Talk:Chinese characters/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Lets involve an administrator or have a vote

I have not been involved in the discussion over name changing before this point.

When I first noticed mention of "Chinese character" it occurred to me that most people would interpret it to mean the moral, ethical, etc. characteristics of Chinese people.

If a reader opens a book in Chinese on Chinese culture or something of that sort and notices a chapter entitled 漢字 hàn zì, that reader would be surprised if it turned out to be a chapter about a single Chinese character, even if that character turned out to be 漢. A translator would quite naturally make the English title "Chinese Characters."

I think there has already been too much heat in the ongoing discussion on this topic. Rather than producing any more virtual smoke I think it would be better to get the people previously involved in this Wikipedia article to vote on the issue. P0M (talk) 18:30, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Please have a look at WP:VOTE. Voting or polling isn't how things are done on wikipedia if they are done right. I understand your frustration with the long and sometimes heated discussions about small, but important name changes, but reaching a concensus through discussion is superior to polling in most ways. Most importantly, the vote will have no authority over the future. A vote is held and a change is made, but the first editor who didn't participate in the vote to come a long will have no reason to respect it's result and will be right to reopen the discussion. Nothing will have been accomplished and the process of developing consensus will have been disrupted. Basically, m:Polls are evil. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 18:46, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The WP:Requested moves procedure tends to become very vote-like, nonetheless. Anyway, that's probably the procedure we ought to follow if we want to get a resolution (at least temporary) to this issue. As to Patrick's argument, that's true, but encyclopedia article titles are not the same as chapter or book titles - Wikipedia uses the singular in titles much more often than would be found in such titles (much more often even than would be found in Wikipedia section headings). This one seems to me to be very close to the border between those that ought to be plural and those that ought to be singular, we probably just need to solicit more opinions about which side of that border it lies (assuming someone is sufficiently dissatisfied with the present title to want to go through the requested move process). W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:39, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

There seems already to be a noticeable lack of civility in discussion. Edit warring by changing the title back and forth is not going to work either. P0M (talk) 20:45, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Nobody's edit warring. There was one move (by me) back in May, and another yesterday. The discussion I requested in May (scroll up) finally seems to be taking place. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:29, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion has been thoroughly poisoned by a couple of outbursts that apparently arise from a cultural misunderstanding. Where I come from, "Q.E.D." does not mean "so fuck you", and from my past observations of discussion by CWH, I don't believe it means that to him either.

Since this discussion has been derailed, I'd recommend dropping it and opening an RM at some point in the future. Kanguole 22:24, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Or we can ignore these attempts to derail the discussion and treat each other and each other's concerns with respect. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:12, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Since your move has been disputed, the only way to get resolution is for you to make a {{requested move}}. My advice would be to wait a bit, but it's up to you, of course. Kanguole 00:57, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

"My" move was never disputed—the proposal went nearly a week without comment, and the move itself stood nearly eight months before CWH raised a fuss. Technically, since there is no consensus, the move should be reverted to the status quo until consensus is achieved. No, I'm not propoing doing that—I'd prefer to discuss it. Do you intend to return to the discussion? Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Just so we're all clear, It's disputed. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 11:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

"It" refers to what? Curly Turkey (gobble) 11:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

The move you are arguing for, what you call "'My' move", it has been totally disputed, for the record. Meaning, I agree with W.P. uzer, requested move is appropriate next move IF someone wishes to continue this move process. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 11:23, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Have you gotten the users backwards? I didn't make the unproposed move, CWH did. That is the move that is being disputed. What Kanguole (not me) called "my" move was the one I proposed eight months ago. There has been no debate about that move—the thread remains empty to this day. Curly Turkey (gobble) 11:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Not even a little backwards. Are you proposing that the above discussions don't count because they happened outside of the subheading you created on this page. I am referring to your suggestion that this page be moved to "Chinese Character". Above and right here is dispute of such a proposal. I don't quite understand why you don't think there has been debate about it. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 13:02, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

There was no opposition for eight months to the move I made. What are you trying to accomplish by trying to make the move I made appear to be the centre of the debate? Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)]

This line of discussion is not going to get anyone anywhere. Reasons, please, why we might prefer the singular or the plural form as the title of the article. W. P. Uzer (talk) 22:11, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Another title that's on my mind is Chinese classifier. I would have thought that, if anything, that one ought to be plural and this one singular. Because "Chinese character" is a name (though composed fairly transparently composed of two parts) for this type of object (whose common use is certainly not limited to China or the Chinese language(s)), whereas "Chinese classifier(s)" is much more of a descriptive title - it means just those classifiers that are used in Chinese. W. P. Uzer (talk) 22:16, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It might be better to move this comment to the above thread, which is still active and focused on the subject. This thread's purpose appears to be to detract from the productive discussion. It would be best, I think, to see it collapsed. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:49, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

The purpose of this sub-topic is to clarify about the process. You may not think that my comments are any more than a distraction, but whether we hold a vote, stop all discussion, make an actual move request or continue to debate the issue in a less organize fashion is actually quite important. I think I understand where you are coming from, but I look at this process differently and I think it might help if you humor me for a moment. I see this as by the book WP:BRD. Your move was bold, it was then reverted and discussed. Instead of focusing on the surprising, but ultimately not that meaningful length of time which passed between the move and it's reversion, I think it is better to follow the current course of events appropriately. Since the move to "Chinese character" is disputed, someone should formally request the move, or we should all forget about it. I think the request is ultimately more productive. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 06:07, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

That interpretation of BRD stretches credulity. I solicited discussion, nobody showed interest, I moved, again nobody showed interest for eight months. By the exact same token, we could interpret this discussion as a dispute over the 2011-08-07 move from the singular to the plural, which was never even proposed on the talk page, and lasted less than 22 months of this article's 11-year history. Will you support such an interpretation? Because I won't. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Its a discussion of the move you made because of the title heading the discussion and because it starts out by specifically mentioning your move and then disputing the rationale. Since you are the only one who has mentioned the previous move, it is not a discussion of that move as you correctly suggest. The discussion didn't happen earlier because it didn't happen earlier, just because it is happening now doesn't make it any less valid or less related to the move you made. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 07:04, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The title of the section is "Move back to "Chinese Characters""—the subject of the dispute. If the subsequent discussion is a to be interpreted as a dispute over the previous move, then how is the previous discussion not to be interpreted as a dispute over the first move? Because I saw no need to name names and point fingers? Is that seriously your argument? I could easily scroll up and add, "Oh, by the way, folks, Kwakikagami moved this on 2011-08-07!" and POOF! we'd suddenly have changed this entire discussion into a dispute over the first move—by your logic, anyways. The rest of us wouldn't buy it, and even if it were that easy I would never do such a thing. Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:37, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Can we not agree that the discussion - if it is to be in any way productive - should not be about any move or moves that were made in the past or about any person or persons who may have performed such moves, but about whether this article should have a singular or a plural as its title? W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:52, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The above thread, where the actual discussion is taken placed, has managed to do exactly that. I don't know why editors are hung up on pointing fingers in this thread, but it's clear that nothing in this thread has contributed in any way to forming a consensus, only to finding ways to increase the level of personalized acrimony. Can someone uninvolved please collapse it, as I've already suggested? Curly Turkey (gobble) 09:29, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

This is also an "actual discussion". There's room on the talk page for more than one idea to be discussed. The article currently is titled in the plural and a discussion has begun about whether or not that should change. There doesn't appear to be a consensus yet about changing it to "Chinese character". I believe we can all agree on that, I hope. From there it seems clear that a move request should be made if someone thinks a move should be made. We aren't discussing the first move because it appears no one is interested in discussing it. I am not here to win an argument. I am trying to make sure that as we proceed we don't have two wildly different ideas about what is going on. Saying that the move from "Chinese characters" to "Chinese character" is not and has never been in dispute seems like the beginning of just such a situation. Collapsing this discussion because you don't agree with me is not helpful.

It seems to me that the current naming discussion is not advancing towards consensus and that the format for the discussion should change, as POM suggests. I don't think putting it to a vote is helpful. A move request would be more appropriate. Note that I'm not the only one, nor the first to make such proposals. As W.P. Uzer suggest, lets not focus on previous moves and the discussions that did or did not occur. also, Who's pointing fingers?

From WP:Requested moves - "The Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle applies to uncontroversial moves (see Wikipedia:Be bold) and reverts of undiscussed moves. The discussion process is used for potentially controversial moves." Your move wasn't discussed and appears to be controversial, whether or not you intended it to be. Am I really stretching credulity?

Request a move or move on. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 10:15, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Your interpretation of BRD stretches credulity beyond breaking. A discussion was opened. Nobody bothered to participate for a week, nor did anyone raise any kind of concern for eight months following it. Under what definition of "controversial" does that move come even within sight of controversy? It takes a mighty fine brush to paint it in that light.

• Re: this "actual discussion": the thread that you've been perpetuating appears to have had no further aim than to antagonize, personalize, slant, and derail the constructive discussion that is still continuing above.
• "There doesn't appear to be a consensus yet about changing it to "Chinese character"": nor has there ever been a consensus on changing it to the plural. This is why we are discussing it above. Personalizing it seems to be your hobbyhorse, and the only "contribution" you've so far made to the discussion.
• "lets not focus on previous moves": those are my sentiments. You're the one who insistently beats the horse that this is all about one specific previous move to the exclusion of all others. Somehow this imaginary "issue" isn't even an issue to those in the real discussion above. Your insistence on personalizing it is a total mystery.
  • Here's a laff: "Who's pointing fingers?", followed almost immediately by "Your move wasn't discussed and appears to be controversial". the answer to your own question? You. You are pointing fingers.
• "I am trying to make sure that as we proceed we don't have two wildly different ideas about what is going on." "We" (those of us involved in the real discussion above) do not. We're not discussing whose move was the evilest, we're discussing which version of the title is more appropriate.
• "Request a move or move on": posturing, personalizing, and slanting, as well as missing the point. No move has been proposed. We're discussing. Only in your distortion of the facts is the discussion about any particular move, past or present, or about any move request.
• "It seems to me that the current naming discussion is not advancing towards consensus and that the format for the discussion should change, as POM suggests.": So after eight months, the discussion I started is still "open", but after two days the new, and still active, discussion has been going on for too long? Watch out, your hypocrisy is showing.

Here's an idea: drop the all-out assault on the guy you disagree with, allow this vicious, dishonest garbage to be collapsed, and allow the active discussion above to play itself out. Nobody actually involved in the discussion above has agreed yet that it should be brought to end. No, I don't expect you to give up your vendetta—your personal animosity has been expressed far too clearly and persistently, and I fully expect your every response to consist of a larger number of paragraphs so as to completely bury the productive discussion above. Curly Turkey (gobble) 11:36, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

If you feel that I have personally antagonized you by addressing you as "you", know that that was not my intention. There is nothing to be gained from personal attacks. I only wanted to address directly some of the points you were making. I do not mean to imply that the discussion has gone on too long, but simply that it should advance in a new fashion. Why would I want to end the discussion? I only wanted to suggest that someone request the move because I thought a slightly more formal process would be helpful. Since you have come to the conclusion that I have some vendetta, then there is clearly not any productive discussion possible here. Something has gone terribly wrong here and I will exit so as not to interfere with the well-functioning of this process. I sincerely hope that whatever misunderstanding has occured will evaporarate with my leaving the discussion. good luck. I hope you find what you are looking for. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 20:29, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

<---(out) P0M, that was my thought (and I'm equally not previously involved here); "Chinese character" refers to the psycho-social characteristics of either the Chinese people or a Chinese individual. "Chinese characters" in my mind first refers to ethnic casting decisions, then to persons in works of fiction. I understand why they're not "Chinese letters" (written Chinese not being a language with an alphabet.) I'd suggest "Chinese glyphs" as less likely to bring up those incorrect associations. All y'all could then furiously debate "glyph" vs. "glyphs"; I'd prefer "glyphs"; having said that, I'll shake my head, being involved in too many squabbles already and delete this from my watchlist, wishing all of you a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. htom (talk) 21:16, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

As somebody who has been studying Chinese language and also Chinese socialization, character structure, etc., since around 1960, I think I have heard a great number of people discuss things related to China. Most of them have been either students, teachers, or reporters. "Chinese characters" (outside of certain definite contexts such as movie reviews) has always referred to 漢字。 "Chinese character" is almost never used for anything unless it comes in a sentence such as, "This Chinese character is extremely difficult for me to learn how to write." What one does hear, from time to time, is something like, "The character of individuals groomed to become members of officialdom was generally....."

The idea that there might even be something definable as "Chinese character" to look up in an encyclopedia is highly suspect. Character is something formed on the basis of many factors, most or all of which vary from individual to individual. So the idea that all Chinese people are of one "character" is not likely to be accepted as a fit subject of discussion in any academic environment unless it is discussed just to tear down prejudices. P0M (talk) 03:17, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Within the context of Wikipedia itself "Chinese character" in running text is frequent---as in "such-and-such is written with the Chinese character such-and-such". Does the sociological/psychological version ever come up in running text in a way such that it would be appropriate to link it? Is it likely that a reader would search for "Chinese character", expecting to find the social/psychological concept? Context is everything. Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:07, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

It is unlikely that a reader would ever search for "Chinese character" for any reason.P0M (talk)

Then that is a context that can be ignored. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I had a look at strict google results for +"chinese characters" and it found 1.5 million whereas a search for +"chinese character" found 15 million. So it seems the singular is used 10 times more often. Of course google results are a rough estimate.

All of the top results referred to "character" as chinese symbols and not the nature of chinese citizens. So I believe confusion of the singular "character" is overblown.

In my opinion it is important to always push towards singular rather than plural. In software development the push has been there for more than a decade and the result is quite elegant. Sure some phrases don't read naturally but that is a small price to pay for getting rid of the whole system of pluralization.

I think this whole argument shows the tension between those two points of view regarding keeping or removing pluralization in general. Because it is effectively trying to change the english language which will naturally cause conflict. LegendLength (talk) 01:50, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I just searched for "Chinese character" and Google had 743,000 finds. Of those, many were in paragraphs that also included "Chinese characters." Something like, "Beginning study of Chinese characters usually involves learning the Chinese character for 'bright.'"

Google seems to choke when requested to provide materials that include "Chinese character" but not "Chinese characters" or vice-versa. I don't think you can convince anyone with this kind of evidence.P0M (talk) 01:45, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

This is choking?! Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

POM: You need to use the plus symbol before the search phrase otherwise google tries to help out with plurals etc..

Again, I don't think google's result count is very accurate or useful but in this case it should show a fairly accurate number for the two results because it is comparing a search term to a search term. Without any other kind of quantification (a survey perhaps) there's not much else to go on. LegendLength (talk) 01:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Analysis of Chinese characters (1922)

Analysis of Chinese characters (1922)

https://archive.org/details/cu31924023476546

Rajmaan (talk) 06:24, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

complex Japanese character

We read:

In Japanese, an 84-stroke kokuji exists: <ref>http://www.mojikyo.gr.jp/gif96/066/066147.gif</ref>—it is composed of three "cloud" (雲) characters 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.

The link is dead, but even if it were alive it would tell us no more than "Some presumably Japanese person had [or imagined] some reason to add this thing to a Japanese website." (I don't know what kind of website, as even www.mojikyo.gr.jp/ is dead. The Wayback machine says "Sorry / This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.") -- Hoary (talk) 23:56, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I've replaced the dead link with a proper ref using the link at the Japanese WP; better anyway as an image is not a good reference.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Good edit! Incidentally, the author is 笹原宏之 = Sasahara Hiroyuki (or as MOS forces us to write it, Hiroyuki Sasahara): I don't know how to add this to the cite web template (which I usually avoid). He talks about the readings, so the reference can be moved rightwards. What he doesn't indicate are his sources; conceivably he learned all of this from Wikipedia. (His post is dated 8 Feb 2011, if anyone would care to investigate the histories of the relevant WP articles.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:26, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I've moved it; not added the writer as not sure it's needed. As far I can tell his sources are unknowable, I would not even know where to start. Via the Japanese WP article the dead link seems to be something to do with this site [1] for software that supports the char, and which may contain info on it but no idea how to find it (can hardly search on it, and the site's navigation defeated me).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:16, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Question

When a Chinese Man hear a spoken Mandarin word that he don't know, he can write it by Pinyin writing. But when he see a written glyph word, then, in what reading can he say it?

הראש (talk) 22:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

You are more likely to get an answer to this at the reference desk: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. This page is meant for discussing change and improvements to the article Chinese characters, and your question is broader, relating the characters to how they are said and Romanized, so is outside the scope of this article anyway.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Han characters

I'm not sure why everyone is so insistent on removing reference to the alternative term "Han characters", except that it's being added by a newbie who is perhaps felt to need putting in his place a bit. Both Google Books and Google Scholar show it to be in common-ish use (though an order of magnitude less common than "Chinese characters"). It ought to be noted somehow. W. P. Uzer (talk) 18:07, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Not in the first sentence of the lead though; it is not a common alternate name, or even an uncommon one. I can see why it might be used in some contexts, in particular when considering their use in languages other than Chinese, or in all CJK languages, but even then they are generally just called Chinese characters, such as in the first sentences of Kanji and Hanja.— Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnBlackburne (talk • contribs) 18:34, 24 June 2015‎ (UTC)

Indeed. One could also supply examples of them being called "Chinese ideographs", "Han ideographs" or "Sinographs", but none of these names are common enough to justify cluttering the introductory sentence with them. Kanguole 19:19, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to W. P. Uzer for opening the discussion.

First, the edit did not contain Chinese ideographs, Han ideographs or Sinographs. What do they have to do with the edit?

If you google these terms, the number of results differs greatly:

"Han character" : 175,000

"Chinese ideograph" : 6,890

"sinograph" : 7,510

"Han ideograph" : 656

If it is not a common alternative name, why would there be 175,000 search results? Why would it appear in the publication of World Health Organization? Note that it is not only used in articles on languages other than Chinese. (Btw, could JohnBlackburne provide evidence for the assertion "but even then they are generally just called Chinese characters"?) In the other two citations provided in the edit, "Han characters" is used in the context of the Chinese language.

Back to the examples "Chinese ideographs", "Han ideographs" or "Sinographs", I want to stress that the edit had nothing to do with characters vs. -graphs or other alternatives, which is very obvious. If we look at the redirects to this page:

Other than a few too specific terms like:

Polysyllabic character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Semantic-phonetic compound (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Sinograph (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Sinography (redirect page) ‎ (links)

List of Frequently Used Characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Sawgun (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chữ Trung Quốc (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chu Trung Quoc (redirect page) ‎ (links)

the terms basically contain either 'Chinese':

Chinese letters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese ideography (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese script (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese system of writing (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Ancient Chinese characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Number of Chinese characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Number of characters in Chinese (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Number of characters in the Chinese language (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese symbol (redirect page) ‎ (links)

List of common Chinese characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Five Hundred Most Commonly Used Chinese Characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese Symbols (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese Character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese Characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Origins of Chinese Characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Origins of Chinese characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Chinese character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Polysyllabic Chinese character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Polysyllabic Chinese morpheme (redirect page) ‎ (links)

or 'Han':

Han character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han graphs (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han characters (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hànzì (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hán tu (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han Tu (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hán Tự (redirect page) ‎ (links)

汉字 (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hántự (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hanzi (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han-Tu (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han-tu (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hán-Tự (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hán-tự (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han ideographs (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han Character (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han script (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han tự (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Hani (script) (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han (script) (redirect page) ‎ (links)

Han-tzu (redirect page) ‎ (links)

WP:R#PLA: we should try to make sure "variants of the article title are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article or section to which the redirect goes. It will often be appropriate to bold the redirected term." Of course, we can't put all of them into the first couple of paragraphs only to show terms like script/symbol/ideograph/character/graph..., which are better explained by other articles. But the two main alternatives should be mentioned. When not in the first sentence, where should it be put? Lysimachi (talk) 23:02, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Here is an ngram comparing the frequency of the various terms in English-language books over the last century. It is clear that usage of the other terms is tiny compared with "Chinese characters". Kanguole 23:35, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Lysimachi (talk · contribs) doesn't seem to have much understanding of Google searches, as 175,000 hits is indeed a very small result, especially when compared to the 26.9 million hits for "Chinese characters" (over 150 times higher); Kanguole (talk · contribs)'s ngram shows this convincingly over a large period of time. The term "Han characters" is only used in English in its Japanese form kanji. To add "Han characters" to the lead (other than in the "l=" field of {{infobox Chinese}}) would be silly.  White Whirlwind  咨  00:30, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

According to the much understanding of Google searches and Wikipedia guidelines/policies, how many hits does a term need to have to be mentioned in the lead? It should be noted that, as you said, the Ngram corpus contains only books, a selection of books. Now "Han character" occurs only in the infobox as the "literal meaning" of 汉字. But it is not just some "literal meaning", it is a term. The question is: why should we prevent the readers from knowing this alternative name? After all, it is Wikipedia's policy/guideline (WP:AT, WP:R#PLA) that alternative names should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. Based on the number of search results and redirected pages, Han (characters) is the most significant alternative name.

White Whirlwind: "The term "Han characters" is only used in English in its Japanese form kanji." Here are examples where "Han characters" are used in context not limited to Japanese:

"In multilingual systems designed only for languages sharing the roman alphabet, such names pose no problem as they can simply be included unaltered in output texts in any of the languages. They cannot, however, be included in a Chinese text, as the roman characters cannot standardly be realized in the Han character set."

"As mentioned above, most technical terms used in TRM come from ancient Chinese medical literature. Consequently, translation of these terms into any other language without Han characters is extremely challenging, as the original meanings of Han characters and the unique nuances of concepts in TRM must be incorporated."

"Various and independent phonetic transcriptions have been thus developed to be as the mapping mechanisms between Chinese mother tongue languages and Han characters."

" In this paper, the author makes a deep study on Kunlun site and the four rivers, which are recorded in 《Shan Hai Jing》 etc, by combining the physical geography of the Qinghai-xizang plateau, and also by comparing Tibetan words with Han characters according to etymology."

"Finally, the Group considered that using the Chinese phonetic alphabet (Pinyin) for the names of meridians and acupuncture points would facilitate pronunciation of the Han character names and enable an alphabetic index to be drawn up."

"We identify the problem of sharing Han character font across incompatible bitmap file formats and discuss the related issues. The ideal solution should meet the requirements including independence of character code schemes, such as GB2312-80, Big5, and Unicode, no conversion of existing bitmap font files, storage efficiency, flexibility, extensibility, platform independence, as well as simplicity."

"This suggests a new way of framing the linguistic analogy to proteins. Instead of viewing the letters in alphabetic strings as being analogous to the amino-acid residues in a protein chain, the new approach views the Han characters as being analogous to whole protein folds"

"Han characters and Han writing were first employed in the writing system of Vietnam when Vietnam was under China’s direct domination. Later on, a domestic script Chu Nom (字字喃), which has similar structure as Han characters, was documented in the tenth century."

"The illiteracy and semi-illiteracy rates used in this paper are from the 1990 census; see State Statistical Bureau, Population Census Office, Zhongguo disici renkou pucha de zhuyao shuju (Major Figures of the Fourth National Population Census of China) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1993). For those aged 15 and above, the official definition of illiterate and semi-illiterate population includes peasants recognizing fewer than 1,500 Han characters, and workers in enterprises and administrative units, and urban residents recognizing fewer than 2,000 Han characters."

The term is not restricted to Japanese. It's used in texts in a variety of fields including linguistics, sociology, geography, informatics, medicine and biology. Lysimachi (talk) 14:30, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

@Lysimachi: If you're going to give quotes, please provide citations for them so other editors can consult and appraise them for themselves. In this case it's ultimately irrelevant, though.

Let me rephrase, since apparently my earlier post wasn't sufficiently clear. There is no "minimum number" of Google hits that a term needs to be included: those numbers are used in conjunction and comparison with the numbers of results of other terms to help get a sense of how commonly used a term is. A search for "Chinese characters" brings 26,900,000 hits, while "Han characters" produces only 175,000, which is lesser by a factor of over 150. This numerical assessment is used to augment the judgment of editors, such as myself and Kanguole (talk · contribs), who have knowledge and expertise in this field. It would be utterly ridiculous to add "Han characters" to the lead (as was previously being done: "Chinese characters or Han characters..."), as it would imply that the latter term is in some way as commonly used as the former, or that "Han characters" is anything other than an alternative term that is rarely, if ever, used in English. It would, however, be entirely appropriate to include "Han characters" along with the list of other alternative terms for "Chinese characters" at whatever later point in the body of the article that they are addressed. I hope this makes things more clear, feel free to post any continuing concerns you have.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:43, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest doing this: after the second sentence (which introduces the native-language terms for these characters) add a sentence "Other names used in English include..." and then list the top two or three alternative names (based on searches of books or scholarly articles rather than the whole Internet), with possibly a footnote listing more. After that we should start a new paragraph for the next sentence, which just says that they are "the oldest ... system in the world": this requires a little expansion, even in the lead (how old? where did they originate?) It seems to be normal for Wikipedia to get alternative names out of the way in the lead, even if they're relatively uncommon - often there's no natural place in the rest of the article for them, and we perhaps want to confirm to readers arriving via a redirect that the term they've found is indeed a synonym (not all redirects are). W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

The above quotes are all Google-searchable, including many taken from academic articles. As White Whirlwind said and to my knowledge, there is no Wikipedia guideline or policy that sets the minimum number of Google hits that a term needs to be included. There is also no policy that alternative terms for a page can't be listed in the first sentence of the lead if they differ 100-fold in the number of Google search results (e.g., Occitan: 26,700,000, lenga d'òc: 274,000). There are, however, Wikipedia policy/guideline (WP:AT, WP:R#PLA) that alternative names should be mentioned in bold in the lead. White Whirlwind thinks it's "utterly ridiculous" to say in the lead "Chinese characters or Han characters...", "as it would imply that the latter term is in some way as commonly used as the former." Could White Whirlwind provide references for the assertion that the conjunction 'or', in addition to combining two alternatives, also implies equal frequencies of occurrence for the alternatives? This doesn't seem to be mentioned in dictionaries, I'm rather curious whence White Whirlwind had this idea. Until evidence is shown that 'or' implies equal frequencies of occurrence, I would stick to the original edit, which simply states Han character is an alternative name. However, I also appreciate W. P. Uzer's suggestion and think it is a reasonable option. I'm not interested in adding other alternative names, which are not found in the original edit. But if someone wants to add other alternative names from the list of redirects (see above), there are in fact very few that can be added. Many of the redirects are variants with regard to capitalization, noun numbers and wording of "character". Most others are names in non-English languages or are not equivalents of 'Chinese characters' at all (e.g., 'Origins of ...', 'List of ...', 'Polysyllabic ...'). There are only two alternative names: Han characters and Sinograph. In addition to that "sinograph" only has 7,510 Google search results, it should be noted that the term (or its variant 'sinogram') is also used in medicine to refer to visual representation in CT scan, such as in this article or this book. Lysimachi (talk) 16:12, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

It's not a common alternative name. They are obviously called Chinese characters when e.g. talking about the writing system for Chinese. But it is also commonly used in other contexts, such as Kanji and Hanja. Your search results prove nothing. That a handful of people chose to call them something different, for whatever reason, is not relevant. It’s especially not useful to add as it’s just another way of saying the same thing – "Han" being another word for Chinese, the Chinese language (漢語), etc. – much like the more common but archaic "Chinese ideographs".--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:32, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

That it's another way of saying the same thing is surely an argument in favour of adding it? It's not as if it would be obvious (to anyone who didn't already know) that "Han" and "Chinese" are being used as synonyms here. W. P. Uzer (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, JohnBlackburne, Han character is another way of saying the same thing, it is an alternative name. It is Wikipedia's policy/guideline (WP:AT, WP:R#PLA) that alternative names, especially those that are redirects, should be mentioned in bold in the lead. Lysimachi (talk) 14:02, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

And as you listed above there are dozens of redirects to this article; so all should be mentioned in the first sentence? That would render it unreadable, just a long list of bolded terms. So no, names should not be added just as they are used for a redirect. Is it a common alternative name then? No, we have already established that it isn't, it is far less common than the rarely used and archaic "Chinese ideographs".--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 14:50, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Are you saying that you want to add all redirects as alternative names? Please go ahead. This is what I have said previously: I'm not interested in adding other alternative names, which are not found in the original edit. But if someone wants to add other alternative names from the list of redirects (see above), there are in fact very few that can be added. Many of the redirects are variants with regard to capitalization, noun numbers and wording of "character". Most others are names in non-English languages or are not equivalents of 'Chinese characters' at all (e.g., 'Origins of ...', 'List of ...', 'Polysyllabic ...'). There are only two alternative names: Han characters and Sinograph. In addition to that "sinograph" only has 7,510 Google search results, it should be noted that the term (or its variant 'sinogram') is also used in medicine to refer to visual representation in CT scan, such as in this article or this book. Lysimachi (talk) 19:49, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Although no references have been provided for the assertion that the conjunction 'or', in addition to combining two alternatives, implies equal frequencies of occurrence for the alternatives, I would follow W. P. Uzer's suggestion to reduce some editor's concern. That is, instead of writing "Chinese characters or Han characters" in the introductory sentence, the first paragraph would read: "Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese they are called hanzi (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字).[2] They have been adapted to write a number of other languages including: Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja, and Vietnamese in a system known as chữ Nôm. In English, they are also known as Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.[3] By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia, and historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world." For those who want to add other redirects that are alternative English names of Chinese characters, that sentence could be later changed to "In English, they are also known as Han characters, XXXX and YYYY" or, as W. P. Uzer originally suggested, "Other names used in English include Han characters, XXXX and YYYY". If there are more than three, the rest could be listed in a footnote. Lysimachi (talk) 16:11, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

128 stroke character

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Han_character_8_Dragons.svg/240px-Han_character_8_Dragons.svg.png

TheGrassGuy (talk) 22:50, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

A better link to the file is commons:File:Han character 8 Dragons.svg. This character is not encoded in Unicode but you can use 龍 instead, or 龙 if you write simplified Chinese, 竜 if you write contemporary Japanese. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 08:02, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

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Kangxi radicals

I couldn't remember the name of the kangxi radicals, and came upon the article by working backward from '214 chinese radicals'. Might we include this in this article so that it is easier to find? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 15:01, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Derivation of 好

The following, copied from my user talk, relates to this revert. Kanguole 02:26, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

You recently reverted the change that I made on the page "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters". If you take a look at the Wiktionary page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%BD#Glyph_origin you will see that I am not incorrect, and (unbeknownst to me) there are multiple interpretations of the character 好 that are in debate, including the one I posted:

"However, broader interpretations of the second character 子 could lead to other theories. 子 could also mean "son", so it may have meant two children, a boy and a girl next to each other, which is a good fortune to have a boy and a girl. 子 could also mean "man", so it may have referred to the love between a man and a woman, which is good. Duan Yucai, in his annotated version of Shuowen, interpreted it as originally referring to the beauty of 女子 (nǚzǐ, “woman”). Lastly, it could mean that the "attitude" of a girl was considered good."

additionally, a quick google translate will find that 女 also can be used to mean "daughter", just as "子" can also be used to mean "son".

From this Wiktionary page I cite I understand your reaction to maintain the original translation, but whith this new context I think that it is most reasonable to either post both translations, or post only one and place a note and link to this wiktionary page noting the differing interpretations.

Pjbeierle (talk) 18:27, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

We would need a reliable source for this (which Wiktionary and Google translate are not). On the other hand, the "woman-child" derivation is found in dozens of sources. Kanguole 02:26, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Change in rating from B Class to C Class?

22 April 2018 the rating of the article was changed from B to C Class with no explanation by Rreagan007, whose Home Page is "Intentionally left blank." Since the article appears to meet the criteria at WP:BCLASS, it would be helpful to know what criteria fall short -- perhaps WP:TECHNICAL? If so, specific examples would be most appreciated! ch (talk) 02:41, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Lectogram, lectography, lectographer, lectographist, lectograph

lectogram: one character/gramma/letter which is also a word — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8463:B400:1512:B0CB:7D02:F959 (talk) 06:55, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

What's 'hanzi'?

Hanzi redirects here, yet the article doesn't mention the term, other than in a caption with barely any explanation. Can someone in the knowledge please add the term to the article body, with a proper explanation? (and ideally it should be bolded as hanzi, since it's a redirect term). Thanks. I came here after encountering the word in a Bloomberg article [2]. --Deeday-UK (talk) 07:59, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

It's the Chinese-language term, given in parentheses in the opening sentence. There are many redirects to this article, and no need to bold them all. Kanguole 10:11, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

It's in the first line of the text: hanzi means "Chinese characters". The ideograms before it also mean Chinese characters, and 'hanzi' is the pronunciation, as well. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 10:19, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

OK, this is what happened: I was clearly in a rush, so I totally missed the hànzì between brackets in the opening sentence, since I was looking for a meaning, not a pronunciation or translation of 'Chinese characters'. Instead, I hit Ctrl+F in my browser (Firefox) and searched for 'hanzi' (no diacritics), which does not match 'hànzì' (with Chrome it does, although it is debatable which behaviour is preferable).

The moral of the story is that to the uninitiated reader landing on this article after searching Wikipedia for 'hanzi', it's not very clear why they have landed here. I'm not sure how to improve this, but if 'hanzi' starts becoming common in English as a synonym for 'Chinese characters', then it should be made clearer (and more conspicuous) in the opening sentence. --Deeday-UK (talk) 19:30, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Such redirects exist as much for non-English speakers. In this case hanzi / 汉子 is Chinese for Chinese character(s). so someone more familiar with Chinese might search for 'hanzi' being unsure of the English, looking for this article. We don’t do this for all languages, only languages directly relevant to the article. 'hanzi' appears in the first line, and a search found it straight away for me. If your browser could not find it that sounds like a browser bug.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 07:32, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

It's not a bug; it's rather different browsers making different design choices, none of which is necessarily right of wrong. That's a side issue anyway. I'm not sure what you mean in the first part of your post; what I'm trying to say is that, since this is the English Wikipedia, if hanzi becomes a common word in English to refer to Chinese characters, then such word should be given more prominence in the article. I gave an example of usage in English in the linked article above, but maybe it's an isolated case. --Deeday-UK (talk) 13:26, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

With English having no standard as to whether to include accents/tone marks (cafe and café are both acceptable, for example) I would expect a search engine to disregard accents when searching. Pinyin in particular is written both with and without tone marks commonly, so being able to search for both at the same time makes sense.

As for the existence of the redirect, I’ve been involved in a few discussions before at WP:RFD which have led to foreign redirects being kept and deleted, based on whether they somehow relate to or are used in the article. It would take a long time to track all of them down, so I had a look for the policy on it, and the clearest statement I can find is here: WP:RFDOUTCOMES#Foreign languages.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:04, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: adding elasticity/flexibility in Chinese entries

see Talk:Chinese grammar#Proposal: adding_elasticity/flexibility in Chinese entries.

--Backinstadiums (talk) 02:40, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

鞋 and 靴 are different characters, not simplifications of one another

So the example of 鞋 and 靴 appears under "characters simplified in Japan but not China". At least in standard chinese and cantonese, these are different characters not variant forms - 鞋 is xie2 (or haai4 in cantonese) and means shoes, while 靴 is xue1 (or heo1 in cantonese) and means boots. So unless I'm missing something this entry should probably be removed from that list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuxcantfly (talk • contribs) 08:54, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

That's correct. 靴 might be considered a simplification of 韡 (=𩏬, to give the Han script form which more closely resembles the small seal script form of the Shuowen), but certainly not of 鞋, which also has a different reading in many/​most Chinese topolects. And 鞋 could be considered a simplification of 鞵, but both characters are in current use in what Anglophones call the traditional Chinese script. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:27, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Writing Direction of Chinese Characters

According to the page, Chinese characters are written left-to-right, no exceptions. However, in real life, Chinese can be written in any direction, no matter left-or-right, right-to-left, up-to-down, or down-to-up (see horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts) As Chinese characters each have an individual meaning, one can easily identify the direction of the text. Therefore, I think we should alter the use of vocabulary when describing the writing direction of Chinese characters a bit. —ChPenguiN (talk) 07:43, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree (except for the remark about the characters' "individual meaning"), though I've only ever seen down-to-up in special cases like characters painted on roads and streets (where drivers/​pedestrians reach the lowest character first) or in electronic signage moving downwards (where lower characters appear and disappear before the following ones; in this case writing direction often alternates in order to draw even more attention). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 06:23, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

phoneticity

According to DeFrancis' "Visible Speech", Chinese "phoneticity" reaches up to 90% for "the two thousand or so that are necessary for basic literacy". --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:21, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

For the record: The sentence "The net result of all this is that their [i.e., Bernhard Karlgren's and William S.-Y. Wang's] estimate of phoneticity (as defined by my first three categories) rises to as high as 90 percent" is on page 112f. of John DeFrancis's book Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1989). The three categories of characters with phoneticity are defined on page 109f.: 1. the character's phonetic component is 100% accurate; 2. the phonetic is accurate except for tone; 3. the phonetic indicates only part of the character's sound (e.g. yāo in characters pronounced yáo, yǎo, jiǎo, jiāo, qiāo, qiáo, xiǎo, xiāo, náo, nǎo, nào, ráo, rào, shāo). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:33, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

@Backinstadiums: Thanks for your email. No, my copy is printed on paper. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:39, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Should we add links for the characters?

I know it would be useful, but would it be acceptable to add links to the "radical" characters? Each "radical" has its own article here in Wikipedia. If the answer is yes: would it be good, additionally, to add links pointing to Wiktionary entries, for the rest of the Chinese characters in the article? If yes, I would do it. -- Genoskill (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that would probably be overlinking. We link because there are relevant connections between subjects, or because there are technical terms that might be unfamiliar. I don't think linking every single Chinese character here (and there are a lot of them) would be beneficial in that regard. It would probably be a solution in search of a problem. bibliomaniac15 22:07, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Maybe keep Hanzi?

I agree with Kanguole that there should not be clutter but maybe it's worthwhile to keep a bolded Hanzi in the lead sentence.

Hanzi does seem to be used fairly commonly (it appears several times in this very article), oftentimes not italicized as a foreign word. A search of Google books Here finds quite a few uses, including in the titles of books, and a search in Google News, taking out a few irrelevant uses here, shows its in non-specialist use, including “Uncle Hanzi.” ch (talk) 01:23, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 30 September 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus to not move. A separate RM can be created to move to Hanzi. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 09:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

---

Chinese characters → Han characters – Not only Chinese use these characters, using the original title is unrespectful to Taiwanese and Japanese 87737573WIKI (talk) 04:10, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• @87737573WIKI: But everybody calls them "Chinese characters". I had never seen or heard the term "Han characters" before I saw this move request. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
• Indeed usage is key, and that is overwhelmingly "Chinese characters". But "Han" is Chinese for "Chinese", so that doesn't seem to help. (And English speakers don't mind being told they use the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals.) Kanguole 08:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
• Either keep as is or move to Hanzi. "Han characters" is the worst of all possible worlds; a quick view on Google Ngram will show that this usage isn't prominent at all. "Chinese characters" is probably the most familiar usage to your average English speaker, but "Hanzi" has the most usage talking specifically about the language. bibliomaniac15 17:45, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - per Ngrams, "Chinese characters" is unquestionably the more common name. However, like Bibliomaniac15, I would also support a move to Hanzi; Hanzi is a more WP:PRECISE term, and in Ngrams it easily surpasses "Chinese characters" and "Han characters" alike. ModernDayTrilobite (talk) 21:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

  It doesn't[3]: you don't use quotes in ngram queries. Kanguole 21:48, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake - apologies, I'm not very experienced with Ngrams yet. ModernDayTrilobite (talk) 23:05, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

• Keep as is, or move to Hanzi. (I watch the article for its connection to Joseph Needham's series, Science and Civilisation in China, and his high opinion of Classical Chinese.) --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 00:14, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose The nomination's assertion that this title is "unrespectful" doesn't appear to be supported by any Wikipedia policy. WP:COMMONNAME supports the status quo. 162 etc. (talk) 19:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose "Chinese characters" is clearly the common name for the broad concept. Hanzi could possibly be an article split specifically about the use of characters in modern Chinese, similar to Chữ Nôm and Kanji relate to Vietnamese and Japanese; I'm not convinced that is necessary. I have literally never heard "Han characters"; were it not for the discussion about Hanzi a SNOW close would be in order. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 01:30, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Nomenclature

this applies to various related articles in Category: Chinese characters, in clarifying the often-conflated categories. Here's how I see it:

• Chinese characters are the logographs originally used to constitute the morphemes in the Old Chinese writing system, which is, perhaps unhelpfully, also called 'Chinese characters'.
• A writing system includes orthographic rules and conventions, in this case relating to semantics and phonology in various spoken languages. a set of characters with expected meanings and pronunciations is an array of conventions as such.
• However, I don't think Traditional and Simplified characters constitute separate writing systems per se, even though there are mergers in character variants from the former to the latter.
• Kanji, for example, is a set of characters within the greater Japanese writing system, using Chinese characters.
• I wish we could call these character sets 'scripts', but that word is largely claimed by the systematic graphical (ish) styles such as clerical script and regular script.

Am I going crazy? help me out here! Remsense (talk) 20:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

New section "Modern Chinese Characters".

Copied from "History":

"curprev 05:06, 21 October 2023‎ Remsense talk contribs‎  162,733 bytes +8‎  this needs to be integrated into the rest of the article better, it repeats a lot of information in other parts of the article and having it split off as its own top-level section makes very little sense undothank Tag: 2017 wikitext editor".

The new section was commented with the reasons that "it repeats a lot of information in other parts of the article". It is true that some section titles are similar, such as "Classification" appear inside and outside the section, and "Collation" inside vs "Indexing" outside the section. But if you read their contents you will find big differences.

The new section is a more detailed and comprehensive introduction to Modern Chinese characters, a sub-topic of Chinese characters.

Can we have a discussion here before deleting the section or keeping (and improve) it, or ...? Ctxz2323 (talk) 08:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I actually have a mirror of the article at Draft:Chinese characters because I was planning on adding a few sections to the article, maybe you could implement your changes there and get them ready before they're copied over to article space? As I've mentioned before elsewhere, modern characters is indeed a subtopic, but it's not how the present article is generally organized (according to period, as it were), and the material in the section should do its best to be integrated into the structure of the article as exsists Remsense聊 18:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, I will read your mirror article first.

Thank for your invitation! Ctxz2323 (talk) 22:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's just the same text at the moment, I hadn't gotten around to writing the additional sections yet, but I will be happy to copyedit any changes you decide to make to the draft or the mainspace article, of course Remsense聊 22:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks,

you are a big help! Ctxz2323 (talk) 22:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The organization of the present Chinese characters is quite messy. Just look at section “Indexing” with a single subsection called “Character counts”. Ctxz2323 (talk) 22:51, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree, it currently is the result of my loose attempts to reorganize its state when i found it, but i wasn't really sure what to do with those parts or how to label them, one of the things i have been mulling over before i'll be happy with my work on the article Remsense聊 03:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Why not make your changes here? Simplifies attribution, gives incremental feedback, and avoids forcing editors to choose between accepting or reverting your changes as a whole. Kanguole 09:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

fair enough, i overthink things sometimes! Remsense聊 18:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

what name would you recommend for the 'Indexing' section? I think it makes sense to have collation, statistics, organization broadly under that heading, but maybe it's not a logical category. I'm currently refactoring your additions into the extant headings, plus a "Structure" heading about components and strokes that was already sorely needed. Remsense聊 19:25, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Indexing is the usual name: it's about how one looks up characters. The number of characters is a separate topic. Kanguole 19:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I prefer "order" or "ordering", for at least two reasons:

(1) Collation, Indexing, all means sorting things in order. People may think that indexing is limited to the application of indexes, and collation limited to dictionary arrangement. And "order" include them all.

(2) The name "orders" is consistent with the term "alphabetical order". Ctxz2323 (talk) 01:24, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Indexing involves more than ordering. It also involves grouping into classes, often in a hierarchy, to obtain a practical method of finding characters. Kanguole 08:08, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

In database systems, grouping can be achieved by sorting (or ordering) on different fields or logical conditions as well. Multi-level sorting is also feasible. My understanding is that an index often involves an ordered list of items with pointers (such as page numbers) to other pieces of knowledge. But the applications of ordering or collation go beyond this. In many cases, such as the main body of an English dictionary in alphabetical order, we don't need the pointers.

Maybe the best way is to select a section title from "Indexing, Collation, Order, Sorting, lookup, etc." leaving (some of) the rest as "other names" in the definition. Ctxz2323 (talk) 12:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

The "Modern characters" section does indeed repeat many other parts of the article. It needs to be integrated with the rest of the article. Kanguole 19:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree. But it is by no means easy! Because the article is not well organized.

For example, when I tried to integrate subsection Orders in "Modern character" into section Indexing, could not find a proper place to put the new contents. Section Indexing started with the introduction of the Radical (部首) ordering method, then be interrupted by contents of the sound (Pinyin, etc) methods and stroke methods, before returning to talk about Radical method in the 3rd paragraph.

How can the integration be done? In fact, adding new section "Modern characters" is a compromise. It has more flexibility. Ctxz2323 (talk) 01:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

We want to organize the article so that readers can find information on the subtopics they are interested in. If the organization is poor, we should work out one that better helps the reader, rather than duplicating everything so they have to look in two places. Moreover, dealing with each subtopic in one place forces us to address different views, producing a more rounded account (see Wikipedia:Content forking). Kanguole 08:08, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Chinese characters has successfully attracted many readers. Make sure we are making it obviously better.

It is safer to work out an outline (table of contents) here first, for the new organization.

By the way, in my memory, I have not copied a single sentence from "Chinese characters" when creating "Modern Chinese characters". Instead, efforts were made to avoid unnecessary repetition. For example, section "Number and sets" talks about the number of modern Chinese characters, not all Chinese characters. Ctxz2323 (talk) 12:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't see that there is any such thing as "Modern Chinese characters", separate from the one obvious modern innovation, Simplified characters, which already have an article. Other than that there are just characters, normally called "traditional", whch aren't really modern – their forms were established centuries ago. i.e. there are just "Chinese characters" which this article covers the modern use of, with links to other articles on e.g. Kanji, Hanja for more details. As they've been around for centuries there isn't a line separating "modern" from "old" characters. As for the article Modern Chinese characters it seems to just rehash what's here but in a way which is much harder to follow, with nothing worth adding to this article that I can see.--2A04:4A43:90AF:FAB6:410F:B52F:7333:858D (talk) 13:20, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

There are a lot of good contents in Modern Chinese characters which you can not find in article Chinese characters, such as the sections and subsections on Chinese character strokes, components, phonology, semantics, etc.

And there are at least 5 textbooks on Modern Chinese characters. Ctxz2323 (talk) 13:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)