{"history":[],"article":{"id":"33cf6b45-e8c9-42fe-91b3-7d87e0ef84fe","title":"Written Chinese","slug":"written-chinese","content":":::summary\n**Showflag:** p \n**Order:** st \n**Title:** Written Chinese \n**L:** Chinese writing \n**P:** Zhōngwén \n**Bpmf:** ㄓㄨㄥㄨㄣˊ \n**Gr:** Jongwen \n**H:** Chung-Vun \n**Myr:** Jūng-wén \n**Tp:** Jhong-wún \n**Buc:** Dṳng-ùng \n**Poj:** Tiong-bûn \n**Wuu:** tson1 ven1 \n**J:** zung1 man4*2 \n**Y:** Jūng mán \n**Gd:** Zung1 men4*2 \n**Altname:** Han writing \n**L 2:** Han writing \n**P 2:** Hànwén \n**Bpmf 2:** ㄏㄢˋ ㄨㄣˊ \n**Gr 2:** Hannwen \n**Tp 2:** Hàn-wún \n:::\n\n# \n**Written Chinese** is a [writing system](https://bliptext.com/articles/writing-system) that uses [Chinese characters](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-characters) and other symbols to represent the [Chinese languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-language).\nChinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an [alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/alphabet) or syllabograms in a [syllabary](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllabary).\nRather, the writing system is [morphosyllabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphosyllabic): characters are one spoken [syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable) in length, but generally correspond to [morphemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/morpheme) in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word.\nMost characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation.\nLiteracy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000.\nThis has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems (generally [Pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pinyin)) as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese.\nChinese writing is first attested during the late [Shang dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/shang-dynasty) (c. 1250), but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (c. 2500–2000 BCE).\nAfter a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the [Qin dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/qin-dynasty) (221–206 BCE).\nOver the millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of [Chinese calligraphy](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-calligraphy).\nAs the [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese) diverged, a situation of [diglossia](https://bliptext.com/articles/diglossia) developed, with speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using [Literary Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-chinese).\nIn the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with [written vernacular Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-vernacular-chinese), largely corresponding to [Standard Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-chinese), a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.\nAlthough most other [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese) are not written, there are traditions of [written Cantonese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-cantonese), [written Shanghainese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-shanghainese) and [written Hokkien](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-hokkien), among others.\n\n# Structure\nWritten Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary.\nMost characters can be analyzed as compounds of smaller components, which may be assembled according to several different principles.\nCharacters and components may reflect aspects of meaning or pronunciation.\nThe best known exposition of Chinese character composition is the [Shuowen Jiezi](https://bliptext.com/articles/shuowen-jiezi), compiled by [Xu Shen](https://bliptext.com/articles/xu-shen) c. 100 CE.\nXu did not have access to the earliest forms of Chinese characters, and his analysis is not considered to fully capture the nature of the writing system.\nNevertheless, no later work has supplanted the Shuowen Jiezi in terms of breadth, and it is still relevant to etymological research today.\n# [A 12th-century Song dynasty redaction of the Shuowen Jiezi | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Shuowen.jpg]\n\n## Derivation of characters\nAccording to the Shuowen Jiezi, Chinese characters are developed on six basic principles.\n(These principles, though popularized by the Shuowen Jiezi, were developed earlier; the oldest known mention of them is in the [Rites of Zhou](https://bliptext.com/articles/rites-of-zhou), a text from c. 150 BCE. ) The first two principles produce simple characters, known as :\n

**Pictographs** : in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes.\n
**Indicatives** : in which the character represents an abstract notion.\n

\nThe remaining four principles produce complex characters historically called, though this term is now generally used to refer to all characters, whether simple or complex.\nOf these four, two construct characters from simpler parts:\n

**Ideographic compounds** : in which two or more parts are used for their meaning.\nThis yields a composite meaning, which is then applied to the new character.\n

**Phono-semantic compounds** : in which one part—often called the [radical](https://bliptext.com/articles/radical-chinese-character)—indicates the general semantic category of the character, such as being related to water or ''eyes', with the other part being another character used for its phonetic value.\n\nThe last two principles do not produce new written forms; they instead transfer new meanings to existing forms:\n

**Transference** : in which a character, often with a simple, concrete meaning takes on an extended, more abstract meaning.\n

**Loangraphs** : in which a character is used, either intentionally or accidentally, for some entirely different purpose.\n\nIn contrast to the popular conception of written Chinese as [ideographic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ideographic), the vast majority of characters—about 95% of those in the Shuowen Jiezi—either reflect elements of pronunciation, or are logical aggregates.\nIn fact, some phonetic complexes were originally simple pictographs that were later augmented by the addition of a semantic root.\nAn example is, now archaic, which was originally a pictograph of a lamp stand , a character that is now pronounced and means 'host', or the character was added to indicate that the meaning is fire related.\nChinese characters are written to fit into a square, even when composed of two simpler forms written side-by-side or top-to-bottom.\nIn such cases, each form is compressed to fit the entire character into a square.\n\n## Strokes\nCharacter components can be further subdivided into individual written strokes.\nThe strokes of Chinese characters fall into eight main categories: \"horizontal\" ⟨⟩, \"vertical\" ⟨⟩, \"left-falling\" ⟨⟩, \"right-falling\" ⟨⟩, \"rising\", \"dot\" ⟨⟩, \"hook\" ⟨⟩, and \"turning\" ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩.\nThere are eight basic rules of stroke order in writing a Chinese character, which apply only generally and are sometimes violated:\n\n## Layout\nAs characters are essentially rectilinear and are not joined with one another, written Chinese does not require a set orientation.\nChinese texts were traditionally written in columns from top to bottom, which were laid out from right to left.\nPrior to the 20th century, Literary Chinese used little to no punctuation, with the breaks between sentences and phrases determined largely by context and the rhythms implied by patterns of syllables.\nIn the 20th century, the layout used in Western scripts—where text is written in rows from left to right, which are laid out from top to bottom—became predominant in mainland China, where it was mandated by the Chinese government in 1955.\nVertical layouts are still used for aesthetic effect, or when space limitations require it, such as on signage or book spines.\nThe government of [Taiwan](https://bliptext.com/articles/taiwan) followed suit in 2004 for official documents, but vertical layouts have persisted in some books and newspapers.\nLess frequently, Chinese is written in rows from right to left, usually on signage or banners, though a left to right orientation remains more common.\nThe use of punctuation has also become more common.\nIn general, punctuation occupies the width of a full character, such that text remains visually well-aligned in a grid.\nPunctuation used in simplified Chinese shows clear influence from that used in Western scripts, though some marks are particular to Asian languages.\nFor example, there are double and single quotation marks (『』 and 「」), and a hollow full stop (. ), which is used to separate sentences in an identical manner to a Western full stop.\nA special mark called an [enumeration comma](https://bliptext.com/articles/enumeration-comma) (、) is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to the clauses in a sentence.\n# [Chinese written from top-to-bottom on restaurant and bus stop signs in Hong Kong | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/HK///Hung///Hom///%E4%BA%AC%E9%83%BD%E5%A4%A7%E9%85%92%E6%A8%93///Capital///Restaurant///Ma///Tau///Wai///Road///35///Fat///Kwong///Street///KMBus///Stop.JPG]\n\n# History\nWritten Chinese is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems.\nThe earliest examples universally accepted as Chinese writing are the [oracle bone inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/oracle-bone-inscriptions) made during the reign of the [Shang](https://bliptext.com/articles/shang) king [Wu Ding](https://bliptext.com/articles/wu-ding) (c. 1250).\nThese inscriptions were made primarily on ox scapulae and turtle shells in order to record the results of divinations conducted by the Shang royal family.\nCharacters posing a question were first carved into the bones.\nThe question's answer was then divined by heating the bones over a fire and interpreting the resulting cracks that formed.\nThe interpretation was then carved into the same [oracle bone](https://bliptext.com/articles/oracle-bone).\nIn 2003, 11 isolated symbols carved on tortoise shells were found at the [Jiahu](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiahu) archaeological site in [Henan](https://bliptext.com/articles/henan)—with some bearing a striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as.\nThe Jiahu site dates from c. 6600 BCE, predating the earliest attested Chinese writing by more than 5,000 years.\nGarman Harbottle, who had headed a team of archaeologists at the [University of Science and Technology of China](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-science-and-technology-of-china) in Anhui—has suggested that these symbols were precursors to Chinese writing.\nHowever, the palaeographer [David Keightley](https://bliptext.com/articles/david-keightley) argues instead that the time gap is too great to establish any connection.\nFrom the [Late Shang](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-shang) period (c. 1250), Chinese writing evolved into the form found in [cast inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-bronze-inscriptions) on ritual bronzes made during the [Western Zhou](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-zhou) dynasty (c. 1046 – 771 BCE) and the [Spring and Autumn period](https://bliptext.com/articles/spring-and-autumn-period) (771–476 BCE), a form of writing called bronze script.\nBronze script characters are less angular than their oracle bone script counterparts.\nThe script became increasingly regularized during the [Warring States period](https://bliptext.com/articles/warring-states-period) (475–221 BCE), settling into what is called, that Xu Shen used as source material in the Shuowen Jiezi.\nThese characters were later embellished and stylized to yield the [seal script](https://bliptext.com/articles/seal-script), which represents the oldest form of Chinese characters still in modern use.\nThey are used principally for [signature seals](https://bliptext.com/articles/seal-east-asia), or chops, which are often used in place of a signature for Chinese documents and artwork.\n[Li Si](https://bliptext.com/articles/li-si) promulgated the seal script as the standard throughout China, which had been recently united under the imperial [Qin dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/qin-dynasty) (221–206 BCE).\nThe initial adaptation of seal into [clerical script](https://bliptext.com/articles/clerical-script) can be attributed to scribes in the [state of Qin](https://bliptext.com/articles/state-of-qin) working prior to the wars of unification.\nClerical script forms generally have a \"flat\" appearance, being wider than their seal script equivalents.\nIn the [semi-cursive script](https://bliptext.com/articles/semi-cursive-script) that evolved from clerical script, character elements begin to run into each other, though the characters themselves generally remain discrete.\nThis is contrasted with fully [cursive script](https://bliptext.com/articles/cursive-script-east-asia), where characters are often rendered unrecognizable by their canonical forms.\n[Regular script](https://bliptext.com/articles/regular-script) is the most widely recognized script, and was considerably influenced by semi-cursive.\nIn regular script, each stroke of each character is clearly drawn out from the others.\nRegular script is considered the archetypal Chinese writing and forms the basis for most printed forms.\nIn addition, regular script [imposes a stroke order](https://bliptext.com/articles/stroke-order), which must be followed in order for the characters to be written correctly.\nStrictly speaking, this stroke order applies to the clerical, running, and grass scripts as well, but especially in the running and grass scripts, this order is occasionally deviated from.\nThus, for instance, the character must be written starting with the horizontal stroke, drawn from left to right; next, the vertical stroke, from top to bottom; next, the left diagonal stroke, from top to bottom; and lastly the right diagonal stroke, from top to bottom.\n# [A turtle plastron bearing oracle bone inscriptions | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Shang///dynasty///inscribed///tortoise///plastron.jpg]\n\n## Simplification and standardization\nBeginning in the mid-20th century, Chinese has primarily been written using either [simplified](https://bliptext.com/articles/simplified-chinese-characters) or [traditional character](https://bliptext.com/articles/traditional-character) forms.\nSimplified characters, which merge some character forms and reduce the average stroke count per character, were developed by the Chinese government with the stated goal of increasing literacy among the population.\nDuring this time, literacy rates did increase rapidly, but some observers instead attribute this to other education reforms and a general increase in the standard of living.\nLittle systematic research has been conducted to support the conclusion that the use of simplified characters has affected literacy rates; studies conducted in China have instead focused on arbitrary statistics, such as quantifying the number of strokes saved on average in a given text sample.\nSimplified characters are standard in mainland China, [Singapore](https://bliptext.com/articles/singapore) and [Malaysia](https://bliptext.com/articles/malaysia), while traditional characters are standard in [Hong Kong](https://bliptext.com/articles/hong-kong), [Macau](https://bliptext.com/articles/macau), [Taiwan](https://bliptext.com/articles/taiwan) and some [overseas Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/overseas-chinese) communities.\nSimplified forms have also been characterized as being inconsistent.\nFor instance, the traditional is simplified to, in which the phonetic on the right side is reduced from 17 strokes to 3, and the radical on the left also being simplified.\nHowever, the same phonetic component is not reduced in simplified characters such as and —these characters are relatively uncommon, and would therefore represent a negligible stroke reduction.\nOther simplified forms derive from long-standing calligraphic abbreviations, as with, which has the traditional form of.\n\n# Function\nChinese characters have always been used to represent individual spoken syllables.\nWhile writing was being invented in the Yellow River valley, words in spoken Chinese were largely monosyllabic, and each written character corresponded to a monosyllabic word.\nSpoken Chinese varieties have since acquired much more polysyllabic vocabulary, usually compound words composed of morphemes corresponding to older monosyllabic words\nFor over two thousand years, the predominant form of written Chinese was [Literary Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-chinese), which had vocabulary and syntax rooted in the language of the [Chinese classics](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-classics), as spoken around the time of [Confucius](https://bliptext.com/articles/confucius) (c. 500 BCE).\nOver time, Literary Chinese acquired some elements of grammar and vocabulary from various varieties of vernacular Chinese that had since diverged.\nBy the 20th century, Literary Chinese was distinctly different from any spoken vernacular, and had to be learned separately.\nOnce learned, it was a common medium for communication between people speaking different dialects, many of which were mutually unintelligible by the end of the first millennium CE.\nVarieties of Chinese vary in pronunciation, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and grammar.\nModern written Chinese, which replaced Classical Chinese as the written standard as an indirect result of the 1919 [May Fourth Movement](https://bliptext.com/articles/may-fourth-movement), is not technically bound to any single variety; however, it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin, by far the most widespread Chinese dialectal family in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers.\nThis form is known as [written vernacular Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-vernacular-chinese).\nWhile some written vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic outside of Mandarin, its use permits some communication between speakers of different dialects.\nThis function may be considered analogous to that of [linguae francae](https://bliptext.com/articles/linguae-francae), such as [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin).\nFor literate speakers, it serves as a common medium; however, the forms of individual characters generally provide little insight to their meaning if not already known.\nGhil'ad Zuckermann's exploration of [phono-semantic matching](https://bliptext.com/articles/phono-semantic-matching) in [Standard Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-chinese) concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional, conveying both semantic and phonetic content.\nThe variation in vocabulary among varieties has also led to informal use of \"dialectal characters\", which may include characters previously used in Literary Chinese that are considered archaic in written Standard Chinese.\nCantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a written colloquial standard, used in Hong Kong and overseas, with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this language.\n[Written Cantonese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-cantonese) has become quite popular on the Internet, while Standard Chinese is still normally used in formal written communications.\nTo a lesser degree, [Hokkien](https://bliptext.com/articles/hokkien) is used similarly in Taiwan and elsewhere, though it lacks the level of standardization seen in Cantonese.\nHowever, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has promulgated a standard character set for Hokkien, which is taught in schools and encouraged for use by the general population.\n# [The tomb of Fu Hao (c. 1200 BCE), containing 200 bronze vessels with 109 inscriptions of Fu Hao's name. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Tomb///Fu///Hao///YinXu.jpg]\n\n# Media\nOver the history of written Chinese, a variety of media have been used for writing.\nThey include:\nSince at least the Han dynasty, such media have been used to create [hanging scrolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanging-scroll) and [handscrolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/handscroll).\n\n# Literacy\nBecause the majority of modern Chinese words contain more than one character, there are at least two measuring sticks for Chinese literacy: the number of characters known, and the number of words known.\n[John DeFrancis](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-defrancis), in the introduction to his Advanced Chinese Reader, estimates that a typical Chinese college graduate recognizes 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words.\n[Jerry Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/jerry-norman-sinologist), in Chinese, places the number of characters somewhat lower, at 3,000 to 4,000.\nThese counts are complicated by the tangled development of Chinese characters.\nIn many cases, a single character came to have multiple [variants](https://bliptext.com/articles/variant-chinese-characters).\nThis development was restrained to an extent by the standardization of the seal script during the Qin dynasty, but soon started again.\nAlthough the Shuowen Jiezi lists 10,516 characters—9,353 of them unique (some of which may already have been out of use by the time it was compiled) plus 1,163 graphic variants—the [Jiyun](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiyun) of the Northern [Song dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/song-dynasty), compiled less than a thousand years later in 1039, contains 53,525 characters, most of them graphic variants.\n\n## Dictionaries\nWritten Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary, so Chinese dictionaries, as well as dictionaries that define Chinese characters in other languages, cannot easily be alphabetized or otherwise lexically ordered, as English dictionaries are.\nThe need to arrange Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to a considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters.\nA traditional mechanism is the method of radicals, which uses a set of character roots.\nThese roots, or radicals, generally but imperfectly align with the parts used to compose characters by means of logical aggregation and phonetic complex.\nA [canonical](https://bliptext.com/articles/canonical-form) set of 214 radicals was developed during the rule of the [Kangxi Emperor](https://bliptext.com/articles/kangxi-emperor) (around the year 1700); these are sometimes called the Kangxi radicals.\nThe radicals are ordered first by stroke count (that is, the number of strokes required to write the radical); within a given stroke count, the radicals also have a prescribed order.\nEvery Chinese character falls (sometimes arbitrarily or incorrectly) under the heading of exactly one of these 214 radicals.\nIn many cases, the radicals are themselves characters, which naturally come first under their own heading.\nAll other characters under a given radical are ordered by the stroke count of the character.\nUsually, however, there are still many characters with a given stroke count under a given radical.\nAt this point, characters are not given in any recognizable order; the user must locate the character by going through all the characters with that stroke count, typically listed for convenience at the top of the page on which they occur.\nBecause the method of radicals is applied only to the written character, one need not know how to pronounce a character before looking it up; the entry, once located, usually gives the pronunciation.\nHowever, it is not always easy to identify which of the various roots of a character is the proper radical.\nAccordingly, dictionaries often include a list of hard to locate characters, indexed by total stroke count, near the beginning of the dictionary.\nSome dictionaries include almost one-seventh of all characters in this list.\nAlternatively, some dictionaries list \"difficult\" characters under more than one radical, with all but one of those entries redirecting the reader to the \"canonical\" location of the character according to Kangxi.\nOther methods of organization exist, often in an attempt to address the shortcomings of the radical method, but are less common.\nFor instance, it is common for a dictionary ordered principally by the Kangxi radicals to have an auxiliary index by pronunciation, expressed typically in either [pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pinyin) or [bopomofo](https://bliptext.com/articles/bopomofo).\nThis index points to the page in the main dictionary where the desired character can be found.\nOther methods use only the structure of the characters, such as the [four-corner method](https://bliptext.com/articles/four-corner-method), in which characters are indexed according to the kinds of strokes located nearest the four corners (hence the name of the method), or the [Cangjie method](https://bliptext.com/articles/cangjie-method), in which characters are broken down into a set of 24 basic components.\nNeither the four-corner method nor the Cangjie method requires the user to identify the proper radical, although many strokes or components have alternate forms, which must be memorized in order to use these methods effectively.\nThe availability of computerized Chinese dictionaries now makes it possible to look characters up by any of the indexing schemes described, thereby shortening the search process.\n\n## Transliteration\nChinese characters do not reliably indicate their pronunciation.\nTherefore, many transliteration systems have been developed to write the sounds of different varieties of Chinese.\nWhile many use the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet), systems using the [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-alphabet) and [Perso-Arabic alphabets](https://bliptext.com/articles/perso-arabic-alphabet) have also been designed.\nAmong other purposes, these systems are used by students learning the corresponding varieties.\nThe replacement of Chinese characters with a phonetic writing system was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, partly motivated by a desire to increase the country's literacy rate.\nThe idea gained further support following the victory of the Communists in 1949, who immediately began two parallel programs regarding written Chinese.\nThe first was the development of an alphabet to write the sounds of Mandarin, the variety spoken by around two-thirds of the Chinese population.\nThe other program investigated the simplification of the standard character forms.\nInitially, character simplification was not competing with the idea of a phonetic script; rather, simplification was intended to make the transition to a fully phonetic writing system easier.\nBy 1958, official priorities had shifted towards character simplification.\nThe [Hanyu Pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanyu-pinyin) (or simply 'pinyin') alphabet had been developed, but plans to replace Chinese characters with it were deferred, and the idea is no longer actively pursued.\nThis change in priorities may have been due in part to pinyin's design being specific to Mandarin, to the exclusion of other dialects.\nPinyin uses the Latin alphabet with [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritics) to represent the phonology of Standard Chinese.\nFor the most part, pinyin uses phonetic values for letters that reflect their existing pronunciations in Romance languages and the [International Phonetic Alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-phonetic-alphabet) (IPA).\nHowever, pairs of letters such as and that correspond to a [voicing](https://bliptext.com/articles/voice-phonetics) distinction in languages such as French instead represent the [aspiration](https://bliptext.com/articles/aspiration-phonetics) distinction that is more abundant in Mandarin.\nPinyin also uses several consonantal letters to represent markedly different sounds from their assignments in other languages.\nFor example, pinyin and correspond to sounds similar to English ch and sh, respectively.\nWhile pinyin has become the predominant transliteration system for Mandarin, others include [bopomofo](https://bliptext.com/articles/bopomofo), [Wade–Giles](https://bliptext.com/articles/wade-giles), [Yale](https://bliptext.com/articles/yale-romanization-of-mandarin), [EFEO](https://bliptext.com/articles/efeo-chinese-transcription) and [Gwoyeu Romatzyh](https://bliptext.com/articles/gwoyeu-romatzyh).\n\n# Citations","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T17:51:29.909Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T17:51:29.909Z","search_vector":"'chines':2 'written':1","search_content":" \n**Showflag:** p \n**Order:** st \n**Title:** Written Chinese \n**L:** Chinese writing \n**P:** Zhōngwén \n**Bpmf:** ㄓㄨㄥㄨㄣˊ \n**Gr:** Jongwen \n**H:** Chung-Vun \n**Myr:** Jūng-wén \n**Tp:** Jhong-wún \n**Buc:** Dṳng-ùng \n**Poj:** Tiong-bûn \n**Wuu:** tson1 ven1 \n**J:** zung1 man4*2 \n**Y:** Jūng mán \n**Gd:** Zung1 men4*2 \n**Altname:** Han writing \n**L 2:** Han writing \n**P 2:** Hànwén \n**Bpmf 2:** ㄏㄢˋ ㄨㄣˊ \n**Gr 2:** Hannwen \n**Tp 2:** Hàn-wún \n \n\n# \n**Written Chinese** is a [writing system](https://bliptext.com/articles/writing-system) that uses [Chinese characters](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-characters) and other symbols to represent the [Chinese languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-language).\nChinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an [alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/alphabet) or syllabograms in a [syllabary](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllabary).\nRather, the writing system is [morphosyllabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphosyllabic): characters are one spoken [syllable](https://bliptext.com/articles/syllable) in length, but generally correspond to [morphemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/morpheme) in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word.\nMost characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation.\nLiteracy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000.\nThis has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems (generally [Pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pinyin)) as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese.\nChinese writing is first attested during the late [Shang dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/shang-dynasty) (c. 1250), but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (c. 2500–2000 BCE).\nAfter a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the [Qin dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/qin-dynasty) (221–206 BCE).\nOver the millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of [Chinese calligraphy](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-calligraphy).\nAs the [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese) diverged, a situation of [diglossia](https://bliptext.com/articles/diglossia) developed, with speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using [Literary Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-chinese).\nIn the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with [written vernacular Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-vernacular-chinese), largely corresponding to [Standard Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-chinese), a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.\nAlthough most other [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese) are not written, there are traditions of [written Cantonese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-cantonese), [written Shanghainese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-shanghainese) and [written Hokkien](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-hokkien), among others.\n\n# Structure\nWritten Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary.\nMost characters can be analyzed as compounds of smaller components, which may be assembled according to several different principles.\nCharacters and components may reflect aspects of meaning or pronunciation.\nThe best known exposition of Chinese character composition is the [Shuowen Jiezi](https://bliptext.com/articles/shuowen-jiezi), compiled by [Xu Shen](https://bliptext.com/articles/xu-shen) c. 100 CE.\nXu did not have access to the earliest forms of Chinese characters, and his analysis is not considered to fully capture the nature of the writing system.\nNevertheless, no later work has supplanted the Shuowen Jiezi in terms of breadth, and it is still relevant to etymological research today.\n# [A 12th-century Song dynasty redaction of the Shuowen Jiezi | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Shuowen.jpg]\n\n## Derivation of characters\nAccording to the Shuowen Jiezi, Chinese characters are developed on six basic principles.\n(These principles, though popularized by the Shuowen Jiezi, were developed earlier; the oldest known mention of them is in the [Rites of Zhou](https://bliptext.com/articles/rites-of-zhou), a text from c. 150 BCE. ) The first two principles produce simple characters, known as :\n \n **Pictographs** : in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes.\n **Indicatives** : in which the character represents an abstract notion.\n \nThe remaining four principles produce complex characters historically called, though this term is now generally used to refer to all characters, whether simple or complex.\nOf these four, two construct characters from simpler parts:\n **Ideographic compounds** : in which two or more parts are used for their meaning.\nThis yields a composite meaning, which is then applied to the new character.\n **Phono-semantic compounds** : in which one part—often called the [radical](https://bliptext.com/articles/radical-chinese-character)—indicates the general semantic category of the character, such as being related to water or ''eyes', with the other part being another character used for its phonetic value.\n \nThe last two principles do not produce new written forms; they instead transfer new meanings to existing forms:\n **Transference** : in which a character, often with a simple, concrete meaning takes on an extended, more abstract meaning.\n **Loangraphs** : in which a character is used, either intentionally or accidentally, for some entirely different purpose.\n \nIn contrast to the popular conception of written Chinese as [ideographic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ideographic), the vast majority of characters—about 95% of those in the Shuowen Jiezi—either reflect elements of pronunciation, or are logical aggregates.\nIn fact, some phonetic complexes were originally simple pictographs that were later augmented by the addition of a semantic root.\nAn example is, now archaic, which was originally a pictograph of a lamp stand , a character that is now pronounced and means 'host', or the character was added to indicate that the meaning is fire related.\nChinese characters are written to fit into a square, even when composed of two simpler forms written side-by-side or top-to-bottom.\nIn such cases, each form is compressed to fit the entire character into a square.\n\n## Strokes\nCharacter components can be further subdivided into individual written strokes.\nThe strokes of Chinese characters fall into eight main categories: \"horizontal\" ⟨⟩, \"vertical\" ⟨⟩, \"left-falling\" ⟨⟩, \"right-falling\" ⟨⟩, \"rising\", \"dot\" ⟨⟩, \"hook\" ⟨⟩, and \"turning\" ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩.\nThere are eight basic rules of stroke order in writing a Chinese character, which apply only generally and are sometimes violated:\n\n## Layout\nAs characters are essentially rectilinear and are not joined with one another, written Chinese does not require a set orientation.\nChinese texts were traditionally written in columns from top to bottom, which were laid out from right to left.\nPrior to the 20th century, Literary Chinese used little to no punctuation, with the breaks between sentences and phrases determined largely by context and the rhythms implied by patterns of syllables.\nIn the 20th century, the layout used in Western scripts—where text is written in rows from left to right, which are laid out from top to bottom—became predominant in mainland China, where it was mandated by the Chinese government in 1955.\nVertical layouts are still used for aesthetic effect, or when space limitations require it, such as on signage or book spines.\nThe government of [Taiwan](https://bliptext.com/articles/taiwan) followed suit in 2004 for official documents, but vertical layouts have persisted in some books and newspapers.\nLess frequently, Chinese is written in rows from right to left, usually on signage or banners, though a left to right orientation remains more common.\nThe use of punctuation has also become more common.\nIn general, punctuation occupies the width of a full character, such that text remains visually well-aligned in a grid.\nPunctuation used in simplified Chinese shows clear influence from that used in Western scripts, though some marks are particular to Asian languages.\nFor example, there are double and single quotation marks (『』 and 「」), and a hollow full stop (. ), which is used to separate sentences in an identical manner to a Western full stop.\nA special mark called an [enumeration comma](https://bliptext.com/articles/enumeration-comma) (、) is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to the clauses in a sentence.\n# [Chinese written from top-to-bottom on restaurant and bus stop signs in Hong Kong | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/HK///Hung///Hom///%E4%BA%AC%E9%83%BD%E5%A4%A7%E9%85%92%E6%A8%93///Capital///Restaurant///Ma///Tau///Wai///Road///35///Fat///Kwong///Street///KMBus///Stop.JP G]\n\n# History\nWritten Chinese is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems.\nThe earliest examples universally accepted as Chinese writing are the [oracle bone inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/oracle-bone-inscriptions) made during the reign of the [Shang](https://bliptext.com/articles/shang) king [Wu Ding](https://bliptext.com/articles/wu-ding) (c. 1250).\nThese inscriptions were made primarily on ox scapulae and turtle shells in order to record the results of divinations conducted by the Shang royal family.\nCharacters posing a question were first carved into the bones.\nThe question's answer was then divined by heating the bones over a fire and interpreting the resulting cracks that formed.\nThe interpretation was then carved into the same [oracle bone](https://bliptext.com/articles/oracle-bone).\nIn 2003, 11 isolated symbols carved on tortoise shells were found at the [Jiahu](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiahu) archaeological site in [Henan](https://bliptext.com/articles/henan)—with some bearing a striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as.\nThe Jiahu site dates from c. 6600 BCE, predating the earliest attested Chinese writing by more than 5,000 years.\nGarman Harbottle, who had headed a team of archaeologists at the [University of Science and Technology of China](https://bliptext.com/articles/university-of-science-and-technology-of-china) in Anhui—has suggested that these symbols were precursors to Chinese writing.\nHowever, the palaeographer [David Keightley](https://bliptext.com/articles/david-keightley) argues instead that the time gap is too great to establish any connection.\nFrom the [Late Shang](https://bliptext.com/articles/late-shang) period (c. 1250), Chinese writing evolved into the form found in [cast inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-bronze-inscriptions) on ritual bronzes made during the [Western Zhou](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-zhou) dynasty (c. 1046 – 771 BCE) and the [Spring and Autumn period](https://bliptext.com/articles/spring-and-autumn-period) (771–476 BCE), a form of writing called bronze script.\nBronze script characters are less angular than their oracle bone script counterparts.\nThe script became increasingly regularized during the [Warring States period](https://bliptext.com/articles/warring-states-period) (475–221 BCE), settling into what is called, that Xu Shen used as source material in the Shuowen Jiezi.\nThese characters were later embellished and stylized to yield the [seal script](https://bliptext.com/articles/seal-script), which represents the oldest form of Chinese characters still in modern use.\nThey are used principally for [signature seals](https://bliptext.com/articles/seal-east-asia), or chops, which are often used in place of a signature for Chinese documents and artwork.\n[Li Si](https://bliptext.com/articles/li-si) promulgated the seal script as the standard throughout China, which had been recently united under the imperial [Qin dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/qin-dynasty) (221–206 BCE).\nThe initial adaptation of seal into [clerical script](https://bliptext.com/articles/clerical-script) can be attributed to scribes in the [state of Qin](https://bliptext.com/articles/state-of-qin) working prior to the wars of unification.\nClerical script forms generally have a \"flat\" appearance, being wider than their seal script equivalents.\nIn the [semi-cursive script](https://bliptext.com/articles/semi-cursive-script) that evolved from clerical script, character elements begin to run into each other, though the characters themselves generally remain discrete.\nThis is contrasted with fully [cursive script](https://bliptext.com/articles/cursive-script-east-asia), where characters are often rendered unrecognizable by their canonical forms.\n[Regular script](https://bliptext.com/articles/regular-script) is the most widely recognized script, and was considerably influenced by semi-cursive.\nIn regular script, each stroke of each character is clearly drawn out from the others.\nRegular script is considered the archetypal Chinese writing and forms the basis for most printed forms.\nIn addition, regular script [imposes a stroke order](https://bliptext.com/articles/stroke-order), which must be followed in order for the characters to be written correctly.\nStrictly speaking, this stroke order applies to the clerical, running, and grass scripts as well, but especially in the running and grass scripts, this order is occasionally deviated from.\nThus, for instance, the character must be written starting with the horizontal stroke, drawn from left to right; next, the vertical stroke, from top to bottom; next, the left diagonal stroke, from top to bottom; and lastly the right diagonal stroke, from top to bottom.\n# [A turtle plastron bearing oracle bone inscriptions | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Shang///dynasty///inscribed///tortoise///plastron.jpg]\n\n## Simplification and standardization\nBeginning in the mid-20th century, Chinese has primarily been written using either [simplified](https://bliptext.com/articles/simplified-chinese-characters) or [traditional character](https://bliptext.com/articles/traditional-character) forms.\nSimplified characters, which merge some character forms and reduce the average stroke count per character, were developed by the Chinese government with the stated goal of increasing literacy among the population.\nDuring this time, literacy rates did increase rapidly, but some observers instead attribute this to other education reforms and a general increase in the standard of living.\nLittle systematic research has been conducted to support the conclusion that the use of simplified characters has affected literacy rates; studies conducted in China have instead focused on arbitrary statistics, such as quantifying the number of strokes saved on average in a given text sample.\nSimplified characters are standard in mainland China, [Singapore](https://bliptext.com/articles/singapore) and [Malaysia](https://bliptext.com/articles/malaysia), while traditional characters are standard in [Hong Kong](https://bliptext.com/articles/hong-kong), [Macau](https://bliptext.com/articles/macau), [Taiwan](https://bliptext.com/articles/taiwan) and some [overseas Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/overseas-chinese) communities.\nSimplified forms have also been characterized as being inconsistent.\nFor instance, the traditional is simplified to, in which the phonetic on the right side is reduced from 17 strokes to 3, and the radical on the left also being simplified.\nHowever, the same phonetic component is not reduced in simplified characters such as and —these characters are relatively uncommon, and would therefore represent a negligible stroke reduction.\nOther simplified forms derive from long-standing calligraphic abbreviations, as with, which has the traditional form of.\n\n# Function\nChinese characters have always been used to represent individual spoken syllables.\nWhile writing was being invented in the Yellow River valley, words in spoken Chinese were largely monosyllabic, and each written character corresponded to a monosyllabic word.\nSpoken Chinese varieties have since acquired much more polysyllabic vocabulary, usually compound words composed of morphemes corresponding to older monosyllabic words\nFor over two thousand years, the predominant form of written Chinese was [Literary Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-chinese), which had vocabulary and syntax rooted in the language of the [Chinese classics](https://bliptext.com/articles/chinese-classics), as spoken around the time of [Confucius](https://bliptext.com/articles/confucius) (c. 500 BCE).\nOver time, Literary Chinese acquired some elements of grammar and vocabulary from various varieties of vernacular Chinese that had since diverged.\nBy the 20th century, Literary Chinese was distinctly different from any spoken vernacular, and had to be learned separately.\nOnce learned, it was a common medium for communication between people speaking different dialects, many of which were mutually unintelligible by the end of the first millennium CE.\nVarieties of Chinese vary in pronunciation, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and grammar.\nModern written Chinese, which replaced Classical Chinese as the written standard as an indirect result of the 1919 [May Fourth Movement](https://bliptext.com/articles/may-fourth-movement), is not technically bound to any single variety; however, it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin, by far the most widespread Chinese dialectal family in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers.\nThis form is known as [written vernacular Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-vernacular-chinese).\nWhile some written vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic outside of Mandarin, its use permits some communication between speakers of different dialects.\nThis function may be considered analogous to that of [linguae francae](https://bliptext.com/articles/linguae-francae), such as [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin).\nFor literate speakers, it serves as a common medium; however, the forms of individual characters generally provide little insight to their meaning if not already known.\nGhil'ad Zuckermann's exploration of [phono-semantic matching](https://bliptext.com/articles/phono-semantic-matching) in [Standard Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-chinese) concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional, conveying both semantic and phonetic content.\nThe variation in vocabulary among varieties has also led to informal use of \"dialectal characters\", which may include characters previously used in Literary Chinese that are considered archaic in written Standard Chinese.\nCantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a written colloquial standard, used in Hong Kong and overseas, with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this language.\n[Written Cantonese](https://bliptext.com/articles/written-cantonese) has become quite popular on the Internet, while Standard Chinese is still normally used in formal written communications.\nTo a lesser degree, [Hokkien](https://bliptext.com/articles/hokkien) is used similarly in Taiwan and elsewhere, though it lacks the level of standardization seen in Cantonese.\nHowever, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has promulgated a standard character set for Hokkien, which is taught in schools and encouraged for use by the general population.\n# [The tomb of Fu Hao (c. 1200 BCE), containing 200 bronze vessels with 109 inscriptions of Fu Hao's name. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Tomb///Fu///Hao///YinXu.jpg]\n\n# Media\nOver the history of written Chinese, a variety of media have been used for writing.\nThey include:\nSince at least the Han dynasty, such media have been used to create [hanging scrolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanging-scroll) and [handscrolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/handscroll).\n\n# Literacy\nBecause the majority of modern Chinese words contain more than one character, there are at least two measuring sticks for Chinese literacy: the number of characters known, and the number of words known.\n[John DeFrancis](https://bliptext.com/articles/john-defrancis), in the introduction to his Advanced Chinese Reader, estimates that a typical Chinese college graduate recognizes 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words.\n[Jerry Norman](https://bliptext.com/articles/jerry-norman-sinologist), in Chinese, places the number of characters somewhat lower, at 3,000 to 4,000.\nThese counts are complicated by the tangled development of Chinese characters.\nIn many cases, a single character came to have multiple [variants](https://bliptext.com/articles/variant-chinese-characters).\nThis development was restrained to an extent by the standardization of the seal script during the Qin dynasty, but soon started again.\nAlthough the Shuowen Jiezi lists 10,516 characters—9,353 of them unique (some of which may already have been out of use by the time it was compiled) plus 1,163 graphic variants—the [Jiyun](https://bliptext.com/articles/jiyun) of the Northern [Song dynasty](https://bliptext.com/articles/song-dynasty), compiled less than a thousand years later in 1039, contains 53,525 characters, most of them graphic variants.\n\n## Dictionaries\nWritten Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary, so Chinese dictionaries, as well as dictionaries that define Chinese characters in other languages, cannot easily be alphabetized or otherwise lexically ordered, as English dictionaries are.\nThe need to arrange Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to a considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters.\nA traditional mechanism is the method of radicals, which uses a set of character roots.\nThese roots, or radicals, generally but imperfectly align with the parts used to compose characters by means of logical aggregation and phonetic complex.\nA [canonical](https://bliptext.com/articles/canonical-form) set of 214 radicals was developed during the rule of the [Kangxi Emperor](https://bliptext.com/articles/kangxi-emperor) (around the year 1700); these are sometimes called the Kangxi radicals.\nThe radicals are ordered first by stroke count (that is, the number of strokes required to write the radical); within a given stroke count, the radicals also have a prescribed order.\nEvery Chinese character falls (sometimes arbitrarily or incorrectly) under the heading of exactly one of these 214 radicals.\nIn many cases, the radicals are themselves characters, which naturally come first under their own heading.\nAll other characters under a given radical are ordered by the stroke count of the character.\nUsually, however, there are still many characters with a given stroke count under a given radical.\nAt this point, characters are not given in any recognizable order; the user must locate the character by going through all the characters with that stroke count, typically listed for convenience at the top of the page on which they occur.\nBecause the method of radicals is applied only to the written character, one need not know how to pronounce a character before looking it up; the entry, once located, usually gives the pronunciation.\nHowever, it is not always easy to identify which of the various roots of a character is the proper radical.\nAccordingly, dictionaries often include a list of hard to locate characters, indexed by total stroke count, near the beginning of the dictionary.\nSome dictionaries include almost one-seventh of all characters in this list.\nAlternatively, some dictionaries list \"difficult\" characters under more than one radical, with all but one of those entries redirecting the reader to the \"canonical\" location of the character according to Kangxi.\nOther methods of organization exist, often in an attempt to address the shortcomings of the radical method, but are less common.\nFor instance, it is common for a dictionary ordered principally by the Kangxi radicals to have an auxiliary index by pronunciation, expressed typically in either [pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pinyin) or [bopomofo](https://bliptext.com/articles/bopomofo).\nThis index points to the page in the main dictionary where the desired character can be found.\nOther methods use only the structure of the characters, such as the [four-corner method](https://bliptext.com/articles/four-corner-method), in which characters are indexed according to the kinds of strokes located nearest the four corners (hence the name of the method), or the [Cangjie method](https://bliptext.com/articles/cangjie-method), in which characters are broken down into a set of 24 basic components.\nNeither the four-corner method nor the Cangjie method requires the user to identify the proper radical, although many strokes or components have alternate forms, which must be memorized in order to use these methods effectively.\nThe availability of computerized Chinese dictionaries now makes it possible to look characters up by any of the indexing schemes described, thereby shortening the search process.\n\n## Transliteration\nChinese characters do not reliably indicate their pronunciation.\nTherefore, many transliteration systems have been developed to write the sounds of different varieties of Chinese.\nWhile many use the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet), systems using the [Cyrillic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-alphabet) and [Perso-Arabic alphabets](https://bliptext.com/articles/perso-arabic-alphabet) have also been designed.\nAmong other purposes, these systems are used by students learning the corresponding varieties.\nThe replacement of Chinese characters with a phonetic writing system was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, partly motivated by a desire to increase the country's literacy rate.\nThe idea gained further support following the victory of the Communists in 1949, who immediately began two parallel programs regarding written Chinese.\nThe first was the development of an alphabet to write the sounds of Mandarin, the variety spoken by around two-thirds of the Chinese population.\nThe other program investigated the simplification of the standard character forms.\nInitially, character simplification was not competing with the idea of a phonetic script; rather, simplification was intended to make the transition to a fully phonetic writing system easier.\nBy 1958, official priorities had shifted towards character simplification.\nThe [Hanyu Pinyin](https://bliptext.com/articles/hanyu-pinyin) (or simply 'pinyin') alphabet had been developed, but plans to replace Chinese characters with it were deferred, and the idea is no longer actively pursued.\nThis change in priorities may have been due in part to pinyin's design being specific to Mandarin, to the exclusion of other dialects.\nPinyin uses the Latin alphabet with [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritics) to represent the phonology of Standard Chinese.\nFor the most part, pinyin uses phonetic values for letters that reflect their existing pronunciations in Romance languages and the [International Phonetic Alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-phonetic-alphabet) (IPA).\nHowever, pairs of letters such as and that correspond to a [voicing](https://bliptext.com/articles/voice-phonetics) distinction in languages such as French instead represent the [aspiration](https://bliptext.com/articles/aspiration-phonetics) distinction that is more abundant in Mandarin.\nPinyin also uses several consonantal letters to represent markedly different sounds from their assignments in other languages.\nFor example, pinyin and correspond to sounds similar to English ch and sh, respectively.\nWhile pinyin has become the predominant transliteration system for Mandarin, others include [bopomofo](https://bliptext.com/articles/bopomofo), [Wade–Giles](https://bliptext.com/articles/wade-giles), [Yale](https://bliptext.com/articles/yale-romanization-of-mandarin), [EFEO](https://bliptext.com/articles/efeo-chinese-transcription) and [Gwoyeu Romatzyh](https://bliptext.com/articles/gwoyeu-romatzyh).\n\n# Citations","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}