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Archive 1Archive 2

Article Needs Re-factoring...Badly

I started editing the first couple of sections of this article, because of numerous errors in language and fact, but it's apparent that the entire article badly needs to be re-factored. The principles of character formation are repeated throughout the article, and the presentation is substantially out of order. I'm willing to take a crack at this if people are agreeable to that. BrianTung 22:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It's a mess. -Adjusting 00:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm making a massive refactor, with some initial citing that needs to be refined. Feel free to revert, but I think it will be an improvement. BrianTung 00:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Requested Move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move to Written Chinese. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 15:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" or other opinion in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

  • Comment While WP need not be stuffy, I have my doubts about this: "Written Chinese" would apply equally well to Chinese in pinyin transliteration. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:56, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose A move is useless energy wastage; current title is good enough. --Alvestrand 20:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support since it defuses any Chinese language/languages strife. —  AjaxSmack  06:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • A point; but is it a problem for writing? The position I know, even from someone who holds that there are several Chinese languages, is that they all use the same written language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Well, they use the same script just as English, French, and Swahili use the Latin alphabet but "language" implies tongue or spoken form. The written form of "Have you eaten yet?" is written 你吃飯了沒? in Mandarin but 汝食飽未? (or 汝有食飯無?) in Minnan. Both of these are Chinese but cannot be said to have the same "written language" any more than English and Dutch. —  AjaxSmack  04:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
        • That is a deceptive example that overstates the issue. First, the phrase 汝食飽未, while certainly different from the typical mainland expression 你吃飯了沒, is nevertheless, perfectly understandable to any reasonably literate Chinese reader regardless of province. Hardly a difference between English and Dutch. More like the difference between American and British. To make the point for anyone who can't read the two phrases, a literal, word by word translation of the standard expression 你吃飯了沒 reads: you eat food or not? The phrase supposedly unintelligble to non Minanhua speakers, 汝食飽未 reads: you food full no? The unusual use of the character 汝 for you, while not common in mainland Chinese, is extremely common in literary Chinese. Also, the character being used for "food" in the Minan version 食 is, in written Chinese, quite commonly used as a verb just like in the Minan greating. Having never learned any southern or island dialects, I have no trouble at all reading the Minan version. bailewen
  • Support. Removes the need for piping of links, follows guidelines and does not make the title more or less ambiguous. Peter Isotalo 00:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. No sufficient reason for a change. This is a quite reasonable name for a subset of Chinese language. Gene Nygaard 17:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Analogous to "spoken Chinese", in agreement with WP guidelines on usage of "language" in titles, and definite improvement over clumsy/amateur current title. But even better would be Chinese writing system, which is now a redirect, because it would enable simply writing The Chinese writing system originated... instead of the current clumsy beginning The Chinese written language is a writing system that originated.... (A short look at the WP intro and comparison with Britannica's opening sentence [Chinese writing system - basically logographic writing system using symbols of pictorial origin to represent words of the Chinese language[s].] shows that the intro is clearly amateur, clumsy, and user unfriendly for other reasons too, including unnecessary immediate use of technical terms like "character" and "morpheme" without prior explanation -- not to mention the article's contradictory statements on whether the system is logographic or not. Instead of the current The Chinese written language is a writing system that originated roughly 3,500 years ago in China. It employs about 5,000 commonly used characters that each represent a Chinese morpheme. something similar to Britannica would be better, e.g. The Chinese writing system employs about 5,000 symbols (usually called characters) to represent words of spoken Chinese. The system originated about 3,500 years ago in China...) --Espoo 17:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Support per Espoo above. It makes perfect sense. Titles should be precise and concise. No need to get overly wordy. 205.157.110.11 03:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. "Chinese written language" is awkward and grammatically suspect. --Nlu (talk) 09:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

I don't see the problem, Anderson. The article already includes a section on romanization, albeit rather minor. It would indeed be very stuffy to claim that transliterations aren't a form of written language and even moreso that "written Chinese" would be more ambiguous than "written Chinese language". The "language" is there to disambiguate and there's nothing to it disambiguate from. At least I don't see any candidates.

Peter Isotalo 20:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Assessment comment

This article has tons of info. Now it just needs references. --Danaman5 07:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Reassessment Request

After refactoring this article, I'd like to request a reassessment from the various projects. How should I go about doing that? Go through the peer review process? BrianTung 03:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

My advice would be to list it at WP:GA. I don't really like to give out A ratings, so you probably won't get any rating increase from me if I reassess it, but it looks like it is probably GA quality.--Danaman5 04:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Would you care to comment on what changes you would like to see made to the article to further justify its upgrade to GA? BrianTung 07:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Added additional labels

Added additional labels to running, grass, and regular. Intranetusa 01:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Confusing

I find the following paragraphs confusing. They seem to assume some unstated context which was obviously clear to the writer but may be unclear to readers who don't already understand what points are being made.

Chinese characters do not unambiguously indicate their pronunciation, even for any single dialect. There is therefore considerable appeal in transliterating a dialect of Chinese so that it may be read by those who are not literate in either the traditional or simplified scripts.

Does "transliteration" mean transliteration into the Roman alphabet or from one Chinese dialect to another? I would have assumed the former, but the phrase "transliterating a dialect of Chinese" makes it sound like its talking about the latter. The section title is also offputting in this respect: "Transliteration and romanisation" suggests that "transliteration" in this section means something other than Romanisation. The purpose of the "therefore" in the second sentence isn't clear. "Considerable appeal" to whom, and for what purpose? If it's actually talking about transliterating from Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet for Western readers then the main motivation is much less to do with Chinese characters not unambiguously indicating their pronunciation in whatever dialect it might be, and much more to do with the fact that the characters are all completely unintelligible and unrecognisable. But are the people "who are not literate in either the traditional or simplified scripts" supposed to be Chinese people or non-Chinese?
Into the Roman alphabet. I've made the appropriate change in the article. I hope that this establishes sufficient context to resolve the following ambiguity as well.
With respect to transliteration vs Romanization, zhuyin fuhao (mentioned in this section) is an example of a transliteration that is not a Romanization—it goes to a completely different set of symbols (derived from Chinese characters, but generally not characters themselves).
I contend that the motivation is still (at least in part) not unambiguously indicating their pronunciation. The issue here isn't homographs, but instead the imperfect functioning of the rebus system in constructing most characters. Any transliteration—whether it's a Romanization or not—would help people who are fluent speakers of the dialect but not literate. I welcome any suggestions on how to better indicate this in the article. BrianTung (talk) 22:57, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

In the modern world, the dominant candidate for such transliteration is Mandarin, as about two-thirds of the Chinese population speaks some variety of Mandarin. (There exist variations throughout the Mandarin dialect region of China, but these variations do not generally impact mutual intelligibility.)[52]

"Candidate" in what sense? Does this mean transliterating from another Chinese dialect into Mandarin, or from Mandarin into the Roman alphabet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.47.125 (talk) 11:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Name in Chinese

Shouldn't the article mention that Written Chinese is called 'Zhongwen' in Chinese? I am not able to type Chinese myself. 74.211.177.2 (talk) 19:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

That seems a reasonable addition to make. I'll do it. BrianTung (talk) 00:21, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

What language should be used in this article?

Of course, this is an article ostensibly written in English about the Chinese language, so has to include fragments of Chinese and pinyin. But should we as a matter of principle use Pinyin within the text? For example, I would advocate the use of the English proper noun "Pinyin" rather than "pīnyīn" within the text, except where it discusses the representation of the Chinese word using Pinyin. Otherwise we have an article which is written in a hybrid of English and Pinyin, which is unnecessary and idiosynchratic even if it does little harm. 82.1.155.30 (talk) 16:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

As an active editor on this page (and the source of most of the pinyin on the page), I think it would be reasonable to leave the pinyin at first mention with any Chinese text, but then dispense with the tone markings at all subsequent uses.
By the way, I think your recent edit, regarding the unsuitability of phonetic scripts for representing Chinese, needs a citation; it's OK if someone else has concluded this, but it currently reads like an editorial comment. I also think the conclusion is somewhat dubious, given that spoken Chinese contains essentially no more information than is given in pinyin, and there is little problem in understanding that. Of course, there are amusing examples where the interchange of homophones leads to some embarrassing ambiguity, but the fact that we find these amusing indicates that these are exceptions, rather than the rule. BrianTung (talk) 22:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

world's longest continuously used writing system ?!

In the Wikipedia article concerning the history of the alphabet, i.e. the writing system used not only by the ancient Greeks but by all modern European languages, plus numerous languages in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, also Tibetan, Mongolian, and probably even Korean [ < Phags-pa ], the first definitive forms of this writing system are dated somewhere between 2000 BCE and 1800 BCE, and of course these ALPHABETIC forms derive from older forms, similar in appearance if not in sound, that go back beyond 3000 BCE as parts of the old Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Therefore this article's assertion that Chinese, starting at the Oracle Bones stage, is the "world's longest continuously used writing system" smacks of Han chauvanism and displays a lack of familiarity with the history of that area of the world where the first urban civilisations and writing systems were developed: the ancient Middle East. Jakob37 (talk) 11:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The difference between modern greek and heiroglyphs is incomparably greater than that between modern written chinese and oracle bone chinese. 99.225.146.192 (talk) 07:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
We're not talking about hieroglyphs: the earliest versions of the Alphabet were already simplified, perhaps I should say incomparably simplified, into symbols which are roughly of the same level of complexity as modern alphabets.Jakob37 (talk) 11:31, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
p.s. To my anonymous reverter-editor: why put the word "continuously" in italics? Italics signal contrast or disagreement. This would strike the general reader as if there were some debate going on, to which they are not privy. Are you thinking of a particular language, or stage of alphabetic use, which you are particularly questioning??Jakob37 (talk) 06:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't think I made that revert anonymously. Did I not register first? At any rate, that was me.
In response to this question, I intend contrast, with an implied distinction from writing systems that are older but are either not in use now, or are in use only in a scholarly or liturgical context. (Coptic/hieroglyphics, for instance.) It is not a particularly pleasing use of italics, but my main purpose was to put in a placeholder while we resolved some other questions.
As far as the larger matter is concerned, I find it plausible that alphabets as a whole can be considered a writing system at least on par, historically speaking, with written Chinese. I'm not entirely sure I buy it yet, but it really doesn't matter whether I buy it. What we need is a citation, other than another Wikipedia article. So if you have something else—a journal article, something in Discover magazine or L.A. Times, whatever—something that we can use to adduce contemporaneity, that would be very useful. Once that is done, then we can rewrite the lead to something smoother. Thanks! BrianTung (talk) 00:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


1) John C. Darnell (Yale) 2006 Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59/2 (with C. Dobbs-Allsopp et al.)
2) "Alphabet's ancestor discovered on desert rock" - By Steve Connor, Science Editor ("The Independent") Monday, 22 November 1999:

"The earliest example of an inscription written in letters of the alphabet will be revealed today by archaeologists. The discovery of ancient alphabetic inscriptions etched on to limestone rock in the Egyptian desert pushes back the date of the invention of the alphabet by several centuries. The earliest example of an inscription written in letters of the alphabet will be revealed today by archaeologists. The discovery of ancient alphabetic inscriptions etched on to limestone rock in the Egyptian desert pushes back the date of the invention of the alphabet by several centuries. Researchers have dated the two inscriptions to between 1900BC and 1800BC, and have identified some of the symbols as precursors to letters in the modern alphabet, but have been unable to decipher their meaning. The scientists, led by John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, will report the full details of their discovery at a meeting today of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston. The invention of the alphabet is considered to be one of the foremost innovations in civilisation and led to an explosion of literacy comparable with the development of the printing press 3,000 years later. Scholars originally thought the alphabet was developed around 1600BC by the Semitic-speaking people living in the area of present-day Palestine.{even this is earlier than the oracle bones} However, Dr Darnell's discovery, on the limestone rocks at the isolated Wadi-el-Hol, on the ancient road between Thebes and Abydos, has shown that the alphabet was invented in Egypt between two and three centuries earlier.

3) from the journal "Archeology": http://www.archaeology.org/0001/newsbriefs/egypt.html (= Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. "First Alphabet Found in Egypt", Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.)

hope this helps....Jakob37 (talk) 04:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Since you're familiar with the citations and their significance, would you mind terribly putting them into the article appropriately? Thanks! BrianTung (talk) 01:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I tried putting in some footnotes before, but I think my Wikiedit skills have gotten rusty, so I will try again later when I have more gumption.Jakob37 (talk) 08:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Unusual q and x pronunciation

Also, the pinyin spellings for a few consonant sounds are markedly different from their spellings in other languages that use the Latin alphabet; for instance, pinyin 'q' and 'x' sound similar to English 'ch' and 'sh', respectively.

This could be rephrased "(...) in some languages that use the Latin alphabet (...)", or "(...) in most languages (...)". The letter x is pronounced [ʃ] in some contexts in Catalan (e.g. xarxa) and Portuguese (e.g. paixão), for instance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.66.64.12 (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

false translation

假借 jiǎjiè: False borrowing, in which a character is used, either intentionally or accidentally, for some entirely different purpose.

It seems to me that "假借" means just borrowing. Cause in old Chinese 假 and 借 have the same meaning borrowing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.207.128.113 (talk) 16:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I just changed it. It bothered me too much. It seems that the writer knows little about meanings of common Chinese morphemes. The words "false borrowing" makes no sense even in English. Any problems against the change, see here first.Riskiest (talk) 12:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Couple of things: One, 假 can of course mean "borrow", but it can also mean "false". And two, the only source I had at the time gave "false borrowing" as the translation. Given that Wikipedia places a premium on sourcing, I had to go with what the source said. Seems to me there's plenty of room to correct what you see as an error without denigrating others' knowledge. BrianTung (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I apologize for the previous rude word. However, though 假 has two meanings, it is not hard to distinguish the right one. In the word, 假 and 借 explain each other. And as Xu Shen said, "假借者，本无其字，依声托事，令长是也。" which explained the meaning of 假借. I can call other proofs. And plus as i said, false borrowing does not make much sense.
I appreciate your precise attitude to Wikipedia rule. If I were in your place, I would probably do the same thing. However, I would not add something that I am not familiar.--Riskiest (talk) 22:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Phonetic Syllabary

Correct me if I'm wrong, but before the Communist Government developed the Pinyin Roman character system of Mandarin Chinese transliteration, wasn't there already a phonetic chart derived from Chinese characters, much like Japanese Kana and/or the Korean Hangul system? I believe it was called "bo po mo fo" or something of the like. Even though it is no longer widely used, it would still be part of the history of the written Chinese language, and I think it bears mentioning in this article.Kogejoe (talk) 07:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You are right. The system is called Zhuyin and it's mentioned at the top of the section. It's still widely used in Taiwan Cababunga (talk) 21:43, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
By the way, it is not a syllabary; each syllable is divided, following a practice over 1500 years old, into an initial and a rime (with a possible glide inbetween). Therefore, a single symbol, unlike Japanese kana, does not represent an entire syllable, nor is the system an actual alphabet like Korean or English. It's unique, it's Chinese.Jakob37 (talk) 06:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
It's true that it's not a syllabary, although some of the symbols can stand alone as syllables (e.g., zi and si, but not bo or po, I don't think). However, why do you contend that it is not an alphabet? It seems to function essentially as an alphabet, even though characters are not actually written using them. Or is that what you meant? BrianTung (talk) 01:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, people mean lots of different things by "alphabet"; I guess the broadest definition would be any system which in some coordinated way shows more internal details of a syllable than does a syllabary. In that case, even Ugaritic or some other purely consonantal system would be an alphabet. Bo-po-mo-fo does not separate out the codas, e.g. there's a symbol for (PY) a, for u, and then there's a symbol for -ang, and another one for the -ng as in -ung, but there's no symbol for the phoneme -ng by itself. Some would say that a "proper alphabet" should have one symbol per one phoneme, but that really gets you nowhere because linguists often disagree on how many phonemes a language has and how to represent them. So, Bo-po-mo-fo is "sort of" an alphabet...Jakob37 (talk) 11:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
p.s. "bo po mo fo" (actually pronounced as pʷɔ - pʰʷɔ etc.) is now pronounced as pə - pʰə etc. by many younger people, which I think is quite strange since such syllables (unlike pʷɔ etc.) don't even exist in Standard Chinese. I wonder if other Chinese (Hong Kong, mainland etc.) do this, or is it just another example of Taiwan's occasionally weird Chinese?Jakob37 (talk) 06:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Might be a regionalism. Those aren't syllables in Beijing Mandarin, but they do exist in other parts of the country. Some of my relatives, not all younger ones, use such syllables consistently; that is, they don't say pʷɔ, etc. BrianTung (talk) 01:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I once (years ago) suggested to my Taiwanese Guo-yu teacher that writing in Chinese about foreign places, people, etc. would be a lot easier by adopting the bo-po-mo-fo to that purpose, just like the Japanese use katakana to spell out foreign words. Her reply: that would make a page of written Chinese look ugly. Apparently aesthetic concerns trump ease of communication. (Chinese-speaking friends tell me it is difficult to remember how to write all those foreign words since they are just (in most cases) strings of unrelated characters, i.e. the characters imply, as usual, morphemes, but the morphemes are not relevant to the transcription. Jakob37 (talk) 14:53, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

the embellished script of the oracle bone script?

In the "Evolution" section, what does "the embellished script of the oracle bone script" mean? (aside from the fact that it doesn't sound like regular English: the script of the script ?!)Jakob37 (talk) 03:09, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that was my fault. A totally garbled transcription of Norman's selection. Not only was it redundantly phrased, but the sentence as written wasn't even correct; early jinwen was less regular and angular than oracle bone, not more. BrianTung (talk) 00:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Evolution: script of the six states

"settled on a form, called 六國文字/六国文字 liùguó wénzì "script of the six states"

From baike.baidu.com: 六國古文，又稱東方六國文字，簡稱古文，是戰國時代東方齊、楚、燕、韓、趙、魏等國文字的合稱。

From the words I emboldened at the end, we can see that this was not a single script: anyone who takes the trouble to look at Zhan-guo period writing from various parts of China will see that the scripts in use in the different kingdoms were quite different from each other. Thus it was one of Qin's policies to promulgate its particular script at the expense of the various other kinds found to its east. From the later Qin-dominated perspective, we have the new "official" script, and then "anything else". The latter was obviously to be belittled, and one way of belittling something is to ingore its variety or complexity. Even in the editions we have of the Shuo-wen, when gu-wen or zhou-wen are quoted, they are reshaped into a standardized style which is quite different than what you actually see if look at modern books that show you photos or copies of the actual Zhan-guo documents (silk, bamboo strips, engravings etc.).Jakob37 (talk) 03:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any thoughts on how this should be reflected in the article? BrianTung (talk) 01:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, as for the section: "the script became still more regular, and settled on a form, called 六國文字/六国文字 liùguó wénzì "script of the six states", that Xu Shen used as source material in the Shuowen Jiezi.":

As for Xu Shen himself, I don't know where he got his gu-wen materials; as far as he was concerned, he wanted to help preserve the seal-script and not let the li-shu or kai-shu bury the older traditions. But he was no great supporter of the 六國文字, he only quotes from them occasionally. My general impression is that the various different systems were all becoming more regularized over the Zhan-guo period, but each in its own way; the main idea is that this diversity continued until the Qin unification. There is a 1986 dissertation in the Taiwan Normal (Taipei)library [I'm lucky to have made a copy], called 戰國文字分域與斷代研究 which would be a good source for details. I should check my other Ph.D. committee advisor (besides Norman): William Boltz and his "The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System", though I think mainland Chinese handboks(Gao Ming?) probably have more on the Zhan-guo period in general.Jakob37 (talk) 13:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation

The punctuation marks are clearly influenced by their Western counterparts, although some marks are particular to Chinese: for example, the double and single quotation marks (『 』 and 「 」); the hollow period (。), which is otherwise used just like an ordinary full stop; and a special kind of comma called an enumeration comma (、), which is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to clauses in a sentence.

These marks are not particular to Chinese, they were introduced into Japanese in the early Meiji Era. I would guess that Chinese has adopted them from Japanese but I don't know for sure. I don't want to edit this myself as I don't know anything about Chinese. 124.155.41.62 (talk) 06:55, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Point taken, although the edit as made leaves a non-sensical sentence. I've restored the original wording, but replaced "Chinese" with "Asian." As we find out more we can be more specific. BrianTung (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Translation dictionaries

The writing for this new section needs to be cleaned up a bit, but beyond that, I'm not sure this article is really the right venue for this. Chinese-to-Chinese dictionaries are represented here because the construction of Chinese characters makes ordering them in some simple way a difficult task. Chinese-to-English (or any other alphabetic language) dictionaries don't really introduce any new difficulties, so I don't feel that this merits another (very short) section. I propose absorbing the relevant point that translation dictionaries (in the Chinese-to-X direction) share the same issues that Chinese-to-Chinese dictionaries do in this regard. I'll leave this up for a few days, then make the change if there are no objections. BrianTung (talk) 23:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Absent any discussion, I absorbed the above point into the Dictionaries subsection, then deleted the remainder of the Translation Dictionaries subsection. As always, it's possible to revert this change, as long as there is proper rationale. BrianTung (talk) 22:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Claims of "One of the Oldest Writing Systems"

It is popular for people to claim that Chinese is one of the oldest writing systems in continuous use, but that's factually wrong. There really are only a few basic writing systems in the world: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cuneiform, Chinese, and the writing systems of the New World; all modern writing systems derive from those. Modern Chinese letter forms were standardized somewhere in the first millennium AD, about a millennium after Latin and Greek. If you allow for the kind of shape variation that lets you consider earlier Chinese scripts to be "in continuous use", then Greek and Latin easily get pushed back another 1000 years as well to their predecessors (Proto-Canaanite, hieroglyph-derived alphabets etc.). And when looking at writing in general, the first documented use of true writing in the Mediterranean (as opposed to proto-writing) again predates Chinese writing by at least 1-2 millennia. Whichever way you cut it, the Chinese writing system is one of the youngest in the world, not one of the oldest. This is consistent with other Chinese cultural developments (Bronze age, Iron age), which tended to lag behind the Mediterranean cultures by about a millennium.

As for the Jiahu symbols, there is not a shred of evidence that they represent a writing system. There is also not real evidence that they are continuous with Chinese writing. In fact, the two symbols that seem most familiar to Chinese, the eye and the sun symbol, resemble contemporary forms, which doesn't make sense if they were Chinese writing: if those symbols were the actual origin of Chinese writing, they should resemble the ancient forms of Chinese writings found on oracle bones (similar material to that found at Jiahu).

The current discussion of the history of Chinese writing is not NPV. I think the claims about the relative age of Chinese need to be moved into a separate section and presented as controversial, together with links to the relevant Wikipedia articles. Jcarnelian (talk) 13:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The matter seems (to me) a bit more complicated because Chinese writing is morphemic (there are few "Chinese letter forms" per se), whereas the alphabetic writing systems are phonemic (Egyptian hieroglyphics are a hybrid, of course). Chinese characters combine two functions that are separated in alphabetic languages: letter forms combined to represent a sound, which in turn represent a morpheme and its meaning. Taking Chinese characters in isolation, unbound to their meaning, what you say makes sense, but it's relatively uncommon to treat Chinese characters that way, I think. In the context of their meaning, I think it's a stretch to say that it's "factually wrong" to say that they represent one of the oldest etc. etc., though I wouldn't balk at "misleading," and would support a removal of that sentence from the lead. And since "one of the oldest writing systems" is purely a matter of interpretation, I would prefer to remove it outright, rather than moving it into a "controversial" section, where it might garner more attention than it deserves. The real fact is the oldest date of attested Chinese characters, not how it compares to other systems (though that is of some interest, naturally).
Regarding the Jiahu symbols, I'll have to look at the text again, but I recall that it's made clear that the interpretation of the symbols is controversial (or at least problematic). Can you propose a rewrite? BrianTung (talk) 20:55, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

"Chinese characters do not unambiguously indicate their pronunciation"?

This opening sentence in the transliteration and romanization section of the article puzzles me: It seems to imply that somehow a character can give some indication of pronunciation.

Is what is meant here instead simply that a given character may have more than one pronunciation or indeed that one can get some idea, however ambiguous, of pronunciation?--Jrm2007 (talk) 06:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

That is basically what is meant there, but I'm not sure why you say "instead". Perhaps "reliable" would be a better word to use there? I will make that change now, as I think that choice is superior in any event, but if that does not clear up your confusion (I'm not entirely certain what particular confusion you're experiencing), please elaborate. BrianTung (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
What I do not understand is how pronunciation of a character may be determined at all from its form as it seems to me the opening sentence implied. Is it in fact that some idea of pronunciation may be determined by a reader who was unfamiliar with a given character? If so, how is this accomplished?--Jrm2007 (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
A large number of characters are constructed on the rebus principle (see xing-sheng in the structure section), which gives some ambiguous indication of the pronunciation. For instance, a character 清 is likely to sound something like 青, based on the presence of the latter in the former (in a position which generally indicates its use as a phonetic component). And sure enough, both are pronounced qīng. That sort of simple clue is all I meant in that sentence. BrianTung (talk) 05:59, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Remove discussion of mutual intelligibility from lead?

Although I think this is an important discussion, my feeling is that it is not sufficiently central to the overall topic to merit inclusion in the lead. The lead, in my opinion, should follow the broad headings in the body of the article, summarizing them. As it stands, there's more discussion of mutual intelligibility in the lead than in the body of the article! I'm going to open this to discussion, and if there isn't significant reason to keep the discussion in the lead, I'm going to move it down into the body. BrianTung (talk) 01:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Character knowledge in Japan

"Educated Chinese know about 4,000;[11][12] educated Japanese know about half that many.[10]"

I think the figure for educated Japanese may be too low, for reasonable interpretations of "about". 86.160.218.157 (talk) 03:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

All of that is sourced, though they are offline sources which I can't check. But it also seems plausible to me; far fewer Chinese characters are needed to write Japanese as much of the language requires only kana. There's also the fact that many kanji have two readings. Looking at kanji it says "approximately 2,000 to 3,000 characters are in common use in Japan", and links to jōyō kanji, the 2136 kanji taught in schools.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 08:49, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't have access to the source either, but I suspect that someone just made the equation "Joyo kanji = regularly used kanji = kanji that are taught in school so all adults should know", without recognising that educated adults normally know rather more than are on that list. The figure I often see bandied about is 3000 (e.g. [1] [2] ). 86.177.108.236 (talk) 17:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
As I suspected, the source (here) doesn't say that an educated Japanese person knows about 2000 characters. In fact, it doesn't say anything at all about how many characters an educated Japanese person knows. I have replaced that statement in the article with a sourced figure. 86.169.184.143 (talk) 13:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Acquisition

Article is missing information on basis and rates of written language acquisition by native-speaker children and by second-language learners. This would seem to be rather important information to have. 24.23.163.55 (talk) 03:53, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

That would seem to fit better in an article on language acquisition, or perhaps Chinese language acquisition, and not here. If such an article exists, it could be linked from a relevant section of this article. For instance, if the number of characters has a bearing on Chinese language acquisition, there could be a sentence to that effect in the section of this article on the number of characters, with a link to that article. Barring that, however, I tend to think such content belongs elsewhere. BrianTung (talk) 01:04, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Xiaoshuangqiao and Wucheng

I have reverted the addition of these two because there is no evidence that they constitute writing of Chinese.

In the case of Xiaoshuangqiao, the symbols occur singly with a few pairs, and the only symbols claimed to match oracle bone characters are rather generic: two or three parallel lines, or a cross. This is similar to the situation with Neolithic inscriptions, such as those at Jiahu. There is no justification for saying that the oracle bones are no longer generally accepted as the earliest Chinese writing.

The inscriptions at Wucheng are longer, and may well be writing, but no-one knows of what language, as they are too few to decipher the script. Kanguole 22:11, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I had a look at both and neither is convincingly early Chinese. They could be or they could be something entirely different, it is impossible to say.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 23:01, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, if it's not written Chinese, I wonder what other language could it be? Any suggestions? Y-barton (talk) 04:20, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
For Xiaoshuangqiao, there's no evidence that the symbols record language. For Wucheng, there's no way of knowing without deciphering the script. In that period, Chinese was spoken around the middle Yellow River. We know that Miao–Yao and Tai–Kadai languages were widespread in southern China before Han expansion. Some authors add Austroasiatic, and there may unrelated languages that have left no trace. Kanguole 08:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

CORRECTION

It is many "common mistakes" that started by semi-literate Chinese in the 19th century in the West when Westerners were trying to understand Chinese. West has continued the mistakes and never corrected it.

One of them is - There is NO such thing as "grass writing" as it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

As the formal Chinese writing can be tedious and slow, a quicker less formal writing system was developed to speed up the process. It rounded off firm corners and linked separate strokes to make it fluid. The same as the Western "cursive". It is therefore called "quick writing", not "grass writing". The quick writing system has developed into an art form all by itself and has absolutely nothing to do with "grass".

The same Chinese word in some combinations that means "quick and careless" can also mean "grass" in different combinations or context. Unfortunately, some semi-literate Chinese, not knowing any better, mistakenly gave Westerners the wrong translation. So the error continued. BUT, it is time to correct this mistake. 2605:E000:854B:600:BC95:2D09:58AB:9C59 (talk) 17:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

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