Talk:Chinese characters

Did you know nomination

 * Amazing hook Remsense! ꧁ Zanahary ꧂ 20:22, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Be sure to thank TheLonelyPather for both the selection and the general wording! Face-smile.svg Remsense  诉  03:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @TheLonelyPather You're a well-regarded king ꧁ Zanahary ꧂ 03:34, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! 天雨粟 鬼夜哭 Cheers, -- The Lonely Pather (talk) 08:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you both, it's definitely one of the best DYKs I saw recently! Artem.G (talk) 07:32, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Potential source?
TWL's partnership with De Gruyter gives us access to The second half of this source seems like it could be helpful for expanding the section on the traditional 說文解字 classification, and maybe some stuff about the 爾雅. It does talk more about language theory (as foretold by the title) than writing systems, and the book swings wildly into Derrida and Nietzsche at times, but there should be useful information in there, whether for this article or some other one.Congratulations on the GA and DYK btws! Folly Mox (talk) 21:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much Folly, you were a huge help to me, especially in the very early going when I had much less clue what I was doing.
 * Funny, this was actually one of the first books I read when researching sinograms, and I think that's why I haven't tried to cite it here for some reason. Obviously it's an RS and its claims are not particular to it, in addition to being a book I recommend quite often, so yeah good point! Remsense  诉  04:09, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Folly Mox, what do you think needs to be added to this article re: 說文解字? My best attempts to be brief in my post-GA additions still have me butting up under 9600 words, and I wonder if I can keep under 10k in getting the article to FAC-ready state. Remsense  诉  13:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * , I'm acknowledging having read your question here, and I'll do my best to think about it sometime this weekend when hopefully I will have the brainpower for a brief glimmer of intelligence. Folly Mox (talk) 11:56, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yesterday I told a friend that my memory was so wrecked and broken that if someone found it in a free pile they might very well take offence that it wasn't already in the garbage. Sighing, I'll try to have a look at this weekend, rather than two weekends ago. Old and busted, Folly Mox (talk) 13:09, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Folly, please don't worry! It means a lot, and you're never anything but the reason I'm an editor here. Remsense  诉  13:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Awww thank you 🥰 You've really done a lot of great work for the project, so I'm very honoured to have played a part in bringing you on board!As to the question here, I think the article does a good job of summarising the important bits about the 說文解字 without getting lost in the details that belong at the main article Shuowen Jiezi. I think the only thing I might add right now would be that the book was the genesis of the 部首 system, which is still how Chinese dictionaries are organised, and often how people disambiguate homonyms in speech. I know this is mentioned already in (unless this refers to the larger 六書 theory) (and probably also at the main article Chinese character classification, which I have not clicked through to because I have to take my roommate's dog for a walk). Folly Mox (talk) 17:00, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Number of characters
Should the number of Chinese characters be in this article? — V ORTEX  3427 (Talk!) 13:07, 15 June 2024 (UTC)


 * There is not and cannot be a well-defined number as such. Moreover, there are already several points where numbers that answer similar, better-defined questions are given in the article, surely? Remsense  诉  14:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Diction
@Imaginatorium I'll reraise here:

Remsense 诉  04:00, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * structures and characteristics is weirdly muddy and imprecise: what exactly is a "structure" versus a "characteristic" here? There's also a somewhat unpleasant implied-but-absent chunk here: I know it means These languages have structures and characteristics that differ from [those in] Chinese, but some may have to pause and fill in the gap.
 * (in significant part) is a parenthetical in parentheses, which occurs nowhere else in the entire article.
 * More importantly, the above is an unnecessary qualifier: characters are obligatory in written Japanese, while they are essentially optional or absent in written Korean, say. Just saying "in significant part" without further elucidation is just confuses the plain fact for the reader that Japanese is written using Chinese characters, especially as characters being removed entirely from other written languages was just mentioned.
 * I would dispute the content rather than the expression. Korean and Japanese are typologically similar. So are Chinese and Vietnamese, but very different from K&J. The reasons each of these languages (including Chinese) kept or abandoned characters are mostly extra-linguistic. Kanguole 21:17, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Aye—I realized over the course of writing and rewriting the lead that I can't adequately communicate a four-way relationship, so I went for the most general possible statement that was still held water. It's certainly crossed my mind repeatedly that the causes were extralinguistic in no small part or even mostly—I simply did not know how to adequately describe that in the context of the lead. Remsense  诉  21:22, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh! And while I've dragged your attention back toward this millstone of mine: does anything strike you as concerns a FAC? I think I've bridged all lot of the gap between broad and comprehensive coverage, but i'd appreciate your insight greatly Remsense  诉  21:33, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If the view underlying the current text is that historical and/or social reasons were the major or primary factors leading Korean and Vietnamese to no longer use characters, perhaps something like the following would reflect this underlying view more accurately: "Historical and/or social factors have contributed to the replacement of characters in Korean and Vietnamese with alphabets designed to write those languages, leaving Japanese as the only major non-Chinese language still written with characters (which are used in Japanese alongside hiragana and katakana)." 216.15.56.15 (talk) 02:30, 5 July 2024 (UTC)