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Stroke Order
Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. They are known as '' Hanzi'' in ( Mandarin) Chinese (Traditional form: ; Simplified form: ), ''kanji'' in Japanese (), and ''Hanja'' in Korean (). Basic principles Chinese characters are basically logograms constructed with strokes. Over the millennia a set of generally agreed rules have been developed by custom. Minor variations exist between countries, but the basic principles remain the same, namely that writing characters should be economical, with the fewest hand movements to write the most strokes possible. This promotes writing speed, accuracy, and readability. This idea is particularly important since as learners progress, characters often get more complex. Since stroke order also aids learning and memor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Script Styles
In Chinese calligraphy, Chinese characters can be written according to five major styles. These styles are intrinsically linked to the history of Chinese script. Styles When used in decorative ornamentation, such as book covers, movie posters, and wall hangings, characters are often written in ancient variations or simplifications that deviate from the modern standards used in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean. Modern variations or simplifications of characters, akin to Chinese Simplified characters or Japanese ''shinjitai'', are occasionally used, especially since some simplified forms derive from cursive script shapes in the first place. The Japanese syllabaries of katakana and hiragana are used in calligraphy; the katakana were derived from the shapes of regular script characters and hiragana from those of cursive script. In Korea, the post-Korean War period saw the increased use of hangul, the Korean alphabet, in calligraphy. In Vietnam, recent calligraphy tends ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tortoise
Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other members of the suborder Cryptodira, they retract their necks and heads directly backward into the shell to protect them. Tortoises can vary in size with some species, such as the Galápagos giant tortoise, growing to more than in length, whereas others like the Speckled cape tortoise have shells that measure only long. Several lineages of tortoises have independently evolved very large body sizes in excess of 100 kg, including the Galapagos giant tortoise and the Aldabra giant tortoise. They are usually diurnal animals with tendencies to be crepuscular depending on the ambient temperatures. They are generally reclusive animals. Tortoises are the longest-living land animals in the world, although the longest-living species ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scapula
The scapula (plural scapulae or scapulas), also known as the shoulder blade, is the bone that connects the humerus (upper arm bone) with the clavicle (collar bone). Like their connected bones, the scapulae are paired, with each scapula on either side of the body being roughly a mirror image of the other. The name derives from the Classical Latin word for trowel or small shovel, which it was thought to resemble. In compound terms, the prefix omo- is used for the shoulder blade in medical terminology. This prefix is derived from ὦμος (ōmos), the Ancient Greek word for shoulder, and is cognate with the Latin , which in Latin signifies either the shoulder or the upper arm bone. The scapula forms the back of the shoulder girdle. In humans, it is a flat bone, roughly triangular in shape, placed on a posterolateral aspect of the thoracic cage. Structure The scapula is a thick, flat bone lying on the thoracic wall that provides an attachment for three groups of muscles: i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient China
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the '' Book of Documents'' (early chapters, 11th century BC), the '' Bamboo Annals'' (c. 296 BC) and the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' (c. 91 BC) describe a Xia dynasty before the Shang, but no writing is known from the period, and Shang writings do not indicate the existence of the Xia. The Shang ruled in the Yellow River valley, which is commonly held to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. However, Neolithic civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River. These Yellow River and Yangtze civilizations arose millennia before the Shang. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is among the world's oldest civilizations and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization. The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simplified Chinese Character
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the ''Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The Government of China, government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s to encourage literacy. They are officially used in the China, People's Republic of China, Malaysia and Singapore, while traditional Chinese characters still remain in common use in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, ROC/Taiwan and Japan to a certain extent. Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially . In its broadest sense, the latter term refers to all characters that have undergone simplifications of character "structure" or "body", some of which have existed for mille ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Chinese Characters
Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at the introduction of the regular script in the 2nd century. Over the following centuries, traditional characters were regarded as the standard form of printed Chinese characters or literary Chinese throughout the Sinosphere until the middle of the 20th century, before different script reforms initiated by countries using Chinese characters as a writing system. Traditional Chinese characters remain in common use in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia; in addition, Hanja in Korean language remains virtually identical to traditional characters, which is still used to a certain extent in South Korea, despite differing standards used among these countries over some variant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cursive Script (East Asia)
Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often mistranslated as grass script, is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular script. The cursive script functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style; it is faster to write than other styles, but can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it due to its abstraction and alteration of character structures. People who can only read standard or printed forms of Chinese or related scripts may have difficulty reading the cursive script. Names The character primarily means "grass", which has led to the semantically inappropriate calque of , "grass script". However, can be extended to mean ''hurried'' or ''rough'', from which the name came. Thus, the name of this script is literally "draft script", "quick script" or "rough script" (the character means script in this context). The ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-cursive Script
Semi-cursive script (), also known as running hand script, is a style of calligraphy which emerged in China during the Han dynasty (3rd century BC – 3rd century AD). The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character’s strokes are permitted to be visibly connected as the writer writes, but not to the extent of the cursive style. This makes the style easily readable by readers who can read regular script and quickly writable by calligraphers who require ideas to be written down quickly. In order to produce legible work using the semi-cursive style, a series of writing conventions is followed, including the linking of the strokes, simplification and merging strokes, adjustments to stroke order and the distribution of text of the work. One of the most notable calligraphers who used this style was Wang Xizhi, known for his work '' Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection'' (''Lantingji Xu''), produced in AD 353. This work remains hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clerical Script
The clerical script (; Japanese: 隷書体, ''reishotai''; Korean: 예서 (old spelling 례서); Vietnamese: lệ thư), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing which evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qin dynasty, matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in largely active use through the Wei-Jin periods. In its development, it departed significantly from the earlier scripts in terms of graphic structures (a process named '' libian'', or "clerical change"), and was characterized by its rectilinearity, a trait shared with the later regular script. Although it was succeeded by the later scripts, including the regular script, the clerical script is preserved as a calligraphic practice. In Chinese calligraphy, the term ''clerical'' often refers to a specific calligraphic style that is typical of a specific subtype of the clerical script, the ''Han'' ''clerical'' () or ''bafen'' () ''script''. This style of calligraphy is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Small Seal Script
The small seal script (), or Qin script (, ''Qínzhuàn''), is an archaic form of Chinese calligraphy. It was standardized and promulgated as a national standard by the government of Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Chinese Qin dynasty. Name Xiaozhuan, formerly romanized as Hsiao-chuan, is also known as the seal script or lesser seal script. History Before the Qin conquest of the six other major warring states of Zhou China, local styles of characters had evolved independently of one another for centuries, producing what are called the "Scripts of the Six States" (), all of which are included under the general term " great seal script". However, under one unified government, the diversity was deemed undesirable as it hindered timely communication, trade, taxation, and transportation, and as independent scripts might be used to represent dissenting political ideas. Hence, Emperor Qin Shi Huang mandated the systematic unification of weights, measures, currencies, etc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
