The system of Chinese pictograms, which has existed for many thousands of years, has become much larger over time, and new characters have been added to it. However, despite its complexity, this writing system was not replaced by an alphabetic system and remains the only one of its kind.
Interesting fact
The most ancient Chinese texts are written on the shell of turtles.
55000 Chinese characters
Invented in 1200 BC, Chinese writing has changed little. Having preserved the ideograms that have disappeared all over the world, it bears the imprint of the original pattern, which can be seen in some words. Educated person can read and understand a text written 2000 years ago...
Learn all your life
The Chinese must be able to write and read several thousand characters! Some are very easy to remember because they are symbolic: environment, man, door. Numerous signs are a combination of pictograms: the sun and the moon form the word "light". But Chinese writing also includes signs that represent sounds.
General writing
In 221, Emperor Qin Shi Huang simplified and unified the script. He banned regional variants. Today, a billion Chinese, who speak different dialects, have a single script. But the same sign is pronounced differently, such as "forest" which is pronounced "mu" in Beijing, "mo" in Shanghai, "muk" in Canton, "ki" in Japanese, and "namu" in Korean. . Due to its complexity, only educated people speak Chinese writing. Since the 20th century, the government has been trying to transform the script and create a phonetic spelling.
wooden books
Before the invention of paper chinese book looked like interconnected bamboo planks. They wrote on them with a pointed stick, which was dipped in varnish. Later, they began to use a brush made of natural hair, the handle of which was made of bamboo, and carbon black-based ink. In the 10th century, a new invention made it possible to print whole pages on paper using wood engraved tablets. The impression technique will gradually replace the manuscript.
Chinese dictionary
If there is no alphabet, then how to classify words in a dictionary? The Chinese have several ways. For example, distribute them based on pronunciation, you only need to be able to read the characters so that you can find them. it is also possible to classify words according to their spelling, because words are formed with the help of signs (keys) combined with each other.
Japanese variant
The Japanese use Chinese characters - kanji, to which they add another hundred characters, which are syllables - hiragana. They are used to record the pronunciation of kanji or to write words (if the kanji does not have the required one). Katakana allows you to denote words of foreign origin.
write like a chinese
Take a sheet of paper or silk cloth, a very thin and flexible brush, dry ink, so that you can dilute them later. A Chinese character is written by drawing the lines that make it up in a strict order and respecting the direction of each line. This sign should be written in a square to make it look nice. Signs are written from left to right, but poetry and scientific texts are written and read from top to bottom and from right to left.
Chinese gestures ()
Beautiful hieroglyphs(harmony, longevity, abundance, career, love and happiness).
The thousand-year history of Chinese writing is an integral part of the culture and development of most peoples of East and South Asia. Traditional Chinese characters are currently or were used in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian writing. With the help of Chinese characters, one of the oldest versions of the Tripitaka (a collection of Buddhist canons) was written.
History of Chinese writing.
Types of Chinese characters and their meanings.
How many characters are there in Chinese.
Modern Chinese writing.
History of Chinese writing
The oldest archaeological find, indicating the emergence of writing on the planet, dates back to the sixth millennium BC. It was a divinatory tortoise shell with proto-written characters inscribed on it, similar to the hieroglyphs of modern Eastern cultures. It was found in the Huang He River basin, in the area of the modern Chinese province of Henan. These facts give reason to believe that the first written language originated precisely in Chinese culture and is the oldest written language on Earth.
Historians associate the origin of writing with the court chronicler Cang Jie, who served under the legendary Emperor Huangdi during his reign in the 27th-26th centuries. BC e. It is he who is supposed to have created the first 540 simple graphic characters for writing, which laid the foundation for the hieroglyphic system of classification of objects and phenomena in the Eastern written culture.
With each century, the system of writing hieroglyphs was streamlined and improved. Thus, during the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, single standard writing hieroglyphs and their interpretation. The Zhou script was supplemented, improved, and the "small seal" and "official letter" appeared. Some rules for writing pictograms are also the basis of modern Chinese calligraphy.
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How many characters are there in Chinese
The exact number of Chinese characters is difficult to calculate, since during the development of writing, new pictograms, signs and phonoidograms were constantly formed and old ones were modified. If the latest edition of the Sea of Chinese Characters dictionary (from 1994) contains 85,568 characters, then the Japanese version of the dictionary, released in the 2000s, contains about 150,000 characters, although most of them have long been forgotten or not used at all .
To perform certain tasks and communicate in China, there is a minimum literacy criterion set for different segments of the population:
illiterate - people who know up to 900 hieroglyphs;
peasants - at least 1500 characters;
employees and workers - about 2000 hieroglyphs;
for foreigners when passing the Chinese language proficiency exam top level HSK - about 3000 hieroglyphs.
high school graduates - from 3000 to 4000 characters;
people of intellectual labor - from 5000 to 8000 hieroglyphs.
Based on practice, we can conclude that in order to understand printed text by 80%, it is enough to know about 500 of the most frequently used hieroglyphs.
Taught in modern language schools on the territory of the Russian Federation, it allows you to quickly master modern hieroglyphic writing, improve your understanding of the language to the level of communication and reading.
Modern Chinese writing
Rapid development cultural, economic and educational spheres in China contributed to the complication of hieroglyphic writing. Over time, some hieroglyphs were transformed into such forms that they could include up to a dozen simple characters. This greatly complicates their memorization, reading and literacy in general. To stop this process, the writing reform, begun in recent years 19th century. So, already at the beginning of the 20th century, a minimal list of simplified hieroglyphs was created, which over time it was rejected, since it included only up to 2500 characters.
Throughout the 20th century in China, the issue of simplification of writing was periodically returned, but none of the programs was applied as official.
To teach foreigners and bring at least some system of pronunciation and reading Putonghua, the phonetic letter alphabet pinyin was adopted, which is now widely used and is considered the official transcription system.
Home -> Encyclopedia ->How many characters are there in Chinese and what does the Chinese keyboard look like?
There are 7 dialect groups in Chinese: Northern (北, the most numerous - over 800 million speakers), Wu (吴), Xiang (湘), Gan (赣), Hakka (客家), Yue (粤), Ming (闽) . The dialects differ phonetically (which makes inter-dialect communication difficult, although the dialects are connected by regular sound correspondences), vocabulary, partly grammar, but the basics of their grammar and vocabulary are united. The medium of communication between speakers of different dialects is the normative Chinese language, which in China is called putonghua (普通话), and in other countries - goyu (国语), there are very slight differences between them. At emergency you can explain yourself by writing hieroglyphs on paper or by drawing them in the air with your hand. The literary language is based on northern dialects. The phonetic norm is Beijing pronunciation (however, in the era of the Tang Dynasty, when most of the classical Chinese texts were created, the norm was closer to the current Hakka dialect group).
In Chinese writing, each character stands for a separate syllable and a separate morpheme. Total Chinese hieroglyphs exceeds 40,000 (sometimes a figure of 70,000 hieroglyphs is called). Most of the characters can be found only in the monuments of classical Chinese literature. A person who has mastered 1500 signs can be considered literate at an elementary level. 3000 characters are enough to read newspapers and non-specialized magazines.
Currently, Chinese characters exist in 2 versions: simplified, adopted in mainland China, and traditional - in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries.
The exact time of the birth of Chinese writing is still unknown. A bizarre geometric ornament on ceramic vessels discovered in the 20s of the 20th century in the village of Yangshao, Henan Province, made 5-7 thousand years ago, may be the beginnings of ancient Chinese writing.
Ornament on ceramic vessels ancient culture Yangshao.
Tradition attributes the idea of creating hieroglyphs to one of the mythical "Three Lords" of Chinese antiquity - Fu Xi, who, according to legend, ruled the Celestial Empire from 2852 to 2737 BC. e. According to the myth, Emperor Fu Xi, walking along the banks of the Yellow River, saw a dragon appear from the river waters, on the back of which distinct marks appeared. The inquisitive emperor immediately copied them. The signs looked like bird footprints on a sandbar. Having comprehended the meaning of the pattern, Fu Xi drew eight trigrams - combinations of three solid and intermittent lines, from which the Chinese hieroglyphics originate.
The creation of hieroglyphs as a writing system is associated with the name of another legendary ruler of the Celestial Empire, the founding father of the Chinese Empire in the 25th century BC. e., the great Yellow Emperor - Huang Di, according to legend, who ruled for 100 years from 2591 to 2491 BC. e.. Emperor Huang Di ordered his court official Cang Jie to create the first system of Chinese writing, who, having subjected the traces of birds and animals to a deep study, invented the first hieroglyphs. ancient monuments Inscriptions on animal bones and turtle shells - jiaguwen, and inscriptions on ritual bronze vessels - jinwen, dating from the Yin-Shan period (in Chinese historiography, the period of the Shan dynasty is determined from 1751 to 1112 years) . BC.).
Jiaguwen - divinatory inscriptions carved on tortoise shells, bull or deer shoulder blades.
These inscriptions appeared in the same historical period as the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the American Mayan script, and the Sumerian cuneiform. In these ancient writings, such a characteristic Chinese writing, as the location of the character in the space of an imaginary square. In the combination of features and elements of hieroglyphs in jiaguwen inscriptions, a distinction can be traced into upper-lower, left-right, spaced-connected; crossing, crossing, repeating, layering, framing are used. The characters are arranged in a line vertically, from top to bottom, if the inscription consists of several lines, they are read from right to left. This order of writing was preserved in China for three millennia. As evidenced by the Jiaguwen inscriptions, the creators of Chinese archaic writing had an inherent desire for aesthetics.
Jinwen- inscriptions made on ritual bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) - bowls, cups and vessels used during feasts, weapons, musical instruments and mirrors. The number of hieroglyphs of one inscription varies from one or two to several hundred, vocabulary is almost 3,000 independent hieroglyphs, of which 2,000 have been identified. Many bronze vessels are extremely skillfully made, the hieroglyphs and lines engraved on them look much smoother, neater, more organized than the ancient jiaguwen scripts, they more strongly feel the craving for the beauty of structure and composition , both individual hieroglyphs and lines.
Fuchai sword.
In the second half of the Zhou era, during the Zhangguo (Warring States) period, in many fragmented kingdoms, the process of simplifying the ancient style of writing Zhuanshu (Dazhuan) began, many varieties and variants of its writing appeared. At the end of the III century BC. e., the emperor of the Qin Empire - Qin Shi Huang carried out a writing reform: he banned the circulation of all non-Qin variants of writing of the six kingdoms he destroyed, simplified and unified the writing of hieroglyphs and introduced the country-wide writing style xiaozhuan - "small seal" - a direct descendant of the "large print."
The initiator of the transition to the Xiaozhuan style was the first Chancellor of the Qin Empire, Li Si (? -208 BC), who opens the first page of the history of famous Chinese calligraphers. Li Si's work is still considered an unsurpassed example of the Xiaozhuan style.
The inscription is in the handwriting of the Qin Imperial Chancellor Li Si.
The creation in China of the first centralized state - the Qin dynasty, significantly intensified the exchange of written dispatches and expanded cultural and information contacts between different parts empire. On the one hand, this provided an objective reason to make the letter faster and simpler, on the other hand, it caused a desire to “embellish” it. Thus, one after another, numerous cursive and non-statutory variants of the Xiaozhuan style appeared, which were later united under the common name Caozhuan. The calligraphic style of this period was called - guli - ancient business letter.
Ghouli-style writing on bamboo tablets.
In the subsequent development of the Zhuanshu style, the rules for writing hieroglyphs established in it were often violated - the thickness and length of the lines changed, and attempts were made to write freely. Some calligraphers limited themselves to extending the line to the right, lengthening the vertical line and the hook. More daring - represented a horizontal line in a completely new form. She was called - tsantou-yanwei - "the head of a silkworm - the tail of a wild goose." The hieroglyph consisted of a horizontal line, where the extreme left part of the line - the “head” - was written in bold, with special pressure, and the extreme right part- "tail" features - slightly bent upwards.
The horizontal line heng in the form of tsantou-yanwei - "the head of a silkworm - the tail of a wild goose"; lose style.
If the hieroglyph consisted of two or three parallel horizontal lines, then the lower (last) one was written as tsantou-yanwei, and the rest - in straight lines, slightly shorter than the last one. These innovations were supported by all more calligraphers and, in the end, gave life to a new calligraphic style, different from the ghouls - lish.
Fragment of an inscription from the Stele of Shi Chen; din. Eastern Han
The final formation of the Lishu style - "business writing", the second fundamental style of Chinese writing after Zhuanshu, refers to the period of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Along with the spread of the lishu style, guided by the requirements of simplicity, beauty, and fashion, calligraphers continued to develop various new writing options based on it. The horizontal stroke in the form of cantou-yanwei was abandoned due to the complexity of writing, but a thickened dash to the right immediately came into fashion. The calligraphy of that period is characterized by simple and unconstrained, smooth and graceful, often intertwined features, but retaining their individuality, hieroglyphs. This style of writing was called zhangcao (“statutory herbal writing”), was widespread in the 3rd-4th centuries, but later it was addressed less and less.
Fragment of an inscription in zhangcao style
Simultaneously with the zhangcao style, the jincao ("modern herbal") style appeared, which, however, is not a direct variety of zhangcao. The founders of jintsao are ghuli and lishu styles. The main difference between the two cursive styles is that in the Zhangcao style, the characters are spaced apart, and some lines are written with a stop, the skill and strength of the brush dominates, while in the Jincao style, the characters are in contact, the lines are written without stopping, and naturalness dominates.
Another variation of the lishu style is the xingshu style (“running” or “running letter”), an everyday style of writing. The hieroglyphs of the Xingshu style are easily distinguishable, the lines of the features are simple, flexible and uninhibited.
Wang Xun. Xingcao style work "Dedicated to Bo Yuan" (Bo Yuan te)
Simultaneously with the varieties of the lishu style, kaishu ("exemplary writing") was born - the style that is most widely used in modern written Chinese. Kaishu is the third and final fundamental style of Chinese writing, and has maintained the status of "official" for over 1,300 years.
After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, by order of the government, the writing of hieroglyphs was simplified both in handwritten and printed form. In case of different spellings, only one official spelling was assigned to the hieroglyph. Along with this, the order of writing also underwent a change: if earlier the hieroglyphs were arranged in vertical columns from right to left, then after the reform they were already written in a horizontal line - from left to right. Of course, all these innovations, aimed at facilitating mass reading and writing, did not affect the art of calligraphy.
Through the centuries, Chinese writing has evolved into a highly revered art form known throughout the world as Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy - beautiful flower Chinese society, an outstanding heritage of world culture. Calligraphy embodied the essence Eastern culture and beauty oriental art. This art is the pride of the Chinese people. One of the foundations of world art history.
Calligraphy is considered one of the treasures of Chinese culture. The art of calligraphy is not only practical implementation Chinese script or a tool for transmitting information, but also - unique means expressions of the spiritual world of the master of calligraphy.
Calligraphy serves as a means of conveying emotions, aesthetic views, moral qualities and character of a master of calligraphy.
"The structure of the hieroglyph, its appearance can create a wide variety of impressions - a hieroglyph can seem to stand still, or walk, or fly; move, then, as if moving away from us, then, on the contrary, approaching; he can, as it were, calmly lie in a slumber or, waking up, get up; the hieroglyph can be sad or, on the contrary, cheerful, it can convey the rhythms of either spring, or summer, or autumn, or winter; it may look like a tree eaten by beetles, or like a sharp blade of a knife or spear ...; a hieroglyph can resemble the movement of jets of water or flames, the movement of clouds or haze, and finally, the play of sunlight or moonlight ... "
From the treatise of Cai Yong (the beginning of a new era), translated by S.N. Sokolov-Remizov.
Chinese characters are characters that do not make up the alphabet. This is a writing system in which each character represents either a complete one-syllable word or a one-syllable part of a word. This letter is also called logographic. Each character has its own pronunciation. In order to be able to read Chinese, it is necessary to memorize about 4,000 characters. Fortunately there is no need long time learn Chinese to appreciate the beauty of its writing.
Frequently used Chinese characters have from 10 to 30 lines (strokes). It is recommended to follow a certain order in their writing to ensure speed, accuracy and readability of the composition. Strokes (or strokes) in Chinese characters are divided into 8 main categories: horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, left oblique, right oblique, rising stroke, dot, hook, curved stroke. The "Eight Principles of Yong" explains how to write strokes that are found in Chinese characters. The hieroglyph "yong" is translated as "forever" or "eternity".
The main material elements of the art of calligraphy are the ink stick, ink stone, writing brush and paper. All of them are combined into one concept, which is known as the Four Cabinet Treasures. These four writing instruments have been used by artists in various periods of Chinese history, from ancient times to the present day. A writing brush can be made from the feather or hair of various animals - wolf, rabbit, deer, chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and tigers.
It was customary for artists to use their signature or seal to leave their name on an oil painting, calligraphy sample, text with a poem or story, documents and letters. Ancient Chinese seals are a stylized image of the artist's name, skillfully engraved on a wooden or bone surface. The hieroglyphs for seals are very elegant in form. Today they have not lost their popularity. Even today they are often used by masters of calligraphy in their works.
Traditionally, Chinese characters are written in vertical columns - from top to bottom; the first column is located on the right side of the sheet, and the text is written on the left side.
Paper (lined for beginners). Character sample (sometimes with a beginner-friendly grid) The starting point of the letter. Place for printing (name of the author, date and seal of the author)
Most scripts known to the world have only two or three standard and cursive writing styles, while Chinese calligraphy has about 10 styles.
Three of them are still widely used in Everyday life, two more - have already gone out of wide use, but continue to live in calligraphic art.
Kaishu- exemplary letter. The kaishu style is the standard style, the main style of modern Chinese character writing. Typographic and computer fonts mainly use characters of this style.
Liu Yun. Fragment of text in kaishu style.
The main characteristics of this style are: standard (uniformity) and strict order of strokes, a rather slow pace of writing. The hieroglyphs made in this style are easily distinguishable. In Chinese calligraphy, the kaishu style is most often used on formal occasions. In this style, the names of books and newspapers, business papers, New Year's paired inscriptions are written, inscriptions are made on shop signs, memorial plaques on buildings, tombstones, monuments and steles.
Xingshu- "running" or "running letter". Modern style Xingshu is one of the cursive styles based on kaishu, considered intermediate between standard kaishu and caoshu cursive.
The main characteristics of the style: the combination of a dot and another line is written without lifting the hand, the hieroglyphs are made at a rather large slope, they are distinguished by smoothness, smoothness, grace, and are clearly distinguishable. Kaishu is most commonly used in everyday writing and epistolary genre.
Caoshu- "herbal letter". The caoshu style is the main cursive style, it has gone much further from the main standard kaishu than the cursive xingshu. In the caoshu style, either the form of the normative hieroglyph of the kaishu style is modified, or the features of the hieroglyph are intertwined into a single script. Some features and elements of a character may even be deliberately omitted, so caoshu characters are difficult to both write and distinguish.
Yu Ren. Paired inscriptions in the caoshu style.
Zhuanshu- “ancient seal” and lishu - “scribe” or “business letter”, have already gone out of everyday use. In the Zhuanshu style, the oldest inscriptions on oracle bones of animals and tortoise shells - jiaguwen and inscriptions on ritual bronze vessels - jingwen were made. Zhuanshu style is characterized the smallest number hell: it lacks a dot, a hook, and a polyline. Another feature of the style is the same thickness of all features.
At Changshuo. Zhuanshu style work recreating the inscription on ancient stone drums.
Style deprive- "scribal or business writing", which arose after the Zhuanshu style, formed the basis of modern Chinese writing. From the Han Dynasty, around the middle of the 1st century BC, Lishu becomes the dominant writing style for all business papers. Graphically, it marks the transition from lines of equal thickness to lines different thickness, and compositionally differs from the archaic zhuanshu by a noticeable simplification of writing due to the reduction or complete rejection of the previous pictographic and ideographic components of the hieroglyph, however, it still differs in lesser variability in the forms of features than kaishu. Another visual graphic feature of the lishu is the horizontally flattened image of signs, unlike other styles, the signs of which tend to be more elongated vertically. Lishu style is characterized by the manner of ancient writing, but at the same time, the hieroglyphs of this style are clearly distinguishable.
Qian Shoute. Lishu style work.
But, the basis of the highest status of the art of Chinese calligraphy does not lie in external beauty. Since ancient times, writing has been understood as part of the world pattern of things (wen). It was believed that the signs of hieroglyphic writing followed the inexhaustible variety of nature, or the variety of movements, metamorphoses in the natural world, and beauty (thought both natural and created by man) consisted in the originality of every nuance of the boundless "pattern" of the universe. The famous treatise of the 5th century “The Carved Dragon of Literary Thought” says: “Look around at the myriad of creatures - both animals and plants are covered with a pattern. The dragon and the phoenix are a good omen with their luxuriant colors. The tiger and leopard are recognized by their spots and stripes. It happens that the colored ligature of clouds at dawn will shame the skill of the painter, and the graceful flowering of trees and grasses does without the fabrications of weavers. So is it really just an external decoration - no, this is their nature ... If unreasonable creatures are endowed with brilliance to such an extent, could a person really not have writing - a receptacle of the heart?
Writing in the eyes of the ancient Chinese was not a reflection of objects, but of their "shadows and traces", that is, an act of transformation of being, which reveals the limit of all things. Writing received the status of an independent reality abstracted from physical prototypes and was recognized as a powerful tool for harmonizing nature and culture, the nature of things and human creativity. As one of the calligraphers of the 18th century wrote: “The first among the arts, calligraphy reflects metamorphoses, reveals the innermost, attaches to the eternal; accompanies the beating of the heart, expresses the soul, carries the culture of the master, polishes the culture of the word, creates a new one; being a response, conceals a call, being a call, conceals a response.
The deep essence of writing is an expression of the world element, eternal movement, endlessly changing ratios and connections of two principles: the masculine yang - firm, strong, aspiring upward, heavenly, creative, and the feminine yin - soft, flexible, pliable, gentle, dark, earthly, full desire for fulfillment and self-giving, directed downwards. It is no coincidence that the human body, in which the interaction of these two forces occurs most visibly, integral in its structure and simultaneously consisting of many elements, has become a prototype of the plastic forms of Chinese calligraphy. If a Chinese doctor approached human body as to the system of energy circulations of yin and yang forces, the calligrapher, distinguishing the backbone, veins, blood, muscles in the structure of the hieroglyph, saw the action of the same polar forces of yin and yang.
The clash and harmony of two opposite principles constitute the hidden potential of each work of calligraphic art. To visually catch this interaction of opposites to an inexperienced eye, peering at how black and white, the two main colors that the master of writing deals with, are consistent in calligraphic strokes. In Chinese tradition, black is associated with yin and white is associated with yang. In calligraphy instructions, it was invariably emphasized: "Calculate the white, measure the black." Black color denotes the deep, sacred secrets of being, the endless potency of forms. White color associated with primordial purity, the reality of existence and its death. Harmonizing black and white is the basis of calligraphic aesthetics.
The Chinese language is one of the oldest written languages peace. Its history goes back at least 3 thousand years. The inscriptions on it were found on tortoise shells from the Shang Dynasty (1766-1123 BC).
History of Chinese writing
Chinese writing is younger than Sumerian or Egyptian, but there is no evidence that the invention of writing in the Celestial Empire was in any way stimulated by the writing of the Middle East. The earliest examples of Chinese characters are divinatory texts on bones and shells. They consist of a question to the soothsayer and an answer to it. This early writing shows that at the dawn of its development it was based on pictograms. For example, the word "cow" was depicted with the head of an animal, and "go" with a foot pattern.
Over time, however, Chinese writing has undergone many changes, and by the time (206 BC - 220 AD) it has lost most its pictorialism. Modern hieroglyphs were formed during the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. e. Surprisingly, after that they hardly changed. In addition to the standard forms, there are also several handwritten ones. The most common are caoshu and xingshu. The first type is very difficult to read for people who do not have special training. Xingshu is a kind of compromise between the high speed of caoshu and standard writing. This form is widely used in modern China.
How many characters are there in Chinese?
To represent each vocabulary morpheme, the Chinese use single distinguishing characters. The vast majority of signs are written versions of spoken sounds that have a semantic meaning. Although the writing system has changed over time due to revolutions and political upheavals, its principles, along with symbols, have remained basically the same.
Chinese hieroglyphic words originally depicted people, animals, or objects, but over the centuries became more stylized and no longer resembled what they represented. Although there are about 56 thousand of them, the vast majority of them are unknown to the typical reader - he needs to know only 3000 of them for literacy. Perhaps this figure most reliably answers the question of how many hieroglyphs are in the Chinese language.
Simplified logograms
The problem of teaching thousands of characters in 1956 led to the fact that the writing of Chinese characters was simplified. As a result, about 2000 logograms became easier to read and write. They are also taught in Mandarin Chinese classes abroad. These symbols are simpler, that is, they have fewer graphic elements than traditional ones.
Simplified characters have existed for hundreds of years, but were officially incorporated into writing only after the founding of the PRC in the 1950s to improve the literacy of the population. Simplified logograms are used by the people's daily newspaper People's Daily and are used in news and video subtitles. However, people who write well may not know the traditional version.
This system is standard in China (excluding Hong Kong) and Singapore, while Traditional Chinese continues to be the standard for Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and other countries.
phonetic writing
Cantonese speakers have developed their own system of phonetic signs. These symbols are used in addition to the traditional Chinese characters, such as in comics or the entertainment sections of newspapers and magazines. Often these characters cannot be found in a dictionary. Unofficial logograms are used to convey
Pinyin
In an attempt to make the Chinese language more understandable to the West, China developed the pinyin system. It uses the pinyin system to represent words. In 1977, the PRC authorities made an official request to the United Nations for naming geographical places in China using the pinyin system. Pinyin is used by those who more familiar with the Latin alphabet and learning to speak Chinese.