Chinese character

Chinese
Type	Logographic
Spoken languages	Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese
Time period	Bronze Age China to present
Parent systems	Oracle Bone Script → Chinese
ISO 15924	`Hani, Hans, Hant`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.^[1]

In the Chinese writing system, each character corresponds to a single spoken syllable which usually has a basic meaning. However, although chinese words may be formed by characters with basic meanings, a majority of words in all modern varieties of Chinese require two or more characters to write (thus are poly-syllabic) but have meaning that is distinct from the characters they are made from.^[2] Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. In addition, many Chinese characters were adopted according to their meaning by the Japanese and Korean languages to represent native words, disregarding pronunciation altogether. Chinese characters are also considered to be the world's longest continuously used writing system.

Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Non-Chinese languages which have adopted sinography—and, with the orthography, a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language—are known as Sinoxenic languages, whether or not they still use the characters. The term does not imply any genetic affiliation with Chinese. The major Sinoxenic languages are Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

History

Precursors

In the last 50 or so years, inscriptions have been found on Neolithic pottery in a variety of locations in China such as Bànpō near Xī’ān, as well as on bone and bone artifacts at Hualouzi, Chang'an County near Xi'an. These simple, often geometric marks have been frequently compared to some of the earliest known Chinese characters, on the oracle bones, and some have taken them to mean that the history of Chinese writing extends back over six millennia. However, because these marks occur singly, without any context to imply usage as writing, and because they are generally extremely crude and simple, Qiú Xīguī (2000, p.31) 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." Isolated graphs and pictures continue to be found periodically, frequently accompanied by media reports pushing back the purported beginnings of Chinese writing a few thousand years. For example, at Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 pictorial cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered, leading to headlines such as "Chinese writing '8,000 years old.'"^[3] Similarly, archaeologists report finding a few inscribed symbols on tortoise shells at the Neolithic site of Jiahu in Henan, dated to around 6,600–6,200BCE, leading to headlines of "'Earliest writing' found in China.^[4] However, each time, scholars urge caution and skepticism. Professor David Keightley, a renowned expert on Shang script, urged caution in the latter instance, noting "There is a gap of about 5,000 years. It seems astonishing that they would be connected," adding "we can't call it writing until we have more evidence."^[4]Chinese writing has enabled us to learn more about Ancient China, and what started such a magnificent writing was called the Oracle Bone script which developed in the Shang dynasty.

An additional problem with many such claims of connections to later Chinese writing is the lack of any direct cultural connection to Shāng culture, combined with gaps between them of many millennia. One group of sites without such problems is the Dàwènkǒu culture sites (2800–2500 BCE, only one millennium earlier than the early Shāng culture sites, and positioned so as to be plausibly albeit indirectly ancestral to the Shāng). There, a few inscribed pottery and jade pieces have been found,^[5] one of which combines pictorial elements (resembling, according to some, a sun, moon or clouds, and fire or a mountain) in a stack which brings to mind the compounding of elements in Chinese characters. Major scholars are divided in their interpretation of such inscribed symbols. Some, such as Yú Xĭngwú,^[6] Táng Lán^[7] and Lĭ Xuéqín,^[8] have identified these with specific Chinese characters. Others such as Wang Ningsheng^[9] interpret them as pictorial symbols such as clan insignia, rather than writing. But as Wang Ningsheng points out, "True writing begins when it represents sounds and consists of symbols that are able to record language. The few isolated figures found on pottery still cannot substantiate this point."^[10]

Legendary origins

According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zì—Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of the world.

Oracle bone script

Shāng Dynasty Oracle Bone Script on Ox Scapula, Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany. Photo by Dr. Meierhofer

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell-bone-script"). These were identified by scholars in 1899 on pieces of bone and turtle shell being sold as medicine, and by 1928, the source of the oracle bones had been traced back to modern Xiǎotún (小屯) village at Ānyáng in Hénán Province, where official archaeological excavations in 1928–1937 discovered 20,000 oracle bone pieces, about 1/5 of the total discovered. The inscriptions were records of the divinations performed for or by the royal Shāng household. The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC).^[11]^[11]^[12]^[13] Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known oracle bone script logographs can be identified with later Chinese characters and thus deciphered by paleographers.

Bronze Age: Parallel script forms and gradual evolution

The traditional picture of an orderly series of scripts, each one invented suddenly and then completely displacing the previous one as implied by neat series of graphs in popular books on the subject, has been conclusively demonstrated to be fiction by the archaeological finds and scholarly research of the last half century.^[14] Gradual evolution and the coexistence of two or more scripts was more often the case. As early as the Shāng dynasty, oracle bone script coexisted as a simplified form alongside the normal script of bamboo books (preserved for us in typical bronze inscriptions) as well as extra-elaborate pictorial forms (often clan emblems) found on many bronzes.

Left: Bronze 方樽 fāngzūn ritual wine container dated about 1000 BCE. The written inscription cast in bronze on the vessel commemorates a gift of cowrie shells (then used as currency in China) from someone of presumably elite status in 周 Zhōu Dynasty society. Right: Bronze 方彝 fāngyí ritual container dated about 1000 BCE. A written inscription of some 180 Chinese characters appears twice on the vessel. The written inscription comments on state rituals that accompanied court ceremony, recorded by an official scribe.

Based on studies of such bronze inscriptions, it is clear that from the Shāng dynasty writing to that of the Western Zhōu and early Eastern Zhōu, the mainstream script evolved in a slow, unbroken fashion, until taking the form now known as seal script in the late Eastern Zhōu in the state of Qín, without any clear line of division.^[15]^[16] Meanwhile other scripts had evolved, especially in the eastern and southern areas during the late Zhōu, including regional forms, such as the gǔwén “ancient forms” of the eastern Warring States preserved in the Hàn dynasty etymological dictionary Shuōwén Jiézì as variant forms, as well as decorative forms such as bird and insect scripts.

Unification: Seal script, vulgar writing and proto-clerical

Seal script, which had evolved slowly in the state of Qín during the Eastern Zhōu dynasty, became standardized and adopted as the formal script for all of China in the Qín 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 Hàn dynasty onward. But despite the Qín 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 Qín state, and the popularity of this vulgar writing grew as the use of writing itself became more widespread.^[17] By the Warring States period, an immature form of clerical script called “early clerical” or “proto-clerical” had already developed in the state of Qín^[18] based upon thus vulgar writing, and with influence from seal script as well.^[19] The coexistence of the three scripts, small seal, vulgar and proto-clerical, with the latter evolving gradually in the Qín to early Hàn dynasties into clerical script, runs counter to the traditional beliefs that the Qín dynasty had one script only, and that clerical script was suddenly invented in the early Hàn dynasty from the small seal script.

Hàn Dynasty

Proto-clerical evolving to clerical

Proto-clerical, which had emerged by the Warring States period from vulgar Qín writing, matured gradually, and by the early Western Hàn, was little different from that of the Qín.^[20] Recently discovered bamboo slips show the script becoming mature clerical script by the middle to late reign of Emperor Wǔ of the W. Hàn,^[21] who ruled 141 BCE to 87 BCE.

Clerical & clerical cursive

Contrary to popular belief of one script per period, there were in fact multiple scripts in use during the Hàn.^[22] Although mature clerical script, also called bāfēn^[23] script (Chinese 八分), was dominant at that time, an early type of cursive script was also in use in the Hàn by at least as early as 24 BCE (very late W. Hàn),^[24] incorporating cursory (sic) forms popular at that period as well as many^[25] from the vulgar writing of the Warring State of Qín. By around the Eastern Jìn dynasty this Hàn cursive became known as zhāngcǎo (Chinese 章草; sometimes called lìcǎo (隸草) today), or in English sometimes clerical cursive, ancient cursive, or draft cursive. Some believe that the name, based on zhāng (章), meaning “orderly”, is due to the fact that this was a more orderly form^[26] of cursive than the modern form of cursive emerging around the E. Jìn and still in use today, called jīncǎo (今草) or “modern cursive”.^[27]

Neo-clerical

Around the mid Eastern Hàn,^[26] a simplified and easier to write form of clerical appeared, which Qiú (2000, p.113 & 139) terms “neo-clerical” (Chinese 新隸體 xīnlìtĭ) and by the late E. Hàn it had become the dominant daily script,^[26] although the formal, mature bāfēn (八分) clerical script remained in use for formal situations such as engraved stelae.^[26] Some have described this neo-clerical script as a transition between clerical and standard script,^[26] and it remained in use through the Cáo Wèi and Jìn dynasties.^[28]

Semi-cursive

By the late E. Hàn, an early form of semi-cursive script appeared,^[29] developing out of a somewhat cursively written kind of neo-clerical script^[30] and cursive.^[31] It was traditionally attributed to Liú Déshēng ca. 147–188 CE,^[28]^[32] 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. Qiú 2000, p.140 gives examples of early semi-cursive showing that it had popular origins rather than being only Liú’s invention.

Wèi to Jìn period

Standard script

Standard script has been attributed to Zhōng Yáo, of the E. Hàn to Cáo Wèi period (ca 151–230 CE), who has been called the “father of standard script”. The earliest surviving pieces written in standard script are copies of his works, including at least one copied by Wáng Xīzhī. 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 (dùn 頓) technique to end horizontal strokes, plus heavy tails on strokes which are written to downward right diagonal.^[33] Thus, early standard script emerged from a neat, formal form of semi-cursive which had emerged from neo-clerical (a simplified, convenient form of clerical). It then matured further in the Eastern Jìn dynasty in the hands of the “Sage of Calligraphy” Wáng Xīzhī and his son Wáng Xiànzhī. It was not, however, in widespread use at that time, and most continued using neo-clerical or a somewhat semi-cursive form of it for daily writing,^[33] while the conservative bāfēn clerical script remained in use on some stelae, alongside some semi-cursive, but primarily neo-clerical.^[34]

Modern cursive

Meanwhile, modern cursive script slowly emerged out of the clerical cursive (zhāngcǎo) script during the Cáo Wèi to Jìn period, under the influence of both semi-cursive and the newly emerged standard script.^[35] Cursive was formalized in the hands of a few master calligraphers, the most famous and influential of which was Wáng Xīzhī.^[36] However, because modern cursive is so cursive, it is hard to read, and never gained widespread use outside of literati circles.

Dominance and maturation of standard script

It was not until the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the standard script rose to dominant status.^[37] During that period, standard script continued evolving stylistically, reaching full maturity in the early Táng dynasty. Some call the writing of the early Táng calligrapher Ōuyáng Xún (557–641) the first mature standard 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. Chinese writing had reached full maturity.

Use in other countries

The Chinese script spread to Korea together with Buddhism from the 7th century (Hanja). The Japanese Kanji were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 8th century AD. The Vietnamese Han tu were first used in Vietnam during the millenium of Chinese rule starting in 111 BC, while adaptation for the vernacular Chữ Nôm script (based on Chinese characters) emerged around the 13th century AD.

Modern history

Although most of the 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, character simplification predates the PRC's formation in 1949. One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lu Feikui, 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. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. In many world languages, literacy has been promoted as a justification for spelling reforms. 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.

Written styles

Sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang Dynasty calligrapher Sun Guoting, c. 650 AD.

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. These characters were used over 3,000 years ago.

The Cursive Script (simplified Chinese: 草书; traditional Chinese: 草書; pinyin: cǎoshū; literally "grass script") is not in general use, and is a purely artistic calligraphic style. The basic character shapes are suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are 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 of the 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 standard scripts described above.

Formation of characters

Excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters

The earliest known Chinese texts, in the Oracle bone script, display a fully developed writing system, little different functionally than modern characters. It can only be assumed that the early stages of the development of characters were dominated by pictograms, which were the objects depicted, and ideograms, in which meaning was expressed iconically. The demands of writing full language, including words which had no easy pictographic or iconic representation, forced an expansion of this system, presumably through use of rebus.

The presumed methods of forming characters were first classified c. 100 AD by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen, whose etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字/说文解字) divides the script into six categories, the liùshū (六書/六书). While the categories and classification are occasionally problematic and arguably fail to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, this account has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.^[38]

Four percent of Chinese characters are derived directly from individual pictograms, though in most cases the resemblance to an object is no longer clear. Others are ideograms, compound ideograms, where two ideograms are combined to give a third reading, or rebus. But most characters are phono-semantic compounds, with one element to indicate the general category of meaning and the other to suggest the pronunciation. Again, in many cases the suggested sound is no longer accurate.

Pictograms

Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. While characters in this class derive from pictures, they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 (rì) for "sun", 月 (yuè) for "moon", and 木 (mù) for "tree"....^[39]

There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) estimated that 4% of characters fell into this category.

Ideograms

Also called simple indicatives or simple ideographs, these characters either modify existing pictographs iconically, or are direct iconic illustrations. For instance, by modifying 刀 dāo, a pictogram for "knife", by marking the blade, an ideogram 刃 rèn for "blade" is obtained. Direct examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down". This category is small.

Ideogrammic compounds

Translated literally as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters symbolically combine pictograms or ideograms to create a third character. For instance, doubling the pictogram 木 mu "tree" produces 林 lin "forest", while combining 日 rì "sun" and 月 yuè "moon", the two natural sources of light, makes 明 míng "bright".

Some scholars flatly reject the existence of this category, opining that failure of modern attempts to identify a phonetic in a compound is due simply to our not looking at ancient "secondary readings", which were lost over time.^[40] For example, the character 安 ān "peace", a combination of "roof" 宀 and "woman" 女, is commonly cited as an ideogrammic compound, purportedly motivated by a meaning such as "all is peaceful with the woman at home". However, there is evidence that 女 was once a polyphone with a secondary reading of *an, as may be gleaned from the set 妟 yàn "tranquil", 奻 nuán "to quarrel", and 姦 jiān "licentious".

Adding weight to this argument is the fact that characters claimed to belong to this group are almost invariably interpreted from modern forms rather than the archaic forms, which as a rule are quite different and often far more graphically complex. However, interpretations differ greatly between sources.^[41]

Phono-semantic compounds

By far the most numerous category are the phono-semantic compounds, also called semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds. These characters are composed of two parts: one of a limited set of pictographs, often graphically simplified, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and an existing character pronounced approximately as the new target word.

Examples are 河 (hé) river, 湖 (hú) lake, 流 (liú) stream, 沖 (chōng) riptide (or flush), 滑 (huá) slippery. All these characters have on the left a radical of three dots, which is a simplified pictograph for a water drop, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 冲 (chōng), the phonetic indicator is 中 (zhōng), which by itself means middle. In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character has diverged from that of its phonetic indicator; this process means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today. Further, the choice of radicals may also seem arbitrary in some cases; for example, the radical of 貓 (māo) cat is 豸 (zhì), originally a pictograph for worms, but in characters of this sort indicating an animal of any sort.

Xu Shen (c. AD 100) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (AD 1716) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.

This method is still sometimes used to form new characters, for example 钚 ("bu", meaning "plutonium") is the metal radical 金 plus the phonetic component 不 ("bu"), described in Chinese as "不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning".

Transformed cognates

Characters in this category originally didn't represent the same meaning but have bifurcated through orthographic and often semantic drift. For instance, 考 (kǎo) to verify and 老 (lǎo) old were once the same character, meaning "elderly person", but detached into two separate words. Characters of this category are rare, so in modern systems this group is often omitted or combined with others.

Rebus

Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar 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 (wan), which originally meant scorpion but is now used only in the sense of ten thousand.

Written variants

Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters occupying a roundish area, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area. Characters made up of multiple parts squash these parts together in order to maintain a uniform size and shape—this is the case especially with characters written in the Sòngtǐ style. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (simplified Chinese: 方块字; traditional Chinese: 方塊字; pinyin: fāngkuàizì).

Orthography

The nature of Chinese characters makes it very easy to produce allographs for any character, and there have been many efforts at orthographical standardization throughout history. The widespread usage of the characters in several different nations has prevented any one system becoming universally adopted; consequently, the standard shape of any given character in Chinese usage may differ subtly from its standard shape in Japanese or Korean usage, even where no simplification has taken place.

Usually, each Chinese character takes up the same amount of space, due to their block-like square nature. Beginners therefore typically practice writing with a grid as a guide. In addition to strictness in the amount of space a character takes up, Chinese characters are written with very precise rules. The three most important rules are the strokes employed, stroke placement, and the order in which they are written (stroke order). Most words can be written with just one stroke order, though some words also have variant stroke orders, which may occasionally result in different stroke counts; certain characters are also written with different stroke orders in different languages.

Common typefaces

Serif (top) and sans-serif (bottom) typefaces exist for Chinese characters in the regular script.

There are two common typefaces based on the regular script for Chinese characters akin to serif and sans-serif fonts in the West. The most popular for body text is a family of fonts called the Song typeface (宋体), also known as Minchō (明朝) in Japan, and Ming typeface (明體) in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these fonts come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical regularity. This typeface is similar to Western serif fonts such as Times New Roman in both appearance and function.

The other common group of fonts is called the black typeface (黑体/體) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese. This group is characterized by straight lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography. This group of fonts, first introduced on newspaper headlines, is commonly used on headings, websites, signs and billboards.

Reform

Simplification in China

The use of traditional characters versus simplified characters varies greatly, and can depend on both the local customs and the medium. Because character simplifications were not officially sanctioned and generally a result of caoshu writing or idiosyncratic reductions, traditional, standard characters were mandatory in printed works, while the (unofficial) simplified characters would be used in everyday writing, or quick scribblings. Since the 1950s, and especially with the publication of the 1964 list, the PRC has officially adopted a simplified script for use in mainland China, while Hong Kong, Macau, and the ROC on Taiwan retain the use of the traditional characters. 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. In addition there is a special system of characters used for writing numerals in financial contexts; these characters are modifications or adaptations of the original, simple numerals, deliberately made complicated to prevent forgeries or unauthorized alterations.

Although most often associated with the PRC, character simplification predates the 1949 communist victory. Caoshu, cursive written text, almost always includes character simplification, and simplified forms have always existed in print, albeit not for the most formal works. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China. Indeed, this desire by the Kuomintang to simplify the Chinese writing system (inherited and implemented by the CCP) also nursed aspirations of some for the adoption of a phonetic script, in imitation of the Roman alphabet, and spawned such inventions as the Gwoyeu Romatzyh.

The PRC 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.

Many of the simplifications adopted had been in use in informal contexts for a long time, as more convenient alternatives to their more complex standard forms. For example, the traditional character 來 lái (come) was written with the structure 来 in the clerical script (隸書 lìshū) of the Han dynasty. This clerical form uses two fewer strokes, 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 Shāng dynasty, and had remained in use later as a phonetic loan in the meaning of to say. The simplified form reverted to this original structure.

Japanese kanji

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, and later the 1945-character Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 list in 1981. 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 simply guidelines, hence many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used, especially those used for personal and place names (for the former, see Jinmeiy�

Oracle Bone Script	Seal Script	Clerical Script	Semi-Cursive Script	Cursive Script	Regular Script (Traditional)	Regular Script (Simplified)	Pinyin	Meaning
						—	rì	Sun
						—	yuè	Moon
						—	shān	Mountain
						—	shuǐ	Water
						—	yǔ	Rain
						—	mù	Wood
						—	hé	Millet
						—	rén	Human
						—	nǚ	Woman
						—	mǔ	Mother
						—	mù	Eye
						—	niú	Ox
						—	yáng	Sheep
							mǎ	Horse
							niǎo	Bird
							guī	Tortoise
							lóng	Chinese Dragon
							fèng	Chinese Phoenix