Talk:Chinese characters/Archive 2

Picture comparing different script styles
Did someone remove the picture & section that compared the different styles of script? (ie. cursive, semi cursive, clerical, etc) That picture/section were very informative, so if someone could please restore it, that would be very helpful. Intranetusa (talk) 19:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Vietnam
Chinese characters are employed to one degree or another in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, as well as Vietnamese before its colonization.

Also after -- the people who take orders at the Vietnamese place my girlfriend and I like use Chinese characters (as I discovered when they got our order wrong) --Charles A. L. 19:28, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * A minority of Vietnamese are actually Vietnamese with Chinese ancestry (how ever "far back" or not). I think a number of Vietnamese Americans are like this. These people at the take-out restaurant may therefore be "Chinese-Vietnamese Americans".


 * I think this is quite likely. Something that I found is many Vietnamese-Americans actually speak very good Mandarin because they were Sino-Vietnamese and learned Chinese in Chinese school in Vietnam.  -RR


 * You could make a conversation with them about this. But my understanding is that Vietnamese schools don't teach Chinese anymore, so most have no way to learn them unless their parents know how to and are interested in teaching their children Chinese. --Menchi 02:42, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Or they be just Chinese Americans who happen to specialize in Vietnamese cuisine. I know many sushi stores are actually owned by Chinese. And probably most pizzerias are not owned by Italians. --Menchi 02:47, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Modern Vietnamese does not use Chinese characters. Most people do not know one character from another, save the characters on Chinese chess pieces.  The restaurant might be owned by a Chinese person, or is specializing in Chinese cuisine.


 * Actually, I don't mean to pick at small details, but very few Chinese, much less Vietnamese, who were raised in Vietnam can speak Mandarin. The majority falls under Cantonese, and they speak it even if they're not. It just so happens that Cantonese sounds quite like Vietnamese (it's like German and English). See this and Hoa. ★ Dasani ★ 23:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

64-stroke character
I don't know where to add this, but someone might want to mention that Chinese characters range in complexity from one stroke (一), meaning "one", to sixty-four strokes, an ancient character meaning "Verbose". -Spencer195 19:44, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * It's in Unicode as 𪚥 (U+2A6A5) although I don't think anyone has a font to display the extended Unihan characters yet. DopefishJustin 01:12, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)


 * This character was added to unicode around the year 2000, a number of fonts have it, the free font Hannom B, has all the Extension B characters in it.Johnkn63 (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have now added this. &mdash; Chameleon 16:24, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

About the "Rare and complex characters"
I am bilingual. I lived and studied in China and Hong Kong for much of my life so I would say I speak better Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese than English. I did not recognize any of those characters as being actual words, the first three appear to be nothing more than compounds of 1 or 2 words written multiple times combined together.

For example:

Zhé, "verbose" - This is the character meaning "dragon" written 4 times...

"Taito," the appearance of a dragon in flight - It is essentially the two words "cloud" and "dragon" written 3 times each and stack on top of one another... this is a word either written by mistake with a chinese word processor or simply a hoax, this is not a word in Chinese

Nàng, "poor enunciation due to snuffle" - I have never seen this interpretation of this word in my life. The "character" is 2 characters combined together essentially meaning the tip of one's nose or the ball of the tip of the nose.

"Biáng," a kind of noodle - I don't know this word either

What I am trying to say is, while these may be words, they are certainly not words nor never were words in Chinese. They may be Japanese or Korean characters however, so I believe someone should say that. It should not be in the Chinese character list, they are not Chinese characters. I think many fluent Chinese speaking people would agree with me.

Thank you for your time Cclinke (talk) 17:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see how having spent time in China automatically entitles you to say they ... certainly ... never were words in Chinese. I don't claim to know any more than you on the subject, but I see no reason to believe they never were. And aren't "characters" and "words" fundamentally different? (A Guide to Reading Chinese, Third Edition) elvenscout742 (talk) 18:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, so because the characters are funny and you've never seen them before, they're suddenly no longer words for all 1.4 billion Chinese? I don't think those complex words are hoaxes at all. You yourself seem like a hoax because of you saying that you've had too much experience in Chinese countries and then denying existence of such characters. Look, if you think those are bad, that's just for starters. There's more obsolete words in Kangxi Dictionary (although not as complex in writing). The articles even point out, although there's around 49,000 Chinese words, many people only know up to 5,000 or 6,000. ★ Dasani ★ 23:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

the important thing is to remember WP:V. While the passage seems credible and well-informed, I must note that no source is cited. I have added fact tags at the appropriate positions. dab (𒁳) 18:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Cclinke, the language is full of many obsolete forms, so I can show you tens of thousands of characters from the Hanyu Da Zidian which you assuredly won't know. But just because you don't know them doesn't mean they're not there. Nang4, for instance, is in a number of my dictionaries, so it is likely to have been in real use at some point. Like you, I am a bit suspicious about some of these. For instance, I suspect that Taito was created on the whim of some calligrapher at one point, and was never in any real use at all. The Biang example might occur on a few shop signs in some isolated region of China, but again it was never in any real widespread use. However, it has been used, even if only in limited form, and it is certainly a visually arresting and fun example so I see no harm in leaving it in place. To strengthen the section a bit I have added a few examples which are in widespread use. Dragonbones (talk) 14:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

As for the rare characters in celebrity names: I don’t think this is a good enough set of examples of rare characters in names. First, although the 镕 róng (朱镕基 Zhū Róngjī) and 煊 xuān (王建煊, pinyin Wáng Jiànxuān) are not well known characters, the pronunciation is obvious because 容 róng and 宣 xuān are very regular, reliable phonetic elements. When you see a character containing them, you’re reasonably assured that the pronunciation is the same, although the latter might be fourth instead of first tone. And they’re both easy enough to type (and not even buried very far down in the IME I’m using, being only the fifth characters on the list in both cases). Next, the 錫 xí in 游錫堃Yóu Xīkūn should be marked 2nd tone; the character is a poyinzi and it is 2nd tone based on the pronunciation here in Taiwan; while it is a first-tone character in the China, the person in question is Taiwanese, so Romanization should reflect that. The only two good examples in this set are the 堃 kūn in the latter name; it is not common and many have not encountered it until this person’s name. The pronunciation is not obvious, and although it types easily enough in my IME, it is not even listed in one of my smaller dictionaries. (I should note that he is well known enough that now most people know the character, but the example is still a fair one.) David Tao’s example is good too; most people don’t know 喆 zhé, and its pronunciation is not obvious either, as it comprises two jí.Dragonbones (talk) 14:49, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

All languages have their obselete terms. I've never heard anyone use the english word "verbose" in everyday life, for instance. --  李博杰   | —Talk contribs 23:56, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Parent systems
(Not directly about this article just a good place to open the topic.)

Hi,

I changed the tree root to Oracle Bone Script. The Parent systems tree should display scripts that lead to the development of the current script. "Chinese" is not a script it is a word description of the whole tree (and more - see article) and if it would be a script it would not be the root ;) As a comparison you can see others like Arabic_alphabet where Proto-Canaanite_alphabet is a specific script :) The tree elements are all right - see Oracle Bone Script, Seal Script , regular script or Clerical Script. All have Oracle Bone script as root. Even "Chinese" names it as root ;)

So it is a simple error. But as I will change more than one article I wanted to explain myself a lil longer. Many Chinese articles have this "wrong" root (possibly a very early error) so if you see one please change it and link here.

If you don't think its right feel free to write

Best wishes Moooitic (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Support. kwami (talk) 22:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Tone marks for person and place names
I couldn't find a definite guide on when to include tone marks, but in other articles they seem to be mostly left out for common place names like Xi'an, dynasty names etc. This article however includes them extensively (though not consistently). Should this be cleaned up? Taniquetil (talk) 10:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Sinograph
What is a sinograph? It is used in the article, but Sinograph also directs to this article. I am German, and a dictionary I have doesn't help. Please explain sinograph in this article, or split into two. TheReincarnator (talk) 19:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

It just means "Chinese character", and as one author I can't recall says, its only virtue is that it is one word rather than two. It is not in wide use. It should probably be attributed to a specific author who uses it rather than be assumed to be a generally known term. --JWB (talk) 14:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

South Korea
KOREANS CONSIDER CHINESE CHARACTER TO BE LATIN OR GREEK. KOREANS DON'T DENY SOME KOREAN VOCABULARY CAME FROM CHINESE CHARACTERS. EVEN BEFORE KOREAN ALPHABET CREATION KOREANS HAD SPOKEN LANGUAGE BUT WRITTEN LANGUAGE WASN'T INVENTED UNTIL 13TH CENTURY. IN KOREA EVERYTHING IS WRITTEN IN KOREAN ALPHABET NOT CHINESE CHARACTERS. KOREANS DO NOT RELY ON CHINESE CHARACTERS. KOREAN LANGUAGE CONSIST 70 PERCENT KOREAN VOCABULARY REST OF 30 PERCENT VOCABULARY ARE CHINESE, ENGLISH, JAPANESE, EUROPEAN, RUSSIAN VOCABULARY.

KOREAN LANGUAGE RELATE TO ALTAIC ROOTS NOT CHINESE. KOREAN WRITTEN AND GRAMMAR LANGUAGE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM CHINESE. IF CHINESE HAD GREAT CULTURAL INFLUENCE OVER KOREAN PEOPLE THEN KOREAN GRAMMAR MUST RELATE TO CHINESE BUT IT DOESN'T. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hangul1 (talk • contribs) 10:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL, 10/10 FOR CAPSLOCK, IT'S CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL --  李博杰   | —Talk contribs email 11:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course, Hanja are not used in everyday life the way they are in China or Japan, but they are used more than just "primarily for emphasis and for names." They are used quite a bit in academic literature (much to my frustration, since I don't want to spend 5 minutes looking up a character in an Okpyeon every time I see a new one I don't know, especially when after all my deciphering, it turns out it's a word I knew all along, but only in its Hangul spelling!); and also in dictionaries, railway signs, and anywhere disambiguation is necessary. Perhaps you were thinking of the use of Hanja in newspaper headlines or shop signs, but this is more for the purpose of instant disambiguation and recognition than for emphasis. --Sewing 02:19, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * The Japanese-style form with mixed Hangul and Hanja is still used in the constitution and some important laws. So lawyers study Hanja for work. --Nanshu 03:49, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Just remember that Koreans were using Chinese characters before the Japanese even knew what they were. Up until the 20th century, almost all writing was done exclusively in Hanja.  Writing with mixed Hangul and Hanja is called "mixed script," not "Japanese-style" writing.  --Sewing 19:34, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That can be called "Japanese-style." There were Classical Chinese and X-eongae but they don't have the mixed writing style. Hangul was used mostly by itself. The new writing style was implanted from Japanese one. So Japanese can guess what old Korean newspapers say. --Nanshu 04:14, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Hangul-hanja mixed script is not Japanese-style. In the Japanese-style, some native Japanese morphemes are written in kanji, but in hangul-hanja mixed script (as opposed to idu & hyangchal), all native Korean morphemes are written in hangul. --AZ, 09 Sept 2009  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.167.225 (talk) 10:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Nanshu's so called Japanese-style,is neither Japan's original nor particular one. All the countries which influenced from Chinese culture,have their own mixed script system. It's not Eongae but Eonhae(諺解), and in here, you can see the sample.. After the Hangul's invention, there exist numerous mixed script style documents like this. And, Before the invention of Hangul, Another mixed style like Gugyeol and Idu already exist. It's totally nonsence to call such a mixed script style to Japanese-style. What Nanshu's so called Japanese-style derived from Classical chinese style only plus katakana annotation. That has no originality except for the fact that Japanese still keeping such a mixed script while other countries already abandoned. What we can called "Japanese-style" limited only their sino-japanese words which translating from Europian languages. These words' originality exist in Europe languages, not Japanese. Iziizi (talk) 07:34, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph that starts with 'In Korea, 한자 hanja have become a politically contentious issue, with some Koreans urging a "purification" of the national language and culture by totally abandoning their use' seems too biased to me. One of the arguments in favour of Hangeul-only orthography was that Hangeul can be typed purely mechanically on a typewriter, whereas Chinese characters cannot. This was an important issue at the period in which Korean orthographical standardisation took place, as it overlapped social instabilities circa the Korean War, and the military use of typewriters was considered vital. Given today's technology, I guess this is no longer much of an issue, but it still is appealing that Hangeul-only system, unlike those of Chinese or Japanese, does not need to go through an input method editor (IME).  Anyways, I just thought the paragraph was misleading, because it seems to portray the people in favour of Hangeul-only orthography as ideological bigots. --AZ 28 August 2008


 * At least today, using mostly Hangeul is simply the norm, so how contentious can it be? At least the tense of the sentence seems misleading. In the past, there certainly was a strong movement to get away from Japanese conventions, in both China and Korea. Although Japanese telegrams used katakana until 1988, so maybe this isn't such an un-Japanese idea.


 * Hangeul input actually does have to go through an IME because Korean character codes encode a whole syllable block, not individual letters. The IME has to map the letter sequence to the code. It is true the user should never have to make a choice between different character strings pronounced the same way, as with Chinese characters.


 * Graphically, Hangeul letters usually change size to make the syllable fit in a standard square space. I guess the mechanical Hangeul typewriters did not do this? I know some fonts today use fixed-size letters, though their use seems mostly decorative. --JWB (talk) 04:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, while IME does exist for Hangeul, it actually turns out that this is not necessary! This technique is known as 직결 (jiggyeol, trans.: "direct connection"), and follows the principle of mechanical Hangeul typewriter.  A few Korean speakers use this when traveling in foreign countries and need to type Hangeul on computers without a Korean IME.  The second website I linked above has a free license font called "direct.ttf" that exemplifies this.  And yes, mechanical Hangeul typewriters did not fit syllables in a square.  These fonts are known as 탈네모글꼴 (trans.: "square-escaped font") and are not all purely decorative.  At least one major South Korean newspaper uses it.  --AZ 30 August 2008  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.211.220 (talk) 22:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, but when you type something using jiggyeol, you do not wind up with Korean coded in the normal character codes, right? If you try to display the file on a normal system, it should look like garbage.


 * Thanks for telling me the term "ttalnemogeulkkol" - I brought up that kind of font recently at Talk:Abugida and Hangul but did not know what they are called.


 * Where are they used on the hani site? The text there looks like normal fonts. --JWB (talk) 06:20, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Right, when you type with jiggyeol on an English operating system without a jiggyeol font, you would just get a string of gibberish ASCII characters. This is a problem of the OS rather than jiggyeol, since the OS is responsible for translating keyboard scan codes into character codes.  So, in practice, if one were to use jiggyeol, she would either have to have or know where to get a jiggyeol font, or she would use a web-font-supporting web browser and use web apps that allow one to type jiggyeol.
 * Hani uses a talnemo font on actual printed newspaper. It's not open license, but you can download and use it without cost.  It is talnemo, but not a typewriter font.  --AZ, 31 August 2008
 * I checked out Talk:Abugida and Hangul and I appreciate your contributions. But I want to point out that talnemo fonts are not that recent.  Since the first typewriter fonts were talnemo, they are at least 60 years old.  As for computer fonts, the oldest I could find was an article dated 1989.  --AZ, 31 August 2008


 * Thanks, please feel free to contribute additional information in those articles!
 * I downloaded the font but was not able to get talnemo text to display. --JWB (talk) 18:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Is the font same as the one the web page is in? If so, it is talnemo, albeit rather moderate.  -- AZ, 09 Sept 2009  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.167.225 (talk) 10:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

New external link?
A user added this to the external links section:
 * Learn Chinese - Your Most Faithful Chinese Guide

I went to fix it up so it was less advertise-y then I noticed the hidden comment to discuss the addition of all such links before adding them to the page. I don't really have an opinion either way; not knowing the language, I find it difficult to judge if the site is good or not. JazzMan 18:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Another new external link

Skritter is a tool focused pretty much exclusively for learning Chinese (and Japanese) characters which I think makes it a useful and relevant link and have added it. Let me know here if you don't think that's a good idea (and why!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.68.40.206 (talk) 01:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The tool is good, but you can't link this site from Wikipedia. Please read the relevant paragraph of guidelines. Thanks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#Sites_requiring_registration —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cababunga (talk • contribs) 22:04, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Another suggested external link

I found this article under "Recent Changes", and noticed that a new link had been added. I was curious so I visited the site (ArchChinese.com), and was impressed with the animation. I checked other wikipedia articles, to try to make sure Arch Chinese was felt to be a legitimate (non-spam) site, and found what seemed to be a better description in the link within another article, so I edited the line here, just trying to be helpful. Then I looked further, and saw that the same anon. IP user who added the link today had tried to add the same link a month ago, and the link had been removed because there had been no prior discussion to establish a consensus whether it was an appropriate link. The Arch Chinese site looks useful to me, but I am just an English-speaking user who has an interest in languages in general, with no knowledge of Chinese characters or pronunciation. The site doesn't look like a commercial one to me, but I have only checked a few pages and I may have missed something. I apologize for not checking the talk page first. I have not been a contributor here before, so I will delete the link and the change I made, to show good faith. As I understand the previous discussion, what is desired is that before an external link is added, there should be discussion first. I propose that if this external site is deemed useful and appropriate, that the link be added here. NameIsRon (talk) 17:29, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't access the site archchinese.com either because it is no longer there or because I reside behind the GFC and it has been blocked for some reason. If it has no advertising, no registration requirements and is a non-commercial site then under WP:ELNO it can go in the article.
 * I erred -- the site doesn't work with the address I gave -- it needs the "www": www.archchinese.com. I looked into the site further, and I see that they do solicit memberships. That is, in order to use some of the site's enhanced capabilities, you have to pay something like 2 USD per month. I can't tell how useful the site is if you do not pay the membership fee. I invite subject matter experts to check it out. NameIsRon (talk) 23:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction in section "Number of Chinese characters"
The table at the beginning of this section says that the Han-Han Dae Sajeon has 53,667 characters, but the next paragraph states that it has over 57,000. 75.17.159.55 (talk) 23:08, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Chinese characters -> Chinese character?
Is it not standard that Wikipedia articles be in the singular? Should this article not be named "Chinese character"? Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Ideograms
I'll be modifying the Ideograms sub-section to clear it of characters whose applicability is dubious or clearly lacking. It will make for a disconcertingly short sub-section, but there's little else to say.

上 and 下 can remain. 林 and 刃 do not withstand close inspection, IMO. 森 absolutely does not belong.

林 is not a doubling of 木, as I pointed out in the Talk Page post above this one. 林 may be regarded as a pictograph representing two trees (and by extension suggesting a larger number of trees that encompass certain spaces/places), or as an ideogram functioning for the same purpose. I incline to the former, and am removing 林 from this category.

森, as I noted in the earlier Talk Page post, is a phono-semantic compound. The article suggested it is interesting to note that 林 and 森 have the same reconstructed Old Chinese final *-ǐǝm. What interests me is that somebody would find that interesting. Consonant shift in the initial is a common factor in compound character formation in Old Chinese; in this case, the initial *l- of 林 became initial *s- in 森.

Consonant shift also hints at the proper category for 刃. At present the article explains 刃 in terms of the marking of a blade. I submit that the (phonetic) evidence strongly suggests the single-stroke element was a once-independent character indicating adherence. The element is also present in 千 (added to 人) and may well be identical with the single-stroke source character seen below 日 in 旦 and above 大 in 天, the function in the latter two characters being to indicate adherence to the horizon. Note how 刃, 千, 旦 and 天 have in common the final *-n. (For the record, the initials for 刃, 千, 旦 and 天 are *n-, *s-, *t- and *t-, respectively.) In short, 刃 should be regarded as having been devised as a phono-semantic compound, with 刀 the semantic indicator and the remaining stroke the phonetic indicator.

If someone presents a compelling argument for the ideogrammatic nature of 林 and restores it on that basis, fine with me. The same for 刃, though I imagine a compelling counter-argument will be hard to find. Lawrence J. Howell (talk) 04:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Ideogrammic compounds 会意字 / 會意字
This sub-section contains two arguments offered in support of the notion that certain of the compound characters created in ancient times were devised as ideogrammic compounds. Both arguments are problematic.

First: However, there is evidence that 女 was once a polyphone with a secondary reading of *an, as may be gleaned from the set 妟 yàn "tranquil", 奻 nuán "to quarrel", and 姦 jiān "licentious".

I submit that regarding 妟 as an abbreviated, variant form of 晏, 奻 as 女 + an abbreviated form of phonetic indicator 安, and 姦 as phonetic indicator 奻 + 女 is much closer in line with the formative and transformative principles governing compound characters. Which of course contraindicates the supposition that 女 serves as the phonetic indicator in these three compounds.

That said, if an authority acceptable to the editors is on record as maintaining that the presence of 女 in 妟, 奻 and 姦 constitutes evidence that 女 was once a polyphone with a secondary reading of *an, so be it. But the statement requires sourcing, does it not?

Second: It is doubtful that secondary readings can be found for many cases, and the characters 明, 休, and 好 are all attested in oracle bone script, with the same components as the modern forms.

While it's true we find 月 paired with 日 in oracle bone script, we also find examples of 月 paired with 向. Here, 向 functions as the phonetic indicator via consonant shift in the initial, making the character a standard phono-semantic compound.

Two considerations weigh in favor of the precedence of the 月 + 向 form.

First is the overwhelming statistical preponderance in favor of phono-semantic compounds in the Chinese character corpus. And that's assuming for the sake of the argument the possibility that some characters were in fact devised as ideogrammic compounds. The phono-semantic model is normative.

Second, the sheer numbers aside, one-by-one inspection of the forms and sounds of characters alleged to be ideogrammic compounds reveals that all lost or had their phonetic indicators obscured according to various processes. Among these processes are those seen in 妟 (entire character is an abbreviated variant of a more complex one), 奻 (use of an abbreviated form of an element) and 明 (replacement of the original phonetic indicator). Other processes include consonant shift in the initial or final, one character being subsumed by another with a similar/identical meaning (as in 子), an element lost in character simplification, a character being created from part of a phono-semantic compound, the dying out and subsequent lack of recognition of a phonetic indicator etc.

Accordingly, it is simplistic, to say the least, for the article to present 明 as an ideogrammic compound in the absence of a certain amount of background information.

That leaves 休 and 好. These are among a handful of characters traditionally regarded as ideogrammic compounds that are attested in the oracle bone script solely with their modern forms. That fact no more supports designating 休 and 好 as ideogrammic compounds than does the presence of 明 in the oracle bone script, the reason being that 休 is consistent with the transformation pattern observed in 奻 (use of an abbreviated form of an element) and 好 is consistent with the secondary readings phenomenon.

In sum, the two arguments discussed here lack substance and/or require clarification. If there is consensus to amend portions of this sub-section, I will return with specific proposals for a partial rewrite. Lawrence J. Howell (talk) 05:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Whether it stands as-is or is rewritten as you may propose, it'll need citations. If you've got the cites, just go ahead and do it.  It doesn't really require discussing here unless there's some kind of dispute—say, if two reliable sources contradict each other; even then, both sources/theories could/should be stated noting the discrepancy.  Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:35, 23 May 2013 (UTC)


 * OK. Didn't want to step on any toes. I'll upload something soon. Lawrence J. Howell (talk) 02:27, 24 May 2013 (UTC)


 * As Curly Turkey says above, this needs citations to the literature. Where the scholars disagree, we need to report that as well, e.g. the source for 妟/奻/姦 is Boltz (1994), pp106–110; not everyone accepts it, but it's an influential view.  The mention of "consonant shift" is alarming as well.  Kanguole 20:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Classification of 酵
The article says 酵 is a Japanese kokuji, despite it appearing in the Kangxi dictionary (compiled in C.E. 1710). This seems to be a mistake. Note that 醗 is not a kokuji either (酉 + shinjitai 発) as 醱 exists with the kyujitai phonetic 發. 130.216.218.72 (talk) 10:01, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Done.  White Whirlwind  咨   21:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Map in "Adaptation to other languages"
There are four similar colours in this map :

Dark Green

Medium Green

Green

Light Green

Everybody has not a perfect eye-view like a machine ! Why use colours that are not distinguishable ?

--AXRL (talk) 17:12, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Move back to "Chinese Characters"
On 6 May 2013‎ Curly Turkey with no discussion moved page "Chinese characters" to "Chinese character", giving the reason "Singular is standard."

This was a well-intentioned misunderstanding.

Reasons to return to the long-standing "Chinese characters" in ascending order of importance:


 * The move resulted in the first sentence: "Chinese characters are logograms," not following the rule that the title of the article should be in the first sentence (it would be almost impossible to fashion a lead sentence which does follow the rule).
 * WP:SINGULAR specifically exempts "the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages)."
 * The guideline WP:NCWS says "Exceptions may also occur where a different technical term is widely used," and  lists the specific example "Chinese characters" as acceptable.

Since "Chinese characters" is specifically mentioned as acceptable, there doesn't seem to be a need for discussion, so I moved the article back to the longstanding title, "Chinese characters." Cheers ch (talk) 18:09, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A number of issues with this rationale:
 * There is no "rule that the title of the article should be in the first sentence". See WP:LEADSENTENCE.
 * When a title is not in sungular it causes unnecessary extra work for editors. For eample, if an edit were to wrtite a sentence such as "X is written with the Chinese character Y", they have to link thus: Chinese character .  Whereas is the title were singular, one could write "LANGUAGE X uses Chinese characters ", and not have to type a single extra character—which I believe is why singular is standard in the first place.
 * The talk page of WP:NCWS has someone raising concerns that WP:NCWS was raised to guideline status with little broad discussion. It also shows that Chinese character was originally singular before the guideline made it plural.
 * Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:07, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Your second point doesn't work, as Chinese character works fine. I don't think you've addressed CWH's point about WP:SINGULAR, as "Arabic numerals" or "Egyptian hieroglyphs" seem closely analoguous with Chinese characters.  Kanguole 22:25, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Chinese character "works fine" because the page has been made a redirect to Chinese characters. There are bots that go around "fixing" these redirects so that we end up with Chinese character, when Chinese character and Chinese characters are cleaner and easier for later editors to parse.
 * Exceptions to WP:SINGULAR should be a last resort: in the case of Bantu languages, if it were Bantu language it would give the impression of a single language called "Bantu", analogous to Japanese language. There are no such extenuating circumstances with regards to "Chinese character".
 * Are there any advatages to this article being in the plural? I've not seen one put forward.
 * Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:01, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are any bots that do that – which ones are you thinking of? Any bot proposal doing that would not get approved, per WP:NOTBROKEN.  Kanguole 01:34, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've had any number of redirects "fixed" for me. Whether they were bots or not, in the end, is irrelevant.  I'd argue that Chinese character wasn't broken when it was originally or subsequently moved. Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:12, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Glad to respond.

Policies and guidelines should not be passed over easily, but I completely agree that they can be trumped by WP:COMMONSENSE, so I take your argument seriously now that you have stated it (it would have been helpful if you had stated it to begin with before summarily moving the article).

I take your primary argument to be:


 * When a title is not in sungular it causes unnecessary extra work for editors. For eample, if an edit were to wrtite a sentence such as "X is written with the Chinese character Y", they have to link thus: Chinese character. Whereas is the title were singular, one could write "LANGUAGE X uses Chinese characters", and not have to type a single extra character—which I believe is why singular is standard in the first place.

This by your own evidence is not the case: "X is written with Chinese character Y" simply redirects to "Chinese characters." An editor can write either "Chinese character" or "Chinese characters."

Next, a few comments on the rules and guidelines:


 * I agree that it is not an overriding argument, but WP:BEGIN does in fact say "If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence. However, if the article title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text."


 * WP:SINGULAR says nothing of "last resort" but clearly describes this situation, that is, "classes of things."
 *  "The talk page of WP:NCWS has someone raising concerns that WP:NCWS was raised to guideline status with little broad discussion. It also shows that Chinese character was originally singular before the guideline made it plural.
 * I don't see the relevance of this comment.

The positive advantages to "Chinese Characters":


 * It is the subject of the article in both common and specialist usage.Search Wikipedia for "Chinese character", that is, search for the singular, finds even in Wikipedia the use of "Chinese characters" is predominant, with the exceptions being, for instance, "Chinese character dictionary." In those cases, as you point out, "Chinese character" redirects to "Chinese characters."
 * "Chinese character" is meaningless in this context.
 * Avoids confusion for readers who might think it concerns Chinese psychology (Chinese national character).

In short, 1) There is no advantage to "Chinese character." 2) "Chinese characters" is completely acceptable.

Hope this helps! ch (talk) 00:20, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "An editor can write either "Chinese character" or "Chinese characters."": How is this an argument in favour of either form?  If your argument is that it makes no difference to you, and my arguement is that it does make a difference to me, then how is it rational to move to the form that hinders me without helping you?
 * WP:SINGULAR at no point says that groups must, should, or would be good to be in the plural. They are granted as an exception, and should only be used in exceptional cases.  "Chinese character" is not in the least bit exceptional.
 * "I don't see the relevance of this comment.": Then I suggest you read it again and give it some thought.
 * "It is the subject of the article in both common and specialist usage.": What is the point of this? That specialists commonly use the plural in contexts that require the plural?  Specialists normally refer to "dogs" rather that dog as well, for obvious reasons that have nothing to do with Wikipedia article titling.
 * "Avoids confusion for readers who might think it concerns Chinese psychology (Chinese national character).": Has this ever been an issue for anyone? Even once?  Reality and plausibility trump fantasy—in reality linking to this article is a frequent issue for me.
 * "In short, 1) There is no advantage to "Chinese character."": Seriously, this is the attitude you've chosen to take? Normally one would weigh the advantages and disadvantages, not pretend there are no advantages.  Myself, I never claimed there were no advantages; I only wrote: "Are there any advatages to this article being in the plural?  I've not seen one put forward."  At that point in the discussion none had been put forward, only misreadings of guidelines, including a guideline that never existed—no argument specific to why this article should be an exception had been given (that's an empirical fact).  Please change your attitude. Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:12, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The guideline WP:NCWS says "Exceptions may also occur where a different technical term is widely used," and  lists the specific example "Chinese characters" as acceptable. Q.E.D. ch (talk) 02:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This "argument" is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALAAAaaa!" Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:23, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't see how Naming conventions (writing systems) applies. The writing system is not "Chinese characters". It's Written Chinese, for which you use Chinese characters; depending where you are these are either Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters. Those are plural as they are particular sets or systems, two different ways of representing Chinese characters. But "Chinese characters" here is just a plural, not the name of a system. Many other English terms are normally used as plural but their article is singular lentil, ant, byte. Chinese character is consistent with this and WP:SINGULAR would seem the most appropriate guideline.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 03:00, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Dear JohnBlackburne -- You pose a useful question. Naming conventions (writing systems) applies because it specifically gives "Chinese characters" as a Common Sense exception to the general rule, one which is used in parallel to Arabic numerals, among others, including your examples, Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters. I do not think they should be moved to the singular but that "Chinese characters" needs to be plural to be parallel and consistent (among other reasons). ch (talk) 03:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Again I don't think that guideline applies, for the reasons I gave, so the example there is misplaced. Looking at the talk page there is also some doubt over what support it has a a guideline. Another example: one might remark, on reading some text, that "those are Chinese characters, but I don't know if it's written in Chinese or Japanese". Here the writing system is (written) Chinese or (written) Japanese. "Chinese characters" refers to neither system but the Hanzi or Kanji that they include.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 12:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Dear CurlyTurkey: You say: "This "argument" is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALAAAaaa!" Since you are an experienced and caring editor whom I respect for trying to improve Wikipedia, I expect an apology for this uncivil outburst. ch (talk) 03:45, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * What is uncivil is your condescending tone and refusal to consider the concerns of your fellow editors who have been put out by your move and your refusal to take the points they've raised seriously. What I wrote was a statement of fact, and not anything to apologize for. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:55, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly apologize if I have given the appearance of condescension, though for future reference it would help if you could point to specific examples. My intention was to reply to your original point that policy required that articles be named in the singular, which appeared to me to be a misunderstanding. I characterized this as well intentioned, but the policy allows for exceptions, and the guideline gave "Chinese characters" as one. You then mentioned that the singular title "hindered" you, which Kanguole and I pointed out was not the case. An editor does not have to type extra input or rely on bots. This appears to me to be responsive to your concerns and, more important, in line with Wikipedia policy and the needs of readers. An article about Chinese characters should be titled "Chinese characters." Again, if you can point me to where I have been uncivil, I sincerely apologize. ch (talk) 04:28, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Let's be absolutely crystal clear on this, as there are editors who pull these mind & word games all the time and it drives me up the wall that they are allowed to get away with this behaviour: never in my entire life have I been in a real-life conversation with anyone in which "Q.E.D." was intended to mean anything but "So, F.U." The game? If anyone calls you out on it, you can respnd by linking to Q.E.D., a cute dodge which allows you to appear superficially to have been "the civil one" in the conversation and humiliate your "opponent" at the same time.

My response to this mind game was to point out that you were ignoring valid arguments: This "argument" is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALAAAaaa!"—pretty spot-on exactly what you did. Not nice to pull open the Wizard's curtain, but certainly not anything like the "incivility" you demanded I apologize for.

As to the validity of the "argument" itself, I'd like to point out a very recent discussion at Talk:Claude Monet. Not long ago, there were extensive galleries in the article: 28 images in one gallery, 40 in another. Attempts to do something about these sprawling galleries were met with resistance from editors who insisted the Visual Arts Manual of Style used the Monet article specifically to excuse such galleries (déjà vu?) After several long and often acrimonious discussions involving over a dozen editors the consensus fell strongly in favour of reducing the number of images and rearranging the remaining ones into smaller, easier-to-navigate and higher-context galleries.

The fact that "Chinese characters" has been chosen as an example for the guideline in and of itself means little, especially given there is little evidence that much discussion went into its selection—the fact that it was moved specifically to be made the example sets an awful lot of bells ringing (Merry Christmas!). Just how valid, or even thought-out, was that decision?

Now if you could get around to responding to my concerns, we can let this ugly tangent die an ugly death. Maybe you can even get consensus on the side of your argument—as it stands, that's not the case.

Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm struggling to see any pertinent considerations in the above discussion, and I'm not too worried about what may be written in various guidelines (where examples tend to be picked after the fact), but I would note that Letter (alphabet), Symbol, Character (symbol) all have singular titles; this one seems to be more or less analogous. I would be happy to draw what is admittedly a very fine line, between Chinese character, which is the English name for that type of object, and Simplified/Traditional Chinese characters, which are slightly more descriptive names for what are slightly more like sets of objects (more like Arabic numerals). That said, I'm not even totally convinced by my own arguments, and it maybe doesn't matter very much. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:30, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment I support the current plural, partially per the comment in the next section that "Chinese character" reads like "the character of the Chinese people". Articles with similar plurals include Post-nominal letters, Code letters, Block letters, Latin letters used in mathematics, Claudian letters, and Hillside letters, ASA carriage control characters, Unicode compatibility characters.  Bad titles elsewhere are not an argument for a bad title here, but would we be comfortable with moving those other articles to the singular? — kwami (talk) 19:58, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It would be helpful if you could tell us what problem is being solved by requiring "Code letter" or "Block letter" to be in the plural. Is this not a case of instruction creep? Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:23, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'd be happy w those in the sg. But for some of the others the sg seems inappropriate.  — kwami (talk) 07:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem there is, if it "seems" inappropriate to you, but it "seems" appropriate to Joe Bleaugh (or Curly Turkey), then what basis do we have for determining which is correct? When new to Wikipedia (I remember those times) it "seemed" inappropriate to me to have, say, "dog" in the singular—after all, if I were to write a book or article on the subject, I'd be certain to put "dog" in the plural. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:49, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Post-nominal letters and Code letters ought to be plural since they are specifically used in groups of more than one. Latin letters used in mathematics is obviously a descriptive title, where the plural is natural. Claudian letters, Hillside letters, ASA carriage control characters and Unicode compatibility characters are delimited sets of objects. Block letters is more about that style of writing than the letters themselves. I don't quite see that Chinese character(s) satisfies any of those criteria for being pluralized, though I admit the criteria as I've expressed them aren't very rigorously defined, and views may differ. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Friends--

Here is a summary of what I take to be the state of discussion. Since the discussion has clarified policy and changed my thinking on several points, I will leave out intermediate steps.


 * 1) WP:SINGULAR specifically exempts "the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages). The guideline WP:NCWS says "Exceptions may also occur where a different technical term is widely used," and lists the specific example "Chinese characters" as acceptable.)"
 * Reply: This guideline was not widely discussed.
 * 2) Linking to this article is a frequent issue and "Chinese characters" creates unnecessary extra work.
 * Reply: Linking the phrase "Chinese character" links to "Chinese characters" article, with no extra work.
 * 3) This article should be an exception to the general rule on plurals. There are several reasons, in addition to the guideline:
 * * An article about "Chinese characters" (and which uses that phrase in the lede and throughout) should be titled "Chinese characters."
 * * "Chinese characters" is the common phrase or term for this meaning, both in Wikipedia and in general usage; "Chinese character" in this sense is hard to find, though it is used adjectively, as in "Chinese character dictionary."
 * Reply There should be exceptions only in extreme circumstances, and this is not extreme.
 * 4) The exception is not unusual: plural is used for parallel articles Simplified Chinese characters, Arabic numerals, and a number of other.
 * Reply: 1) Many parallel articles are in the singular. 2) Exceptions do not justify further exceptions.
 * 5) "Chinese character" gives the impression that it concerns Chinese psychology (Chinese national character).
 * Objection: This is not a common confusion.
 * Reply to objection: Several editors said that they had this impression.
 * 6)"Chinese characters" was the long standing title, 2011-2013.
 * Reply: For many years it was not.

My own view at this point is that #1 is not as strong an argument as I originally thought, though still clearly in favor of the plural; #2 is a reasonable objection but has been met; #3 & #4 are the strongest arguments & leave me in favor of the plural; #5 is not powerful, but still in favor of plural; #6 is not powerful either way. Therefore, on balance, I am still in favor of the move to the plural.

Respectfully submitted ch (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You seem to have omitted all of my arguments - is that just because they tend to lead to the opposite conclusion from the one you want to draw, or because I haven't expressed them well enough to make them look like arguments? W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Apologies. My "summary" was too condensed. I meant to briefly represent your argument by saying "many articles are in the singular." I would be happy to add or to have you add a few more words indicated by something like "added". Would this be ok? ch (talk) 15:47, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I guess my position is already reasonably summed up by "There should be exceptions only in extreme circumstances, and this is not extreme." Although I wouldn't myself say "extreme", just that there should be exceptions only for specific reasons, and I haven't yet seen anything sufficiently specific (that wouldn't also take in a whole lot of other articles that Wikipedia routinely titles in the singular). But as I say, I don't have very strong feelings about it. Happy New Year everyone! W. P. Uzer (talk) 16:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That pretty much echoes my sentiments, the question I posed to Kwakikagami: is requiring the plural not just a case of instruction creep? Was the singular causing any editor or reader any practical problems whatsoever?  What does the requirement seek to resolve?
 * I can sympathize with the alleged "Chinese national character" confusion, but it appears to me strictly hypothetical: when linked, the surrounding context makes the meaning obvious ("X is spelt with the Chinese character Y" will obviously not be misunderstood as having anything to do with psychology), and I would predict that the ratio of those searching "Chinese character" who intend the written characters to dwarf by enormous margins those who are searching for the psychological concept, assuming there is a significant (or even existent) number of readers who would use those search words at all for the psychological concept. Given the number of readers who come to Wikipedia for pop culture trivia, I would expect "Chinese characters" (read "Chinese fictional characters") to be at least equally problematic, anyways. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:46, 31 December 2013 (UTC)