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91-690: The block has dozens of ideographic variation sequences registered in the Unicode Ideographic Variation Database (IVD). These sequences specify the desired glyph variant for a given Unicode character. Sources for the original collection of CJK Compatibility Ideographs include: In ensuing versions of the standard, more characters have been added to the block from: IBM Japanese double-byte EBCDIC includes several kanji which do not exist in, or do not round-trip from, JIS X 0208 . These were included as gaiji in extensions to Shift JIS and EUC-JP from IBM (e.g. code page 942 ), NEC ,

182-544: A | and single-storey | ɑ | forms both representing the Latin letter ⟨ A ⟩ . Variants also emerge for aesthetic reasons, to make handwriting easier, or to correct what the writer perceives to be errors in a character's form. Individual components may be replaced with visually, phonetically, or semantically similar alternatives. The boundary between character structure and style—and thus whether forms represent different characters, or are merely variants of

273-635: A 190×190 grid; code 0x40 ( space in EBCDIC) is used doubled as an ideographic space , but not as part of any other double-byte code. In the IBM version of the DBCS-Host code, the code 0x0F switches to single-byte mode and the code 0x0E switches to double-byte mode, in common with IBM double-byte EBCDIC codes for other CJK languages, such as the EBCDIC version of Johab for Korean . In contrast to KEIS and JEF,

364-437: A brush onto silk, bamboo, or paper, and being printed using woodblocks and moveable type . Technologies invented since the 19th century allowing for wider use of characters include telegraph codes and typewriters , as well as input methods and text encodings on computers. Chinese characters are accepted as representing one of four independent inventions of writing in human history. In each instance, writing evolved from

455-416: A character's meaning. Examples of phono-semantic compounds include 河 ( hé ; 'river'), 湖 ( hú ; 'lake'), 流 ( liú ; 'stream'), 沖 ( chōng ; 'surge'), and 滑 ( huá ; 'slippery'). Each of these characters have three short strokes on their left-hand side: 氵 , a simplified combining form of ⽔   'WATER' . This component serves

546-428: A few characters in length at their shortest, to several dozen at their longest. The Shang king would communicate with his ancestors by means of scapulimancy , inquiring about subjects such as the royal family, military success, and the weather. Inscriptions were made in the divination material itself before and after it had been cracked by exposure to heat; they generally include a record of the questions posed, as well as

637-690: A given position in the compound. Components within a character may serve a specific function: phonetic components provide a hint for the character's pronunciation, and semantic components indicate some element of the character's meaning. Components that serve neither function may be classified as pure signs with no particular meaning, other than their presence distinguishing one character from another. A straightforward structural classification scheme may consist of three pure classes of semantographs , phonographs and signs —having only semantic, phonetic, and form components respectively, as well as classes corresponding to each combination of component types. Of

728-558: A language. Specifically, characters represent the smallest units of meaning in a language, which are referred to as morphemes . Morphemes in Chinese—and therefore the characters used to write them—are nearly always a single syllable in length. In some special cases, characters may denote non-morphemic syllables as well; due to this, written Chinese is often characterized as morphosyllabic . Logographs may be contrasted with letters in an alphabet , which generally represent phonemes ,

819-406: A line, and later evolved into their present forms with less potential for graphical ambiguity in context. More complex indicatives include 凸 ('convex'), 凹 ('concave'), and 平 ('flat and level'). Compound ideographs ( 会意 ; 會意 ; huìyì )—also called logical aggregates , associative idea characters , or syssemantographs —combine other characters to convey

910-542: A mature form, also called 八分 ( bāfēn ). Bamboo slips discovered during the late 20th century point to this maturation being completed during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han ( r.  141–87 BCE ). This process, called libian ( 隶变 ; 隸變 ), involved character forms being mutated and simplified, with many components being consolidated, substituted, or omitted. In turn, the components themselves were regularized to use fewer, straighter, and more well-defined strokes. The resulting clerical forms largely lacked any of

1001-419: A model first popularized in the 2nd-century Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. More recent models have analysed the methods used to create characters, how characters are structured, and how they function in a given writing system. Most characters can be analysed structurally as compounds made of smaller components ( 部件 ; bùjiàn ), which are often independent characters in their own right, adjusted to occupy

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1092-685: A new, synthetic meaning. A canonical example is 明 ('bright'), interpreted as the juxtaposition of the two brightest objects in the sky: ⽇   'SUN' and ⽉   'MOON' , together expressing their shared quality of brightness. Other examples include 休 ('rest'), composed of pictographs ⼈   'MAN' and ⽊   'TREE' , and 好 ('good'), composed of ⼥   'WOMAN' and ⼦   'CHILD' . Many traditional examples of compound ideographs are now believed to have actually originated as phono-semantic compounds, made obscure by subsequent changes in pronunciation. For example,

1183-719: A semantic component. Pictographs have often been extended from their original meanings to take on additional layers of metaphor and synecdoche , which sometimes displace the character's original sense. When this process results in excessive ambiguity between distinct senses written with the same character, it is usually resolved by new compounds being derived to represent particular senses. Indicatives ( 指事 ; zhǐshì ), also called simple ideographs or self-explanatory characters , are visual representations of abstract concepts that lack any tangible form. Examples include 上 ('up') and 下 ('down')—these characters were originally written as dots placed above and below

1274-563: A semantic function in each example, indicating the character has some meaning related to water. The remainder of each character is its phonetic component: 湖 ( hú ) is pronounced identically to 胡 ( hú ) in Standard Chinese, 河 ( hé ) is pronounced similarly to 可 ( kě ), and 沖 ( chōng ) is pronounced similarly to 中 ( zhōng ). The phonetic components of most compounds may only provide an approximate pronunciation, even before subsequent sound shifts in

1365-912: A set of characters which are usually encoded the same across all EBCDIC code pages. Most notably, they sometimes include katakana characters at code points which are used for lowercase letters of the Basic Latin alphabet in the invariant set. Encoding of lowercase letters when katakana characters are included at those locations, and encoding of katakana characters when lowercase letters are retained in their usual locations, can vary between vendors, as shown below. Microsoft Windows implements two Japanese single-byte EBCDIC variants, with code page numbers 20000 higher than IBM's code page numbers for its variants, as code pages 20290 (documented as IBM290 , "IBM EBCDIC Japanese Katakana Extended") and 21027 ("Extended/Ext Alpha Lowercase"). Code page 21027 as implemented in Windows

1456-429: A stylus in clay moulds used to cast ritual bronzes . Characters have also been incised into stone, or written in ink onto slips of silk, wood, and bamboo. The invention of paper for use as a writing medium occurred during the 1st century CE, and is traditionally credited to Cai Lun ( d.  121 CE ). There are numerous styles, or scripts ( 书 ; 書 ; shū ) in which characters can be written, including

1547-540: A system using two distinct types of ideographs . Ideographs could either be pictographs visually depicting objects or concepts, or fixed signs representing concepts only by shared convention. These systems are classified as proto-writing , because the techniques they used were insufficient to carry the meaning of spoken language by themselves. Various innovations were required for Chinese characters to emerge from proto-writing. Firstly, pictographs became distinct from simple pictures in use and appearance: for example,

1638-540: A time and without indicating any greater context. Qiu concludes, "We simply possess no basis for saying that they were already being used to record language." A historical connection with the symbols used by the late Neolithic Dawenkou culture ( c.  4300  – c.  2600 BCE ) in Shandong has been deemed possible by palaeographers, with Qiu concluding that they "cannot be definitively treated as primitive writing, nevertheless they are symbols which resemble most

1729-811: A transitional form between clerical and regular script which remained in use through the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) and beyond. Cursive script ( 草书 ; 草書 ; cǎoshū ) was in use as early as 24 BCE, synthesizing elements of the vulgar writing that had originated in Qin with flowing cursive brushwork. By the Jin dynasty (266–420), the Han cursive style became known as 章草 ( zhāngcǎo ; 'orderly cursive'), sometimes known in English as 'clerical cursive', 'ancient cursive', or 'draft cursive'. Some attribute this name to

1820-510: A village near Anyang in Henan —discovered to be the site of Yin , the final Shang capital—which was excavated by a team led by Li Ji (1896–1979) from the Academia Sinica between 1928 and 1937. To date, over 150 000 oracle bone fragments have been found. Oracle bone inscriptions recorded divinations undertaken to communicate with the spirits of royal ancestors. The inscriptions range from

1911-481: A well-developed writing system, which suggests an initial emergence predating the late 2nd millennium BCE. Although written Chinese is first attested in official divinations, it is widely believed that writing was also used for other purposes during the Shang, but that the media used in other contexts—likely bamboo and wooden slips —were less durable than bronzes or oracle bones, and have not been preserved. As early as

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2002-414: A word is used to indicate a different word with a similar pronunciation, depending on context. This allowed for words that lacked a plausible pictographic representation to be written down for the first time. This technique preempted more sophisticated methods of character creation that would further expand the lexicon. The process whereby writing emerged from proto-writing took place over a long period; when

2093-597: Is an incomplete implementation, lacking two-way mappings for several letters and kana, and is currently deprecated. IBM's code pages were later updated to include the Euro sign at 0xE1, retaining their original CPGID numbers, but being assigned new CCSID numbers. Hence, the CCSID 290 refers to the original version of code page 290, while the version of code page 290 with the Euro sign is also known as CCSID 8482. Similarly, CCSID 1027 refers to

2184-474: Is given by Xu as 轉注 ( zhuǎnzhù ; 'reversed and refocused'); however, its definition is unclear, and it is generally disregarded by modern scholars. Modern scholars agree that the theory presented in the Shuowen Jiezi is problematic, failing to fully capture the nature of Chinese writing, both in the present, as well as at the time Xu was writing. Traditional Chinese lexicography as embodied in

2275-399: Is not required, and character forms may be accentuated to evoke a variety of aesthetic effects. Traditional ideals of calligraphic beauty often tie into broader philosophical concepts native to East Asia. For example, aesthetics can be conceptualized using the framework of yin and yang , where the extremes of any number of mutually reinforcing dualities are balanced by the calligrapher—such as

2366-402: Is now written with five strokes instead of eight, and a system of five basic stroke types is commonly employed in analysis—with certain compound strokes treated as sequences of basic strokes made in a single motion. Characters are constructed according to predictable visual patterns. Some components have distinct combining forms when occupying specific positions within a character—for example,

2457-457: Is regularly done with corporate brand names: for example, Coca-Cola 's Chinese name is 可口可乐 ; 可口可樂 ( Kěkǒu Kělè ; 'delicious enjoyable'). Some characters and components are pure signs , whose meaning merely derives from their having a fixed and distinct form. Basic examples of pure signs are found with the numerals beyond four, e.g. 五 ('five') and 八 ('eight'), whose forms do not give visual hints to

2548-783: Is used as the single-byte component of the multi-byte code page IBM-939 and (as the Euro-updated CCSID 5123) the updated version IBM-1399. In the following table, conformance to the invariant set is marked with green; collision with the invariant set is marked with red. There are three double-byte character codes used for Japanese with EBCDIC: IBM code page 300 (also called IBM Kanji or IBM Japanese DBCS-Host) from IBM , KEIS from Hitachi , and JEF from Fujitsu . These are DBCS-Host encodings, using different shift codes to switch between single-byte EBCDIC and double-byte modes. Codes 0x41 through 0xFE (those used for graphic characters in EBCDIC) are used in pairs to represent characters from

2639-446: The I ;Ching . According to one tradition, Chinese characters were invented during the 3rd millennium BCE by Cangjie , a scribe of the legendary Yellow Emperor . Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called 字 ( zì ) due to his frustration with the limitations of knotting, taking inspiration from his study of the tracks of animals, landscapes, and the stars in the sky. On

2730-548: The ⼑   'KNIFE' component appears as 刂 on the right side of characters, but as ⺈ at the top of characters. The order in which components are drawn within a character is fixed. The order in which the strokes of a component are drawn is also largely fixed, but may vary according to several different standards. This is summed up in practice with a few rules of thumb, including that characters are generally assembled from left to right, then from top to bottom, with "enclosing" components started before, then closed after,

2821-646: The 3500 characters that are frequently used in Standard Chinese, pure semantographs are estimated to be the rarest, accounting for about 5% of the lexicon, followed by pure signs with 18%, and semantic–form and phonetic–form compounds together accounting for 19%. The remaining 58% are phono-semantic compounds. The Chinese palaeographer Qiu Xigui ( b.  1935 ) presents three principles of character function adapted from earlier proposals by Tang Lan  [ zh ] (1901–1979) and Chen Mengjia (1911–1966), with semantographs describing all characters whose forms are wholly related to their meaning, regardless of

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2912-753: The Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties (1644–1912) led to considerable standardization in character forms, which prefigured later script reforms during the 20th century. This print orthography , exemplified by the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary , was later dubbed the jiu zixing ('old character shapes'). Printed Chinese characters may use different typefaces , of which there are four broad classes in use: Before computers became ubiquitous, earlier electro-mechanical communications devices like telegraphs and typewriters were originally designed for use with alphabets, often by means of alphabetic text encodings like Morse code and ASCII . Adapting these technologies for use with

3003-630: The Open Software Foundation , and Microsoft (e.g. Windows code page 932 ). However, they were not used as a source for the original Unified Repertoire and Ordering (URO). Instead, 32 of the IBM extension kanji, those which had not been included in the URO from other sources, were included in the CJK Compatibility Ideographs block in the range U+FA0E–U+FA2D. Of these 32 characters: The following Unicode-related documents record

3094-467: The Shuowen Jiezi describes 信 ('trust') as an ideographic compound of ⼈   'MAN' and ⾔   'SPEECH' , but modern analyses instead identify it as a phono-semantic compound—though with disagreement as to which component is phonetic. Peter A. Boodberg and William G. Boltz go so far as to deny that any compound ideographs were devised in antiquity, maintaining that secondary readings that are now lost are responsible for

3185-462: The Shuowen Jiezi has suggested implausible etymologies for some characters. Moreover, several categories are considered to be ill-defined: for example, it is unclear whether characters like 大 ('large') should be classified as pictographs or indicatives. However, awareness of the 'six writings' model has remained a common component of character literacy, and often serves as a tool for students memorizing characters. The broadest trend in

3276-576: The Shuowen Jiezi . For nearly two millennia, this scheme was the primary framework for character analysis used throughout the Sinosphere. Xu based most of his analysis on examples of Qin seal script that were written down several centuries before his time—these were usually the oldest specimens available to him, though he stated he was aware of the existence of even older forms. The first five categories are pictographs, indicatives, compound ideographs, phono-semantic compounds, and loangraphs. The sixth category

3367-507: The Sinosphere . In Japanese , Korean , and Vietnamese , Chinese characters are known as kanji , hanja , and chữ Hán respectively. Writing traditions also emerged for some of the other languages of China , like the sawndip script used to write the Zhuang languages of Guangxi . Each of these written vernaculars used existing characters to write the language's native vocabulary, as well as

3458-557: The Sui dynasty (581–618) required test takers to write in Literary Chinese using regular script, which contributed to the prevalence of both throughout later Chinese history. Each character of a text is written within a uniform square allotted for it. As part of the evolution from seal script into clerical script, character components became regularized as discrete series of strokes ( 笔画 ; 筆畫 ; bǐhuà ). Strokes can be considered both

3549-470: The loanwords it borrowed from Chinese . In addition, each invented characters for local use. In written Korean and Vietnamese, Chinese characters have largely been replaced with alphabets, leaving Japanese as the only major non-Chinese language still written using them. At the most basic level, characters are composed of strokes that are written in a fixed order. Methods of writing characters have historically included being carved into stone, being inked with

3640-519: The 13th century BCE in what is now Anyang , Henan, as part of divinations conducted by the Shang dynasty royal house. Character forms were originally highly pictographic in style, but evolved over time as writing spread across China. Numerous attempts have been made to reform the script, including the promotion of small seal script by the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Clerical script , which had matured by

3731-500: The Buddhist terminology introduced to China in antiquity, as well as contemporary non-Chinese words and names. For example, each character in the name 加拿大 ( Jiānádà ; 'Canada') is often used as a loangraph for its respective syllable. However, the barrier between a character's pronunciation and meaning is never total: when transcribing into Chinese, loangraphs are often chosen deliberately as to create certain connotations. This

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3822-517: The Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture . Chinese characters have a documented history spanning over three millennia, representing one of the four independent inventions of writing accepted by scholars; of these, they comprise the only writing system continuously used since its invention. Over time, the function, style, and means of writing characters have evolved greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect

3913-611: The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code ( EBCDIC ) have been used to represent the Japanese language on computers, including variants defined by Hitachi , Fujitsu , IBM and others. Some are variable-width encodings , employing locking shift codes to switch between single-byte and double-byte modes. Unlike other EBCDIC locales, the lowercase basic Latin letters are often not preserved in their usual locations. The characters which are found in

4004-537: The IBM-300 code page add additional Kanji with lead bytes 0xB8 through 0xD5 and additional non-Kanji with lead bytes 0xD6 through 0xE9. This revision updated the set for JIS X 0213 , including the Euro sign and, while retaining the CPGID 300, was assigned the new CCSID 16684. The code pages IBM-930 (with code page 290 as the single-byte set), IBM-931 (with code page 37 as the single-byte set), and IBM-939 (with code page 1027 as

4095-457: The Qin small seal script was standardized for use throughout the entire country under the direction of Chancellor Li Si ( c.  280  – 208 BCE). It was traditionally believed that Qin scribes only used small seal script, and the later clerical script was a sudden invention during the early Han. However, more than one script was used by Qin scribes: a rectilinear vulgar style had also been in use in Qin for centuries prior to

4186-410: The Shang royal house. Contemporaneous inscriptions in a related but distinct style were also made on ritual bronze vessels. This oracle bone script ( 甲骨文 ; jiǎgǔwén ) was first documented in 1899, after specimens were discovered being sold as "dragon bones" for medicinal purposes, with the symbols carved into them identified as early character forms. By 1928, the source of the bones had been traced to

4277-586: The Shang, the oracle bone script existed as a simplified form alongside another that was used in bamboo books, in addition to elaborate pictorial forms often used in clan emblems. These other forms have been preserved in what is called bronze script ( 金文 ; jīnwén ), where inscriptions were made using a stylus in a clay mould, which was then used to cast ritual bronzes . These differences in technique generally resulted in character forms that were less angular in appearance than their oracle bone script counterparts. Study of these bronze inscriptions has revealed that

4368-620: The Sinosphere during the 20th century as a result of Western influence. Many publications outside mainland China continue to use the traditional vertical writing direction. Western influence also resulted in the generalized use of punctuation being widely adopted in print during the 19th and 20th centuries. Prior to this, the context of a passage was considered adequate to guide readers; this was enabled by characters being easier than alphabets to read when written scriptio continua , due to their more discretized shapes. The earliest attested Chinese characters were carved into bone, or marked using

4459-659: The ancient pictographic script discovered thus far in China... They undoubtedly can be viewed as the forerunners of primitive writing." The oldest attested Chinese writing comprises a body of inscriptions produced during the Late Shang period ( c.  1250  – 1050 BCE), with the very earliest examples from the reign of Wu Ding dated between 1250 and 1200 BCE. Many of these inscriptions were made on oracle bones —usually either ox scapulae or turtle plastrons—and recorded official divinations carried out by

4550-436: The answers as interpreted in the cracks. A minority of bones feature characters that were inked with a brush before their strokes were incised; the evidence of this also shows that the conventional stroke orders used by later calligraphers had already been established for many characters by this point. Oracle bone script is the direct ancestor of later forms of written Chinese. The oldest known inscriptions already represent

4641-419: The apparent absence of phonetic indicators, but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars. Phono-semantic compounds ( 形声 ; 形聲 ; xíngshēng ) are composed of at least one semantic component and one phonetic component. They may be formed by one of several methods, often by adding a phonetic component to disambiguate a loangraph, or by adding a semantic component to represent a specific extension of

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4732-541: The basic unit of handwriting, as well as the writing system's basic unit of graphemic organization. In clerical and regular script, individual strokes traditionally belong to one of eight categories according to their technique and graphemic function. In what is known as the Eight Principles of Yong , calligraphers practice their technique using the character 永 ( yǒng ; 'eternity'), which can be written with one stroke of each type. In ordinary writing, 永

4823-492: The calligrapher Zhong Yao ( c.  151  – 230), who was living in the state of Cao Wei (220–266); he is often called the "father of regular script". The earliest surviving writing in regular script comprises copies of Zhong Yao's work, including at least one copy by Wang Xizhi. Characteristics of regular script include the 'pause' ( 頓 ; dùn ) technique used to end horizontal strokes, as well as heavy tails on diagonal strokes made going down and to

4914-639: The character as 明 . However, the increased usage of 朙 was followed by the proliferation of a third variant: 眀 , with ⽬   'EYE' on the left—likely derived as a contraction of 朙 . Ultimately, 明 became the character's standard form. From the earliest inscriptions until the 20th century, texts were generally laid out vertically—with characters written from top to bottom in columns, arranged from right to left. Word boundaries are generally not indicated with spaces . A horizontal writing direction—with characters written from left to right in rows, arranged from top to bottom—only became predominant in

5005-403: The components they enclose. For example, 永 is drawn in the following order: Over a character's history, variant character forms ( 异体字 ; 異體字 ; yìtǐzì ) emerge via several processes. Variant forms have distinct structures, but represent the same morpheme; as such, they can be considered instances of the same underlying character. This is comparable to visually distinct double-storey |

5096-610: The day that these first characters were created, grain rained down from the sky; that night, the people heard the wailing of ghosts and demons, lamenting that humans could no longer be cheated. Collections of graphs and pictures have been discovered at the sites of several Neolithic settlements throughout the Yellow River valley, including Jiahu ( c.  6500 BCE ), Dadiwan and Damaidi (6th millennium BCE), and Banpo (5th millennium BCE). Symbols at each site were inscribed or drawn onto artefacts, appearing one at

5187-417: The distinct process of semantic extension, where a word acquires additional senses, which often remain written with the same character. As both processes often result in a single character form being used to write several distinct meanings, loangraphs are often misidentified as being the result of semantic extension, and vice versa. Loangraphs are also used to write words borrowed from other languages, such as

5278-519: The distinct units of sound used by speakers of a language. Despite their origins in picture-writing, Chinese characters are no longer ideographs capable of representing ideas directly; their comprehension relies on the reader's knowledge of the particular language being written. The areas where Chinese characters were historically used—sometimes collectively termed the Sinosphere —have a long tradition of lexicography attempting to explain and refine their use; for most of history, analysis revolved around

5369-420: The double-byte Japanese code used with EBCDIC by IBM, but not found in the first edition of JIS X 0208 , also influenced the vendor extensions found in some non-EBCDIC encodings such as IBM code page 932 ("DBCS-PC") and Windows code page 932 . Similarly to JIS X 0201 (itself incorporated into Shift JIS ), Japanese EBCDIC encodings often include a set of single-byte katakana . Several different variants of

5460-439: The duality between strokes made quickly or slowly, between applying ink heavily or lightly, between characters written with symmetrical or asymmetrical forms, and between characters representing concrete or abstract concepts. Woodblock printing was invented in China between the 6th and 9th centuries, followed by the invention of moveable type by Bi Sheng (972–1051) during the 11th century. The increasing use of print during

5551-822: The early Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), abstracted the forms of characters—obscuring their pictographic origins in favour of making them easier to write. Following the Han, regular script emerged as the result of cursive influence on clerical script, and has been the primary style used for characters since. Informed by a long tradition of lexicography , states using Chinese characters have standardized their forms: broadly, simplified characters are used to write Chinese in mainland China , Singapore , and Malaysia , while traditional characters are used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau . After being introduced in order to write Literary Chinese , characters were often adapted to write local languages spoken throughout

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5642-504: The evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape ( 字形 ; zìxíng ), the "external appearances of individual graphs", and in graphical form ( 字体 ; 字體 ; zìtǐ ), "overall changes in the distinguishing features of graphic[al] shape and calligraphic style, [...] in most cases refer[ring] to rather obvious and rather substantial changes". The traditional notion of an orderly procession of script styles, each suddenly appearing and displacing

5733-406: The extent that the original objects represented are no longer obvious. This proto-writing system was limited to representing a relatively narrow range of ideas with a comparatively small library of symbols. This compelled innovations that allowed for symbols to directly encode spoken language. In each historical case, this was accomplished by some form of the rebus technique, where the symbol for

5824-554: The fact that the style was considered more orderly than a later form referred to as 今草 ( jīncǎo ; 'modern cursive'), which had first emerged during the Jin and was influenced by semi-cursive and regular script. This later form was exemplified by the work of figures like Wang Xizhi (303–361), who is often regarded as the most important calligrapher in Chinese history. An early form of semi-cursive script ( 行书 ; 行書 ; xíngshū ; 'running script') can be identified during

5915-460: The forms of pictographs have been simplified in order to make them easier to write. As a result, modern readers generally cannot deduce what many pictographs were originally meant to resemble; without knowing the context of their origin in picture-writing, they may be interpreted instead as pure signs. However, if a pictograph's use in compounds still reflects its original meaning, as with 日 in 晴 ('clear sky'), it can still be analysed as

6006-649: The historical forms like seal script and clerical script. Most styles used throughout the Sinosphere originated within China, though they may display regional variation. Styles that have been created outside of China tend to remain localized in their use: these include the Japanese edomoji and Vietnamese lệnh thư scripts. Calligraphy was traditionally one of the four arts to be mastered by Chinese scholars, considered to be an artful means of expressing thoughts and teachings. Chinese calligraphy typically makes use of an ink brush to write characters. Strict regularity

6097-401: The initial development of Chinese writing, and has remained common throughout its subsequent history. Some loangraphs ( 假借 ; jiǎjiè ; 'borrowing') are introduced to represent words previously lacking another written form—this is often the case with abstract grammatical particles such as 之 and 其 . The process of characters being borrowed as loangraphs should not be conflated with

6188-488: The late Han, with its development stemming from a cursive form of neo-clerical script. Liu Desheng ( 劉德升 ; c.  147  – 188 CE) is traditionally recognized as the inventor of the semi-cursive style, though accreditations of this kind often indicate a given style's early masters, rather than its earliest practitioners. Later analysis has suggested popular origins for semi-cursive, as opposed to it being an invention of Liu. It can be characterized partly as

6279-631: The layout of IBM code page 300 is unrelated to JIS X 0208 , and conversion between the two must be done via a table; however, its character repertoire has been kept up-to-date with successive revisions of JIS X 0208 so as to remain a superset of JIS X 0208's repertoire. Lead bytes 0x41 through 0x44 are used for non-Kanji characters, lead bytes 0x45 through 0x68 are used for Kanji characters, and lead bytes 0x69 through 0x89 are used for UDC ( user-defined characters ). The existence of IBM's Japanese DBCS-Host code had impact beyond EBCDIC systems, since IBM also defined variants of Shift JIS ("DBCS-PC", defined in

6370-499: The mainstream script underwent slow, gradual evolution during the late Shang, which continued during the Zhou dynasty ( c.  1046  – 256 BCE) until assuming the form now known as small seal script ( 小篆 ; xiǎozhuàn ) within the Zhou state of Qin . Other scripts in use during the late Zhou include the bird-worm seal script ( 鸟虫书 ; 鳥蟲書 ; niǎochóngshū ), as well as

6461-548: The method by which the meaning was originally depicted, phonographs that include a phonetic component, and loangraphs encompassing existing characters that have been borrowed to write other words. Qiu also acknowledges the existence of character classes that fall outside of these principles, such as pure signs. Most of the oldest characters are pictographs ( 象形 ; xiàngxíng ), representational pictures of physical objects. Examples include 日 ('Sun'), 月 ('Moon'), and 木 ('tree'). Over time,

6552-507: The one previous, has been disproven by later scholarship and archaeological work. Instead, scripts evolved gradually, with several coexisting in a given area. Several of the Chinese classics indicate that knotted cords were used to keep records prior to the invention of writing. Works that reference the practice include chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching and the " Xici  II" commentary to

6643-428: The original version of code page 1027, while the version of CPGID 1027 with the Euro sign is given the CCSID 5123. Alongside versions of IBM's double-byte Japanese DBCS-Host code page (CPGID 300, CCSID 300 or 16684) as a double-byte component, IBM code page 290 is used as the single-byte component of the multi-byte code page IBM-930 and (as the Euro-updated CCSID 8482) the updated version IBM-1390. IBM code page 1027

6734-405: The phonetic series of characters using 余 ( yú ; jyu4 ), a literary first-person pronoun. The Old Chinese pronunciations of these characters were similar, but the phonetic component no longer serves as a useful hint for their pronunciation due to subsequent sound shifts. The phenomenon of existing characters being adapted to write other words with similar pronunciations was necessary in

6825-428: The pictograph 大 , meaning 'large', was originally a picture of a large man, but one would need to be aware of its specific meaning in order to interpret the sequence 大鹿 as signifying 'large deer', rather than being a picture of a large man and a deer next to one another. Due to this process of abstraction, as well as to make characters easier to write, pictographs gradually became more simplified and regularized—often to

6916-489: The pictorial qualities that remained in seal script. Around the midpoint of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), a simplified and easier form of clerical script appeared, which Qiu terms 'neo-clerical' ( 新隶体 ; 新隸體 ; xīnlìtǐ ). By the end of the Han, this had become the dominant script used by scribes, though clerical script remained in use for formal works, such as engraved stelae . Qiu describes neo-clerical as

7007-566: The pure double-byte Code page 301 and used in the variable width Code page 932 and Code page 942 ) and of EUC-JP which encode the entire repertoire of IBM code page 300, including 28 non-Kanji and 360 Kanji additional to those originally included in JIS X 0208 (although the non-Kanji because sign ∵ and not sign ￢ were later added to JIS X 0208 in 1983). These are referred to as "IBM-selected" characters and are included as extensions in, for example, Windows code page 932 . Some newer revisions of

7098-529: The purely pictorial use of symbols disappeared, leaving only those representing spoken words, the process was complete. Chinese characters have been used in several different writing systems throughout history. The concept of a writing system includes both the written symbols themselves, called graphemes —which may include characters, numerals, or punctuation—as well as the rules by which they are used to record language. Chinese characters are logographs , which are graphemes that represent units of meaning in

7189-2084: The purpose and process of defining specific characters in the CJK Compatibility Ideographs block: CJK Unified Ideographs CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I CJK Radicals Supplement Kangxi Radicals Ideographic Description Characters CJK Symbols and Punctuation CJK Strokes Enclosed CJK Letters and Months CJK Compatibility CJK Compatibility Ideographs CJK Compatibility Forms Enclosed Ideographic Supplement CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement 0 BMP 0 BMP 2 SIP 2 SIP 2 SIP 2 SIP 2 SIP 3 TIP 3 TIP 2 SIP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 0 BMP 1 SMP 2 SIP 4E00–9FFF 3400–4DBF 20000–2A6DF 2A700–2B73F 2B740–2B81F 2B820–2CEAF 2CEB0–2EBEF 30000–3134F 31350–323AF 2EBF0–2EE5F 2E80–2EFF 2F00–2FDF 2FF0–2FFF 3000–303F 31C0–31EF 3200–32FF 3300–33FF F900–FAFF FE30–FE4F 1F200–1F2FF 2F800–2FA1F 20,992 6,592 42,720 4,154 222 5,762 7,473 4,939 4,192 622 115 214 16 64 39 255 256 472 32 64 542 Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Unified Not unified Not unified Not unified Not unified Not unified Not unified Not unified 12 are unified Not unified Not unified Not unified Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Han Common Han, Hangul , Common, Inherited Common Hangul, Katakana , Common Katakana, Common Han Common Hiragana , Common Han Code page 300 Several mutually incompatible versions of

7280-525: The quantities they represent. The Shuowen Jiezi is a character dictionary authored c.  100 CE by the scholar Xu Shen ( c.  58  – c.  148 CE ). In its postface, Xu analyses what he sees as all the methods by which characters are created. Later authors iterated upon Xu's analysis, developing a categorization scheme known as the 'six writings' ( 六书 ; 六書 ; liùshū ), which identifies every character with one of six categories that had previously been mentioned in

7371-423: The regional forms used in non-Qin states. Examples of these styles were preserved as variants in the Shuowen Jiezi . Historically, Zhou forms were collectively referred to as large seal script ( 大篆 ; dàzhuàn ), a term which has fallen out of favour due to its lack of precision. Following Qin's conquest of the other Chinese states that culminated in the founding of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BCE,

7462-472: The result of clerical forms being written more quickly, without formal rules of technique or composition: what would be discrete strokes in clerical script frequently flow together instead. The semi-cursive style is commonly adopted in contemporary handwriting. Regular script ( 楷书 ; 楷書 ; kǎishū ), based on clerical and semi-cursive forms, is the predominant form in which characters are written and printed. Its innovations have traditionally been credited to

7553-534: The right. It developed further during the Eastern Jin (317–420) in the hands of Wang Xizhi and his son Wang Xianzhi (344–386). However, most Jin-era writers continued to use neo-clerical and semi-cursive styles in their daily writing. It was not until the Northern and Southern period (420–589) that regular script became the predominant form. The system of imperial examinations for the civil service established during

7644-594: The same as in EUC-JP. Differing from KEIS, the JIS X 0208 edition used in this JEF zone is the original JIS C 6226:1978. The lead byte range is extended back to 0x41, with 0x80–A0 designated for user definition; lead bytes 0x41–7F are assigned row numbers 101 through 163 for kuten purposes, although row 162 (lead byte 0x7E) is unused. Rows 101 through 148 are used for extended kanji, while rows 149 through 163 are used for extended non-kanji. Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write

7735-722: The same byte sequences used to encode them in EUC-JP , i.e. with both bytes being between 0xA1 and 0xFE inclusive. This results in duplicate encodings for the ideographic space —0x4040 per the DBCS-Host code structure, and 0xA1A1 as in EUC-JP. However, the lead byte range is extended back to 0x59, out of which the lead bytes 0x81–A0 are designated for user-defined characters, and the remainder are used for corporate-defined characters, including both kanji and non-kanji. In Fujitsu JEF (Japanese-processing Extended Feature), 0x29 switches to single-byte mode and 0x28 switches to double-byte mode. Similarly to KEIS, JIS X 0208 codes are represented

7826-426: The same character—is often non-trivial or unclear. For example, prior to the Qin dynasty the character meaning 'bright' was written as either 明 or 朙 —with either ⽇   'SUN' or 囧 'WINDOW' on the left, and ⽉   'MOON' on the right. As part of the Qin programme to standardize small seal script across China, the 朙 form was promoted. Some scribes ignored this, and continued to write

7917-515: The single-byte EBCDIC code are used in the Japanese locale, by different vendors; a given vendor may also define two different single-byte codes, one favoured for half-width katakana and one favoured for Latin script . Variants of EBCDIC favoured by a given vendor for use for katakana are sometimes referred to as EBCDIK , standing for Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Kana code . Code pages incorporating half-width kana are an exception to IBM's EBCDIC invariant character set, which specifies

8008-434: The single-byte set) exclude these additions, while IBM-1390 (with the Euro sign version of code page 290 / CCSID 8482) and IBM-1399 (with the Euro sign version of code page 1027 / CCSID 5123) include them. In Hitachi KEIS (Kanji-processing Extended Information System), the sequence 0x0A 0x41 switches to single-byte mode and the sequence 0x0A 0x42 switches to double-byte mode. JIS X 0208 characters are encoded using

8099-428: The sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes , the units of meaning in a language. Writing a language's entire vocabulary requires thousands of different characters. Characters are created according to several different principles, where aspects of both shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during

8190-414: The spoken language. Some characters may only have the same initial or final sound of a syllable in common with phonetic components. A phonetic series comprises all the characters created using the same phonetic component, which may have diverged significantly in their pronunciations over time. For example, 茶 ( chá ; caa4 ; 'tea') and 途 ( tú ; tou4 ; 'route') are part of

8281-579: The wars of unification. The popularity of this form grew as writing became more widespread. By the Warring States period ( c.  475  – 221 BCE), an immature form of clerical script ( 隶书 ; 隸書 ; lìshū ) had emerged based on the vulgar form developed within Qin, often called "early clerical" or "proto-clerical". The proto-clerical script evolved gradually; by the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), it had arrived at

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