and 發 → 发; 儘 and 盡 → 尽

I think you can see the difference right away. Do you agree that they look simpler? But there are also opponents of the simplification reform. The main argument against simplification is the distortion or loss of the meaning of the hieroglyph. And this is true. Knowing the meanings of radicals, you can often guess semantic meaning hieroglyph. And in simplified writing, some radicals are simply removed from the original hieroglyph.

女+子=好 woman + child = good,
木+木=林 tree + tree = grove, forest,
人(亻)+木=休 person + tree → person under the tree = rest,
一+口=言 one + mouth → sound waves from the mouth = words, speech,
耳+門=聞 ear + gate → ear at the gate = listen.

Example text:

人人生而自由,在尊严和权利上一律平等。他们赋有理性和良心,并应以兄弟关系的精神互相对待。

Comparison of traditional and simplified writing

For ease of perception, different hieroglyphs are highlighted in blue.

Example of text in traditional hieroglyphs:

人人生而自由﹐在尊嚴和權利上一律平等。他們賦有理性和良心﹐並應以兄弟關係的精神互相對待。

Example text in simplified hieroglyphs:

人人生而自由﹐在尊严和权利上一律平等。他们赋有理性和良心﹐并应以兄弟关系的精神互相对待。

Well, how? I hope you still have strength left? Let's get together! Cantonese characters await us!

Cantonese characters 廣州話

Cantonese is one of the most famous southern dialects of the Chinese language. Distributed in GuangDong province and neighboring regions, as well as in Macau and, of course, Hong Kong. Phonetically, it is very different from standard Chinese, which was discussed above. This is partly why new characters are being created for Cantonese. Some hieroglyphs are not in the Unicode system; for such hieroglyphs combinations with in Latin letters. For example, the character 㗎 (口+架) exists in Unicode, but is often absent from fonts. They do it simply, instead of 㗎 they write the Latin “o” and 架, i.e. o架.
Characters unique to Cantonese:
乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 係, 俾, 靚, 嚟, 𨋢 …
The radical is often used to create new characters for Cantonese mouth口, which is added to a character from Standard Chinese:
嗰, 唔, 啲, 呢, 嘢, 噉, 哋, 啱, 嘩, 嘞, 㗎 …

Text examples:

人人生出嚟就係自由嘅，喺尊嚴同權利上一律平等。佢哋具有理性同良心，而且應該用兄弟間嘅關係嚟互相對待。

The thousand-year history of Chinese writing is an integral part of the culture and development of most peoples of East and South Asia. Traditional Chinese characters are currently used or were previously used in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian writing. One of the oldest versions of the Tripitaka (a collection of Buddhist canons) was written using Chinese characters.

History of Chinese writing.

Types of Chinese characters and their meanings.

How many characters are there in Chinese?

Modern Chinese writing.

History of Chinese writing

The oldest archaeological find indicating the emergence of writing on the planet dates back to the sixth millennium BC. It was a fortune-telling turtle shell with proto-written signs inscribed on it, similar to the hieroglyphs of modern oriental cultures. It was found in the Yellow River basin, in the area of the modern Chinese province of Henan. These facts give reason to believe that the first writing originated precisely in Chinese culture and is the oldest writing on Earth.

Historians associate the origin of writing with the court chronicler Tsang Jie, who served with the legendary Emperor Huang Di during his reign in the 27th-26th centuries. BC e. It was he who is believed to have created the first 540 simple graphic symbols for writing, which laid the foundation for the hieroglyphic system of classifying objects and phenomena in Eastern written culture.

With each century, the system of writing hieroglyphs was streamlined and improved. Thus, during the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, a unified standard for writing hieroglyphs and their interpretation was introduced. Zhou writing was supplemented and improved, and the “small seal” and “official letter” appeared. Some rules for writing pictograms are the basis of modern Chinese calligraphy.

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How many characters are there in Chinese?

The exact number of Chinese characters is difficult to calculate, since throughout the development of writing, new ones were constantly formed and old pictograms, signs and phonideograms were modified. If in latest edition While the “Sea of Chinese Characters” dictionary (from 1994) contains 85,568 characters, the Japanese version of the dictionary, released in the 2000s, contains about 150 thousand characters, although most of them have long been forgotten or are not used at all.

To perform certain tasks and communicate in China, there is a minimum literacy criterion set for different layers population:

illiterate - people who know up to 900 hieroglyphs;

peasants - at least 1500 characters;

employees and workers - about 2000 hieroglyphs;

for foreigners when passing the Chinese language proficiency exam top level HSK - about 3000 hieroglyphs.

high school graduates - from 3000 to 4000 hieroglyphs;

people of intellectual work - from 5000 to 8000 hieroglyphs.

Based on practice, we can conclude that to understand 80% of printed text, it is enough to know about 500 of the most frequently used hieroglyphs.

Taught in modern language schools on the territory of the Russian Federation, allows you to quickly master modern hieroglyphic writing, improve your understanding of the language to the level of communication and reading.

Modern Chinese writing

The rapid development of cultural, economic and educational spheres in China contributed to the complication of hieroglyphic writing. Over time, some hieroglyphs were transformed to such forms that they could include up to a dozen simple characters. This made it much more difficult for them to memorize, read, and master literacy in general. The reform of writing, begun in recent years 19th century. Thus, already at the beginning of the 20th century, a minimum list of simplified hieroglyphs was created, which over time was rejected, since it included only up to 2500 characters.

Throughout the 20th century, China periodically returned to the issue of simplifying writing, but none of the programs was applied as official.

To teach foreigners and bring them to at least some system of pronunciation and reading of Putonghua, the Pinyin phonetic alphabetic alphabet was adopted, which is now widespread and considered the official transcription system.

Asian culture is permeated with the spirit of mysticism and mystery. One can imagine how difficult it is to penetrate into the essence of all chinese legends and stories, but only through them can one understand the subtle spiritual organization of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. The mentality of the Chinese is best reflected in their writing. Have you ever wondered how many characters there are in the Chinese language?

The Legend of the Origin of Chinese Writing

Those who study the history of China or often visit this country have probably noticed that the population communicates in different dialects. In some cases, residents of one province may not understand the speech of their neighbors from another territorial district at all. This oddity is even more pronounced against the backdrop of a single written language. No matter where you live, you will always write exactly the same, which shows the huge difference between writing and speaking in China.

If you are wondering how many characters there are in the Chinese language, then you should carefully study ancient legend about the emergence of writing in the Middle Kingdom. The great Cang Jie is considered to be the father of Chinese hieroglyphic writing. He lived in the twenty-sixth century BC and was a court historian at the emperor's court. During this period, the Chinese lived side by side with spirits who constantly deceived ordinary people. But the wise Tsang Jie managed to penetrate into the plan of Heaven and copied the outlines of all objects familiar to him, turning them into hieroglyphs. From this moment evil spirits are in great sadness. They ceased to influence the lives of the Chinese, who had acquired great knowledge.

How Chinese writing developed

Since the appearance of the first hieroglyphs (it is believed that there were only twelve of them), writing in the country began to develop at a fast pace. Back then, no one thought about how many characters there are in the Chinese language. New ones periodically supplemented existing ones, forming a language base. During the Han Dynasty it was carried out great job according to the count of hieroglyphs, at that time there were just over nine thousand.

Over time, not only did the number of characters in the Chinese language increase, but their writing also became more complicated. Quite a lot of characters were unavailable ordinary people who could not write them correctly. This significantly affected the literacy of the Chinese population. Therefore, since the middle of the last century, the country has been carrying out a reform to simplify the writing of hieroglyphs. This program helps to increase the number of educated citizens.

How many characters are there in Chinese, what are characters and how are they classified?

We all have an idea of what a hieroglyph is, but from a scientific point of view it can be characterized as a written sign that carries a semantic load. It can mean a sound, a syllable or a whole word. Many scientists draw a parallel between the hieroglyph and the pentagram, since both signs have some imagery. It is this fact that makes learning the Chinese language difficult, because Europeans perceive the hieroglyph as a carrier of direct information. And for the Chinese, it is most often just a direction for thought, a kind of boundary into which it is necessary to fit some image.

Before answering the question of how many characters there are in the Chinese language, it is necessary to find out how they are formed. According to the method of formation, they can be divided into the following categories:

pictographic;
ideographic;
phonographic.

Each group has its own characteristics of education and writing. For example, the simplest are pictographic hieroglyphs - they are based on the shape and appearance of the depicted object. Ideographic ones are formed from two different hieroglyphs. They can symbolize a whole word or phenomenon. But phonographic characters, of which there are more than eighty percent in the Chinese language, are a complex symbiosis of phonetics and key, where the latter is responsible for the meaning, and the second conveys sound.

Chinese writing. How many hieroglyphs are displayed in dictionaries?

It is difficult to determine the correct number of Chinese characters, because some of them have a narrow focus and are not used in everyday life. Many are applicable only when reading ancient texts, and only historians know them. According to the latest data, the Chinese language contains from 50 to 84 thousand characters.

But the Chinese themselves will never be able to learn them all. Dictionaries usually contain no more than seven thousand hieroglyphs necessary for competent writing.

If you are planning to learn the language of the Celestial Empire, then keep in mind that you will not have to spend years memorizing a lot of difficult-to-write characters. The average Chinese person with higher education, knows no more than two thousand hieroglyphs. The same amount will be enough for you.

Please note that in modern literature it is used more signs. Therefore, if you want to read Chinese authors fluently, you will need to learn approximately three thousand characters. Having such a knowledge base, you can feel absolutely confident and comfortable in China.

- this is the most ancient look writing on our planet, which has not only survived to this day, but also occupies one of the leading places among the most widespread languages of the world. The emergence and evolution of Chinese writing became the impetus for the development of the civilization of the ancient Chinese, and also had an active influence on the formation of the cultural values of China and even the whole world. Unique complex graphic signs and drawings were created more than 6000 years ago.

When reading any Chinese text or book, the question arises what the hieroglyphs mean and how to translate them. Not even a single Chinese knows exactly how many characters there are in the Chinese language.

The total number of Chinese characters is about 50 thousand, but 4-7 thousand characters are practically used. The outline of a hieroglyph is made up of standard strokes (from one to 28), repeated in various combinations.

Complex hieroglyphs are a combination of simple characters, of which there are about 300. Most of the rare hieroglyphs denote ancient narrow professional terms, various nationalities, parts of tools, etc.

Facts about Chinese writing in characters

Chinese characters are the official writing of the Chinese People's Republic(PRC), Republic of China (Taiwan Island), Hong Kong (now Hong Kong - special autonomous region People's Republic of China), one of the official scripts of Singapore (Chinese is one of official languages UN). Chinese writing is also common in Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Malaysia and Thailand, where the Chinese form a small minority. Chinese writing is used to a limited extent and in part in a modified form in Japan and South Korea. Until 1910, Chinese characters were official in Vietnam.

Traditionally, Chinese characters were written from right to left in vertical columns (like Mongolian writing) . The first publication with horizontal lines from left to right was R. Morrison's Chinese Dictionary, published in Macau in 1815-23.

Over time, this line direction became more popular. Since 1949, the horizontal direction of lines has become standard in the PRC, and by 1956 all mainland Chinese newspapers were printed this way, although some headlines (or signage) are still written vertically.

In 1990, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities moved to the horizontal direction. Vertical writing remains popular in Taiwan, although horizontal writing is becoming more common there.

History of hieroglyphs

“Tsang Jie invented hieroglyphs, for this reason Heaven showered the earth with millet, and evil spirits we cried all night long,” as the legend says.

It is still not known exactly when Chinese characters originated. There is evidence that this happened during the Yin Dynasty (1401–1122 BC), but there is also a legend that Chinese characters were invented by the historiographer of the heavenly Emperor Huangdi named Tsang Jie four thousand years ago.

The most ancient hieroglyphs were written on tortoiseshells and bovine bones. They are called “jiaguwen,” which literally means “text on the shell and bones.” Then, after the advent of bronze melting technology, Chinese characters began to be written on bronze vessels. They were called "jinwen", which means "text on bronze".

Scientists have managed to find many turtle shells with the first written language. The fact is that during the reign Shang Dynasty there was a certain tradition, one might say a ritual, which was used immediately before making an extremely important decision in the sphere of governing the people and the state as a whole.

Before the ritual began, the turtle shell had to be carefully processed: cleaned, washed and polished. Next, the person responsible for carrying out ancient rite had to use a specially prepared turtle shell in strict in a certain order inflict several blows that left indentations, as well as an inscription consisting of several symbols ,which later turned into Chinese characters.

This inscription contained specific question, to which a clear answer could be obtained. After the question was formulated and applied, the fortuneteller set fire to the indentations in the shell with a stick made of bronze. After such a ritual back side Cracks formed in the shell, from which the ancient Chinese determined the result of fortune telling and the answer to the question that concerned them. When the ritual ended, all the turtle shells were folded into certain place and were kept as official government documents. It was some kind of ancient archive.

Writing on turtle shells is considered an already established and mature ancient system writing, it was they who became the basis for the subsequent development of hieroglyphs in China.

During the development of hieroglyphic writing, various styles calligraphy , such as: “zhuan”, “lishu”, “xing”, “cao”, “kai”, etc. Subsequently, calligraphy turned into a kind of art with its own strict rules. For example, each hieroglyph must strictly fit into a square of a given size, the lines of the hieroglyph must be strictly written from top to bottom and from left to right, horizontal lines are written first, and then vertical, etc.

Next to the figure you can trace the order of writing traits using the example of the Chinese character for “wisdom” (huì - hui).

Basic graphic elements of Chinese characters

Each hieroglyph consists of a certain number of graphic elements (in total more than 200). As a rule, these elements themselves do not carry any semantic load. Combinations of graphic elements written in a certain sequence are called graphemes. A grapheme can be used as an independent simple Chinese character, or be part of a complex one.
The basic graphic elements of the Chinese character are:

horizontal line
vertical bar
dot
folding left
hook
folding right
rising bar
broken line

From these simplest elements derivatives are formed: for example, a threefold broken horizontal line.

Rules for writing Chinese character elements :

The writing tool should move from left to right if we are writing a horizontal line, and from top to bottom if we are writing a vertical or oblique line. First of all, we write the vertical, then the horizontal. First, a folding line is written to the left, then a folding line to the right. First - the sides of the hieroglyph, then - the middle. The last dot is placed on the right.

What is a hieroglyph?

Chinese characters are some kind of ideographs, that is, symbols that contain an idea or meaning; they are the basis of Chinese writing and oral speech. At this stage of development, there are up to 10 thousand hieroglyphs, among them the number of the most common and most frequently used is 3 thousand. These symbols are enough to make up many different phrases and sentences.

Chinese characters are living characters, they, like people, age, they may be forgotten, new ones are found to replace outdated characters, some disappear from use forever.

They carry within themselves deep meaning and even the wisdom of the ages. This explains the use of many hieroglyphs as symbols in teaching feng shui. You will find them on souvenirs, figurines, cars, clothes; many people get tattoos depicting beneficial hieroglyphs. If you sincerely believe in the power of hieroglyphs, they will definitely help in the fulfillment of your most cherished desires.

Chinese hieroglyphs became the basis and had a significant influence on the formation of writing in neighboring countries, such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Many Chinese characters are used in their speech.