Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How many characters are in written Chinese?
It is difficult to establish exactly how many different Chinese characters are in use today; the new HSK, a widely used proficiency test for Standard Chinese as a second language, tests over 2,600 different characters, whilst in 1988 the People's Republic of China published the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese" which contains 7,000 different characters. In Japan, where a smaller set of characters are in general usage, the Japanese Ministry of Education prescribes the teaching of 2,136 kanji in primary and secondary school in a list called the jōyō kanji, meaning "regular-use Chinese characters".
Although Cantonese shares a lot of vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon. Sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. A notable difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is how the spoken word is written; both can be recorded verbatim, but very few Cantonese speakers are knowledgeable in the full Cantonese written vocabulary, so a non-verbatim formalized written form is adopted, which is more akin to the Mandarin written form. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar but are pronounced differently.
Throughout East Asia, Literary Chinese was the language of administration and scholarship.
Although Vietnam, Korea and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, these were limited to popular literature.
Chinese remained the medium of formal writing until it was displaced by vernacular writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Though they did not use Chinese for spoken communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud, the so-called Sino-Xenic pronunciations, which provide clues to the pronunciation of Middle Chinese.
Chinese words with these pronunciations were also borrowed extensively into the local vernaculars, and today comprise over half their vocabularies.
Modern Korean is written almost exclusively in the script of the Korean alphabet (known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosungul in China and North Korea), which was invented in the 15th century. Korean is sometimes written with the addition of some Chinese characters called Hanja; however, this is only occasionally seen nowadays. While Hangul may appear logographic, it is actually a phonemic alphabet organised into syllabic blocks. Each block consists of at least two of the 24 hangul letters ("jamo"): at least one each of the 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had several additional letters (see obsolete jamo). For a phonological description of the letters, see Korean phonology.
After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called the ' amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava script. The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the "āytam". The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 x 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel "a", as with other Indic scripts. This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a ', to the consonantal sign. For example, is "ṉa" (with the inherent "a") and is "ṉ" (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama, but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible "puḷḷi" to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without a vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives. Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology.
Computers (namely, the "C" in "ABC Dictionary") were purposefully involved in almost every stage of dictionary compilation and publication in order to facilitate further advances in electronic lexicography and software development. In 1997, the Wenlin Institute published "Wenlin Software for Learning Chinese" with about 14,000 head entries (version 1.0) and entered into a licensing agreement with the University of Hawaii to utilize the "ABC Dictionary" database in Wenlin software. The first edition "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary" (1996) was incorporated into Wenlin 2.0 with over 74,000 entries (1998); the second "ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary" (2003) went into Wenlin 3.0 with over 196,000 entries (2002); and the third edition "ABC English-Chinese/Chinese–English Dictionary" (2010) was incorporated into Wenlin 4.0 (2011), which includes 300,000 Chinese–English entries, 73,000 Chinese character entries, and 62,000 English-Chinese entries.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han, who constitute 91.51% of the total population in 2010. Ethnic minorities constitute 8.49% or 113.8 million of China's population in 2010. During the past decades ethnic minorities have experienced higher growth rates than the majority Han population, because they are not under the one-child policy. Their proportion of the population in China has grown from 6.1% in 1953, to 8.04% in 1990, 8.41% in 2000, and 8.49% in 2010. Large ethnic minorities (data according to the 2000 census) include the Zhuang (16 million, 1.28%), Manchu (10 million, 0.84%), Uyghur (9 million, 0.78%), Hui (9 million, 0.71%), Miao (8 million, 0.71%), Yi (7 million, 0.61%), Tujia (5.75 million, 0.63%), Mongols (5 million, 0.46%), Tibetan (5 million, 0.43%), Buyei (3 million, 0.23%), and Korean (2 million, 0.15%).
China is a largely-homogenous society; over 90 percent of its population has historically been Han Chinese. Some of the country's ethnic groups are distinguishable by physical appearance and relatively-low intermarriage rates. Others have married Han Chinese and resemble them. A growing number of ethnic minorities are fluent at a native level in Mandarin Chinese. Children sometimes receive ethnic-minority status at birth if one of their parents belongs to an ethnic minority, even if their ancestry is predominantly Han Chinese. Pockets of immigrants and foreign residents exist in some cities.
Kublai Khan commissioned Chögyal Phagpa to design a new writing system to unify the writing of the multilingual Yuan China. Phagpa modified the Tibetan alphabet to create his 'Phags-pa script, which was completed in 1268. Kublai Khan decided to use the 'Phags-pa script as the official writing system of the empire, including when he became Emperor of China in 1271, instead of Chinese characters or the Old Uyghur alphabet formerly used for Mongolian. However, he encountered major resistances and difficulties when trying to promote this script and never achieved his original goal. As a result, only a small amount of texts were written in this script, and the majority (including most official documents) were still written in Chinese ideograms or the Uyghur alphabet. The script fell into disuse after the collapse of the Yuan in 1368. The script was used for about a century and is thought to have influenced the development of Hangul.
Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. However, due to the fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages and the large number of characters to be learned, the lower classes, who often didn't have the privilege of education, had much difficulty in learning how to write using Chinese characters. To assuage this problem, King Sejong () created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.
China, Japan, and Korea represent the three core countries and civilizations of traditional East Asia - as they once shared a common written language, culture, as well as sharing Confucian philosophical tenets and the Confucian societal value system once instituted by Imperial China. Other usages define China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan as countries that constitute East Asia based on their geographic proximity as well as historical and modern cultural and economic ties, particularly with Japan and Korea having strong cultural influences that originated from China. Some scholars include Vietnam as part of East Asia as it has been considered part of the greater sphere of Chinese influence. Though Confucianism continues to play an important role in Vietnamese culture, Chinese characters are no longer used in its written language and many scholarly organizations classify Vietnam as a Southeast Asian country. Mongolia is geographically north of China yet Confucianism and the Chinese writing system and culture had no impact in Mongolian society. Thus, Mongolia is sometimes grouped with Central Asian countries such as Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
The ABC Chinese–English Dictionary or ABC Dictionary (1996), compiled under the chief editorship of John DeFrancis, is the first Chinese dictionary to collate entries in single-sort alphabetical order of pinyin romanization, and a landmark in the history of Chinese lexicography. It was also the first publication in the University of Hawai'i Press's "ABC" (Alphabetically Based Computerized) series of Chinese dictionaries. They republished the "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary" in a pocket edition (1999) and desktop reference edition (2000), as well as the expanded "ABC Chinese–English Comprehensive Dictionary" (2003) and dual "ABC Chinese–English/English-Chinese Dictionary" (2010). Furthermore, the "ABC Dictionary" databases have been developed into computer applications such as Wenlin Software for learning Chinese (1997).
It is not uncommon to encounter children who grew up with a regional variant of Mandarin as their parent tongue with little or no fluency in a Wu variety at all. However, this is primarily when parents are speakers of different languages and communicate in Mandarin and more rarely due to the parents' attitudes towards using language or dialect, which most associate with the warmth of home and family life. Many people have noticed this trend and thus call for the preservation and documentation of not only Wu but all Chinese varieties. The first major attempt was the "Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects", which surveyed 2,791 locations across the nation, including 121 Wu locations (a step up from the two locations in PKU's earlier surveys), and led to the formation of an elaborate database including digital recordings of all locations; however, this database is not available to the general public. The atlas's editor, Cao Zhiyun, considers many of these languages "endangered" and has introduced the term (Languages in danger) or "endangered dialects" into the Chinese language to raise people's attention to the issue, while others try to draw attention to how the dialects fall under the scope of UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage and as such deserve to be preserved and respected.
Before the creation of Hangul, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. However, due to the fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages, and the large number of characters needed to be learned, there was much difficulty in learning how to write using Chinese characters for the lower classes, who often didn't have the privilege of education. To assuage this problem, King Sejong created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.
The international Unicode standard contains special characters for representing the Korean language in the native hangul phonetic system.  There are two ways supported by Unicode.  The way used by Microsoft Windows is to have every one of the 11,172 syllable combinations as a code and a pre-formed font character.  The other way is to encode letters ("jamos"), and to let the software combine them into correct combinations, which is not supported in Windows.  Of course the former way needs more font memory, but gives the possibility of getting better shapes, since it is complicated to create fully correct combinations which may be preferred when creating documents.
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered to be the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with the earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion. A similar debate exists for the Chinese script, which developed around 1200 BC. The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had independent origins.
In southern China (not including Hong Kong and Macau), where the difference between Standard Chinese and local dialects is particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Chinese, and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it, in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Chinese is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it non-Standard Chinese or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Chinese and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable; even a diglossia.
The Turkish alphabet () is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. It is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.
China officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of
which are the Han Chinese, who constitute about 91.51% of the total
population. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial-level division except Tibet and Xinjiang. Ethnic minorities account for about 8.49% of the population of China, according to
the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%. The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), the
United States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).
Although no autograph copies of Yang Xi's famous calligraphy have survived, one well-documented stone rubbing version of the revealed "Huangting jing" (黃庭經, Yellow Court Scripture) has been given special attention. The Song dynasty connoisseur and critic Mi Fu (1051-1107) analyzed four manuscripts of the "Huangting jing", and said the best one was written on a silk scroll with a provenance that he traced back to the early 8th century. Mi disagreed with a former owner Tao Gu (陶穀, 903-970) who said that Wang Xizhi wrote the manuscript, and concluded it was a superb example of calligraphy from the Six Dynasties period. The Ming dynasty calligrapher and painter Dong Qichang (1555-1636) was so impressed by the Mi Fu manuscript that he made a copy, recommend it as the best model for studying "kaishu" script, and included it as the first example in his classic "Xihong tang fatie" (戲鴻堂法帖, Calligraphy Compendium of the Hall of the Playful Goose). Dong's colophon attributed the calligraphy to Yang Xi himself and described it as "the traces of a holy immortal" (Ledderose 1984: 262-263, who calls Dong's attribution to Yang "extremely optimistic").
Along with Prof. DeFrancis overseeing the general planning and supervision of the project as well as its detailed operations, a volunteer team of some 50 contributors – including academics, Chinese language teachers, students, lexicographers, and computer consultants – were involved in the myriad tasks of processing dictionary entries, such as defining, inputting, checking, and proofreading. The University of Hawai'i Press published the "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary" in September 1996. UHP republished the original paperback "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary", which had a total 916 pages and was 23 cm. high, into the "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary: Pocket Edition" (1999, 16 cm.) and hardback "ABC Chinese–English Dictionary: Desk Reference Edition" (2000, 23 cm.).
Many characters have multiple readings, with instances denoting different morphemes, sometimes with different pronunciations.
In modern Standard Chinese, one fifth of the 2,400 most common characters have multiple pronunciations.
For the 500 most common characters, the proportion rises to 30%.
Often these readings are similar in sound and related in meaning.
In the Old Chinese period, affixes could be added to a word to form a new word, which was often written with the same character.
In many cases the pronunciations diverged due to subsequent sound change.
For example, many additional readings have the Middle Chinese departing tone, the major source of the 4th tone in modern Standard Chinese.
Scholars now believe that this tone is the reflex of an Old Chinese *-s suffix, with a range of semantic functions.
For example,
Another common alternation is between voiced and voiceless initials (though the voicing distinction has disappeared on most modern varieties).
This is believed to reflect an ancient prefix, but scholars disagree on whether the voiced or voiceless form is the original root.
For example,
In Japan, common characters are written in post-WWII Japan-specific simplified forms ("shinjitai"), 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 "shinjitai" forms. In South Korea, when Chinese characters are used, they are in traditional form, essentially identical to those used in Taiwan and Hong Kong where the official writing system is traditional Chinese. Teaching of Chinese characters in South Korea starts in the 7th grade and continues until the 12th grade; a total of 1,800 characters are taught, though these characters are used only in certain cases (on names, signs, academic papers, historical writings, etc.) and are slowly declining in use as native alphabetical hangul supplanted them in most aspects of Korean society.
The result is a syllabary of 2082 syllables, about 80% of which are single morphemes—that is, in 80% of cases there is no difference between GC and standard written Chinese, and in running text, that figure rises to 90–95%, as the most common morphemes tend to be uniquely identified. For example, "kai" can only mean 開 "kāi" 'open', and "sam" can only mean 三 "sān" 'three'. Chao notes, "These syllables then are morphemes, or words with definite meanings, or clusters of meanings related by extensions. About 20 percent of the syllables are homophones under each of which there will be more than one morpheme, [which are traditionally] usually written with different characters [...] The degree of homophony is so low that it will be possible to write text either in literary or colloquial Chinese with the same character for each syllable [...] as has been tested in texts of various styles." Chao compares General Chinese to how Chinese was written when the writing system was still productive: "This amounts to a 100 percent use of writing Chinese by 'phonetic loan' [...] The situation is that when the ancients wrote a character by sound regardless of meaning, it was a 'loan character', whereas if a modern schoolboy writes one, he is punished for writing the wrong character!"
Traditional Chinese characters are only still used primarily by those in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong and many overseas communities, comprising a small minority of the Chinese-speaking population (~50 million people). However, they also remain in use in mainland China for artistic, scholarly and advertising purposes. Simplified Chinese has come to dominate the written form of Chinese used nearly all over the world, due to the size and rising influence of mainland China. The United Nations has also used simplified Chinese since 1973. Moving back to traditional characters on the mainland has the potential to be difficult, confusing, and time-consuming.The long history of Chinese characters and the role of the Chinese Communist Party in the design and adoption of simplified characters means that there is often a strong political aspect to the debate on the usage of traditional and simplified Chinese characters.
In recent years, the official Campaign of Simplification of Chinese Language has caused many controversial discussions in the general public to higher level of the government in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and amongst some international organisations.