Chinese Flashcards
Chinese Fast Facts
logographic, linear w/ blocks, written on bamboo/bone (tortoise shell/cow scapula)/bronze/paper in columns, used knife/brush, wrote chinese langs/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese, 1250 BCE-present
Fully devo’d in 1250, adapted to write Chinese from sum’n else
Precursors to bone
Neolithic Pottery 6/5000 BCE similar signs/stroke
bamboo strips 5th cen BCE (might predate bone but decomposed)
Oracle bones and Bronzeware
tortoise/cow scapula, 1250 BCE Zhang dynasty
divination, devo’d abstract signs, undeciphered
Bronze same time period as bone, more pictographic diff shape
Kang Hou Gui - bronze vessel from 11th cen BCE, medium determines char shape
Evolution of Chars
Identificational -> Bone -> Zhou Bronze -> Small Seal -> Clerical -> Standard (traditional) -> Simplified (1950s)/Running (semi-cursive)/Grass (cursive)
Block Formation
all chars formed from 200-300 radicals (main and affix forms)
combined by conflation/infixing (ideal square)
Organized TD and LR
Semanto-Phonetic Compounds (90%) - logo w/ phon comp, allow disambiguity of homophones
Determinatives, and Rebus chars
Deciphering
bones have 30k chars, only 1500-2k legible, lost descendant chars
Chars wrote old Chinese, modern varities split off/devo’d (some unsuitable like taiwanese)
Lang family
Sino tibetan = chinese, tibetan, burmese, yi
Chinese = mandarin, wu (shanghainese), min (taiwanese), yue (cantonese)
Diff langs not mutually intelligble, chars can be same but pronunciation is not
Cantonese
tried writing chinese chars 1910-present, preserves older chars lost in mandarin
invented for cantonese words (used in hong kong and guang dong)
Taiwanese
chinese script doesnt work for it
50% taiwanese writing is chinese, 25% agreed upon
25% vocab unwritten
Peh-oe-ji and Tai-lo are other attempts
Aesthetic adaptations of chinese script
Tangut - borrowed radicals, violates stroke order, logosyllabic
Nushu - by thread, syllabary 700 chars, writes tuhua sino lang (closely related!), by women exclusively
Old Chinese
Old chinese evol’d to middle and classical (purely written)
mandarin replaced classical chinese as standard lang in 1900s
Reform and diffs between trad/simplified
1950s ling democratization - simplification of chars to help literacy and boost efficiency (lowered stroke count)
Some stayed some, others only 1 radical changed some both
Disadv = more homophones now
Traditional = encodes multiple langs (old/classical/mandarin), used in hong long/macau/taiwain
Simplified = only mandarin, mainland china/singapore
Kanbun
Japanese adaptation for chinese
sinographic writing chinese chars japanese reading
superscript give order of chars, chinese char order but read japanese syntax
Japanese Kanji adaptations
Chinese chars write Japanese words, polyvalent 1 char = J. reading, >1 = C. reading
Onyom reading = chinese reading
Kunyom reading = japanese reading
konyom reading = for names
Kokuji = invented japanese chards, 9 total
Japanese Kana adaptations
kana are syllabograms derived from chinese chars, simplified, only CV meaning
Manyougana = writing chinese chars for chinese pronunciation, not used a lot
Katakana = borrowed simplified chars assigned CV values, just strokes, used for foreign words now
Hiragana = grass script and chinese pron, dominant syllabary
Hentaigana = weird kana, used by japanese enclaves not in Japan
Modern Japanese usage of chinese
Kanji logograms used for noun/verbs
hiragana phon comp for logog
katakana for foreign/names
logoysllabic system
4 treasures
ink, inkwell, paper, brush
Calligraphy is big aspect of culture, digraphia = diff char styles for diff social vibes
Sawndip
12th cen CE for Zhuong, related to Thai
borrow chars for sound/meaning, invented semanto-phon compounds and compound ideograms
Chu Nom
12th cen Vietnamese, used in vernacular
was official lang of vietnam but replaced by mandarin, thousands of semanto-phon compounds created
Yi
same organization/tools
basic shapes changed, centrifugal
Classicial Yi = logosyl, 1840 chars, closest cousin to chinese!
Modern Yi = syllabic, 756 chars pure syllabary, (43 consonants, 10 vowels, 3 tones). Simplified of classic by chinese gov’t trying to control it
Khitan
Khitan inspired Mongolian later, like maya with affixes
large script - 920 CE, logographic, undeciphered, same chinese radical/block structure, adapted running script
small script - 925 CE, undeceiphered logographic with some consonantal characters, blocks like Maya, inspired by Uighur alphabet
