Written Chinese

Written Chinese
Chinese中文
Hanyu PinyinZhōngwén
Literal meaningChinese writing
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZhōngwén
Bopomofoㄓㄨㄥ ㄨㄣˊ
Gwoyeu RomatzyhJongwen
Wade–GilesChung1-wen2
Tongyong PinyinJhong-wún
Yale RomanizationJūng-wén
IPA[ʈʂʊ́ŋ.wə̌n]
Wu
Romanizationtson1 ven1
Hakka
RomanizationChung-Vun
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationJūng mán
Jyutpingzung1 man4*2
Canton RomanizationZung1 men4*2
IPA
Southern Min
Hokkien POJTiong-bûn
Eastern Min
Fuzhou BUCDṳng-ùng
Han writing[a]
Simplified Chinese汉文
Traditional Chinese漢文
Hanyu PinyinHànwén
Literal meaningHan writing
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinHànwén
Bopomofoㄏㄢˋ ㄨㄣˊ
Gwoyeu RomatzyhHannwen
Wade–GilesHan4-wen2
Tongyong PinyinHàn-wún
IPA[xân.wə̌n]

Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rather, the writing system is morphosyllabic: characters are one spoken syllable in length, but generally correspond to morphemes in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word. Most characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation.[1] Literacy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000.[2][3] This has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese.[4]

Chinese writing is first attested during the late Shang dynasty (c. 1250 – c. 1050 BCE),[5][6][7] but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (c. 2500–2000 BCE).[8] After a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE).[9] Over the millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of Chinese calligraphy.[10] As the varieties of Chinese diverged, a situation of diglossia developed, with speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using Literary Chinese.[11] In the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with written vernacular Chinese, largely corresponding to Standard Chinese, a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Although most other varieties of Chinese are not written, there are traditions of written Cantonese, written Shanghainese and written Hokkien, among others.


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  1. ^ DeFrancis (1984), p. 84.
  2. ^ DeFrancis (1968).
  3. ^ Norman (1988), p. 73.
  4. ^ Ramsey (1987), p. 143.
  5. ^ Boltz, William G. (1986). "Early Chinese Writing". World Archaeology. 17 (3): 420–436. doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979980. ISSN 0043-8243. JSTOR 124705.
  6. ^ Keightley, David N. (1996). "Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China". Representations (56): 68–95. doi:10.2307/2928708. ISSN 0734-6018. JSTOR 2928708.
  7. ^ DeFrancis, John (1989). "Chinese". Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1207-2 – via pinyin.info.
  8. ^ Norman (1988), pp. 64–65; Demattè (2022).
  9. ^ Norman (1988), p. 63.
  10. ^ Norman (1988), pp. 65–70.
  11. ^ DeFrancis (1984), pp. 155–156.