Haiwang YuanProfessor

Western Kentucky University Libraries

Chinese Characters

Fact Sheet of Chinese Characters

No documented history of how written Chinese originated Legendary person Cang Ji said to be creator around 4,500 years agoCreated the characters on the basis of animal and fowl footprintsArcheologists found 8,000-year old precursors of Chinese charactersBy about 3,500 years ago, Chinese characters had already formed a complete systemThe only ancient writing system alive in the world

How Many Chinese Characters Are There?

The late Han dynasty dictionary Etymology of Chinese Characters included 9,393 characters

The early Qing Kangxi Dictionary included 50,000 characters

Computer encoding systems include 6,000 – 13,000 characters

Only about 3,500 characters that form 80,000 words needed to read a book or newspaper

Evolution of Chinese Characters

Unified Written Chinese

The Han Chinese speak 7 major dialects, such

as Mandarin, Hakka, and Cantonese

Almost every Chinese uses the same system

thanks to the First Emperor who unified the

Chinese characters

There are traditional and simplified versions of

Chinese characters

Pictographic characters comprise only a small portion of Chinese characters.

The vast majority are pictophonetic—characters consisting of a radical and a phonetic element.

Formation of Chinese Characters

Radicals of Chinese Characters

A radical, known as 部首 (bù shǒu, head part) in Chinese, is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese characterIt’s like the root of an English wordThere are about 214 types of radicals, some of which are themselves characters and many of which are variants of charactersThe vast number of Chinese characters can be much more easily memorized if they are mentally decomposed into their constituent radicalsRadicals are used in Chinese dictionaries to order characters in sets by the number of strokes they contain

214 Radicals

Strokes of Chinese Characters

Strokes - Continued

Write Chinese – Stroke Orders

Every Chinese character has a correct stroke order. Learning the stroke order has two main benefits:– It will be easier to remember how to write

characters if you draw them consistently– Your characters will look better

Stroke Order Rules

Top to bottom: 三 Left to right:  川 Upper left corner to lower right corner 石 Outside to inside 月 When two or more strokes cross, horizontal strokes before vertical ones 十 Slanting stroke to the left before a slanting stroke to the right 人 Center stroke before symmetrical wings 小 Boxes should only be closed once the strokes inside them have been completed.  So, 田 would be written: