Chinese characters

Chinese characters (traditional Chinese and Japanese: 漢字; simplified Chinese: 汉字; pinyin: hànzì; Cantonese Jyutping: hon3 zi6; Wade–Giles: han4 tzŭ4; rōmaji: kanji; "Han characters") are the logograms used to write several languages historically influenced by Chinese culture, including the Chinese languages and Japanese.[2][3] Evolving in usage and style over the course of millennia, Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world,[4]

Quick facts: Chinese characters, Chinese name, Simplified ... ▼

Chinese characters
Hanzi ('Chinese character') written in traditional (left) and simplified (right) forms.
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	汉字
Traditional Chinese	漢字
Literal meaning	"Han characters"
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin hànzì Bopomofo ㄏㄢˋ ㄗˋ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Hanntzyh Wade–Giles han4-tzŭ4 IPA [xân.tsɨ̂] other Mandarin Xiao'erjing خًازِ Wu Shanghainese Romanization [høz] Gan Romanization hon5-ci5 Hakka Romanization hon55 sii55 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization hon-jih Jyutping hon3-zi6 IPA [hɔːn˧.tsiː˨] Southern Min Hokkien POJ hàn-jī Tâi-lô hàn-jī Teochew Peng'im hang3 ri7 Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC háng-cê Middle Chinese Middle Chinese xanCdzɨC
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	chữ Hán chữ Nho Hán tự
Hán-Nôm	𡨸漢 𡨸儒
Chữ Hán	漢字
Thai name
Thai	อักษรจีน
Zhuang name
Zhuang	𭨡倱[1] Sawgun
Korean name
Hangul	한자
Hanja	漢字
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Hanja McCune–Reischauer hancha
Japanese name
Kanji	漢字
Hiragana	かんじ
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn kanji Kunrei-shiki kanzi
Khmer name
Khmer	តួអក្សរចិន

Han characters
Scripts Precursors Oracle-bone Bronze Seal (bird-worm large small) Clerical Regular Semi-cursive Cursive Flat brush Simplified characters Type styles Imitation Song Ming Sans-serif
Properties Strokes (order) Radicals Classification
Variants Character-form standards Kangxi Dictionary Jiu zixing/Inherited form Xin zixing General Standard Chinese Characters (PRC) Graphemes of commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong) Standard typefaces for Chinese characters (ROC Taiwan) Grapheme-usage standards Graphemic variants General Standard Characters (PRC) Jōyō kanji (Japan) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC) Tōyō kanji (Japan)
Reforms Chinese Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japanese Old (Kyūjitai) New (Shinjitai) Ryakuji Sino-Japanese Differences between Shinjitai and Simplified characters Korean Yakja Singaporean Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs Literary and colloquial readings
Use in particular scripts Written Chinese Zetian characters Slavonic transcription Hokkien Nüshu Kanji (Kokuji) Kana (Man'yōgana) Idu Hanja (Gukja) Chữ Nôm Sawndip
v t e

The history of the system is characterized by waves of innovation and reform. Most recently, countries that write with Chinese characters have published standardized lists of characters, variant forms, and pronunciations. Broadly, simplified characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, while traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Chinese characters have been adapted to write other languages spoken by peoples influenced by China throughout history. They have been most prominently used to write Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, where they are known as kanji, hanja, and chữ Hán respectively. The aforementioned three peoples also coined new characters for their own use, known as kokuji, gukja, and chữ Nôm respectively. Each of these languages belong to their own language families, and are generally very different from both Chinese and one another. Today, Korean and Vietnamese are almost exclusively written with native alphabets later designed to replace Chinese characters. Japanese is now the only major non-Chinese language written with Chinese characters.

Unlike in phonetic writing systems, where individual letters roughly correspond to phonemes, the Chinese writing system associates each logogram with a syllable that almost always corresponds to a morpheme, the smallest unit of meaning in a language.[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2][6] However, written Chinese is not ideographic—characters fundamentally correspond to spoken syllables, not to the abstracted ideas themselves.

To a higher degree than most major languages, modern spoken Chinese has many homophones: the same spoken syllable may have many meanings dictated by surrounding context, represented by one of many different characters. Additionally, a particular character may possess a range of distinct meanings, sometimes quite divergent ones, and different readings of the same character may have different pronunciations, even different etymologies. In Standard Chinese, one-fifth of the 2,400 most common characters have multiple possible pronunciations.[lower-alpha 3]