Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Bibliography of the Chinese language and writing system. The Chinese language has an attested history spanning more than three millennia, and linguists have reconstructed forms spoken millennia prior to the earliest known examples of written Chinese c. 1200 BC. Chinese may be viewed either as a holistic unit with great internal topological ...
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. [2]
The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja ...
Chinese characters [a] are logographs used to write 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.
The term large seal script traditionally refers to written Chinese dating from before the Qin dynasty —now used either narrowly to the writing of the Western and early Eastern Zhou dynasty ( c. 1046 – 403 BCE), or more broadly to also include the oracle bone script ( c. 1250 – c. 1000 BCE ). The term deliberately contrasts the small seal ...
Although the Chinese writing system is not alphabetic, comparison of words whose characters share a phonetic element (a phonetic series) yields much information about pronunciation. Often the characters in a phonetic series are still pronounced alike, as in the character 中 ( zhōng , 'middle'), which was adapted to write the words chōng ...
Chinese characters. Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, artifacts bearing markings dating to the Neolithic period have been unearthed at several archeological sites in China, mostly in the Yellow River valley. These symbols have been compared to the oracle bone script —the earliest known forms of Chinese characters, first ...