The word chinese in chinese characters

For the moth known as «Chinese character», see Cilix glaucata. For the Chinese philosopher often known as «Hanzi», see Han Fei. For the primary literary work attributed to said philosopher, see Han Feizi.

Unless otherwise specified, Chinese text in this article is presented as simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese, pinyin. If the simplified and traditional characters are the same, they are written only once.

Chinese characters
Script type	Logographic
Time period	13th century BC to present
Direction	Left-to-right (modern) Top-to-bottom, columns right-to-left (traditional)
Languages	Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ryukyuan, Vietnamese, Zhuang, Miao, etc.
Related scripts
Parent systems	Oracle bone script Chinese characters
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Hani (500), ​Han (Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Han
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Chinese characters
Hanzi (Chinese character) in traditional (left) and simplified form (right)
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	汉字
Traditional Chinese	漢字
Literal meaning	«Han characters»
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin hànzì Bopomofo ㄏㄢˋ ㄗˋ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Hanntzyh Wade–Giles han4-tzŭ4 IPA [xân.tsɨ̂] Wu Shanghainese Romanization [høz] Gan Romanization hon5-ci5 Hakka Romanization hon55 sii55 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization hon-jih Jyutping hon3-zi6 IPA [hɔ̄ːn.tsìː] Southern Min Hokkien POJ hàn-jī Tâi-lô hàn-jī Teochew Peng’im hang3 ri7 Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC háng-cê Middle Chinese Middle Chinese xanCdzɨC
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	chữ Hán chữ Nho Hán tự
Hán-Nôm	𡨸漢 𡨸儒
Chữ Hán	漢字
Thai name
Thai	อักษรจีน
Zhuang name
Zhuang	𭨡倱[1] Sawgun
Korean name
Hangul	한자
Hanja	漢字
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Hanja McCune–Reischauer hancha
Japanese name
Kanji	漢字
Hiragana	かんじ
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn kanji Kunrei-shiki kanzi
Khmer name
Khmer	តួអក្សរចិន

Chinese characters^[a] are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese.^[2][3] Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.^[4] By virtue of their widespread current use throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as their profound historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world by number of users.

The total number of Chinese characters ever to appear in a dictionary is in the tens of thousands, though most are graphic variants, were used historically and passed out of use, or are of a specialized nature. A college graduate who is literate in written Chinese knows between three and four thousand characters, though more are required for specialized fields.^[5] In Japan, 2,136 are taught through secondary school (the Jōyō kanji); hundreds more are in everyday use. Due to separate simplifications of characters in Japan and in China, the kanji used in Japan today has some differences from Chinese simplified characters in several respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, and pronunciations. Simplified forms of certain characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau. In addition, chinese characters have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as kanji. Chinese characters in South Korea, which are known as hanja, retain significant use in Korean academia to study its documents, history, literature and records. Vietnam once used the chữ Hán and developed chữ Nôm to write Vietnamese before turning to a romanized alphabet. In Japan, common characters are often written in post-Tōyō kanji simplified forms, while uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms. During the 1970s, Singapore had also briefly enacted its own simplification campaign, but eventually streamlined its simplification to be uniform with mainland China.

In modern Chinese, most words are compounds written with two or more characters.^[6] Unlike alphabetic writing systems, in which the unit character roughly corresponds to one phoneme, the Chinese writing system associates each logogram with an entire syllable, and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary. A character almost always corresponds to a single syllable that is also a morpheme.^[7] However, there are a few exceptions to this general correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes (written with two characters), bimorphemic syllables (written with two characters) and cases where a single character represents a polysyllabic word or phrase.^[8]

Modern Chinese has many homophones; thus the same spoken syllable may be represented by one of many characters, depending on meaning. A particular character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, which might have different pronunciations. Cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. In other languages, most significantly in modern Japanese and sometimes in Korean, characters are used to represent Chinese loanwords or to represent native words independent of the Chinese pronunciation (e.g., kun’yomi in Japanese). Some characters retained their phonetic elements based on their pronunciation in a historical variety of Chinese from which they were acquired. These foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

Function[edit]

When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, and each character denoted a single word.^[9] Increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. It is estimated that about 25–30% of the vocabulary of classic texts from the Warring States period was polysyllabic, though these words were used far less commonly than monosyllables, which accounted for 80–90% of occurrences in these texts.^[10]
The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones.^[11]
It has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables.^[12]

The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, written with the characters of the constituent words. Words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication, and borrowing from other languages.^[13]
Polysyllabic words are generally written with one character per syllable.^[14][b]
In most cases, the character denotes a morpheme descended from an Old Chinese word.^[15]

Many characters have multiple readings, with instances denoting different morphemes, sometimes with different pronunciations. In modern Standard Chinese, one fifth of the 2,400 most common characters have multiple pronunciations.
For the 500 most common characters, the proportion rises to 30%.^[16]
Often these readings are similar in sound and related in meaning. In the Old Chinese period, affixes could be added to a word to form a new word, which was often written with the same character. In many cases, the pronunciations diverged due to subsequent sound change. For example, many additional readings have the Middle Chinese departing tone, the major source of the 4th tone in modern Standard Chinese. Scholars now believe that this tone is the reflex of an Old Chinese *-s suffix, with a range of semantic functions.^[17]
For example,

• 传/傳 has readings OC *drjon > MC drjwen’ > Mod. chuán ‘to transmit’ and *drjons > drjwenH > zhuàn ‘a record’.^[18] (Middle Chinese forms are given in Baxter’s transcription, in which H denotes the departing tone.)
• 磨 has readings *maj > ma > mó ‘to grind’ and *majs > maH > mò ‘grindstone’.^[18]
• 宿 has readings *sjuk > sjuwk > sù ‘to stay overnight’ and *sjuks > sjuwH > xiù ‘celestial «mansion»‘.^[19]
• 说/説 has readings *hljot > sywet > shuō ‘speak’ and *hljots > sywejH > shuì ‘exhort’.^[20]

Another common alternation is between voiced and voiceless initials (though the voicing distinction has disappeared on most modern varieties).
This is believed to reflect an ancient prefix, but scholars disagree on whether the voiced or voiceless form is the original root.
For example,

• 见/見 has readings *kens > kenH > jiàn ‘to see’ and *gens > henH > xiàn ‘to appear’.^[21]
• 败/敗 has readings *prats > pæjH > bài ‘to defeat’ and *brats > bæjH > bài ‘to be defeated’.^[21] (In this case, the pronunciations have converged in Standard Chinese, but not in some other varieties.)
• 折 has readings *tjat > tsyet > zhé ‘to bend’ and *djat > dzyet > shé ‘to break by bending’.^[22]

Principles of formation[edit]

Chinese characters represent words of the language using several strategies. A few characters, including some of the most commonly used, were originally pictograms, which depicted the objects denoted, or ideograms, in which meaning was expressed iconically. The vast majority were written using the rebus principle, in which a character for a similarly sounding word was either borrowed or more commonly extended with a disambiguating semantic marker to form a phono-semantic compound character.^[23]

The traditional six-fold classification (liùshū 六书 / 六書 «six writings») was first described by the scholar Xu Shen in the postface of his dictionary Shuowen Jiezi in 100 AD.^[24]
While this analysis is sometimes problematic and arguably fails to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, it has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.

Pictograms[edit]

• 象形字 xiàngxíngzì

Pictograms are highly stylized and simplified pictures of material objects. Examples of pictograms include 日 rì for «sun», 月 yuè for «moon», and 木 mù for «tree» or «wood». Xu Shen placed approximately 4% of characters in this category.
Though few in number and expressing literal objects, pictograms and ideograms are nonetheless the basis on which all the more complex characters such as associative compound characters (会意字/會意字) and phono-semantic characters (形声字/形聲字) are formed.

Over time pictograms were increasingly standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write. Furthermore, the same Kangxi radical character element can be used to depict different objects.
Thus, the image depicted by most pictograms is not often immediately evident. For example, 口 may indicate the mouth, a window as in 高 which depicts a tall building as a symbol of the idea of «tall» or the lip of a vessel as in 富 a wine jar under a roof as symbol of wealth. That is, pictograms extended from literal objects to take on symbolic or metaphoric meanings; sometimes even displacing the use of the character as a literal term, or creating ambiguity, which was resolved through character determinants, more commonly but less accurately known as «radicals» i.e. concept keys in the phono-semantic characters.

Simple ideograms[edit]

• 指事字 zhǐshìzì

Also called simple indicatives, this small category contains characters that are direct iconic illustrations. Examples include 上 shàng «up» and 下 xià «down», originally a dot above and below a line. Indicative characters are symbols for abstract concepts which could not be depicted literally but nonetheless can be expressed as a visual symbol e.g. convex 凸, concave 凹, flat-and-level 平.

Compound ideographs[edit]

• 会意字 / 會意字 huìyìzì

Also translated as logical aggregates or associative idea characters, these characters have been interpreted as combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning. The canonical example is 明 bright. 明 is the association of the two brightest objects in the sky the sun 日 and moon 月, brought together to express the idea of «bright». It is canonical because the term 明白 in Chinese (lit. «bright white») means «to understand, understand». Adding the abbreviated radical for grass, cao 艹 above the character, ming, changes it to meng 萌, which means to sprout or bud, alluding to the heliotropic behavior of plant life. Other commonly cited examples include 休 «rest» (composed of the pictograms 人 «person» and 木 «tree») and 好 «good» (composed of 女 «woman» and 子 «child»).

Xu Shen placed approximately 13% of characters in this category, but many of his examples are now believed to be phono-semantic compounds whose origin has been obscured by subsequent changes in their form.^[25] Peter Boodberg and William Boltz go so far as to deny that any of the compound characters devised in ancient times were of this type, maintaining that now-lost «secondary readings» are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators,^[26] but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars.^[27]

In contrast, associative compound characters are common among characters coined in Japan. Also, a few characters coined in China in modern times, such as 鉑 platinum, «white metal» (see Chemical elements in East Asian languages) belong to this category.

Rebus[edit]

• 假借字 jiǎjièzì

Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, the rebus category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar or identical pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 zì, which has lost its original meaning of «nose» completely and exclusively means «oneself», or 萬 wàn, which originally meant «scorpion» but is now used only in the sense of «ten thousand».

Rebus was pivotal in the history of writing in China insofar as it represented the stage at which logographic writing could become purely phonetic (phonographic). Chinese characters used purely for their sound values are attested in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period manuscripts, in which zhi 氏 was used to write shi 是 and vice versa, just lines apart; the same happened with shao 勺 for Zhao 趙, with the characters in question being homophonous or nearly homophonous at the time.^[28]

Phonetical usage for foreign words[edit]

Chinese characters are used rebus-like and exclusively for their phonetic value when transcribing words of foreign origin, such as ancient Buddhist terms or modern foreign names. For example, the word for the country «Romania» is 罗马尼亚/羅馬尼亞 (Luó Mǎ Ní Yà), in which the Chinese characters are only used for their sounds and do not provide any meaning.^[29] This usage is similar to that of the Japanese Katakana and Hiragana, although the Kanas use a special set of simplified forms of Chinese characters, in order to advertise their value as purely phonetic symbols. The same rebus principle for names in particular has also been used in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Maya glyphs.^[30] In the Chinese usage, in a few instances, the characters used for pronunciation might be carefully chosen in order to connote a specific meaning, as regularly happens for brand names: Coca-Cola is translated phonetically as 可口可乐/可口可樂 (Kěkǒu Kělè), but the characters were carefully selected so as to have the additional meaning of «Delicious and Enjoyable». A more literal translation would be «the Mouth can be happy», and the phrase in Chinese is technically grammatically sound.^[29][30]

Phono-semantic compounds[edit]

• 形声字 / 形聲字 Mandarin: xíngshēngzì

Semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds are by far the most numerous characters. These characters are composed of at least two parts. The semantic component suggests the general meaning of the compound character. The phonetic component suggests the pronunciation of the compound character. In most cases the semantic indicator is also the 部首 radical under which the character is listed in dictionaries. In some rare examples phono-semantic characters may also convey pictorial content. Each Chinese character is an attempt to combine sound, image, and idea in a mutually reinforcing fashion.

Examples of phono-semantic characters include 河 hé «river», 湖 hú «lake», 流 liú «stream», 沖 chōng «surge», 滑 huá «slippery». All these characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes (氵), which is a reduced form of the character 水 shuǐ meaning «water», indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water. The right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator- for instance: 胡 hú has a very similar pronunciation to 湖 and 可 kě has a similar (though somewhat different) pronunciation to 河. For example, in the case of 沖 chōng (Old Chinese *ɡ-ljuŋ^[31]) «surge», the phonetic indicator is 中 zhōng (Old Chinese *k-ljuŋ^[32]), which by itself means «middle». In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character is slightly different from that of its phonetic indicator; the effect of historical sound change means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today.

In general, phonetic components do not determine the exact pronunciation of a character, but only give a clue as to its pronunciation. While some characters take the exact pronunciation of their phonetic component, others take only the initial or final sounds.^[33] In fact, some characters’ pronunciations may not correspond to the pronunciations of their phonetic parts at all, which is sometimes the case with characters after having undergone simplification. The 8 characters in the following table all take 也 for their phonetic part, however, as it is readily apparent, none of them take the pronunciation of 也, which is yě (Old Chinese *lajʔ). As the table below shows, the sound changes that have taken place since the Shang/Zhou period when most of these characters were created can be dramatic, to the point of not providing any useful hint of the modern pronunciation.

8 phono-semantic compounds with phonetic part 也 (yě)^[34]

Character	Semantic part	Phonetic part	Mandarin (pinyin)	Cantonese (jyutping)	Japanese (romaji)	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese (Baxter–Sagart)	meaning
也	(originally a pictograph of a vulva)[35]	none	yě	jaa5	ya	jiaX	*lajʔ	grammatical particle; also
池	水（氵）water	也	chí	ci4	chi	ɖje	*Cə.lraj	pool
馳 / 驰	马 / 馬 horse	也	chí	ci4	chi	ɖje	*lraj	gallop
弛	弓 bow (bend)	也	chí (Mainland and Taiwan) shǐ (Taiwan)	ci4	chi, shi	ɕjeX	*l̥ajʔ	loosen, relax
施	㫃 flag	也	shī	si1	se, shi	ɕje	*l̥aj	spread, set up, use
地	土 earth	也	dì	dei6	ji, chi	dijH	*lˤej-s	ground, earth
de, di	—	—	—	adverbial particle in Mandarin
他	人 （亻）person	也	tā	taa1	ta	tʰa	*l̥ˤaj	he, other
她	女 female	也	—	—	—	she
拖	手 （扌）hand	㐌	tuō	to1	ta, da	tʰaH	*l̥ˤaj	drag

Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 AD) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.^{[citation needed]} The chữ Nôm characters of Vietnam were created using this principle.

This method is used to form new characters, for example 钚 / 鈈 bù («plutonium») is the metal radical 金 jīn plus the phonetic component 不 bù, described in Chinese as «不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning». Many Chinese names of the chemical elements and many other chemistry-related characters were formed this way. In fact, it is possible to tell from a Chinese periodic table at a glance which elements are metal (金), solid nonmetal (石, «stone»), liquid (氵), or gas (气) at standard temperature and pressure.

Occasionally a bisyllabic word is written with two characters that contain the same radical, as in 蝴蝶 húdié «butterfly», where both characters have the insect radical 虫. A notable example is pipa (a Chinese lute, also a fruit, the loquat, of similar shape) – originally written as 批把 with the hand radical (扌), referring to the down and up strokes when playing this instrument, which was then changed to 枇杷 (tree radical 木), which is still used for the fruit, while the character was changed to 琵琶 when referring to the instrument (radical 玨).^[36] In other cases a compound word may coincidentally share a radical without this being meaningful.

Derivative cognates[edit]

• 转注字 / 轉注字 zhuǎnzhùzì

The smallest category of characters is also the least understood.^[37] In the postface to the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen gave as an example the characters 考 kǎo «to verify» and 老 lǎo «old», which had similar Old Chinese pronunciations (*khuʔ and *C-ruʔ respectively^[38]) and may once have been the same word, meaning «elderly person», but became lexicalized into two separate words. The term does not appear in the body of the dictionary, and is often omitted from modern systems.^[39]

History[edit]

Legendary origins[edit]

According to traditional legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie, a figure said to have been a scribe to the legendary Yellow Emperor during the 27th century BC. Inspired by his study of the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth and the stars in the sky, Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called zì (字) – the first Chinese characters. The legend relates that on the day the characters were created, grain rained down from the sky and that night the people heard ghosts wailing and demons crying because the human beings could no longer be cheated.^[40]

Early sign use[edit]

In recent decades, a series of inscribed graphs and pictures have been found at Neolithic sites in China, including Jiahu (c. 6500 BC), Dadiwan and Damaidi from the 6th millennium BC, and Banpo (5th millennium BC). Often these finds are accompanied by media reports that push back the purported beginnings of Chinese writing by thousands of years.^[41][42] However, because these marks occur singly without any implied context and are made crudely, Qiu Xigui concluded that «we do not have any basis for stating that these constituted writing nor is there reason to conclude that they were ancestral to Shang dynasty Chinese characters.»^[43] They do however demonstrate a history of sign use in the Yellow River valley during the Neolithic through to the Shang period.^[42]

Oracle bone script[edit]

The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions carved on bronze vessels and oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1250–1050 BC).^[44][45] The earliest of these is dated to around 1200 BC.^[46][47] In 1899, pieces of these bones were being sold as «dragon bones» for medicinal purposes, when scholars identified the symbols on them as Chinese writing. By 1928, the source of the bones had been traced to a village near Anyang in Henan Province, which was excavated by the Academia Sinica between 1928 and 1937. Over 150,000 fragments have been found.^[44]

Oracle bone inscriptions are records of divinations performed in communication with royal ancestral spirits.^[44] The shortest are only a few characters long, while the longest are 30 to 40 characters in length. The Shang king would communicate with his ancestors on topics relating to the royal family, military success, weather forecasting, ritual sacrifices, and related topics by means of scapulimancy, and the answers would be recorded on the divination material itself.^[44]

The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system,^[48][49] suggesting that the Chinese script’s origins may lie earlier than the late second millennium BC.^[50] Although these divinatory inscriptions are the earliest surviving evidence of ancient Chinese writing, it is widely believed that writing was used for many other non-official purposes, but that the materials upon which non-divinatory writing was done – likely wood and bamboo – were less durable than bone and shell and have since decayed away.^[50]

Bronze Age: parallel script forms and gradual evolution[edit]

The traditional picture of an orderly series of scripts, each one invented suddenly and then completely displacing the previous one, has been conclusively demonstrated to be fiction by the archaeological finds and scholarly research of the later 20th and early 21st centuries.^[51] Gradual evolution and the coexistence of two or more scripts was more often the case. As early as the Shang dynasty, oracle bone script coexisted as a simplified form alongside the normal script of bamboo books (preserved in typical bronze inscriptions), as well as the extra-elaborate pictorial forms (often clan emblems) found on many bronzes.

Based on studies of these bronze inscriptions, it is clear that, from the Shang dynasty writing to that of the Western Zhou and early Eastern Zhou, the mainstream script evolved in a slow, unbroken fashion, until assuming the form that is now known as seal script in the late Eastern Zhou in the state of Qin, without any clear line of division.^[52][53] Meanwhile, other scripts had evolved, especially in the eastern and southern areas during the late Zhou dynasty, including regional forms, such as the gǔwén («ancient forms») of the eastern Warring States preserved as variant forms in the Han dynasty character dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, as well as decorative forms such as bird and insect scripts.

Unification: seal script, vulgar writing, and proto-clerical[edit]

Seal script, which had evolved slowly in the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qin dynasty (leading to a popular misconception that it was invented at that time), and was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty period. However, despite the Qin script standardization, more than one script remained in use at the time. For example, a little-known, rectilinear and roughly executed kind of common (vulgar) writing had for centuries coexisted with the more formal seal script in the Qin state, and the popularity of this vulgar writing grew as the use of writing itself became more widespread.^[54] By the Warring States period, an immature form of clerical script called «early clerical» or «proto-clerical» had already developed in the state of Qin^[55] based upon this vulgar writing, and with influence from seal script as well.^[56] The coexistence of the three scripts – small seal, vulgar and proto-clerical, with the latter evolving gradually in the Qin to early Han dynasties into clerical script – runs counter to the traditional belief that the Qin dynasty had one script only, and that clerical script was suddenly invented in the early Han dynasty from the small seal script.

Han dynasty[edit]

Proto-clerical evolving to clerical[edit]

Proto-clerical script, which had emerged by the time of the Warring States period from vulgar Qin writing, matured gradually, and by the early Western Han period, it was little different from that of the Qin.^[57] Recently discovered bamboo slips show the script becoming mature clerical script by the middle-to-late reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han,^[58] who ruled from 141 to 87 BC.

Clerical and clerical cursive[edit]

Contrary to the popular belief of there being only one script per period, there were in fact multiple scripts in use during the Han period.^[59] Although mature clerical script, also called 八分 (bāfēn)^[60] script, was dominant at that time, an early type of cursive script was also in use by the Han by at least as early as 24 BC (during the very late Western Han period),^[c] incorporating cursive forms popular at the time, well as many elements from the vulgar writing of the Warring State of Qin.^[61] By around the time of the Eastern Jin dynasty, this Han cursive became known as 章草 zhāngcǎo (also known as 隶草 / 隸草 lìcǎo today), or in English sometimes clerical cursive, ancient cursive, or draft cursive. Some believe that the name, based on 章 zhāng meaning «orderly», arose because the script was a more orderly form^[62] of cursive than the modern form, which emerged during the Eastern Jin dynasty and is still in use today, called 今草 jīncǎo or «modern cursive».^[63]

Neo-clerical[edit]

Around the mid-Eastern Han period,^[62] a simplified and easier-to-write form of clerical script appeared, which Qiu terms «neo-clerical» (新隶体 / 新隸體, xīnlìtǐ).^[64] By the late Eastern Han, this had become the dominant daily script,^[62] although the formal, mature bāfēn (八分) clerical script remained in use for formal works such as engraved stelae.^[62] Qiu describes this neo-clerical script as a transition between clerical and regular script,^[62] and it remained in use through the Cao Wei and Jin dynasties.^[65]

Semi-cursive[edit]

By the late Eastern Han period, an early form of semi-cursive script appeared,^[64] developing out of a cursively written form of neo-clerical script^[d] and simple cursive.^[66] This semi-cursive script was traditionally attributed to Liu Desheng c. 147–188 AD,^[65][e] although such attributions refer to early masters of a script rather than to their actual inventors, since the scripts generally evolved into being over time. Qiu gives examples of early semi-cursive script, showing that it had popular origins rather than being purely Liu’s invention.^[67]

Wei to Jin period[edit]

Regular script[edit]

Regular script has been attributed to Zhong Yao (c. 151–230 AD), during the period at the end of the Han dynasty in the state of Cao Wei. Zhong Yao has been called the «father of regular script». However, some scholars^[68] postulate that one person alone could not have developed a new script which was universally adopted, but could only have been a contributor to its gradual formation. The earliest surviving pieces written in regular script are copies of Zhong Yao’s works, including at least one copied by Wang Xizhi. This new script, which is the dominant modern Chinese script, developed out of a neatly written form of early semi-cursive, with addition of the pause (顿/頓 dùn) technique to end horizontal strokes, plus heavy tails on strokes which are written to the downward-right diagonal.^[69] Thus, early regular script emerged from a neat, formal form of semi-cursive, which had itself emerged from neo-clerical (a simplified, convenient form of clerical script). It then matured further in the Eastern Jin dynasty in the hands of the «Sage of Calligraphy», Wang Xizhi, and his son Wang Xianzhi. It was not, however, in widespread use at that time, and most writers continued using neo-clerical, or a somewhat semi-cursive form of it, for daily writing,^[69] while the conservative bafen clerical script remained in use on some stelae, alongside some semi-cursive, but primarily neo-clerical.^[70]

Modern cursive[edit]

Meanwhile, modern cursive script slowly emerged from the clerical cursive (zhāngcǎo) script during the Cao Wei to Jin period, under the influence of both semi-cursive and the newly emerged regular script.^[71] Cursive was formalized in the hands of a few master calligraphers, the most famous and influential of whom was Wang Xizhi.^[f]

Dominance and maturation of regular script[edit]

It was not until the Northern and Southern dynasties that regular script rose to dominant status.^[72] During that period, regular script continued evolving stylistically, reaching full maturity in the early Tang dynasty. Some call the writing of the early Tang calligrapher Ouyang Xun (557–641) the first mature regular script. After this point, although developments in the art of calligraphy and in character simplification still lay ahead, there were no more major stages of evolution for the mainstream script.

Modern history[edit]

Although most simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 60s, the use of some of these forms predates the PRC’s formation in 1949. Caoshu, cursive written text, was the inspiration of some simplified characters, and for others, some are attested as early as the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) as either vulgar variants or original characters.

One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China as quickly as possible. Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged and subsequently blamed for their problems. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and therefore proposed that a reform be initiated. It was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, «If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die» (漢字不滅，中國必亡). Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time.^[73]

In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of the intelligentsia maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China.^[74] In 1935, 324 simplified characters collected by Qian Xuantong were officially introduced as the table of first batch of simplified characters, but they were suspended in 1936 due to fierce opposition within the party.

The People’s Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. In the 1950s and 1960s, while confusion about simplified characters was still rampant, transitional characters that mixed simplified parts with yet-to-be simplified parts of characters together appeared briefly, then disappeared.

«Han unification» was an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the so-called CJK languages (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) into a single set of unified characters and was completed for the purposes of Unicode in 1991 (Unicode 1.0).

Apart from Chinese ones, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese normative medium of record-keeping, written historical narratives and official communication are in adaptations and variations of Chinese script.^[75]

Adaptation to other languages[edit]

The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 2nd century BC to 5th century AD (hanja).^[77] This was adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 5th century AD.^[g]

Chinese characters were first used in Vietnam during the millennium of Chinese rule starting in 111 BC. They were used to write Classical Chinese and adapted around the 13th century to create the chữ Nôm script to write Vietnamese.

Currently, the only non-Chinese language outside of China that regularly uses the Chinese script is Japanese. Vietnam abandoned its use in the early 20th century in favour of a Latin-based script, and Korea in the late 20th century in favour of its homegrown hangul script. Since the education of Chinese characters is not mandatory in South Korea,^[78] the usage of Chinese characters is rapidly disappearing.

Japanese[edit]

Chinese characters adapted to write Japanese words are known as kanji. Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with Chinese characters, while native Japanese words could also be written using the character(s) for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Most kanji have both the native (and often multi-syllabic) Japanese pronunciation, known as kun’yomi, and the (mono-syllabic) Chinese-based pronunciation, known as on’yomi. For example, the native Japanese word katana is written as 刀 in kanji, which uses the native pronunciation since the word is native to Japanese, while the Chinese loanword nihontō (meaning «Japanese sword») is written as 日本刀, which uses the Chinese-based pronunciation. While nowadays loanwords from non-Sinosphere languages are usually just written in katakana, one of the two syllabary systems of Japanese, loanwords that were borrowed into Japanese before the Meiji Period were typically written with Chinese characters whose on’yomi had the same pronunciation as the loanword itself, words like Amerika (kanji: 亜米利加, katakana: アメリカ, meaning: America), karuta (kanji: 歌留多, 加留多, katakana: カルタ, meaning: card, letter), and tenpura (kanji: 天婦羅, 天麩羅, katakana: テンプラ, meaning: tempura), although the meanings of the characters used often had no relation to the words themselves. Only some of the old kanji spellings are in common use, like kan (缶, meaning: can). Kanji that are used to only represent the sounds of a word are called ateji (当て字).
Because Chinese words have been borrowed from varying dialects at different times, a single character may have several on’yomi in Japanese.^[79]

Written Japanese also includes a pair of syllabaries known as kana, derived by simplifying Chinese characters selected to represent syllables of Japanese.
The syllabaries differ because they sometimes selected different characters for a syllable, and because they used different strategies to reduce these characters for easy writing: the angular katakana were obtained by selecting a part of each character, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of whole characters.^[80]
Modern Japanese writing uses a composite system, using kanji for word stems, hiragana for inflectional endings and grammatical words, and katakana to transcribe non-Chinese loanwords as well as serve as a method to emphasize native words (similar to how italics are used in Latin-script languages).^[81]

Korean[edit]

Throughout most of Korean history as early as the Gojoseon period up until the Joseon Dynasty, Literary Chinese was the dominant form of written communication. Although the Korean alphabet hangul was created in 1443, it did not come into widespread official use until the late 19th and early 20th century.^[82][83]

Even today, much of the vocabulary, especially in the realms of science and sociology, comes directly from Chinese. However, due to the lack of tones in Modern Standard Korean, as the words were imported from Chinese, many dissimilar characters and syllables took on identical pronunciations, and subsequently identical spelling in hangul.^{[citation needed]} Chinese characters are sometimes used to this day for either clarification in a practical manner, or to give a distinguished appearance, as knowledge of Chinese characters is considered by many Koreans a high class attribute and an indispensable part of a classical education. It is also observed that the preference for Chinese characters is treated as being culturally Confucian.^[83]

In Korea, hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a «purification» of the national language and culture by totally abandoning their use. These individuals encourage the exclusive use of the native hangul alphabet throughout Korean society and the end to Hanja education in public schools. Other Koreans support the revival of Hanja in everyday usage, like in the 1970s and 80s.^[84] In South Korea, educational policy on characters has swung back and forth, often swayed by education ministers’ personal opinions. At present, middle and high school students (grades 7 to 12) are taught 1,800 characters,^[84] albeit with the principal focus on recognition, with the aim of achieving newspaper literacy.^[83] Hanja retains its prominence, especially in Korean academia, as the vast majority of Korean documents, history, literature and records (such as the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, among others) were written in Literary Chinese using Hanja as its primary script. Therefore, a good working knowledge of Chinese characters is still important for anyone who wishes to interpret and study older texts from Korea, or anyone who wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities. Hanja is also useful for understanding the etymology of Sino-Korean vocabulary.^[85]

There is a clear trend toward the exclusive use of hangul in day-to-day South Korean society. Hanja are still used to some extent, particularly in newspapers, weddings, place names and calligraphy (although it is nowhere near the extent of kanji use in day-to-day Japanese society). Hanja is also extensively used in situations where ambiguity must be avoided, such as academic papers, high-level corporate reports, government documents, and newspapers; this is due to the large number of homonyms that have resulted from extensive borrowing of Chinese words.^[86] Characters convey meaning visually, while alphabets convey guidance to pronunciation, which in turn hints at meaning. As an example, in Korean dictionaries, the phonetic entry for 기사 gisa yields more than 30 different entries. In the past, this ambiguity had been efficiently resolved by parenthetically displaying the associated hanja. While hanja is sometimes used for Sino-Korean vocabulary, native Korean words are rarely, if ever, written in hanja.

When learning how to write hanja, students are taught to memorize the native Korean pronunciation for the hanja’s meaning and the Sino-Korean pronunciations (the pronunciation based on the Chinese pronunciation of the characters) for each hanja respectively so that students know what the syllable and meaning is for a particular hanja. For example, the name for the hanja 水 is 물 수 (mul-su) in which 물 (mul) is the native Korean pronunciation for «water», while 수 (su) is the Sino-Korean pronunciation of the character. The naming of hanja is similar to if «water» were named «water-aqua», «horse-equus», or «gold-aurum» based on a hybridization of both the English and the Latin names. Other examples include 사람 인 (saram-in) for 人 «person/people», 큰 대 (keun-dae) for 大 «big/large//great», 작을 소 (jakeul-so) for 小 «small/little», 아래 하 (arae-ha) for 下 «underneath/below/low», 아비 부 (abi-bu) for 父 «father», and 나라이름 한 (naraireum-han) for 韓 «Han/Korea».^[87]

North Korea[edit]

In North Korea, the hanja system was once completely banned since June 1949 due to fears of collapsed containment of the country; during the 1950s, Kim Il Sung had condemned all sorts of foreign languages (even the then-newly proposed New Korean Orthography). The ban continued into the 21st century. However, a textbook for university history departments containing 3,323 distinct characters was published in 1971. In the 1990s, school children were still expected to learn 2,000 characters (more than in South Korea or Japan).^[88]

After Kim Jong Il, the second ruler of North Korea, died in December 2011, his successor Kim Jong Un began mandating the use of Hanja as a source of definition for the Korean language. Currently, it is said that North Korea teaches around 3,000 Hanja characters to North Korean students, and in some cases, the characters appear within advertisements and newspapers. However, it is also said that the authorities implore students not to use the characters in public.^[89] Due to North Korea’s strict isolationism, accurate reports about hanja use in North Korea are hard to obtain.

Okinawan[edit]

Chinese characters are thought to have been first introduced to the Ryukyu Islands in 1265 by a Japanese Buddhist monk.^[90] After the Okinawan kingdoms became tributaries of Ming China, especially the Ryukyu Kingdom, Classical Chinese was used in court documents, but hiragana was mostly used for popular writing and poetry. After Ryukyu became a vassal of Japan’s Satsuma Domain, Chinese characters became more popular, as well as the use of Kanbun. In modern Okinawan, which is labeled as a Japanese dialect by the Japanese government, katakana and hiragana are mostly used to write Okinawan, but Chinese characters are still used.

Vietnamese[edit]

In Vietnam, Chinese characters (called Chữ Hán, chữ Nho, or Hán tự in Vietnamese) are now limited to ceremonial uses, but they were once in widespread use. Until the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was used in Vietnam for all official and scholarly writing.

The oldest writing Chinese materials found in Vietnam is an epigraphy dated 618, erected by local Sui dynasty officials in Thanh Hoa.^[91] Around the 13th century, a script called chữ Nôm was developed to record folk literature in the Vietnamese language. Similar to Zhuang Sawndip, the Nom script (demotic script) and its characters formed by fusing phonetic and semantic values of Chinese characters that resemble Vietnamese syllables.^[92] This process resulted in a highly complex system that was never mastered by more than 5% of the population.^[93] The oldest writing Vietnamese chữ Nôm script written along with Chinese is a Buddhist inscription, dated 1209.^[92] In total, about 20,000 Chinese and Vietnamese epigraphy rubbings throughout Indochina were collected by the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) library in Hanoi before 1945.^[94]

The oldest surviving extant manuscript in Vietnam is a late 15th-century bilingual Buddhist sutra Phật thuyết đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh, which is currently kept by the EFEO. The manuscript features Chinese texts in larger characters, and Vietnamese translation in smaller characters in Old Vietnamese.^[95] Every Sino-Vietnamese book in Vietnam after the Phật thuyết are dated either from 17th century to 20th century, and most are hand-written/copied works, only few are printed texts. The Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies’s library in Hanoi had collected and kept 4,808 Sino-Vietnamese manuscripts in total by 1987.^[96]

During French colonization in the late 19th and early 20th century, Literary Chinese fell out of use and chữ Nôm was gradually replaced with the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet.^[97][98] Currently this alphabet is the main script in Vietnam, but Chinese characters and chữ Nôm are still used in some activities connected with Vietnamese traditional culture (e.g. calligraphy).

Other languages[edit]

Several minority languages of south and southwest China were formerly written with scripts based on Hanzi but also including many locally created characters.
The most extensive is the sawndip script for the Zhuang language of Guangxi which is still used to this day.
Other languages written with such scripts include Miao, Yao, Bouyei, Mulam, Kam, Bai, and Hani.^[99] All these languages are now officially written using Latin-based scripts, while Chinese characters are still used for the Mulam language.^{[citation needed]} Even today for Zhuang, according to survey, the traditional sawndip script has twice as many users as the official Latin script.^[100]

The foreign dynasties that ruled northern China between the 10th and 13th centuries developed scripts that were inspired by Hanzi but did not use them directly: the Khitan large script, Khitan small script, Tangut script, and Jurchen script.
Other scripts in China that borrowed or adapted a few Chinese characters but are otherwise distinct include Geba script, Sui script, Yi script, and the Lisu syllabary.^[99]

Transcription of foreign languages[edit]

Along with Persian and Arabic, Chinese characters were also used as a foreign script to write the Mongolian language, where characters were used to phonetically transcribe Mongolian sounds. Most notably, the only surviving copies of The Secret History of the Mongols were written in such a manner; the Chinese characters 忙豁侖紐察 脫[卜]察安 (nowadays pronounced «Mánghuōlún niǔchá tuō[bo]chá’ān» in Chinese) is the rendering of Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan, the title in Mongolian.

Hanzi was also used to phonetically transcribe the Manchu language in the Qing dynasty.

According to the Rev. John Gulick: «The inhabitants of other Asiatic nations, who have had occasion to represent the words of their several languages by Chinese characters, have as a rule used unaspirated characters for the sounds, g, d, b. The Muslims from Arabia and Persia have followed this method … The Mongols, Manchu, and Japanese also constantly select unaspirated characters to represent the sounds g, d, b, and j of their languages. These surrounding Asiatic nations, in writing Chinese words in their own alphabets, have uniformly used g, d, b, etc., to represent the unaspirated sounds.»^[101]

Simplification[edit]

Chinese character simplification is the overall reduction of the number of strokes in the regular script of a set of Chinese characters.

Asia[edit]

China[edit]

The use of traditional Chinese characters versus simplified Chinese characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Before the official reform, character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally adopted vulgar variants and idiosyncratic substitutions. Orthodox variants were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing or quick notes. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the People’s Republic of China has officially adopted simplified Chinese characters for use in mainland China, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) were not affected by the reform. There is no absolute rule for using either system, and often it is determined by what the target audience understands, as well as the upbringing of the writer.

Although most often associated with the People’s Republic of China, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, are what inspired some simplified characters, and for others, some were already in use in print text, albeit not for most formal works. In the period of Republican China, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government and the intelligentsia, in an effort to greatly reduce functional illiteracy among adults, which was a major concern at the time. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the Chinese Communist Party after its subsequent abandonment) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script based on the Latin script, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh.

The People’s Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. A second round of character simplifications (known as erjian, or «second-round simplified characters») was promulgated in 1977. It was poorly received, and in 1986 the authorities rescinded the second round completely, while making six revisions to the 1964 list, including the restoration of three traditional characters that had been simplified: 叠 dié, 覆 fù, 像 xiàng.

As opposed to the second round, a majority of simplified characters in the first round were drawn from conventional abbreviated forms, or ancient forms.^[102] For example, the orthodox character 來 lái («come») was written as 来 in the clerical script (隶书 / 隸書, lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses one fewer stroke, and was thus adopted as a simplified form. The character 雲 yún («cloud») was written with the structure 云 in the oracle bone script of the Shang dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of «to say» while the 雨 radical was added a semantic indicator to disambiguate the two. Simplified Chinese merges them instead.

Japan[edit]

In the years after World War II, the Japanese government also instituted a series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified forms called shinjitai (新字体, lit. «new character forms»); the older forms were then labelled the kyūjitai (旧字体, lit. «old character forms»). The number of characters in common use was restricted, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established, first the 1850-character tōyō kanji (当用漢字) list in 1945, the 1945-character jōyō kanji (常用漢字) list in 1981, and a 2136-character reformed version of the jōyō kanji in 2010. Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are common guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the latter, see jinmeiyō kanji),^{[citation needed]} as well as for some common words such as «dragon» (竜/龍, tatsu) in which both old and new forms of the character are both acceptable and widely known amongst native Japanese speakers.

Singapore[edit]

Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification. These resulted in some simplifications that differed from those used in mainland China.

The first round, consisting of 498 Simplified characters from 502 Traditional characters, was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969. The second round, consisting of 2287 Simplified characters, was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the Mainland China system; those were removed in the final round in 1976.

In 1993, Singapore adopted the six revisions made by Mainland China in 1986. However, unlike in mainland China where personal names may only be registered using simplified characters, parents have the option of registering their children’s names in traditional characters in Singapore.^[103]

It ultimately adopted the reforms of the People’s Republic of China in their entirety as official, and has implemented them in the educational system. However, unlike in China, personal names may still be registered in traditional characters.

Malaysia[edit]

Malaysia started teaching a set of simplified characters at schools in 1981, which were also completely identical to the Mainland China simplifications. Chinese newspapers in Malaysia are published in either set of characters, typically with the headlines in traditional Chinese while the body is in simplified Chinese.

Although in both countries the use of simplified characters is universal among the younger Chinese generation, a large majority of the older Chinese literate generation still use the traditional characters. Chinese shop signs are also generally written in traditional characters.

Philippines[edit]

In the Philippines, most Chinese schools and businesses still use the traditional characters and bopomofo, owing from influence from the Republic of China (Taiwan) due to the shared Hokkien heritage. Recently, however, more Chinese schools now use both simplified characters and pinyin. Since most readers of Chinese newspapers in the Philippines belong to the older generation, they are still published largely using traditional characters.

North America[edit]

Canada & United States[edit]

Public and private Chinese signage in the United States and Canada most often use traditional characters.^[104] There is some effort to get municipal governments to implement more simplified character signage due to recent immigration from mainland China.^[105] Most community newspapers printed in North America are also printed in traditional characters.

Comparisons of traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and Japanese[edit]

The following is a comparison of Chinese characters in the Standard Form of National Characters, a common traditional Chinese standard used in Taiwan; the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters, the standard for Mainland Chinese jiantizi (simplified); and the jōyō kanji, the standard for Japanese kanji. Generally, the jōyō kanji are more similar to fantizi (traditional) than jiantizi are to fantizi. «Simplified» refers to having significant differences from the Taiwan standard, not necessarily being a newly created character or a newly performed substitution. The characters in the Hong Kong standard and the Kangxi Dictionary are also known as «Traditional», but are not shown.

Comparisons of a sample of traditional Chinese characters, simplified Chinese characters, and simplified Japanese characters in their modern standardized forms (

)

Chinese	Japanese	Meaning
Traditional	Simplified
Simplified in mainland China only, not Japan (Some radicals were simplified)
電	电	電	electricity
買	买	買	buy
車	车	車	car, vehicle
紅	红	紅	red
無	无	無	nothing
東	东	東	east
馬	马	馬	horse
風	风	風	wind
愛	爱	愛	love
時	时	時	time
鳥	鸟	鳥	bird
島	岛	島	island
語	语	語	language, word
頭	头	頭	head
魚	鱼	魚	fish
園	园	園	garden
長	长	長	long, grow
紙	纸	紙	paper
書	书	書	book, document
見	见	見	watch, see
響	响	響	echo, sound
Simplified in Japan, not Mainland China (In some cases this represents the adoption of different variants as standard)
假	假	仮	false, day off, borrow
佛	佛	仏	Buddha
德	德	徳	moral, virtue
拜	拜	拝	kowtow, pray to, worship
黑	黑	黒	black
冰	冰	氷	ice
兔	兔	兎	rabbit
妒	妒	妬	jealousy
每	每	毎	every
壤	壤	壌	soil
步	步	歩	step
巢	巢	巣	nest
惠	惠	恵	grace
莓	莓	苺	strawberry
Simplified differently in Mainland China and Japan
圓	圆	円	circle
聽	听	聴	listen
實	实	実	real
證	证	証	certificate, proof
龍	龙	竜	dragon
賣	卖	売	sell
龜	龟	亀	turtle, tortoise
藝	艺	芸	art, arts
戰	战	戦	fight, war
繩	绳	縄	rope, criterion
繪	绘	絵	picture, painting
鐵	铁	鉄	iron, metal
圖	图	図	picture, diagram
團	团	団	group, regiment
圍	围	囲	to surround
轉	转	転	turn
廣	广	広	wide, broad
惡	恶	悪	bad, evil, hate
豐	丰	豊	abundant
腦	脑	脳	brain
雜	杂	雑	miscellaneous
壓	压	圧	pressure, compression
雞/鷄	鸡	鶏	chicken
總	总	総	overall
價	价	価	price
樂	乐	楽	fun, music
歸	归	帰	return, revert
氣	气	気	air
廳	厅	庁	hall, office
發	发	発	emit, send
澀	涩	渋	astringent
勞	劳	労	labour
劍	剑	剣	sword
歲	岁	歳	age, years
權	权	権	authority, right
燒	烧	焼	burn
贊	赞	賛	praise
兩	两	両	two, both
譯	译	訳	translate
觀	观	観	look, watch
營	营	営	camp, battalion
處	处	処	processing
齒	齿	歯	teeth
驛	驿	駅	station
櫻	樱	桜	cherry
產	产	産	production
藥	药	薬	medicine
嚴	严	厳	strict, severe
讀	读	読	read
顏	颜	顔	face
關	关	関	concern, involve, relation
顯	显	顕	prominent, to show
Simplified (almost) identically in Mainland China and Japan
畫	画	画	picture
聲	声	声	sound, voice
學	学	学	learn
體	体	体	body
點	点	点	dot, point
麥	麦	麦	wheat
蟲	虫	虫	insect
舊	旧	旧	old, bygone, past
會	会	会	be able to, meeting
萬	万	万	ten-thousand
盜	盗	盗	thief, steal
寶	宝	宝	treasure
國	国	国	country
醫	医	医	medicine
雙	双	双	pair
晝	昼	昼	noon, day
觸	触	触	contact
來	来	来	come
黃	黄	黄	yellow
區	区	区	ward, district

Written styles[edit]

There are numerous styles, or scripts, in which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used.

The Shang dynasty oracle bone script and the Zhou dynasty scripts found on Chinese bronze inscriptions are no longer used; the oldest script that is still in use today is the seal script (篆書(篆书), zhuànshū). It evolved organically out of the Spring and Autumn period Zhou script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now used only in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains alive; some calligraphers also work in this style.

Scripts that are still used regularly are the «clerical script» (隸書(隶书), lìshū) of the Qin dynasty to the Han dynasty, the weibei (魏碑, wèibēi), the «regular script» (楷書(楷书), kǎishū), which is used mostly for printing, and the «semi-cursive script» (行書(行书), xíngshū), used mostly for handwriting.

The cursive script (草書(草书), cǎoshū, literally «grass script») is used informally. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are sometimes extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye, this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom that it embodies. Some of the simplified Chinese characters adopted by the People’s Republic of China, and some simplified characters used in Japan, are derived from the cursive script. The Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script.

There also exist scripts created outside China, such as the Japanese Edomoji styles; these have tended to remain restricted to their countries of origin, rather than spreading to other countries like the Chinese scripts.

Calligraphy[edit]

The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China, Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes; none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the most precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.

Typography and design[edit]

Three major families of typefaces are used in Chinese typography:

• Ming or Song
• Sans-serif
• Regular script

Ming and sans-serif are the most popular in body text and are based on regular script for Chinese characters akin to Western serif and sans-serif typefaces, respectively. Regular script typefaces emulate regular script.

The Song typeface (宋体 / 宋體, sòngtǐ) is known as the Ming typeface (明朝, minchō) in Japan, and it is also somewhat more commonly known as the Ming typeface (明体 / 明體, míngtǐ) than the Song typeface in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these styles come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China.

Sans-serif typefaces, called black typeface (黑体 / 黑體, hēitǐ) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese, are characterized by simple lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography.

Regular script typefaces are also commonly used, but not as common as Ming or sans-serif typefaces for body text. Regular script typefaces are often used to teach students Chinese characters, and often aim to match the standard forms of the region where they are meant to be used. Most typefaces in the Song dynasty were regular script typefaces which resembled a particular person’s handwriting (e.g. the handwriting of Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, or Liu Gongquan), while most modern regular script typefaces tend toward anonymity and regularity.

Variants[edit]

Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters mostly occupying the x-height, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area in which the components of every character are written to fit in order to maintain a uniform size and shape, especially with small printed characters in Ming and sans-serif styles. Because of this, beginners often practise writing on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term «Square-Block Characters» (方块字 / 方塊字, fāngkuàizì), sometimes translated as tetragraph,^[106] in reference to Chinese characters.

Despite standardization, some nonstandard forms are commonly used, especially in handwriting. In older sources, even authoritative ones, variant characters are commonplace. For example, in the preface to the Imperial Dictionary, there are 30 variant characters which are not found in the dictionary itself.^[107] A few of these are reproduced at right.

Regional standards[edit]

The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs (variants) for many characters, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. In recent times, the widespread usage of the characters in several nations has prevented any particular system becoming universally adopted and the standard form of many Chinese characters thus varies in different regions.

Mainland China adopted simplified Chinese characters in 1956. They are also used in Singapore and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Postwar Japan has used its own less drastically simplified characters, Shinjitai, since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of Vietnamese alphabet and Hangul, respectively.

The standard character forms of each region are described in:

• The List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese for Mainland China.
• The List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters for Hong Kong.
• The three lists of the Standard Form of National Characters for Taiwan.
• The list of Jōyō kanji for Japan.
• The Han-Han Dae Sajeon (de facto) for Korea.

In addition to strictness in character size and shape, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The most important rules regard the strokes employed, stroke placement, and stroke order. Just as each region that uses Chinese characters has standardized character forms, each also has standardized stroke orders, with each standard being different. Most characters can be written with just one correct stroke order, though some words also have many valid stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts. Some characters are also written with different stroke orders due to character simplification.

Polysyllabic morphemes[edit]

Chinese characters are primarily morphosyllabic, meaning that most Chinese morphemes are monosyllabic and are written with a single character, though in modern Chinese most words are disyllabic and dimorphemic, consisting of two syllables, each of which is a morpheme. In modern Chinese 10% of morphemes only occur as part of a given compound. However, a few morphemes are disyllabic, some of them dating back to Classical Chinese.^[108] Excluding foreign loan words, these are typically words for plants and small animals. They are usually written with a pair of phono-semantic compound characters sharing a common radical. Examples are 蝴蝶 húdié «butterfly» and 珊瑚 shānhú «coral». Note that the 蝴 hú of húdié and the 瑚 hú of shānhú have the same phonetic, 胡, but different radicals («insect» and «jade», respectively). Neither exists as an independent morpheme except as a poetic abbreviation of the disyllabic word.

Polysyllabic characters[edit]

In certain cases compound words and set phrases may be contracted into single characters. Some of these can be considered logograms, where characters represent whole words rather than syllable-morphemes, though these are generally instead considered ligatures or abbreviations (similar to scribal abbreviations, such as & for «et»), and as non-standard. These do see use, particularly in handwriting or decoration, but also in some cases in print. In Chinese, these ligatures are called héwén (合文), héshū (合书, 合書) or hétǐzì (合体字, 合體字), and in the special case of combining two characters, these are known as «two-syllable Chinese characters» (双音节汉字, 雙音節漢字).

A commonly seen example is the Double Happiness symbol 囍, formed as a ligature of 喜喜 and referred to by its disyllabic name (simplified Chinese: 双喜; traditional Chinese: 雙喜; pinyin: shuāngxǐ). In handwriting, numbers are very frequently squeezed into one space or combined – common ligatures include 廿 niàn, «twenty», normally read as 二十 èrshí, 卅 sà, «thirty», normally read as 三十 sānshí, and 卌 xì «forty», normally read as 四十 «sìshí». Calendars often use numeral ligatures in order to save space; for example, the «21st of March» can be written as 三月廿一.^[8]

Modern examples particularly include Chinese characters for SI units. In Chinese these units are disyllabic and standardly written with two characters, as 厘米 límǐ «centimeter» (厘 centi-, 米 meter) or 千瓦 qiānwǎ «kilowatt». However, in the 19th century these were often written via compound characters, pronounced disyllabically, such as 瓩 for 千瓦 or 糎 for 厘米 – some of these characters were also used in Japan, where they were pronounced with borrowed European readings instead. These have now fallen out of general use, but are occasionally seen. Less systematic examples include 圕 túshūguǎn «library», a contraction of 圖書館 (simplified: 图书馆).^[109][110] Since polysyllabic characters are often non-standard, they are often excluded in character dictionaries.

The use of such contractions is as old as Chinese characters themselves, and they have frequently been found in religious or ritual use. In the Oracle Bone script, personal names, ritual items, and even phrases such as 受又(祐) shòu yòu «receive blessings» are commonly contracted into single characters. A dramatic example is that in medieval manuscripts 菩薩 púsà «bodhisattva» (simplified: 菩萨) is sometimes written with a single character formed of a 2×2 grid of four 十 (derived from the grass radical over two 十).^[8] However, for the sake of consistency and standardization, the CCP seeks to limit the use of such polysyllabic characters in public writing to ensure that every character only has one syllable.^[111]

Conversely, with the fusion of the diminutive -er suffix in Mandarin, some monosyllabic words may even be written with two characters, as in 花儿, 花兒 huār «flower», which was formerly disyllabic.

In most other languages that use the Chinese family of scripts, notably Korean, Vietnamese, and Zhuang, Chinese characters are typically monosyllabic, but in Japanese a single character is generally used to represent a borrowed monosyllabic Chinese morpheme (the on’yomi), a polysyllabic native Japanese morpheme (the kun’yomi), or even (in rare cases) a foreign loanword. These uses are completely standard and unexceptional.

Rare and complex characters[edit]

Often a character not commonly used (a «rare» or «variant» character) will appear in a personal or place name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (see Chinese name, Japanese name, Korean name, and Vietnamese name, respectively). This has caused problems as many computer encoding systems include only the most common characters and exclude the less often used characters. This is especially a problem for personal names which often contain rare or classical, antiquated characters.

One man who has encountered this problem is Taiwanese politician Yu Shyi-kun, due to the rarity of the last character (堃; pinyin: kūn) in his name. Newspapers have dealt with this problem in varying ways, including using software to combine two existing, similar characters, including a picture of the character, or, especially as is the case with Yu Shyi-kun, substituting a homophone for the rare character in the hope that the reader would be able to make the correct inference. Taiwanese political posters, movie posters etc. will often add the bopomofo phonetic symbols next to such a character. Japanese newspapers may render such names and words in katakana instead, and it is accepted practice for people to write names for which they are unsure of the correct kanji in katakana instead.^{[citation needed]}

There are also some extremely complex characters which have understandably become rather rare. According to Joël Bellassen (1989), the most complex Chinese character is /𪚥 (U+2A6A5) zhé listen (help·info), meaning «verbose» and containing 64 strokes; this character fell from use around the 5th century. It might be argued, however, that while containing the most strokes, it is not necessarily the most complex character (in terms of difficulty), as it requires writing the same 16-stroke character 龍 lóng (lit. «dragon») four times in the space for one. Another 64-stroke character is /𠔻 (U+2053B) zhèng composed of 興 xīng/xìng (lit. «flourish») four times.

One of the most complex characters found in modern Chinese dictionaries^[h] is 齉 (U+9F49) (nàng, listen (help·info), pictured below, middle image), meaning «snuffle» (that is, a pronunciation marred by a blocked nose), with «just» thirty-six strokes. Other stroke-rich characters include 靐 (bìng), with 39 strokes and 䨻 (bèng), with 52 strokes, meaning the loud noise of thunder. However, these are not in common use. The most complex character that can be input using the Microsoft New Phonetic IME 2002a for traditional Chinese is 龘 (dá, «the appearance of a dragon flying»). It is composed of the dragon radical represented three times, for a total of 16 × 3 = 48 strokes. Among the most complex characters in modern dictionaries and also in frequent modern use are 籲 (yù, «to implore»), with 32 strokes; 鬱 (yù, «luxuriant, lush; gloomy»), with 29 strokes, as in 憂鬱 (yōuyù, «depressed»); 豔 (yàn, «colorful»), with 28 strokes; and 釁 (xìn, «quarrel»), with 25 strokes, as in 挑釁 (tiǎoxìn, «to pick a fight»). Also in occasional modern use is 鱻 (xiān «fresh»; variant of 鮮 xiān) with 33 strokes.

In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists: , normally read taito. It is composed of triple «cloud» character (䨺) on top of the abovementioned triple «dragon» character (龘). Also meaning «the appearance of a dragon in flight», it has been pronounced おとど otodo, たいと taito, and だいと daito.^[112] The most elaborate character in the jōyō kanji list is the 29-stroke 鬱, meaning «depression» or «melancholy».

The most complex Chinese character still in use may be^{[according to whom?]} /𰻞 (U+30EDE) (biáng, pictured right, bottom), with 58 strokes, which refers to biangbiang noodles, a type of noodle from China’s Shaanxi province. This character along with the syllable biáng cannot be found in dictionaries. The fact that it represents a syllable that does not exist in any Standard Chinese word means that it could be classified as a dialectal character.

• 

  Zhèng (unknown meaning)

• 

  Nàng, «poor enunciation due to snuffle»

• 

  Taito, «the appearance of a dragon in flight»

• 

  alternative form of Taito

Number of characters[edit]

The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are being developed all the time – for instance, brands may create new characters when none of the existing ones allow for the intended meaning – or they have been invented by whoever wrote them and have never been adopted as official characters. Chinese characters are theoretically an open set and anyone can create new characters, though such inventions are rarely included in official character sets.^[113] The number of entries in major Chinese dictionaries is the best means of estimating the historical growth of character inventory.

Number of characters in monolingual Chinese dictionaries

Year	Name of dictionary	Number of characters
100	Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)	9,353[114]
230	Shenglei (聲類)	11,520[114]
350	Zilin (字林)	12,824[114]
543	Yupian (玉篇)	16,917[115][116]
601	Qieyun (切韻)	12,158[117]
732	Tangyun (唐韻)	15,000[114]
753	Yunhai jingyuan (韻海鏡源)	26,911[118]
997	Longkan Shoujian (龍龕手鑒)	26,430[119]
1011	Guangyun (廣韻)	26,194[116][120]
1066	Leipian (類篇)	31,319[118]
1039	Jiyun (集韻)	53,525[121]
1615	Zihui (字彙)	33,179[116][122]
1675	Zhengzitong (正字通)	33,440[123]
1716	Kangxi Zidian (康熙字典)	47,035[116][124]
1915	Zhonghua Da Zidian (中華大字典)	48,000[116]
1989	Hanyu Da Zidian (漢語大字典)	54,678[114]
1994	Zhonghua Zihai (中华字海)	85,568[125]
2004	Yitizi Zidian (異體字字典)	106,230[126]

Number of characters in bilingual Chinese dictionaries

Year	Country	Name of dictionary	Number of characters
2003	Japan	Dai Kan-Wa Jiten (大漢和辞典)	50,305
2008	South Korea	Han-Han Dae Sajeon (漢韓大辭典)	53,667

Even the Zhonghua Zihai does not include characters in the Chinese family of scripts created to represent non-Chinese languages, except the unique characters in use in Japan and Korea. Characters formed by Chinese principles in other languages include the roughly 1,500 Japanese-made kokuji given in the Kokuji no Jiten,^[127] the Korean-made gukja, the over 10,000 Sawndip characters still in use in Guangxi, and the almost 20,000 Nôm characters formerly used in Vietnam.^{[citation needed]} More divergent descendants of Chinese script include Tangut script, which created over 5,000 characters with similar strokes but different formation principles to Chinese characters.

Modified radicals and new variants are two common reasons for the ever-increasing number of characters. There are about 300 radicals and 100 are in common use. Creating a new character by modifying the radical is an easy way to disambiguate homographs among xíngshēngzì pictophonetic compounds. This practice began long before the standardization of Chinese script by Qin Shi Huang and continues to the present day. The traditional 3rd-person pronoun tā (他 «he, she, it»), which is written with the «person radical», illustrates modifying significs to form new characters. In modern usage, there is a graphic distinction between tā (她 «she») with the «woman radical», tā (牠 «it») with the «animal radical», tā (它 «it») with the «roof radical», and tā (祂 «He») with the «deity radical», One consequence of modifying radicals is the fossilization of rare and obscure variant logographs, some of which are not even used in Classical Chinese. For instance, he 和 «harmony, peace», which combines the «grain radical» with the «mouth radical», has infrequent variants 咊 with the radicals reversed and 龢 with the «flute radical».

Chinese[edit]

Chinese characters (Chinese: 字; pinyin: zì, meaning the semiotic sign, symbol, or glyph part) should not be confused with Chinese words (Chinese: 詞; pinyin: cí, meaning phrases or vocabulary words, consisting from a group of characters or possibly a single character), as the majority of modern Chinese words, unlike their Old Chinese and Middle Chinese counterparts, are more frequently written with two or more characters, each character representing one syllable and/or morpheme. Knowing the meanings of the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not always the case.

Studies in China have shown that literate individuals know and use between 3,000 and 4,000 characters. Specialists in classical literature or history, who would often encounter characters no longer in use, are estimated to have a working vocabulary of between 5,000 and 6,000 characters.^[5]

In China, which uses simplified Chinese characters, the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语常用字表, List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese) lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòng Zìbiǎo (现代汉语通用字表, Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. In June 2013, the Tōngyòng Guīfàn Hànzì Biǎo (通用规范汉字表, Table of General Standard Chinese Characters) became the current standard, replacing the previous two lists. It includes 8,105 characters, 3,500 as primary, 3,000 as secondary, and 1,605 as tertiary. GB 2312, an early version of the national encoding standard used in the People’s Republic of China, has 6,763 code points. GB 18030, the modern, mandatory standard, has a much higher number. The Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì (汉语水平考试, Chinese Proficiency Test) cover 2,663 characters and 5,000 words at its highest level (level six), while the Guójì Zhōngwén Jiàoyù Zhōngwén Shuǐpíng Děngjí Biāozhǔn (国际中文教育中文水平等级标准, Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education) would cover 3,000 characters and 11,092 words at its highest level (level nine).^{[129][130][131]}

In Taiwan, which uses traditional Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education’s Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (常用國字標準字體表, Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) lists 4,808 characters; the Cì Chángyòng Guózì Biāozhǔn Zìtǐ Biǎo (次常用國字標準字體表, Chart of Standard Forms of Less-Than-Common National Characters) lists another 6,341 characters. The Chinese Standard Interchange Code (CNS11643)—the official national encoding standard—supports 48,027 characters in its 1992 version (currently over 96,000 characters),^[132] while the most widely used encoding scheme, BIG-5, supports only 13,053. The Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (華語文能力測驗, TOCFL) covers 8,000 words at its highest level (level six). The Taiwan Benchmarks for the Chinese Language (臺灣華語文能力基準, TBCL), a guideline developed to describe levels of Chinese language proficiency, covers 3,100 characters and 14,425 words at its highest level (level seven).^[133][134]

In Hong Kong, which uses traditional Chinese characters, the Education and Manpower Bureau’s Soengjung Zi Zijing Biu (Chinese: 常用字字形表; Jyutping: soeng⁴jung⁶zi⁶ zi⁶jing⁴ biu²), intended for use in elementary and junior secondary education, lists a total of 4,759 characters.

In addition, there are a number of dialect characters (方言字) that are not generally used in formal written Chinese but represent colloquial terms in nonstandard varieties of Chinese. In general, it is common practice to use standard characters to transcribe Chinese dialects when obvious cognates with words in Standard Mandarin exist. However, when no obvious cognate could be found for a word, due to factors like irregular sound change or semantic drift in the meanings of characters, or the word originates from a non-Chinese source like a substratum from an earlier displaced language or a later borrowing from another language family, then characters are borrowed and used according to the rebus principle or invented in an ad hoc manner to transcribe it. These new characters are generally phonosemantic compounds (e.g., 侬, ‘person’ in Min), although a few are compound ideographs (e.g., 孬, ‘bad’, in Northeast Mandarin). Except in the case of written Cantonese, there is no official orthography, and there may be several ways to write a dialectal word, often one that is etymologically correct and one or several that are based on the current pronunciation (e.g., 觸祭 (etymological) vs. 戳鸡/戳雞 (phonetic), ‘eat’ (low-register) in Shanghainese). Speakers of a dialect will generally recognize a dialectal word if it is transcribed according to phonetic considerations, while the etymologically correct form may be more difficult or impossible to recognize. For example, few Gan speakers would recognize the character meaning ‘to lean’ in their dialect, because this character (隑) has become archaic in Standard Mandarin. The historically «correct» transcription is often so obscure that it is uncovered only after considerable scholarly research into philology and historical phonology and may be disputed by other researchers.

As an exception, written Cantonese is in widespread use in Hong Kong, even for certain formal documents, due to the former British colonial administration’s recognition of Cantonese for use for official purposes. In Taiwan, there is also a body of semi-official characters used to represent Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka. For example, the vernacular character 㓾, pronounced cii¹¹ in Hakka, means «to kill».^[135] Other varieties of Chinese with a significant number of speakers, like Shanghainese Wu, Gan Chinese, and Sichuanese, also have their own series of characters, but these are not often seen, except on advertising billboards directed toward locals and are not used in formal settings except to give precise transcriptions of witness statements in legal proceedings. Written Standard Mandarin is the preference for all mainland regions.

Japanese[edit]

In Japanese, there are 2,136 jōyō kanji (常用漢字, lit. «frequently used Chinese characters») designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education; these are taught during primary and secondary school. The list is a recommendation, not a restriction, and many characters missing from it are still in common use.^[146]

One area where character usage is officially restricted is in names, which may contain only government-approved characters. Since the jōyō kanji list excludes many characters that have been used in personal and place names for generations, an additional list, referred to as the jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字, lit. «kanji for use in personal names»), is published.^[147] It currently contains 983 characters.^[148]

Today, a well-educated Japanese person may know upwards of 3,500 characters.^[149] The kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験, Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken or Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude) tests a speaker’s ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the kanji kentei tests on approximately 6,000 kanji (corresponding to the kanji characters list of the JIS X 0208).^[150][151]

Korean[edit]

Basic Hanja for educational use (漢文敎育用基礎漢字) are a subset of 1,800 Hanja defined in 1972 by a South Korea education standard. 900 characters are expected to be learnt by middle school students and a further 900 at high school.^[152]

In March 1991, the Supreme Court of Korea published the Table of Hanja for Personal Name Use (人名用追加漢字表), which allowed a total of 2,854 hanja in South Korean given names.^[153] The list expanded gradually, and until 2015 there are 8,142 hanja (including the set of basic hanja) permitted using in Korean names.^[154]

Modern creation[edit]

New characters can in principle be coined at any time, just as new words can be, but they may not be adopted. Significant historically recent coinages date to scientific terms of the 19th century. Specifically, Chinese coined new characters for chemical elements – see Chemical elements in East Asian languages – which continue to be used and taught in schools in China and Taiwan. In Japan, in the Meiji era (specifically, late 19th century), new characters were coined for some (but not all) SI units, such as 粁 (米 «meter» + 千 «thousand, kilo-«) for kilometer. These kokuji (Japanese-coinages) have found use in China as well – see Chinese characters for SI units for details.

While new characters can be easily coined by writing on paper, they are difficult to represent on a computer – they must generally be represented as a picture, rather than as text – which presents a significant barrier to their use or widespread adoption. Compare this with the use of symbols as names in 20th century musical albums such as Led Zeppelin IV (1971) and Love Symbol Album (1993); an album cover may potentially contain any graphics, but in writing and other computation these symbols are difficult to use.

Indexing[edit]

Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries. The great majority of these schemes have appeared in only a single dictionary; only one such system has achieved truly widespread use. This is the system of radicals (see for example, the 214 so-called Kangxi radicals).

Chinese character dictionaries often allow users to locate entries in several ways. Many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionaries of Chinese characters list characters in radical order: characters are grouped together by radical, and radicals containing fewer strokes come before radicals containing more strokes (radical-and-stroke sorting). Under each radical, characters are listed by their total number of strokes. It is often also possible to search for characters by sound, using pinyin (in Chinese dictionaries), zhuyin (in Taiwanese dictionaries), kana (in Japanese dictionaries) or hangul (in Korean dictionaries). Most dictionaries also allow searches by total number of strokes, and individual dictionaries often allow other search methods as well.

For instance, to look up the character where the sound is not known, e.g., 松 (pine tree), the user first determines which part of the character is the radical (here 木), then counts the number of strokes in the radical (four), and turns to the radical index (usually located on the inside front or back cover of the dictionary). Under the number «4» for radical stroke count, the user locates 木, then turns to the page number listed, which is the start of the listing of all the characters containing this radical. This page will have a sub-index giving remainder stroke numbers (for the non-radical portions of characters) and page numbers. The right half of the character also contains four strokes, so the user locates the number 4, and turns to the page number given. From there, the user must scan the entries to locate the character he or she is seeking. Some dictionaries have a sub-index which lists every character containing each radical, and if the user knows the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the character, he or she can locate the correct page directly.

Another dictionary system is the Four-Corner Method, in which characters are classified according to the shape of each of the four corners.

Most modern Chinese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries sold to English speakers use the traditional radical-based character index in a section at the front, while the main body of the dictionary arranges the main character entries alphabetically according to their pinyin spelling.^{[citation needed]} To find a character with unknown sound using one of these dictionaries, the reader finds the radical and stroke number of the character, as before, and locates the character in the radical index. The character’s entry will have the character’s pronunciation in pinyin written down; the reader then turns to the main dictionary section and looks up the pinyin spelling alphabetically.

See also[edit]

• Chinese calligraphy
• Eight Principles of Yong
• Stroke order
• Transcription into Chinese characters
• Romanization of Chinese
• Adoption of Chinese literary culture
• Character amnesia
• Chinese family of scripts
• Chinese character encoding
• Chinese input methods for computers
• Chinese numerals, how numbers are written with Chinese characters
• Chinese punctuation
• Digraph
• Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
• List of languages written in Chinese characters and derivatives of Chinese characters

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

Works cited[edit]

 This article incorporates text from The Chinese recorder and missionary journal, Volume 3, a publication from 1871, now in the public domain in the United States.

Further reading[edit]

• Galambos, Imre (2006). Orthography of Early Chinese Writing: Evidence from Newly Excavated Manuscripts (PDF). Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University. ISBN 978-963-463-811-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 May 2012.

Early works of historical interest

• Samuel Wells Williams (1842). Easy lessons in Chinese: or progressive exercises to facilitate the study of that language. Printed at the Office of the Chinese Repository.
• Herbert Allen Giles (1892). A Chinese-English dictionary, Volume 1. B. Quaritch. p. 1415.
• P. Poletti (1896). A Chinese and English dictionary, arranged according to radicals and sub-radicals. Printed at the American Presbyterian mission press.
• William Edward Soothill (1900). The student’s four thousand [characters] and general pocket dictionary (2 ed.). American Presbyterian Mission Press.
• John Chalmers (1882). An account of the structure of Chinese characters under 300 primary forms: after the Shwoh-wan, 100 A.D., and the phonetic Shwoh-wan, 1833. Trübner & co.
• Chinese and English dictionary: compiled from reliable authors. American Tract Society. 1893.
• Joseph Edkins (1876). Introduction to the study of the Chinese characters. Trübner & co. p. 314.
• Walter Henry Medhurst (1842). Chinese and English dictionary: containing all the words in the Chinese imperial dictionary; arranged according to the radicals. 2 volumes. Parapattan: Walter Henry Medhurst.
• Tai Tung (Dai Tong 戴侗) (1954). The Six Scripts Or the Principles of Chinese Writing. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-60515-2. Translated by L.C. Hopkins with a Memoir of the Translator by W. Perceval Yetts

External links[edit]

History and construction of Chinese characters[edit]

• Excerpt from Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems by John DeFrancis, 1989 by the University of Hawai’i Press. Used by permission of the University of Hawai’i Press.

Online dictionaries and character reference[edit]

• Chinese Text Project Dictionary Comprehensive character dictionary including data for all Chinese characters in Unicode, and exemplary usage from early Chinese texts.
• Evolution of Chinese Characters
• Richard Sears, Chinese Etymology
• Da, Jun, Chinese text computing – statistics on use of Chinese characters

Chinese characters in computing[edit]

• Unihan Database: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean references, readings, and meanings for all the Chinese and Chinese-derived characters in the Unicode character set
• Daoulagad Han – Mobile OCR hanzi dictionary, OCR interface to the UniHan database

Early works of historical interest[edit]

• Chinese and English dictionary: compiled from reliable authors. American Tract Society. 1893. Retrieved 15 May 2011.
• Kangxi (Emperor of China) (1842). Chinese and English dictionary: containing all the words in the Chinese imperial dictionary; arranged according to the radicals, Volume 1. Printed at Parapattan. Retrieved 15 May 2011.

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	Character	Definition	Pinyin
1	我	I ; me	wǒ
2	的	possessive p.	de
3	你	you	nǐ
4	是	to be; is	shì
5	了	completed action p.	le
6	不	no; not	bù
7	们	plural p.	men
8	这	this	zhè
9	一	one; a	yī
10	他	he; him	tā
11	么	interrogative p.	me
12	在	at	zài
13	有	to have; there is	yǒu
14	个	general measure word	gè
15	好	good; well	hǎo
16	来	to come	lái
17	人	man; person	rén
18	那	that	nà
19	要	to want; important	yào
20	会	can; will; to know	huì
21	就	then; just (emp.)	jiù
22	什	what	shén
23	没	not	méi
24	到	to arrive; until (time)	dào
25	说	to speak	shuō
26	吗	question p.	ma
27	为	because of; for	wèi
28	想	to think; to want	xiǎng
29	能	to be able to	néng
30	上	above; top	shàng
31	去	to go	qù
32	道	way; method	dào
33	她	she	tā
34	很	very	hěn
35	看	to see; to look at	kàn
36	可	can; able to	kě
37	知	to know	zhī
38	得	complement p. (V + 得 + Adverb)	de
39	过	experienced action p.	guo
40	吧	…right?	ba
41	还	still; yet; to return	hái
42	对	correct; opposite	duì
43	里	inside	lǐ
44	以	according to; by	yǐ
45	都	all; both	dōu
46	事	thing; item	shì
47	子	child	zǐ
48	生	life; raw	shēng
49	时	time	shí
50	样	manner	yàng
51	也	also; too	yě
52	和	and	hé
53	下	below; down	xià
54	真	really; truly	zhēn
55	现	present	xiàn
56	做	to do	zuò
57	大	big	dà
58	啊	ah!	a
59	怎	how	zěn
60	出	to go out	chū
61	点	a dot; o’clock	diǎn
62	起	to rise	qǐ
63	天	day; heaven	tiān
64	把	direct object p.; to hold	bǎ
65	开	to open; to start	kāi
66	让	to allow; passive p.	ràng
67	给	to give; for; passive p.	gěi
68	但	but; yet	dàn
69	谢	to thank	xiè
70	着	action in progress p.	zhe
71	只	only	zhǐ
72	些	some; few	xiē
73	如	as; as if	rú
74	家	home; family	jiā
75	后	behind; after	hòu
76	儿	son	ér
77	多	many; much	duō
78	意	idea; meaning	yì
79	别	must not; other	bié
80	所	actually; place	suǒ
81	话	language; talk	huà
82	小	small	xiǎo
83	自	self	zì
84	回	to answer; to return	huí
85	然	correct	rán
86	果	fruit	guǒ
87	发	to send; to develop	fā
88	见	to see; to meet	jiàn
89	心	heart	xīn
90	走	to walk; away	zǒu
91	定	to set	dìng
92	听	to listen	tīng
93	觉	to feel	jué
94	太	too (much)	tài
95	该	should	gāi
96	当	to be; just at	dāng
97	经	pass through	jīng
98	妈	mum	mā
99	用	to use	yòng
100	打	to hit	dǎ
101	地	-ly structural p.	de
102	再	again; then	zài
103	因	reason	yīn
104	呢	how about…?; continuing p.	ne
105	女	female	nǚ
106	告	to tell	gào
107	最	most; -est	zuì
108	手	hand	shǒu
109	前	front	qián
110	找	to look for	zhǎo
111	行	to travel; OK!	xíng
112	快	rapid; almost	kuài
113	而	and; as well as	ér
114	死	to die	sǐ
115	先	first; former	xiān
116	像	to be like; image	xiàng
117	等	rank; to wait for	děng
118	被	passive p.	bèi
119	从	from; to follow	cóng
120	明	bright	míng
121	中	middle	zhōng
122	哦	oh	ó
123	情	emotion	qíng
124	作	to do	zuò
125	跟	with; to follow	gēn
126	面	side; aspect	miàn
127	诉	to tell; to complain	sù
128	爱	to love	ài
129	已	already	yǐ
130	之	possessive p.	zhī
131	问	to ask	wèn
132	错	mistake; bad	cuò
133	孩	child	hái
134	斯	this	sī
135	成	to become	chéng
136	它	it	tā
137	感	to feel; emotion	gǎn
138	干	to do	gàn
139	法	law	fǎ
140	电	electric	diàn
141	间	between; room	jiān
142	哪	which	nǎ
143	西	West	xī
144	己	oneself	jǐ
145	候	to wait; season	hòu
146	次	mw. for time	cì
147	信	letter; to trust	xìn
148	欢	joyous	huān
149	正	just (right); correct	zhèng
150	实	real; honest	shí
151	关	to shut	guān
152	进	to enter	jìn
153	车	vehicle	chē
154	年	year	nián
155	喜	to like	xǐ
156	认	to recognize	rèn
157	克	gram; to overcome	kè
158	爸	father	bà
159	谁	who	shuí
160	方	place; square	fāng
161	老	old prefix	lǎo
162	应	should; ought to	yīng
163	比	comparison p.	bǐ
164	帮	to help	bāng
165	无	not to have; -less	wú
166	晚	evening; late	wǎn
167	动	to move	dòng
168	头	head	tóu
169	机	machine	jī
170	分	to divide; fraction	fēn
171	特	special; unique	tè
172	相	mutual; each other	xiāng
173	全	all; whole	quán
174	杀	to kill	shā
175	需	to need; to want	xū
176	放	to put	fàng
177	常	always; general	cháng
178	直	straight	zhí
179	才	just now; ability	cái
180	美	beautiful	měi
181	于	in; at; on	yú
182	带	to bring; belt	dài
183	今	today; now	jīn
184	力	power	lì
185	工	work	gōng
186	许	to permit	xǔ
187	东	East	dōng
188	名	name	míng
189	同	same; similar	tóng
190	长	long; length	cháng
191	亲	parent; relative	qīn
192	种	kind	zhǒng
193	者	one who (is)	zhě
194	嘿	hey	hēi
195	白	white; pure	bái
196	学	to learn	xué
197	安	safe; calm	ān
198	尔	thus; thou	ěr
199	叫	to call	jiào
200	理	essence; truth	lǐ
201	本	mw. for books; origin	běn
202	国	country	guó
203	第	ordinal #	dì
204	友	friend	yǒu
205	高	high; tall	gāo
206	两	two (used with mw.)	liǎng
207	保	to defend	bǎo
208	请	to invite	qǐng
209	非	not	fēi
210	重	heavy; serious	zhòng
211	公	public	gōng
212	记	to record	jì
213	身	body	shēn
214	受	to receive	shòu
215	住	to live; to reside	zhù
216	活	to live	huó
217	加	to add; plus	jiā
218	何	question word	hé
219	伙	companion; buddy	huǒ
220	题	topic; subject	tí
221	完	to finish; complete	wán
222	接	to receive; to join	jiē
223	拿	to take	ná
224	望	to gaze; to hope	wàng
225	解	to divide; to explain	jiě
226	其	his; hers; its	qí
227	离	to leave; (distance) from	lí
228	谈	to chat	tán
229	又	again; also	yòu
230	新	new	xīn
231	更	more	gèng
232	钱	money	qián
233	马	horse	mǎ
234	思	to think; to consider	sī
235	部	section; part	bù
236	场	open area	cháng
237	嗯	approval interjection	en
238	计	to plan	jì
239	任	to appoint; office	rèn
240	确	solid; real	què
241	吃	to eat	chī
242	始	to begin	shǐ
243	结	to produce	jiē
244	利	sharp; benefit	lì
245	朋	friend	péng
246	警	police; to warn	jǐng
247	士	scholar; soldier	shì
248	外	outside; foreign	wài
249	件	mw. for items	jiàn
250	难	difficult	nán
251	位	mw. for people	wèi
252	表	exterior surface	biǎo
253	刚	just (now); hard	gāng
254	希	rare: hope	xī
255	查	to research	chá
256	拉	to pull	lā
257	边	side; edge	biān
258	或	maybe; perhaps	huò
259	将	will; shall	jiāng
260	男	male	nán
261	准	to allow	zhǔn
262	变	to change	biàn
263	证	proof	zhèng
264	物	thing; object	wù
265	员	employee; member	yuán
266	总	always	zǒng
267	噢	moan sound	ō
268	系	system; to connect	xì
269	几	how many	jǐ
270	管	to control	guǎn
271	玩	to play	wán
272	处	place; location	chù
273	办	to do; to manage	bàn
274	主	master; main	zhǔ
275	气	air	qì
276	每	each; every	měi
277	少	few; little	shǎo
278	切	to cut; to slice	qiē
279	失	to lose	shī
280	算	to calculate	suàn
281	性	nature; gender	xìng
282	此	this; these	cǐ
283	必	must; will	bì
284	备	get ready	bèi
285	合	to close; together	hé
286	德	virtue; ethics	dé
287	队	team; group	duì
288	试	to test; to try	shì
289	抱	to carry in arms	bào
290	医	medical	yī
291	通	to connect; open	tōng
292	体	body; form	tǐ
293	乐	happy	lè
294	并	(not) at all	bìng
295	三	three	sān
296	早	early; morning	zǎo
297	门	door; gate	mén
298	害	harm	hài
299	歉	to apologize	qiàn
300	选	to choose	xuǎn
301	嗨	an exclamation	hāi
302	房	house; room	fáng
303	命	life; fate	mìng
304	且	moreover; both	qiě
305	向	towards; direction	xiàng
306	兴	to rise; to flourish	xīng
307	球	ball; sphere	qiú
308	服	clothes; to serve	fú
309	入	to enter	rù
310	照	according to; to shine	zhào
311	提	to lift	tí
312	掉	to fall; to lose	diào
313	夫	husband	fū
314	路	road	lù
315	演	to act; to develop	yǎn
316	够	to be enough	gòu
317	日	sun; day	rì
318	案	legal case; record	àn
319	舞	to dance	wǔ
320	决	to decide	jué
321	求	to look for; to request	qiú
322	约	appointment; to invite	yuē
323	字	word; character	zì
324	呃	belch; hiccup	è
325	肯	to agree	kěn
326	目	eye	mù
327	笑	to laugh	xiào
328	伤	wound	shāng
329	神	deity; spirit	shén
330	父	father	fù
331	指	finger; refer to	zhǐ
332	报	to announce	bào
333	留	to stay; to remain	liú
334	水	water; liquid	shuǐ
335	教	to teach	jiào
336	枪	gun	qiāng
337	清	clear	qīng
338	色	color	sè
339	号	number	hào
340	世	life; age; world	shì
341	远	far; distant	yuǎn
342	片	thin piece; slice	piàn
343	官	official	guān
344	口	mouth	kǒu
345	师	teacher; master	shī
346	原	original	yuán
347	酒	wine	jiǔ
348	周	circle; week	zhōu
349	星	star	xīng
350	识	to know	shí
351	赛	competition	sài
352	救	to save	jiù
353	底	bottom; end	dǐ
354	棒	wonderful; stick	bàng
355	须	must; beard	xū
356	收	to receive	shōu
357	交	to deliver; to pay	jiāo
358	坐	to sit	zuò
359	停	to stop	tíng
360	卡	card; to block	kǎ
361	尼	Buddhist nun	ní
362	婚	to marry	hūn
363	格	grid; pattern	gé
364	眼	eye	yǎn
365	金	gold	jīn
366	蛋	egg	dàn
367	息	breath; to rest	xī
368	室	room	shì
369	内	inside; inner	nèi
370	运	to move; fortune	yùn
371	根	root; basis	gēn
372	单	single; list	dān
373	宝	jewel; treasure	bǎo
374	哥	elder brother	gē
375	张	mw. for flat obj.	zhāng
376	搞	to make; to set up	gǎo
377	战	to fight; war	zhàn
378	火	fire	huǒ
379	罗	gauze; to gather	luó
380	至	to arrive	zhì
381	万	ten thousand	wàn
382	声	sound; voice	shēng
383	布	cloth; to spread	bù
384	音	sound; noise	yīn
385	期	period of time	qī
386	条	mw. long thing obj.	tiáo
387	消	to vanish; need	xiāo
388	买	to buy	mǎi
389	病	illness; disease	bìng
390	整	ordered	zhěng
391	奇	strange	qí
392	弟	young brother	dì
393	犯	to violate; to offend	fàn
394	装	clothing; to pretend	zhuāng
395	贝	shell	bèi
396	您	you (polite)	nín
397	送	to give; to deliver	sòng
398	怕	to fear	pà
399	护	to protect	hù
400	度	degree; measure	dù
401	花	flower; to spend	huā
402	节	festival	jié
403	近	near	jìn
404	怪	odd; monster	guài
405	持	to maintain; to manage	chí
406	光	bright; only	guāng
407	与	and; with	yǔ
408	穿	to wear	chuān
409	愿	to hope; willing	yuàn
410	象	elephant; form	xiàng
411	影	image	yǐng
412	击	to hit	jí
413	使	to cause	shǐ
414	二	two	èr
415	喝	to drink	hē
416	月	moon; month	yuè
417	器	device; tool	qì
418	察	to examine; to observe	chá
419	制	to manufacture	zhì
420	嘛	obvious p.; pause p.	ma
421	哈	laughter	hā
422	助	to help	zhù
423	达	to reach	dá
424	海	ocean; sea	hǎi
425	待	to wait; about to	dài
426	托	support; to entrust	tuō
427	除	to remove	chú
428	写	to write	xiě
429	绝	sever; absolutely	jué
430	界	boundary; scope	jiè
431	帝	emperor	dì
432	姐	older sister	jiě
433	反	contrary; opposite	fǎn
434	担	to undertake	dān
435	司	to manage; department	sī
436	强	strong; powerful	qiáng
437	由	from; by	yóu
438	论	opinion; theory	lùn
439	飞	to fly	fēi
440	亚	Asia	yà
441	续	to continue	xù
442	视	to look at	shì
443	母	mother	mǔ
444	空	empty; air	kōng
445	军	army	jūn
446	跑	to run	pǎo
447	阿	prefix for names	ā
448	尽	to greatest extent	jìn
449	注	pay attention; to register	zhù
450	弄	to do	nòng
451	密	secret	mì
452	线	thread	xiàn
453	代	to substitute; era	dài
454	忙	busy	máng
455	坏	bad; broken	huài
456	久	long (time)	jiǔ
457	议	to discuss	yì
458	衣	clothes	yī
459	血	blood	xiě
460	钟	clock; o’clock	zhōng
461	继	to carry on	jì
462	礼	gift; ceremony	lǐ
463	数	number; figure	shù
464	份	mw. for papers, sets	fèn
465	疯	insane	fēng
466	平	flat; equal	píng
467	止	to prohibit	zhǐ
468	十	ten	shí
469	拜	to pay respect	bài
470	鬼	ghost	guǐ
471	睡	to sleep	shuì
472	啦	exclamation p.	la
473	调	to transfer; tone	diào
474	巴	to stick to; close to	bā
475	兄	elder brother	xiōng
476	紧	strict; tight	jǐn
477	站	to stop; station	zhàn
478	品	goods; product	pǐn
479	英	brave	yīng
480	罪	guilt; crime	zuì
481	文	language; culture	wén
482	亮	bright; clear	liàng
483	抓	to grab	zhuā
484	跳	to jump	tiào
485	联	to unite; to join	lián
486	混	to mix	hùn
487	便	ordinary; convenient	biàn
488	狗	dog	gǒu
489	脑	brain; mind	nǎo
490	业	occupation	yè
491	歌	song	gē
492	精	essence; vitality	jīng
493	包	to wrap; bag	bāo
494	转	to revolve; to turn	zhuǎn
495	却	but; however	què
496	参	to participate	cān
497	院	courtyard; institution	yuàn
498	务	affair; business	wù
499	基	base; foundation	jī
500	台	platform	tái
501	另	other; another	lìng
502	恩	grace	ēn
503	书	book	shū
504	统	to unite	tǒng
505	风	wind	fēng
506	况	situation; moreover	kuàng
507	四	four	sì
508	黑	black	hēi
509	否	to deny	fǒu
510	险	danger	xiǎn
511	言	words; speech	yán
512	米	rice	mǐ
513	杰	distinguished	jié
514	校	school	xiào
515	幸	fortunate	xìng
516	传	to transfer; send	chuán
517	复	to return; to repeat	fù
518	量	quantity; amount	liàng
519	首	head; chief	shǒu
520	改	to change	gǎi
521	忘	to forget	wàng
522	术	method; technique	shù
523	局	office; narrow	jú
524	客	customer; guest	kè
525	假	fake; to borrow	jiǎ
526	永	forever	yǒng
527	维	to maintain	wéi
528	岁	years (of age)	suì
529	据	according to; to seize	jù
530	派	school of though	pài
531	票	ticket	piào
532	兰	orchid	lán
533	恶	evil; ugly	è
534	烦	to trouble	fán
535	取	to take	qǔ
536	游	to swim; to travel	yóu
537	糟	dregs	zāo
538	令	command; to order	lìng
539	随	to follow; comply	suí
540	五	five	wǔ
541	圣	holy	shèng
542	式	type; style	shì
543	探	to explore	tàn
544	嘴	mouth	zuǐ
545	毒	poison	dú
546	越	to climb over	yuè
547	律	law	lǜ
548	费	expense	fèi
549	科	division	kē
550	麻	hemp; rough	má
551	简	simple	jiǎn
552	易	easy	yì
553	流	to flow	liú
554	治	to govern; solve	zhì
555	唱	to sing	chàng
556	答	to reply; answer	dá
557	倒	to invert; actually	dǎo
558	划	to plan; row	huà
559	控	to accuse; manage	kòng
560	味	taste; smell	wèi
561	区	area	qū
562	漂	to float	piāo
563	支	to support	zhī
564	乎	in; at; from	hū
565	录	diary; record	lù
566	考	to test	kǎo
567	超	to exceed; super-	chāo
568	拍	to clap; to take (photo)	pāi
569	轻	light; gentle	qīng
570	连	to link; even…	lián
571	往	towards	wǎng
572	组	to organize; group	zǔ
573	满	to fill; satisfied	mǎn
574	造	to build; to make	zào
575	弹	bullet	dàn
576	静	still; calm	jìng
577	故	old; happening	gù
578	吸	to breathe; inhale	xī
579	喂	call attention	wèi
580	集	to gather; to collect	jí
581	极	extremely	jí
582	讲	to speak; lecture	jiǎng
583	块	colloq. money; lump	kuài
584	趣	interesting	qù
585	类	kind; category	lèi
586	呀	surprise p.	yā
587	戏	drama; trick	xì
588	曾	once; already	céng
589	容	to contain; appearance	róng
590	步	a step	bù
591	投	to cast	tóu
592	化	to change into	huà
593	未	not; have not	wèi
594	束	to bind; bundle	shù
595	醒	to wake up	xǐng
596	威	power	wēi
597	班	team; class	bān
598	终	end; finish	zhōng
599	差	inferior; bad	chà
600	梦	dream	mèng
601	赢	to win	yíng
602	药	medicine	yào
603	迪	to enlighten	dí
604	店	inn; shop	diàn
605	丽	beautiful	lì
606	卖	to sell	mài
607	显	prominent; to show	xiǎn
608	监	to supervise	jiān
609	图	diagram; map	tú
610	半	half	bàn
611	语	language; speech	yǔ
612	付	to pay; hand over	fù
613	热	hot	rè
614	排	a row; to arrange	pái
615	楚	distinct; clear	chǔ
616	偷	to steal	tōu
617	敢	to dare	gǎn
618	油	oil	yóu
619	餐	meal	cān
620	破	broken; to destroy	pò
621	杯	cup	bēi
622	市	market; city	shì
623	城	city; town	chéng
624	哇	child cry sound	wā
625	权	authority; power	quán
626	某	some; a certain	mǒu
627	激	to excite; fierce	jī
628	立	to stand	lì
629	程	rule; order	chéng
630	伊	he; she	yī
631	讨	to invite; to discuss	tǎo
632	责	duty	zé
633	昨	yesterday	zuó
634	闭	to close; to shut	bì
635	庭	main hall; courtyard	tíng
636	落	to set; to decline	luò
637	饭	food; meal	fàn
638	林	forest	lín
639	换	to change	huàn
640	及	to reach; up to	jí
641	船	boat	chuán
642	争	to strive for	zhēng
643	猜	to guess	cāi
644	级	level; rank	jí
645	姆	matron	mǔ
646	雷	thunder	léi
647	刻	quarter (hour); to cut	kè
648	建	to establish	jiàn
649	团	round	tuán
650	王	king	wáng
651	惊	frightened	jīng
652	迎	to welcome	yíng
653	段	section	duàn
654	标	sign; prize	biāo
655	检	to check	jiǎn
656	各	each; every	gè
657	义	justice	yì
658	百	hundred	bǎi
659	民	the people	mín
660	功	result; achievement	gōng
661	唯	yes	wěi
662	夜	night	yè
663	示	to show	shì
664	靠	to lean on	kào
665	释	to explain	shì
666	脸	face	liǎn
667	引	to pull; to guide	yǐn
668	择	to select	zé
669	疑	to doubt	yí
670	赶	to hurry	gǎn
671	俩	two (coll. 两）	liǎ
672	独	alone	dú
673	冷	cold	lěng
674	妹	younger sister	mèi
675	楼	building; floor	lóu
676	皮	leather; skin	pí
677	存	to exist; to deposit	cún
678	练	to practice	liàn
679	娘	mother; young lady	niáng
680	顿	to pause; mw. for meals	dùn
681	断	to break; defiitely	duàn
682	设	to set up	shè
683	松	loose; to relax	sōng
684	博	rich; extensive	bó
685	置	to install	zhì
686	逃	to escape	táo
687	观	to watch	guān
688	痛	ache; pain	tòng
689	狂	mad; wild	kuáng
690	足	foot	zú
691	码	number; code	mǎ
692	恐	afraid	kǒng
693	吉	lucky	jí
694	历	calendar; to experience	lì
695	慢	slow	màn
696	妻	wife	qī
697	山	mountain	shān
698	普	general; popular	pǔ
699	价	price; value	jià
700	元	unit of money	yuán
701	角	angle; 0.1元	jiǎo
702	怀	bosom; heart	huái
703	床	bed	chuáng
704	奥	obscure	ào
705	模	to imitate	mó
706	验	to examine	yàn
707	索	to search; to ask	suǒ
708	街	street	jiē
709	呼	to call	hū
710	祝	to wish; to pray	zhù
711	料	material; stuff	liào
712	休	to rest	xiū
713	灵	quick; effective	líng
714	狱	prison; lawsuit	yù
715	剧	drama; play	jù
716	乱	messy; disorder	luàn
717	展	to spread out	zhǎn
718	板	board; plank	bǎn
719	承	to bear; to carry	chéng
720	则	in contrast; norm	zé
721	顾	to look after	gù
722	深	deep; profound	shēn
723	产	give birth; to produce	chǎn
724	洗	to wash	xǐ
725	政	political	zhèng
726	迷	fan (of)	mí
727	领	neck	lǐng
728	午	noon	wǔ
729	纳	to receive; to bring in	nà
730	谎	lie	huǎng
731	具	tool; ability	jù
732	退	to retreat; to decline	tuì
733	福	luck; fortune	fú
734	习	to study; habit	xí
735	秘	secret	mì
736	奶	milk; breast	nǎi
737	遇	to meet; to encounter	yù
738	职	office; duty	zhí
739	架	to support; framework	jià
740	即	namely; at once	jí
741	挺	to stand upright	tǐng
742	史	history	shǐ
743	负	to bear	fù
744	千	thousand	qiān
745	脱	to take off	tuō
746	瑞	auspicious	ruì
747	背	back of object	bèi
748	仅	barely; merely	jǐn
749	追	to chase	zhuī
750	伦	relationship	lún
751	炸	to fry in oil	zhá
752	资	property; wealth	zī
753	画	to draw; picture	huà
754	踪	footprints; traces	zōng
755	射	to shoot	shè
756	弃	to abandon	qì
757	傻	foolish	shǎ
758	藏	to conceal; to store	cáng
759	屁	fart; nonsense	pì
760	瞧	to glance at	qiáo
761	修	to repair	xiū
762	尸	corpse	shī
763	闻	to hear; news	wén
764	共	common; general	gòng
765	懂	to understand	dǒng
766	蒂	stem of plant	dì
767	危	danger	wēi
768	专	specialized	zhuān
769	呆	stupid	ái
770	介	to introduce	jiè
771	萨	Bodhissatva	sà
772	魔	devil; magic	mó
773	急	urgent; worried	jí
774	碰	to bump	pèng
775	甚	variant of 什	shén
776	糕	cake	gāo
777	苦	bitter; pain	kǔ
778	念	to miss (sb); thought	niàn
779	适	to fit; suitable	shì
780	华	splendid	huá
781	冲	to clash; to rinse	chōng
782	骗	to cheat	piàn
783	厌	to loathe	yàn
784	型	model; type	xíng
785	麦	wheat; oats	mài
786	似	-like	sì
787	红	red	hóng
788	值	value	zhí
789	脚	foot	jiǎo
790	六	six	liù
791	谋	plan; scheme	móu
792	套	cover; mw. for sets	tào
793	凯	triumphant	kǎi
794	众	many; crowd	zhòng
795	预	to advance; prepare	yù
796	际	border; between	jì
797	咱	we; us	zá/zán
798	波	wave	bō
799	卫	to guard	wèi
800	聊	to chat	liáo
801	养	to raise; to bring up	yǎng
802	导	to guide	dǎo
803	虑	to think over	lǜ
804	私	private	sī
805	戴	to put on	dài
806	毁	to destroy	huǐ
807	鱼	fish	yú
808	滚	to boil	gǔn
809	志	sign; ambition	zhì
810	杂	mixed	zá
811	居	to reside; residence	jū
812	词	word	cí
813	食	food	shí
814	诺	promise	nuò
815	读	to read	dú
816	误	mistake	wù
817	撒	to release	sā
818	突	to dash; sudden	tū
819	牛	cow	niú
820	馆	building; shop	guǎn
821	规	a rule; compass	guī
822	陪	to accompany	péi
823	州	a state	zhōu
824	肉	flesh; meat	ròu
825	形	form; appear	xíng
826	凶	culprit; scary	xiōng
827	森	forest	sēn
828	商	commernce	shāng
829	纪	order; to discipline	jì
830	浪	wave	làng
831	石	stone	shí
832	顺	to obey; along	shùn
833	举	to lift	jǔ
834	按	to press; to restrain	àn
835	旅	journey	lǚ
836	努	to exert	nǔ
837	坚	strong	jiān
838	测	to measure	cè
839	免	to exempt; to avoid	miǎn
840	喔	I see; oh	ō
841	丝	silk	sī
842	辆	mw. for vehicles	liàng
843	乔	tall; lofty	qiáo
844	防	to protect	fáng
845	句	sentence	jù
846	印	to print; image	yìn
847	恋	to feel attached to	liàn
848	弗	not, negative	fú
849	季	season	jì
850	严	strict; tight	yán
851	推	to push	tuī
852	伯	eldest uncle	bó
853	莉	white jasmine	lì
854	武	martial	wǔ
855	胜	victory; better	shèng
856	毛	hair; coarse	máo
857	压	to push down	yā
858	败	to defeat	bài
859	究	after all; to investigate	jiū
860	评	to comment; criticize	píng
861	屋	house; room	wū
862	双	pair; double	shuāng
863	牙	tooth	yá
864	斗	to fight	dòu
865	鸡	chicken	jī
866	审	to examine	shěn
867	南	South	nán
868	速	fast; rapid	sù
869	蠢	stupid	chǔn
870	丈	husband	zhàng
871	守	to guard	shǒu
872	获	to capture; to reap	huò
873	八	eight	bā
874	致	fine; delicate	zhì
875	细	thin; fine	xì
876	勒	to rein in; to compel	lè
877	称	to weigh; name	chēng
878	塔	pagoda; tower	tǎ
879	丢	to lose	diū
880	冰	ice	bīng
881	态	attitude	tài
882	吓	to scare	xià
883	古	ancient	gǔ
884	亡	to die	wáng
885	状	suit; strong	zhuàng
886	鲁	foolish, Shandong	lǔ
887	疗	to be healed	liáo
888	操	to operate	cāo
889	遗	to lose; to omit	yí
890	判	to judge	pàn
891	响	sound; noise	xiǎng
892	网	net; network	wǎng
893	箱	box; chest	xiāng
894	货	goods	huò
895	围	to encircle	wéi
896	签	to sign; label	qiān
897	牌	card; tablet	pái
898	户	door; household	hù
899	寻	to search	xún
900	质	character; quality	zhì
901	供	to supply	gōng
902	奖	prize	jiǎng
903	袋	pocket	dài
904	胡	beard; mustache	hú
905	脏	dirty	zāng
906	堂	hall; mw. for furniture sets	táng
907	曼	extended	màn
908	效	effect	xiào
909	露	dew; to reveal	lù
910	替	on behalf	tì
911	娜	elegant; delicate	nuó
912	座	seat	zuò
913	园	park	yuán
914	拥	to embrace	yǒng
915	睛	eye; eyeball	jīng
916	冒	to emit	mào
917	甜	sweet	tián
918	股	portion; thigh	gǔ
919	香	fragrant	xiāng
920	笔	pen; brush	bǐ
921	沙	sand	shā
922	扰	to disturb	rǎo
923	挑	to choose	tiāo
924	姑	aunt	gū
925	爆	to explode	bào
926	镇	suppress; small town	zhèn
927	暴	violent; cruel	bào
928	困	sleepy; difficult	kùn
929	项	item; back of neck	xiàng
930	概	approximate	gài
931	摩	to rub	mó
932	虽	although	suī
933	纽	knot; button; knob	niǔ
934	享	to enjoy	xiǎng
935	配	to join; to match	pèi
936	迹	traces	jì
937	登	to ascend	dēng
938	诞	give birth	dàn
939	竟	unexpectedly	jìng
940	叔	father’s younger brother	shū
941	捕	to arrest	bǔ
942	赌	to gamble	dǔ
943	阻	to obstruct	zǔ
944	彩	color; variety	cǎi
945	搬	to move (house)	bān
946	属	category; affiliation	shǔ
947	招	to recruit	zhāo
948	婆	grandmother	pó
949	巧	opportunely; timely	qiǎo
950	骨	bone	gǔ
951	塞	to stop up	sāi
952	剩	to remain	shèng
953	酷	ruthless; cool	kù
954	啡	coffee; morphine	fēi
955	课	subject; lesson	kè
956	烟	cigarette; to smoke	yān
957	摄	to absorb	shè
958	封	to grant; title	fēng
959	咖	coffee (phonetic)	kā
960	低	low; beneath	dī
961	技	skill	jì
962	迟	late; slow	chí
963	纸	paper	zhǐ
964	烧	to cook; roast/bake	shāo
965	委	to entrust	wěi
966	暗	dark; gloomy	àn
967	左	left	zuǒ
968	输	to lose	shū
969	曲	song; tune	qǔ
970	仍	still; yet	réng
971	训	to tell; to teach	xùn
972	借	to lend; to borrow	jiè
973	扔	to throw	rēng
974	善	virtuous; kind	shàn
975	社	society	shè
976	轮	wheel; by turns	lún
977	顶	apex; to replace	dǐng
978	聪	intelligent	cōng
979	秀	handsome; elegant	xiù
980	刀	knife	dāo
981	莫	do not	mò
982	腿	legs; thighs	tuǐ
983	族	race; nationality	zú
984	鞋	shoes	xié
985	兵	soldiers	bīng
986	锁	lock	suǒ
987	妮	girl	nī
988	异	different; other	yì
989	誓	swear; oath	shì
990	树	tree	shù
991	木	tree; wood	mù
992	抢	to plunder	qiǎng
993	档	grade (of goods); shelves	dǎng
994	雇	to employ	gù
995	广	wide	guǎng
996	丹	cinnabar	dān
997	银	silver	yín
998	镜	mirror	jìng
999	群	group	qún
1000	坦	flat; smooth	tǎn
1001	汉	Han people	hàn
1002	土	earth	tǔ
1003	短	short; brief	duǎn
1004	伴	partner	bàn
1005	播	to scatter	bō
1006	环	ring; to circle	huán
1007	恨	to hate	hèn
1008	移	to move; to alter	yí
1009	编	to organize; to compile	biān
1010	温	warm	wēn
1011	刺	to stab; to pierce	cì
1012	毫	fine hair	háo
1013	右	right	yòu
1014	野	field; wild	yě
1015	哭	to cry	kū
1016	遍	everywhere; all over	biàn
1017	库	warehouse	kù
1018	搭	to put up	dā
1019	康	healthy	kāng
1020	症	disease; illness	zhèng
1021	荣	glory; honor	róng
1022	充	to fill; to satisfy	chōng
1023	创	a wound	chuāng
1024	尝	taste; experience	cháng
1025	列	to arrange; list	liè
1026	毕	the whole of; to finish	bì
1027	般	sort; kind	bān
1028	聚	to assemble	jù
1029	劳	to toil	láo
1030	攻	to attack	gōng
1031	忍	to endure	rěn
1032	势	power; potential	shì
1033	尊	senior; to honor	zūn
1034	吻	kiss; lips	wěn
1035	汤	soup; hot water	tāng
1036	优	excellent	yōu
1037	境	border; place	jìng
1038	蒙	cover; ignorant	méng
1039	偶	accidental	ǒu
1040	熟	cooked; ripe; familiar	shú
1041	营	camp; barracks	yíng
1042	苏	to revive	sū
1043	爷	father; grandfather	yé
1044	微	tiny	wēi
1045	埃	fine dust; dirt	āi
1046	抽	to draw out	chōu
1047	盖	lid; cover	gài
1048	灯	light; lamp	dēng
1049	莎	sedge grass	shā
1050	府	seat of power	fǔ
1051	透	to penetrate	tòu
1052	魂	soul; spirit	hún
1053	艺	skill; art	yì
1054	掌	palm of hand	zhǎng
1055	啥	what?	shà
1056	升	to ascend; promote	shēng
1057	裤	trousers	kù
1058	临	to face	lín
1059	智	wisdom	zhì
1060	盘	plate	pán
1061	研	study; research	yán
1062	菲	fragrant; luxuriant	fēi
1063	归	to return	guī
1064	撞	to hit	zhuàng
1065	隐	secret	yǐn
1066	附	to be close to; to add	fù
1067	搜	to seek	sōu
1068	摆	to arrange	bǎi
1069	散	to scatter	sàn
1070	阳	male; sun	yáng
1071	协	to cooperate	xié
1072	租	to hire	zū
1073	泰	safe; grand	tài
1074	岛	island	dǎo
1075	健	healthy	jiàn
1076	饼	biscuits	bǐng
1077	较	comparatively	jiào
1078	避	to flee; to avoid	bì
1079	猫	cat	māo
1080	七	seven	qī
1081	菜	dish; cuisine; vegetable	cài
1082	糖	sugar; sweets	táng
1083	痴	imbecile	chī
1084	富	rich; abundant	fù
1085	降	to drop; descend	jiàng
1086	怜	to pity	lián
1087	既	already; both…	jì
1088	织	to weave	zhī
1089	执	to execute; to grasp	zhí
1090	戒	to warn	jiè
1091	佛	Buddha	fó
1092	抗	to resist; anti-	kàng
1093	笨	stupid	bèn
1094	航	boat; to sail	háng
1095	妙	wonderful	miào
1096	迈	to pass by	mài
1097	耳	ear	ěr
1098	匙	spoon	chí
1099	宣	to announce	xuān
1100	烂	soft; rotten	làn
1101	秒	a second	miǎo
1102	挂	to hang; to register	guà
1103	旁	beside; side	páng
1104	勇	brave	yǒng
1105	钥	key; lock	yào/yuè
1106	悲	sorrow	bēi
1107	妇	married woman	fù
1108	圈	ring; to circle	quān
1109	敬	to respect	jìng
1110	劲	strong; tough	jìn/jìng
1111	帕	turban; veil	pà
1112	草	grass	cǎo
1113	醉	intoxicated	zuì
1114	绑	to tie	bǎng
1115	层	layer; floor (of building)	céng
1116	吵	to quarrel	chǎo
1117	龙	dragon	lóng
1118	挥	to wave; to disperse	huī
1119	奋	to strive	fèn
1120	忆	to remember	yì
1121	折	to break; to turn	zhé
1122	彼	that; those	bǐ
1123	末	tip; final	mò
1124	北	North	běi
1125	景	scenery	jǐng
1126	沃	to irrigate	wò
1127	废	to abolish	fèi
1128	副	secondary; vice-	fù
1129	默	silent	mò
1130	铁	iron	tiě
1131	初	at first	chū
1132	雪	snow	xuě
1133	瓦	tile; pottery	wǎ
1134	素	raw silk; nature	sù
1135	禁	to prohibit	jìn
1136	诚	honest; sincere	chéng
1137	黄	yellow	huáng
1138	敌	enemy; to resist	dí
1139	夏	Summer	xià
1140	贵	expensive	guì
1141	欧	Europe	ōu
1142	旦	dawn	dàn
1143	依	to depend on	yī
1144	谅	to forgive	liàng
1145	桌	table	zhuō
1146	雄	male; grand	xióng
1147	丁	male adult; robust	dīng
1148	舒	leisurely; to stretch	shū
1149	粉	powder	fěn
1150	旧	old	jiù
1151	朝	dynasty	cháo
1152	厅	hall	tīng
1153	恭	polite	gōng
1154	汽	steam	qì
1155	补	to make up for	bǔ
1156	徒	apprentice	tú
1157	稍	somewhat; a little	shāo
1158	摇	to shake	yáo
1159	躲	to hide	duǒ
1160	窗	window	chuāng
1161	源	source; origin	yuán
1162	蓝	blue	lán
1163	章	chapter	zhāng
1164	灭	to extinguish	miè
1165	疼	aches; pains	téng
1166	孤	lonely	gū
1167	滑	to slip; cunning	huá
1168	碎	to break; broken	suì
1169	弱	weak	ruò
1170	仔	meticulous; young	zǐ
1171	款	section	kuǎn
1172	拒	to resist	jù
1173	河	river	hé
1174	伍	to associate with	wǔ
1175	纹	line; streak	wén
1176	臭	smell; stink	chòu
1177	幻	fantasy	huàn
1178	童	child	tóng
1179	翰	writing brush	hàn
1180	闪	to dodge; flash	shǎn
1181	残	to injure; cruel	cán
1182	鸟	bird	niǎo
1183	骑	to ride	qí
1184	翻	to translate; to flip	fān
1185	洲	continent; island	zhōu
1186	沉	to submerge; sink	chén
1187	饿	hungry	è
1188	砸	to smash	zá
1189	互	mutual	hù
1190	卷	roll; to roll up	juǎn
1191	拖	to drag	tuō
1192	瓜	melon	guā
1193	例	example; case	lì
1194	财	money; wealth	cái
1195	瓶	bottle; vase	píng
1196	墙	wall	qiáng
1197	拳	fist; boxing	quán
1198	牢	prison; stable	láo
1199	典	dictionary; law	diǎn
1200	垃	waste	lā
1201	染	to dye; to acquire	rǎn
1202	漫	free; to inundate	màn
1203	触	to touch	chù
1204	胁	ribs; to threaten	xié
1205	圾	garbage	jī
1206	施	to grant	shī
1207	胸	breast; chest	xiōng
1208	阴	cloudy; female	yīn
1209	孕	be pregnant	yùn
1210	惹	to irritate	rě
1211	硬	hard	yìng
1212	逮	to seize	dài
1213	销	to melt	xiāo
1214	邦	country; nation	bāng
1215	劫	to take by force	jié
1216	袭	to raid	xí
1217	育	to bring up	yù
1218	虫	insects	chóng
1219	嫌	to hate	xián
1220	累	tired	léi
1221	怖	terror; fear	bù
1222	握	to grasp	wò
1223	雨	rain	yǔ
1224	缺	lack	quē
1225	琳	gem	lín
1226	墨	black; corrupt	mò
1227	迫	to force	pò
1228	采	to select; looks	cǎi
1229	辈	generation	bèi
1230	陷	to submerge	xiàn
1231	蹈	to stamp feet	dǎo
1232	限	limit	xiàn
1233	巨	huge	jù
1234	鲍	dried fish	bào
1235	针	needle	zhēn
1236	雅	elegant	yǎ
1237	兹	now; here; this	zī
1238	尾	tail	wěi
1239	青	green/blue; young	qīng
1240	席	mat; banquet	xí
1241	逼	to pressure	bī
1242	犹	like; similar to	yóu
1243	扮	to dress up	bàn
1244	赞	to praise; to support	zàn
1245	邀	to invite	yāo
1246	净	clean	jìng
1247	闹	noisy	nào
1248	访	to call on; to inquire	fǎng
1249	良	good; very much	liáng
1250	叛	to rebel; rebellion	pàn
1251	驾	to operate vehicle	jià
1252	范	pattern; model	fàn
1253	俄	sudden(ly), Russia	é
1254	猪	pig	zhū
1255	辛	hot taste; hard	xīn
1256	杉	pine/fir tree	shān
1257	淘	wash in sieve	táo
1258	洞	cave; hole	dòng
1259	冠	hat; crown	guān
1260	伟	big; great	wěi
1261	珍	precious	zhēn
1262	梅	plum	méi
1263	朗	clear; bright	lǎng
1264	欠	owe; lack	qiàn
1265	扯	rip up; haul	chě
1266	丑	clown; ugly	chǒu
1267	竞	to compete	jìng
1268	剂	liquid solution	jì
1269	烈	fierce; intense	liè
1270	李	plum	lǐ
1271	村	village	cūn
1272	厉	strict	lì
1273	厨	kitchen	chú
1274	允	to grant	yǔn
1275	授	to teach	shòu
1276	堆	to pile up; heap	duī
1277	庆	to celebrate	qìng
1278	率	to lead; frank	shuài
1279	怒	anger; rage	nù
1280	寓	residence	yù
1281	液	sap; juice	yè
1282	谓	to speak; meaning	wèi
1283	估	to estimate	gū
1284	鲜	fresh	xiān
1285	磨	grind; rub	mó/mò
1286	帅	handsome	shuài
1287	婊	prostitute	biǎo
1288	尿	urine	niào
1289	键	key(board)	jiàn
1290	余	surplus	yú
1291	绍	to continue	shào
1292	娃	baby; doll	wá
1293	刑	to punish	xíng
1294	扫	to sweep	sǎo
1295	核	seed	hé
1296	损	to decrease; damage	sǔn
1297	辩	to dispute	biàn
1298	惯	accustomed to	guàn
1299	傲	proud	ào
1300	减	to lower	jiǎn
1301	泡	bubble; to steep	pào
1302	摸	feel with hand	mō
1303	著	manifest	zhù
1304	途	way; route	tú
1305	矶	jetty	jī
1306	鼓	drum	gǔ
1307	堡	fortress	bǎo
1308	愚	stupid	yú
1309	敏	quick	mǐn
1310	版	edition	bǎn
1311	盒	small box	hé
1312	订	to agree	dìng
1313	寄	to mail	jì
1314	赚	to earn	zhuàn
1315	爵	feudal title	jué
1316	材	material	cái
1317	盛	to ladle	chéng
1318	尤	especially	yóu
1319	皇	emperor	huáng
1320	夺	to take by force	duó
1321	邮	post; mail	yóu
1322	俱	all; together	jù
1323	九	nine	jiǔ
1324	盗	to steal	dào
1325	尺	Chinese “foot”	chǐ
1326	愉	pleasant	yú
1327	序	order; sequence	xù
1328	鼠	rat	shǔ
1329	幕	curtain	mù
1330	踢	kick	tī
1331	憾	to regret	hàn
1332	汰	excessive	tài
1333	隔	to partition	gé
1334	彻	to penetrate	chè
1335	插	to insert; pierce	chā
1336	猎	to hunt	liè
1337	尚	still; yet; to value	shàng
1338	潜	to hide; hidden	qián
1339	构	to assign; faciton	gòu
1340	烤	bake; roast	kǎo
1341	霍	quickly	huò
1342	悔	to regret	huǐ
1343	暂	temporary	zàn
1344	爽	bright; crisp	shuǎng
1345	扎	to pierce	zhā
1346	绪	beginnings; thread	xù
1347	讯	to question	xùn
1348	吐	to vomit	tù
1349	吹	to blow	chuī
1350	宾	guest; visitor	bīn
1351	侦	spy	zhēn
1352	颗	particle	kē
1353	宁	peaceful	níng
1354	罚	penalty	fá
1355	欲	to wish for; desire	yù
1356	乡	countryside	xiāng
1357	帽	hat	mào
1358	杜	to prevent	dù
1359	豪	heroic	háo
1360	征	to recruit	zhēng
1361	括	to enclose; to include	kuò
1362	盯	to keep eyes on	dīng
1363	稳	steady; stable	wěn
1364	胆	gall; bravery	dǎn
1365	甲	first; shell	jiǎ
1366	赖	to depend on; bad	lài
1367	啤	beer	pí
1368	佩	to respect; wear (belt)	pèi
1369	启	to start; to open	qǐ
1370	胎	embryo; fetus	tāi
1371	帐	screen	zhàng
1372	赏	to bestow	shǎng
1373	抛	throw (away)	pāo
1374	遭	meet by chance	zāo
1375	若	seem like	ruò
1376	梯	ladder	tī
1377	震	to shake	zhèn
1378	述	to tell	shù
1379	阵	short time	zhèn
1380	仪	ceremony	yí
1381	乖	clever; shrewd	guāi
1382	宫	palace	gōng
1383	咬	bite; gnaw	yǎo
1384	祷	to pray	dǎo
1385	祖	ancestor	zǔ
1386	蜜	honey	mì
1387	耍	to frolic	shuǎ
1388	拼	to join together	pīn
1389	惜	to cherish	xī
1390	忠	loyal	zhōng
1391	策	policy	cè
1392	鼻	nose	bí
1393	钻	to drill	zuān
1394	池	pond; reservoir	chí
1395	虚	emptiness; modest	xū
1396	桑	mulberry tree	sāng
1397	拾	to collect	shí
1398	泳	to dive; swim	yǒng
1399	频	frequently	pín
1400	尖	sharp; acute	jiān
1401	申	to extend; to state	shēn
1402	违	to disobey	wéi
1403	零	zero	líng
1404	诊	to diagnose	zhěn
1405	嘘	to exhale	xū
1406	惧	to fear	jù
1407	拯	to help; to save	zhěng
1408	痕	scar	hén
1409	批	to criticize	pī
1410	绿	green	lǖ
1411	乘	to ride	chéng
1412	佳	beautiful	jia
1413	熊	bear	xióng
1414	辣	hot; spicy	là
1415	躺	to lie down	tǎng
1416	祈	to pray	qí
1417	肥	fat; plump	féi
1418	址	location	zhǐ
1419	占	to divine	zhān
1420	络	net	luò
1421	掩	to cover	yǎn
1422	省	to save; province	shěng
1423	羊	sheep	yáng
1424	荒	wasteland	huāng
1425	督	to supervise	dū
1426	撤	to omit	chè
1427	胖	fat	pàng
1428	辞	words	cí
1429	增	to increase; add	zēng
1430	援	to help	yuán
1431	郎	young man	láng
1432	献	to offer	xiàn
1433	擦	to wipe	cā
1434	农	agriculture	nóng
1435	邪	demonic; evil	xié
1436	姻	marriage	yīn
1437	恢	to restore	huī
1438	描	to copy	miáo
1439	匹	mw. for horses	pǐ
1440	软	soft; flexible	ruǎn
1441	埋	to bury	mái
1442	惨	miserable	cǎn
1443	洋	ocean	yáng
1444	纯	pure	chún
1445	浴	to bathe	yù
1446	贴	to paste; to post	tiē
1447	尉	officer	wèi
1448	略	summary; strategy	lüè
1449	符	symbol; charm	fú
1450	侵	to invade	qīn
1451	陆	shore; land	lù
1452	载	to carry	zài
1453	爬	to crawl	pá
1454	挖	to dig	wā
1455	骄	pride	jiāo
1456	兽	beast	shòu
1457	嫁	to marry	jià
1458	洁	clean	jié
1459	晨	early morning	chén
1460	喊	to shout	hǎn
1461	奏	to play music	zòu
1462	灰	ashes	huī
1463	摔	to stumble	shuāi
1464	羞	disgrace; shy	xiū
1465	邻	neighbour	lín
1466	椅	chair	yǐ
1467	颜	face	yán
1468	欺	cheat	qī
1469	端	to hold; end points	duān
1470	贺	congratulate	hè
1471	茶	tea	chá
1472	障	to block	zhàng
1473	慈	kind; charitable	cí
1474	仇	enemy; hate	chóu
1475	厂	factory	chǎng
1476	怨	to blame	yuàn
1477	逊	humble; worse	xùn
1478	黎	dawn; black	lí
1479	剪	scissors	jiǎn
1480	春	Spring	chūn
1481	额	forehead	é
1482	豆	bean	dòu
1483	罢	to stop; to suspend	bà
1484	裂	crack	liè
1485	挡	to obstruct	dǎng
1486	偏	to lean; oblique	piān
1487	糊	paste	hù
1488	卧	to crouch	wò
1489	敲	to strike	qiāo
1490	丧	to lose	sàng
1491	乌	crow	wū
1492	购	to purchase	gòu
1493	域	field; region	yù
1494	闲	idle	xián
1495	宇	universe	yǔ
1496	姓	surname	xìng
1497	葬	to bury (dead)	zàng
1498	党	party; association	dǎng
1499	售	to sell	shòu
1500	涂	to apply (paint)	tú