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Chinese character

Chinese writing
Type
Languages Chinese, Japanese, Korean (occasionally), Vietnamese (formerly)
Time period
Bronze Age China to present
Parent systems
Oracle Bone Script
  • Chinese writing
Direction Left-to-right
ISO 15924 Hani, 500
Unicode alias
Han
Chinese characters
Hanzi.svg
"Chinese character" in traditional (left) and simplified form (right)
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 漢字
Simplified Chinese 汉字
Literal meaning "Han characters"
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese chữ Hán
Chữ Nôm
Zhuang name
Zhuang Saw sawndip.svg
Sawgun
Korean name
Hangul 한자
Hanja 漢字
Japanese name
Kanji 漢字
Hiragana かんじ

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ). They have been adapted to write a number of other languages including: Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja, and Vietnamese in a system known as chữ Nôm. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters. In English, they are sometimes called Han characters. 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 (note that the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many 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.


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