Chinese characters | Wikipedia audio article
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Chinese characters
00:04:17 1 Function
00:08:11 2 Principles of formation
00:09:12 2.1 Pictograms
00:10:00 2.2 Simple ideograms
00:10:26 2.3 Compound ideograms
00:11:49 2.4 Rebus
00:12:57 2.5 Phono-semantic compounds
00:16:02 2.6 Transformed cognates
00:16:45 3 History
00:16:54 3.1 Legendary origins
00:17:28 3.2 Early sign use
00:18:24 3.3 Oracle bone script
00:20:02 3.4 Bronze Age: parallel script forms and gradual evolution
00:21:29 3.5 Unification: seal script, vulgar writing and proto-clerical
00:22:55 3.6 Han dynasty
00:23:04 3.6.1 Proto-clerical evolving to clerical
00:23:37 3.6.2 Clerical and clerical cursive
00:24:43 3.6.3 Neo-clerical
00:25:22 3.6.4 Semi-cursive
00:26:05 3.7 Wei to Jin period
00:26:13 3.7.1 Regular script
00:27:42 3.7.2 Modern cursive
00:28:09 3.8 Dominance and maturation of regular script
00:28:51 3.9 Modern history
00:30:48 4 Adaptation to other languages
00:31:50 4.1 Japanese
00:34:26 4.2 Korean
00:39:37 4.3 Okinawan
00:40:24 4.4 Vietnamese
00:41:22 4.5 Other languages
00:42:33 4.6 Transcription of foreign languages
00:43:57 5 Simplification
00:44:15 5.1 Simplification in China
00:47:20 5.2 Japanese kanji
00:48:49 5.3 Southeast Asian Chinese communities
00:50:24 5.4 North America
00:50:54 5.5 Comparisons of traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and Japanese
00:51:51 6 Written styles
00:54:09 6.1 Calligraphy
00:55:07 6.2 Typography and design
00:56:49 7 Variants
00:57:56 7.1 Regional standards
00:59:56 7.2 Polysyllabic morphemes
01:01:05 7.3 Polysyllabic characters
01:04:57 7.4 Rare and complex characters
01:09:16 8 Number of characters
01:11:56 8.1 Chinese
01:15:37 8.2 Japanese
01:16:57 8.3 Modern creation
01:18:21 9 Indexing
01:21:18 10 See also
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SUMMARY
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Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字; pinyin: hànzì; literally: Han characters) are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. They have been adapted to write a number of other Asian languages. They remain a key component of the Japanese writing system (where they are known as kanji) and are occasionally used in the writing of Korean (where they are known as Hanja). They were formerly used in Vietnamese (in a system known as chữ Nôm) and Zhuang (in a system known as Sawndip). Collectively, they are known as CJK characters. Vietnamese is sometimes also included, making the abbreviation CJKV.
Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world. By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia, and historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world by number of users.
Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that functional literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan, 2,136 are taught through secondary school (the Jōyō kanji); hundreds more are in everyday use. Due to post-WWII simplifications of Kanji in Japan as well as the post-WWII simplifications of characters in China, the Chinese characters used in Japan today are distinct from those used in China in several respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, and pronunciations. Simplified forms of certain characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; the corresponding traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and to a limited extent in South Korea.
In Japan, common characters are written in post-WWII Japan-specific simplified forms (shinjitai), which are usually closer to traditional forms than Chinese simplifications are, while uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms (kyūjitai), which are virtually identical to Chinese traditional forms. Interestingly enough, many Chinese simplified forms were copied from shinjita ...