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	Chinese written language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Its logographic writing system employs a large number of symbols, known as characters, to represent individual words or morphemes.
		Chinese characters that are closer to the spoken language were used to write informal works such as colloquial novels.
		The Chinese writing system is mostly logographic, i.e., each character expresses a monosyllabic word part, also known as a morpheme.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Chinese_written_language (1591 words)

	Chinese: The Chinese Writing System
		The Chinese writing system developed more than 4,000 years ago; the oldest extant examples of written Chinese are from the 14th or 15th cent.
		Chinese writing consists of an individual character or ideogram for every syllable, each character representing a word or idea rather than a sound; thus, problems caused by homonyms in spoken Chinese are not a difficulty in written Chinese.
		Since alphabetic writing requires a standardized spoken language, the local differences in the pronunciation of Chinese present a serious obstacle to the development of a satisfactory alphabet.
	www.factmonster.com /ce6/society/A0857298.html (379 words)

	Chinese (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The realities of speech and writing in China that are obscured by the myth of the universality of Chinese characters and by the ambiguity of the umbrella term "Chinese" should be kept in mind in considering the evolution of Chinese writing.
		Particularly illuminating is a comparison of Chinese and Sumerian in their approaches to an essentially similar problem of coping with the ambiguity inherent in writing systems in which one word might be written many different ways and one graph might be read many different ways.
		The grapheme, as we recall, is the indispensable meaningless unit that corresponds to the smallest segment of speech represented in the writing system.
	www.pinyin.info /readings/texts/visible/visible.html (9228 words)

	Tradition and Transformation in the Chinese Writing System (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Chinese writing is logographic, that is, every symbol either represents a word or a minimal unit of meaning.
		It would seem that from the very beginning of writing certain symbols that originated as pictograms were used for their sound alone, and it was only when this phonetic use of characters was introduced that a complete graphic record of language was possible.
		One problem that the proponents of alphabetic writing were not able to overcome was that for such a writing system to be practical, it would have to be adapted to various regional dialects; such a move was viewed as potentially divisive and harmful to the idea of a single Chinese nation.
	www.askasia.org /teachers/Instructional_Resources/Materials/Readings/China/R_china_11.htm (1419 words)

	AncientScripts.com: Chinese
		Chinese is an extremely ancient system of writing.
		It is because of this that the Chinese writing system is misleadingly labeled as "ideographic", because, as many would argue, every sign stands for an idea.
		This is untrue and pretty absurd, as a writing system records a language, not replicates ideas, emotions, or other mental states.
	www.ancientscripts.com /chinese.html (669 words)

	Chinese logographic writing system
		Because the uniform writing system represents ideas and not sounds, it can also be used for the five distinct languages and many dialects, mostly also tonal and homophonic, within China itself, and it is readable by the literate in Japan and to a certain extent in South Korea and parts of South-East Asia.
		Chinese does have phonetic elements, representing spoken sounds, but according to Wang (1973) it is not possible to read using the phonetic elements without first analysing the whole character to find out which is the phonetic element.
		Chinese and Japanese children quickly learn a few characters as wholes, but then comes a stage when they are liable to confuse characters that share a common subpart, until at last they are able to make correct associations to the whole characters because they have become clearer about the subparts.
	home.vicnet.net.au /~ozideas/writchin.htm (2501 words)

	Chinese script and language
		Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millenium BC and that there is no evidence to suggest the transmission of writing from elsewhere.
		The Chinese writing system an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters.
		Chinese characters, with some modifications, are also used in written Japanese and Korean, and were once used to write Vietnamese.
	www.omniglot.com /writing/chinese.htm (892 words)

	Chinese writing system -- Britannica Concise Encyclopedia - The online encyclopedia you can trust! (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		System of symbols used to write the Chinese language.
		Chinese writing is fundamentally logographic: there is an exact correspondence between a single symbol, or character, in the script and a morpheme.
		The term is from the Latin, meaning “wedge-shaped.” The writing system was in use at least by the end of the 4th millennium BC, and during the 3rd millennium the pictures that it used became fairly standardized linear drawings.
	www.britannica.com /ebc/article-9360623?tocId=9360623 (821 words)

	Recycled Knowledge: Writing Chinese (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Until about 1915 almost all Chinese writing was done in Classical Chinese, using conventions utterly divorced from those of any of the eight to twelve living Sinitic languages.
		As one of the many knock-on effects from the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, a widespread tradition of writing arose using the lexical and grammatical conventions of modern Peking Mandarin.
		It's interesting to note that the native alphabet of Chinese, Zhuyin Fuhao (or informally Bopomofo) was first used to show pronunciations in the official post-dynastic dictionary of Mandarin, the 1919 edition.
	recycledknowledge.blogspot.com /2005/06/writing-chinese.html (528 words)

	Ideographic Myth (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The concept of Chinese writings as a means of conveying ideas without regard to speech took hold as part of the chinoiserie fad among Western intellectuals that was stimulated by the generally highly laudatory writings of Catholic missionaries from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
		To lump together the writing of the American Indians and the early Chinese and Egyptians because of some similarity in graphic forms is to fall victim to the kind of befuddled thinking that is indicated by calling all of them pictographic or ideographic.
		The last sentence should be given the utmost emphasis: Chinese characters represent words (or better, morphemes), not ideas, and they represent them phonetically, for the most part, as do all real writing systems despite their diverse techniques and differing effectiveness in accomplishing the task.
	pinyin.info /readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html (4316 words)

	Appreciation of Chinese Calligraphy
		It is the only major writing system that went through a pictographic stage, and then maintained a pictographic component as the written language developed.
		In contrast, most of the world’s writing systems eventually developed phonetic alphabets to represent the sounds of spoken language rather than visual images perceived in the physical world.
		A: If you are familiar with the principles governing the composition of the Chinese characters, you will find it is very easy to remember even the most complicated looking character, and you will find that it is one of the most beautiful, logical, and scientifically constructed writing systems in the world.
	fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us /~jliou/ch_written_system/written.htm (340 words)

	Chinese writing reforms
		The dedication and years of study required to become a scholar in Chinese was rewarded with so much respect and the chance of government office, that no one once in power ever wished to change the system.
		Conservatives defended the beauty of the script and the moral value of the old literature that it preserved, but the writing system was a clear hazard in modernization.
		Writing reform in China may have not be as important for literacy than the spread of formal schools (Hayford), or it may be 'a major change amounting to nothing less than the most far reaching cultural revolution in all Chinese history' (De Francis, 1977).
	home.vicnet.net.au /~ozideas/wchinref.htm (1121 words)

	Origins of Chinese Writing - Logoi.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The inscriptions on these bones tell us that by 1200 BC Chinese writing was already a highly developed writing system which was used to record a language fairly similar to classical Chinese.
		Before writing the characters with a hard brush or a stick on the bamboo surface, the strips were prepared in advance and tied together with strings to form a roll.
		A major event in the history of Chinese script is the standardization of writing by the First Emperor of Qin who unified China in 221 BC.
	www.logoi.com /notes/chinese_origins.html (576 words)

	Japanese Writing System
		At the time, the Chinese writing system of kanji was considered too difficult for women, as it required years of study.
		It has been suggested that the Chinese system is necessary due to the large number of homonyms in Japanese.
		It is a writing system of aesthetic quality that by itself explains a great deal of the history of the Japanese.
	www.csuchico.edu /~cheinz/syllabi/asst001/fall97/mat-wite.htm (1435 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Even the writing systems of the three societies are from the same original, they all develop their own unique writing which the three are not able to communcate with each other.
		Even if it is true that both Korea and Japanese used Chinese writing at the first plae, it does not mean that both Korea and Japanese doen't have their own distinct writing system.
		Chinese language is like a main language that two other Korea and Japan had adopted and used them.
	www.sscnet.ucla.edu /soc/faculty/cheng/linkev.htm (549 words)

	The Japanese Writing System
		When the Japanese began to adopt the Chinese writing system in the fifth century, the Chinese writing system was already standardized and was twenty centuries old.
		The early attempts at adopting the Chinese writing system for Japanese met with many very difficult to overcome problems and the earliest solutions often avoided the problem by using Chinese syntax.
		Chinese characters are written in the angular form called Kaisho and the cursive form called Sousho.
	www.takase.com /Library/Background.htm (911 words)

	Ethiopian Writing System - Baye Yimam (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Even though this writing system is basically a syllabic system, the vowels inside each phoneme are not represented by a number of vowels but by a single vowel.
		In all the writing systems, there is always a difference between a sound and the symbol that represents it.
		The characters in their writings were not given roles based on their ethnic identity but by their contribution to the themes the writers want to pass through these literary works.
	www.ethiopians.com /bayeyima.html (6639 words)

	History and Prospect of Chinese Romanization (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Chinese romanization refers to the phonetic representation of Chinese language material in the Roman alphabet.
		The huge number of writing symbols one must learn in order to read and write Chinese is the chief culprit of the difficulty in learning and using the Chinese writing system.
		All the other systems are theoretically sound, because they all have representations for all the Chinese phonemes (The CWP pinyin system distinguishes the contrast between zh, ch, sh and z, c, s not in the basic syllable form, but through the homonym identifiers.).
	www.white-clouds.com /iclc/cliej/cl4ao.htm (2590 words)

	Japanese Writing System (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Chinese books were first brought to Japan between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D. Subsequently, the Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system in its entirety by adopting Classical Chinese as the official written language.
		Chinese characters used by the Japanese derive from the same tradition as the Chinese, namely, the characters of the Classical language.
		Chinese character compounds -- not just single characters -- are sometimes used to write native Japanese words, especially the names of plants and animals.
	cjvlang.com /Writing/writsys/writjpn.html (3605 words)

	Chinese Writing System (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		Chinese characters have a mystique that fascinates Chinese and non-Chinese alike.
		Admired for their beauty and the meanings (such as 'virtue' or 'sincerity') that they represent, characters tend to be regarded as objects worthy of study in themselves.
		There is also a system of phonetic symbols, informally known as bo po mo fo, created in the early 20th century and still used for limited purposes in Taiwan (e.g., indicating pronunciation in children's books).
	www.cjvlang.com /Writing/writsys/writchin.html (492 words)

	Chinese Cultural Studies: The Chinese Language and Alphabet
		Because there has long been a single method for writing Chinese, and a common literary and cultural history, a tradition has grown up of referring to, the eight main varieties of speech in China as diaalects'.
		Han Chinese is thus to be distinguished from the non-Han minority languages used in China.
		After several previous attempts to write Chinese using the letters of the roman alphabet, this 58-symbol writing system was finally adopted in 1958.
	acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu /~phalsall/texts/chinlng2.html (1520 words)

	Marjorie Chan's C683. Study of the Chinese Writing System (SP 88) [deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/c683-s88.htm]
		This course presents a critical study of the origin, classification, composition, and development of the Chinese writing system.
		For comparative purposes, the Japanese and Korean writing systems (kana and hangul respectively) will also be investigated, together with a brief look at problems of computerization of these three languages.
		Concluding the course will be some psycholinguistic studies on the reading of Chinese characters (versus other systems of writing) and hemispheric specialization, on the speed and comprehension in reading Chinese characters versus romanization, and other topics.
	people.cohums.ohio-state.edu /chan9/c683-s88.htm (594 words)

	Chinese 210: The Characteristics of Chinese--Course Info & Syllabus
		Whether or not you do study Chinese, you should be prepared to learn much of the Chinese that is presented as examples in the lectures and readings.
		During the course we will discuss the sounds and word structure of modern standard Chinese, the history of Chinese, the Chinese writing system, Chinese dialects, the relationship of Chinese to nearby languages, and modern language planning, reform, and standardization.
		In learning about the characteristics of Chinese and the history of the language, you will acquire a knowledge of what the Chinese is like and how it is organized and used.
	www.rci.rutgers.edu /~rsimmon/210SYL.htm (787 words)

	Kanji
		Kanji, one of the three scripts used in the Japanese language, are Chinese characters, which were first introduced to Japan in the 5th century via Korea.
		Consequently, most kanji can still be pronounced in at least two ways, a Chinese (on yomi) and a Japanese (kun yomi) way, which considerably further complicates the study of the Japanese language.
		Kanji are used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs.
	www.japan-guide.com /e/e2046.html (312 words)

	Chinese Cultural Studies: Chinese Logographic Writing
		First, because Chinese writing derives from an ideographic script [where each grapheme has an abstract, and not necessarily a clear pictorial, link with the meaning of the word represented], with several pictographic elements [where there is a direct pictorial link with the word represented], the characters are commonly referred to as ideographs.
		Secondly, the characters in fact often represent parts of words or morphemes [for example "happi" in "happiness" constitutes a morpheme] as well as whole words, so that even the term 'logographic' is slightly misleading; but in the absence of a more appropriate term (such as "morphographic"), it continues to be used.
		In the same way Chinese characters mean the same thing whether they are read in a variety of Chinese "dialects", or even in Japanese, a language which is as unlike Chinese in its internal structure as it is possible for a language to be.
	acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu /~phalsall/texts/chinlng4.html (541 words)

	Programming Tutorials - Books : Reading and Writing Chinese: A Guide to the Chinese Writing System
		Reading and Writing Chinese has been the standard text for foreign students and self-teachers of the Chinese Writing System since Tuttle first published it over 20 years ago.
		the only drawback is the glossary doesn't show the english meanings of the chinese words in pinyin.if you wanna look up the chinese character for an english word and you don't know its pinyin spelling and tone mark, you'd be lost looking up all the...
		The book is phenomenal because it is set up to teach you how to use a traditional Chinese dictionary and shows you how to write the character and even gives you some hints on learning them.
	www.programmertutorials.com /ItemId/0804832064 (516 words)

	Chinese writing system for Cantonese (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18)
		The educated Cantonese learns to read and write a type of Chinese that is markedly different from the language they speak.
		Because Chinese is not alphabetical, characters can have many pronunciations depending on the dialect.
		Thus, a monolingual French person could write to an educated Spaniard in Latin but could not have a conversation with him or her.
	clp.arizona.edu /nsep/coh/char.htm (320 words)

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