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Chinese Character Components
In Written Chinese, components () are building blocks of characters, composed of strokes. In most cases, a component consists of more than one stroke, and is smaller than the whole of the character. For example, the character consists of two components: and . These can be further decomposed: can be analyzed as the sequence of strokes , and as the sequence . There are two methods for Chinese character component analysis, ''hierarchical dividing'' and ''plane dividing''. Hierarchical dividing separates layer by layer from larger to smaller components, and finally gets the primitive components. Plane dividing separates out the primitive components at one time. The structure of a Chinese character is the pattern or rule in which the character is formed by its (first level) components. Chinese character structures include single-component structure, left-right structure, up-down structure and surrounding structure. Analysis Chinese characters may be analyzed in terms of small ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Written Chinese
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly Logogram, logosyllabic; that is, a character generally represents one syllable of spoken Chinese and may be a word on its own or a part of a polysyllabic word. The characters themselves are often composed of parts that may represent physical objects, abstract notions, or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of a great number of characters: college-educated Chinese speakers know about 4,000. The large number of Chinese characters has in part led to the adoption of Western alphabets or other complementary systems as auxiliary means of representing Chinese. Various current Chinese characters have been traced back to the late Shang Dynasty about 1200–1050 BC,William G. Boltz, Early Chinese Writing, World Archaeology, Vol. 17, No. 3, Early Writing Systems. (Feb., 1986), pp. 42 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |