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chinese system of writing: Reading and Writing Chinese William McNaughton, 1989 A comprehensive guide to the Chinese writing system |
chinese system of writing: The Chinese Typewriter Thomas S. Mullaney, 2018-10-09 How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University |
chinese system of writing: The Chinese Language John DeFrancis, 1986-03-01 DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone. --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted. --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley |
chinese system of writing: Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1 James W. Heisig, Timothy W. Richardson, 2008-10-31 At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ imaginative memory to associate each character’s component parts, or primitive elements, with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a story that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory. |
chinese system of writing: Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) Jing Tsu, 2022-01-18 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded. |
chinese system of writing: Reading and Writing Chinese William McNaughton, Li Ying, 1999 Reading and Writing Chinese has been the standard text for foreign students and self-teachers of the Chinese Writing System since Tuttle first published it over 20 years ago. This new, completely revised edition offers students a more convenient, efficient, and up-to-date introduction to the writing system. |
chinese system of writing: The Chinese Writing System in Asia Yu Li, 2019-11-04 The Chinese Writing System in Asia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective integrates a diverse range of disciplinary approaches in examining how the Chinese script represents and actively shapes personal and social identities in and beyond Asia. It is an ideal read for students and scholars interested in a broad and culturally rich introduction to research on the Chinese writing system. It can also serve as the main text of an undergraduate course on the subject. Key features of this volume include: Insights from studies of the Chinese writing system in linguistics, script reform and technology, gender, identity, literature, and the visual arts; Examples embedded in inquiries of the cultural history and contemporary society of Asia; Rigorous yet accessible discussions of complex concepts and phenomena that assume no prior knowledge of Asian languages or linguistics; Supplementary multimedia materials and resources, including instructional support, available online. |
chinese system of writing: Reading and Writing Chinese William McNaughton, 2013-07-23 This is a complete and easy–to–use guide for reading and writing Chinese characters. Learning written Chinese is an essential part of mastering the Chinese language. Used as a standard by students and teachers learning to read Chinese and write Chinese for more than three decades, the bestselling Reading & Writing Chinese has been thoroughly revised and updated. Reading & Writing Chinese places at your fingertips the essential 1,725 Chinese characters' current definitions, derivations, pronunciations, and examples of correct usage by utilizing cleverly condensed grids. This guide also focuses on Pinyin, which is the official system to transcribe Hanzi, Chinese characters, into Latin script, now universally used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional characters (still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are also included, making this a complete reference. Newly updated and revised, these characters are the ones officially prescribed by the Chinese government for the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). The student's ability to read and write Chinese are reinforced throughout the text. Key features of this newly-expanded edition include: The 1,725 most frequently used characters in both Simplified and Traditional forms. All 2,633 characters and 5,000+ compounds required for the HSK Exam. Standard Hanyu Pinyin romanizations. More mnemonic phrases and etymologies to help you remember the characters. An extensive introduction, alphabetical index, and index according to stroke count and stroke order. Completely updated/expanded English definitions. Convenient quick-reference tables of radicals. Updated and revised compounds, plus 25% more vocabulary now offered. Codes to assist those who are preparing for the AP exam or the HSK exam. |
chinese system of writing: A History of Writing Steven Roger Fischer, 2020-09-10 From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a format that everyone can follow. Steven Roger Fischer also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for students and specialists as well as a delightful read for lovers of the written word everywhere. |
chinese system of writing: The Cambridge World History Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, 2015-04-09 The era from 1400 to 1800 saw intense biological, commercial, and cultural exchanges, and the creation of global connections on an unprecedented scale. Divided into two books, Volume 6 of the Cambridge World History series considers these critical transformations. The first book examines the material and political foundations of the era, including global considerations of the environment, disease, technology, and cities, along with regional studies of empires in the eastern and western hemispheres, crossroads areas such as the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, and the Caribbean, and sites of competition and conflict, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The second book focuses on patterns of change, examining the expansion of Christianity and Islam, migrations, warfare, and other topics on a global scale, and offering insightful detailed analyses of the Columbian exchange, slavery, silver, trade, entrepreneurs, Asian religions, legal encounters, plantation economies, early industrialism, and the writing of history. |
chinese system of writing: Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture Hye K. Pae, 2020-10-14 This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart. |
chinese system of writing: Chinese Grammatology Yurou Zhong, 2019-11-12 Today, Chinese characters are described as a national treasure, the core of the nation’s civilizational identity. Yet for nearly half of the twentieth century, reformers waged war on the Chinese script. They declared it an archaic hindrance to modernization, portraying the ancient system of writing as a roadblock to literacy and therefore science and democracy. Movements spanning the political spectrum proposed abandonment of characters and alphabetization of Chinese writing, although in the end the Communist Party opted for character simplification. Chinese Grammatology traces the origins, transmutations, and containment of this script revolution to provide a groundbreaking account of its formative effects on Chinese literature and culture, and lasting implications for the encounter between the alphabetic and nonalphabet worlds. Yurou Zhong explores the growth of competing Romanization and Latinization movements aligned with the clashing Nationalists and Communists. She finds surprising affinities between alphabetic reform and modern Chinese literary movements and examines the politics of literacy programs and mass education against the backdrop of war and revolution. Zhong places the Chinese script revolution in the global context of a phonocentric dominance that privileges phonetic writing, contending that the eventual retention of characters constituted an anti-ethnocentric, anti-imperial critique that coincided with postwar decolonization movements and predated the emergence of Deconstructionism. By revealing the consequences of one of the biggest linguistic experiments in history, Chinese Grammatology provides an ambitious rethinking of the origins of Chinese literary modernity and the politics of the science of writing. |
chinese system of writing: East Asia : the Great Tradition Albert M. Craig, John King Fairbank, Edwin Oldfather Reischauer, 1960 |
chinese system of writing: Chinese Rhetoric and Writing Andy Kirkpatrick, Zhichang Xu, 2012-03-07 Andy Kirkpatrick and and Zhichang Xu offer a response to the argument that Chinese students’ academic writing in English is influenced by “culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate.” Noting that this argument draws from “an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing,” they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for “a radical reassessment of what English is in today’s world.” The result is a book that provides teachers of writing, and in particular those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric, a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. Understanding this important rhetorical tradition provides a strong foundation for assessing and responding to the writing of this growing group of students. |
chinese system of writing: Reading & Writing Chinese Traditional Character Edition William McNaughton, Li Ying, 2016-09-06 This is a complete and easy–to–use guide for reading and writing traditional Chinese characters. Reading and Writing Chinese has been the leading text for foreign students and teachers of the Chinese writing system since it was first published. This completely revised edition draws on the lessons learnt from the use of the book in classrooms so as to provide a more convenient and up–to–date introduction to written Chinese. Over 1,100 new combinations of characters have been added, increasing the total vocabulary significantly to about 4,500 items. There are also new notes on usage to give students insight into the contemporary state of the Chinese language. The student's ability to read Chinese and write Chinese are reinforced throughout. For each of the basic 1,062 characters, the pronunciation, definition and derivation are given, with examples of the use of most words and a chart showing how to write each character. Memorization tips and cautionary cross–reference to look–alike characters are also provided, as well as notes to help clarify those overlooked aspects of the Chinese writing system. Key features of this book: The Student's 1,020 List and the Official 2,000 List. Over 2,000 characters and 4,500 vocabulary items. Pronunciations given in standard Hanyu Pinyin Ronamized form Memorization hints and stroke–order diagrams. Hong Kong/Taiwan and China/Singapore forms. Traditional and modern radical systems. The best-selling student's guide |
chinese system of writing: The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System William G. Boltz, 1994 Originally published in 1994 (hardcover now out of print), this volume has been reprinted in a new paperback format that will make it more attractive and affordable for use in the classroom. The work sketches with extraordinary precision the history of the Chinese writing system from the late Shang (ca. 1200 B.C.) when Chinese characters are first in evidence down to the script's standardization and codification a millennium later in the Ch'in and Han (221 B.C.-A.D. 220). Prof. Boltz takes in part a comparative approach to the origin and early structure and development of Chinese writing, suggesting that in its general principles the process was matched pari passu by the way writing first arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and among the Mayas (for example, that the Chinese script records the sounds of words, not ideas). The author also examines the question of why the Chinese script never became alphabetic, in spite of hints of such tendencies in the third and second centuries B.C. Kidder Smith, of Bowdoin College, said of the original publication: ... this book will be highly valued by anyone concerned with the relationships of language to writing, and should become the point of reference for all discussions of these questions as they pertain to ancient Chinese (Religious Studies Review Vol. 21, No. 4, October 1995). |
chinese system of writing: Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese Insup Taylor, M. Martin Taylor, 2014-12-15 The book describes how the three East Asian writing systems-Chinese, Korean, and Japanese- originated, developed, and are used today. Uniquely, this book: (1) examines the three East Asian scripts (and English) together in relation to each other, and (2) discusses how these scripts are, and historically have been, used in literacy and how they are learned, written, read, and processed by the eyes, the brain, and the mind. In this second edition, the authors have included recent research findings on the uses of the scripts, added several new sections, and rewritten several other sections. They have also added a new Part IV to deal with issues that similarly involve all the four languages/scripts of their interest. The book is intended both for the general public and for interested scholars. Technical terms (listed in a glossary) are used only when absolutely necessary. |
chinese system of writing: Chinese Writing Xigui Qiu, Gilbert Louis Mattos, Jerry Norman, 2000 |
chinese system of writing: Chinese Writing and Calligraphy Wendan Li, 2010-05-31 Suitable for college and high school students and those learning on their own, this fully illustrated coursebook provides comprehensive instruction in the history and practical techniques of Chinese calligraphy. No previous knowledge of the language is required to follow the text or complete the lessons. The work covers three major areas: 1) descriptions of Chinese characters and their components, including stroke types, layout patterns, and indications of sound and meaning; 2) basic brush techniques; and 3) the social, cultural, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese calligraphy—all of which are crucial to understanding and appreciating this art form. Students practice brush writing as they progress from tracing to copying to free-hand writing. Model characters are marked to indicate meaning and stroke order, and well-known model phrases are shown in various script types, allowing students to practice different calligraphic styles. Beginners will find the author’s advice on how to avoid common pitfalls in writing brush strokes invaluable. Chinese Writing and Calligraphy will be welcomed by both students and instructors in need of an accessible text on learning the fundamentals of the art of writing Chinese characters. |
chinese system of writing: Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese Insup Taylor, Martin M. Taylor, Maurice Martin Taylor, 1995-01-01 Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population.They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users.Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating. |
chinese system of writing: Visible Speech John DeFrancis, 1989-06-01 Visible Speech is an attempt to set the record straight about the nature of writing. John DeFrancis, a noted specialist in the Chinese language, shows that writing can be based only upon a sound system and not upon any other linguistic level. He corrects the erroneous views of Chinese writing as pictographic, ideographic, logographic, or morphemic, and defends his conclusion that because of these misrepresentations, the nature of all writing continues to be misunderstood. Using the writing systems of Sumerian, Egyptian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Mayan, and English, among others, to illustrate his points, Dr. DeFrancis stresses their basic identity as representatives of visible speech, while noting their secondary differences as manifested in their diverse script forms. He proposes a new classification of writing systems based on this theme of diversity and oneness, and makes an impassioned case for the essential phonetic component of all writing. This book reflects the author's sound scholarship and novel insights, which place it in the forefront with such classics on writing as those by Gelb, Diringer, Cohen, Février, and Jensen. The readable style aims at a general audience interested in understanding the nature of the symbols that first strike the eye, while the academic research involved makes it an indispensable work for scholars in the many fields related to language and linguistics. |
chinese system of writing: The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature Kang-i Sun Chang, Stephen Owen, 2010 Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket. |
chinese system of writing: Writing Systems, Reading Processes, and Cross-Linguistic Influences Hye K. Pae, 2018-07-15 This book provides readers with a unique array of scholarly reflections on the writing systems of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in relation to reading processes and data-driven interpretations of cross-language transfer. Distinctively broad in scope, topics addressed in this volume include word reading with respect to orthographic, phonological, morphological, and semantic processing as well as cross-linguistic influences on reading in English as a second language or a foreign language. Given that the three focal scripts have unique orthographic features not found in other languages – Chinese as logography, Japanese with multi-scripts, and Korean as non-Roman alphasyllabary – chapters expound script-universal and script-specific reading processes. As a means of scaling up the body of knowledge traditionally focused on Anglocentric reading research, the scientific accounts articulated in this volume importantly expand the field’s current theoretical frameworks of word processing to theory building with regard to these three languages. |
chinese system of writing: The Cambridge Illustrated History of China Patricia Buckley Ebrey, 1999-05-13 A look at the over eight thousand year history and civilization of China. |
chinese system of writing: China: A History Harold Miles Tanner, 2009-03-13 A deep and rigorous, yet eminently accessible introduction to the political, social, and cultural development of imperial Chinese civilisation, this volume develops a number of important themes -- such as the ethnic diversity of the early empires -- that other editions omit entirely or discuss only minimally. Includes a general introduction, chronology, bibliography, illustrations, maps, and an index. |
chinese system of writing: The World's Writing Systems Peter T. Daniels, William Bright, 1996 Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form. The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection. |
chinese system of writing: Traditional Chinese Characters: A Translingual Writing System Emmanuel Ternon, 2019-02-18 Chinese characters are a fascinating writing system. As humanity's last logographic script still in widespread use today, they constitute a precious part of the cultural heritage of the so-called Sinosphere, the region of the world made up of the various nations using Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese as their official languages. Chinese characters once served as part of the writing systems of these four languages, enabling a person literate in one language to read a large number of written words in the other three. However, Chinese characters have suffered a great deal of damage in recent history due to language reforms that either simplified these characters (in Chinese and Japanese) or removed them from the language's writing system altogether (in Korean and Vietnamese). These reforms have not only made East Asian people less capable of understanding their own languages but also severely reduced cross-cultural communication between the various nations of the Sinosphere. In this book, we examine how the damage caused by Chinese character simplification and elimination reforms can be reversed by re-adopting traditional (i.e. non-simplified) Chinese characters into the writing systems of all languages of the Sinosphere. Doing this would not only enable users of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese to better understand their own languages, but also have the potential to help East Asian people reconnect with their common cultural heritage. |
chinese system of writing: Language Conflict and Language Rights William D. Davies, Stanley Dubinsky, 2018-08-09 As the colonial hegemony of empire fades around the world, the role of language in ethnic conflict has become increasingly topical, as have issues concerning the right of speakers to choose and use their preferred language(s). Such rights are often asserted and defended in response to their being violated. The importance of understanding these events and issues, and their relationship to individual, ethnic, and national identity, is central to research and debate in a range of fields outside of, as well as within, linguistics. This book provides a clearly written introduction for linguists and non-specialists alike, presenting basic facts about the role of language in the formation of identity and the preservation of culture. It articulates and explores categories of conflict and language rights abuses through detailed presentation of illustrative case studies, and distills from these key cross-linguistic and cross-cultural generalizations. |
chinese system of writing: Daily Life in Traditional China Charles D. Benn, |
chinese system of writing: Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E Xing Lu, 2022-03-10 Xing Lu examines language, art, persuasion, and argumentation in ancient China and offers a detailed and authentic account of ancient Chinese rhetorical theories and practices within the society's philosophical, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. She focuses on the works of five schools of thought and ten well-known Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Han Feizi to the the Later Mohists. Lu identifies seven key Chinese terms pertaining to speech, language, persuasion, and argumentation as they appeared in these original texts, selecting ming bian as the linchpin for the Chinese conceptual term of rhetorical studies. Lu compares Chinese rhetorical perspectives with those of the ancient Greeks, illustrating that the Greeks and the Chinese shared a view of rhetoric as an ethical enterprise and of speech as a rational and psychological activity. The two traditions differed, however, in their rhetorical education, sense of rationality, perceptions of the role of language, approach to the treatment and study of rhetoric, and expression of emotions. Lu also links ancient Chinese rhetorical perspectives with contemporary Chinese interpersonal and political communication behavior and offers suggestions for a multicultural rhetoric that recognizes both culturally specific and transcultural elements of human communication. |
chinese system of writing: Cantonese as Written Language Don Snow, 2004-10-01 Cantonese is the only dialect of Chinese which has developed a widely known and used written form. It has played a role in publishing in the Guangdong region since the late Ming dynasty when various types of verses using Cantonese were published as mu yu shu (‘wooden fish books’). In the early twentieth century these dialect texts were joined by Cantonese opera scripts, published as popular reading material. However, it was only after the end of the Second World War that written Cantonese came to be widely used in popular newspapers and magazines, advertising, and in the private communications. Cantonese as Written Language examines this development in the broader context of diglossia, and also of the patterns by which spoken vernaculars have developed written forms in other societies. Based on primary source research, including interviews with publishers and writers who played an important role in the growth of written Cantonese, the author argues that this move of Cantonese into the realm of written language is closely associated with Hong Kong's distinct local culture and identity. The growth of the written vernacular also reflects the territory's evolving cultural distinctiveness from mainland China, first as a British colony, and now as a Special Administrative Region of China. |
chinese system of writing: Hacking Chinese Olle Linge, 2016-03-26 Learning Chinese can be frustrating and difficult, partly because it's very different from European languages. Following a teacher, textbook or language course is not enough. They show you the characters, words and grammar you need to become proficient in Chinese, but they don't teach you how to learn them! Regardless of what program you're in (if any), you need to take responsibility for your own learning. If you don't, you will miss many important things that aren't included in the course you're taking. If you study on your own, you need to be even more aware of what you need to do, what you're doing at the moment and the difference between them. Here are some of the questions I have asked and have since been asked many times by students: How do I learn characters efficiently? How do I get the most out of my course or teacher? Which are the best learning tools and resources? How can I become fluent in Mandarin? How can I improve my pronunciation? How do I learn successfully on my own? How can I motivate myself to study more? How can I fit learning Chinese into a busy schedule? The answers I've found to these questions and many others form the core of this book. It took eight years of learning, researching, teaching and writing to figure these things out. Not everybody has the time to do that! I can't go back in time and help myself learn in a better way, but I can help you! This book is meant for normal students and independent language learners alike. While it covers all major areas of learning, you won't learn Chinese just by reading this book. It's like when someone on TV teaches you how to cook: you won't get to eat the delicious dish just by watching the program; you have to do the cooking yourself. That's true for this book as well. When you apply what you learn, it will boost your learning, making every hour you spend count for more, but you still have to do the learning yourself. This is what a few readers have said about the book: The book had me nodding at a heap of things I'd learnt the hard way, wishing I knew them when I started, as well as highlighting areas that I'm currently missing in my study. - Geoff van der Meer, VP engineering This publication is like a bible for anyone serious about Chinese proficiency. It's easy for anyone to read and written with scientific precision. - Zachary Danz, foreign teacher, children's theatre artist About me I started learning Chinese when I was 23 (that's more than eight years ago now) and have since studied in many different situations, including serious immersion programs abroad, high-intensity programs in Sweden, online courses, as well as on the side while working or studying other things. I have also successfully used my Chinese in a graduate program for teaching Chinese as a second language, taught entirely in Chinese mostly for native speakers (the Graduate Institute for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University). All these parts have contributed to my website, Hacking Chinese, where I write regularly about how to learn Mandarin. |
chinese system of writing: Writing and Authority in Early China Mark Edward Lewis, 1999-01-01 This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects. |
chinese system of writing: Basic Written Chinese Practice Essentials Cornelius C. Kubler, Jerling Guo Kubler, 2011-12-20 Use this one-of-a-kind practice guide and Chinese workbook together with any Chinese book or language program, and dramatically enhance your speaking. No matter what book or course you're using to learn Chinese, it takes a lot of practice. Here is a wealth of effective practice activities to help polish your written Chinese. This book corresponds to Basic Written Chinese and allows you to move from complete beginner level to basic proficiency. Included downloadable content contains extensive audio material, as well as (printable) flash cards. Practice Essentials includes carefully designed activities to help solidify every aspect of your spoken Chinese skills, including: Chinese character practice sheets. Dictation, fill-in-the-blank, dialog completion. Answering questions, map reading, converting written style to spoken style. Identify radicals and phonetics; punctuating sentences. Written tasks based on realia like schedule, photographs, and name cards. Translation exercises. The downloadable materials include: 64 minutes of native-speaker audio. 288 printable flash cards. Together with this book, you can use the Basic Spoken Chinese series if you want to learn fluent spoken Mandarin. About the Series: Respected Chinese language expert Dr. Cornelius Kubler, who has taught diplomats, business people and students, presents a learning system that uses separate but integrated tracks to help you efficiently master the basics of spoken and written Chinese. The materials in Basic Spoken Chinese allow you to move from complete beginner level to basic fluency. |
chinese system of writing: A Phonological History of Chinese Zhongwei Shen, 2020-06-04 A one-stop, comprehensive account of the key developments in the phonological history of Chinese. |
chinese system of writing: Writing Systems Geoffrey Sampson, 1985 To say that writing has as much claim as speech to be treated as language may strike the reader as a statement of the obvious. But the fact is that, although the tide is beginning to turn now, for most of the twentieth century linguistics has almost wholly ignored writing. It is not necessary to accept all the theories of the French critic Jacques Derrida in order to agree with him when he describes writing as the wandering outcast of linguistics. This book is offered in the belief that written language is a form of language. As such, it deserves to be treated with the methods of modern, scientific linguistic study, which have been increasing our understanding of the spoken form of language for many decades. |
chinese system of writing: Writing and the Ancient State Haicheng Wang, 2014-05-12 Writing and the Ancient State explores the early development of writing and its relationship to the growth of political structures. The first part of the book focuses on the contribution of writing to the state's legitimating project. The second part deals with the state's use of writing in administration, analyzing both textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the state used bookkeeping to allocate land, police its people, and extract taxes from them. The third part focuses on education, the state's system for replenishing its staff of scribe-officials. The first half of each part surveys evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya lowlands, Central Mexico, and the Andes; against this background the second half examines the evidence from China. The chief aim of this book is to shed new light on early China (from the second millennium BC through the end of the Han period, ca. 220 AD) while bringing to bear the lens of cross-cultural analysis on each of the civilizations under discussion. |
chinese system of writing: The Origins of Chinese Writing Paola Demattè, 2022-10-18 This study explores the evidence for Chinese writing in the late Neolithic (3500-2000 BCE) and early Bronze Age (2000-1250 BCE) periods. Chinese writing is often said to have begun with little incubation during the late Shang period (c. 1300-1045 BCE) in the middle-lower Yellow River Valley area as a sudden independent invention. This explanation runs counter to evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica that shows that independent developments of writing generally undergo a protracted evolution. It also ignores archaeological data from the Chinese Neolithic and early Bronze Age that reveals the existence of signs comparable to Shang characters. Paola Demattè takes this data into account to address the issue of what writing is, and when, why, and how it develops, by employing a theory of writing that does not privilege language as a prime mover. It focuses instead on visual systems of communication as well as ideological and socio-economic developments as key elements that promote the eventual development of writing. To understand the processes that led to primary developments of writing, The Origins of Chinese Writing draws from the latest research on the early writing systems of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica, and other forms of protowriting. The result is a novel and inclusive theoretical approach to the archaeological evidence, grammatological data, and textual sources, an approach that demonstrates that Chinese writing emerged out of a long process that began in the Late Neolithic and continued during the Early Bronze Age. |
chinese system of writing: Oxford Bibliographies , |
chinese system of writing: Mandarin Chinese Language Composition Notebook Tuttle Publishing, 2020-08-25 This beautiful notebook makes studying a pleasure! Each double page spread has squared paper on the right-hand side for practicing formation of the Chinese characters, and lined paper on the left-hand side for note-taking. A ten-page reference section at the back of the notebook gives Mandarin character charts, key vocabulary, and basic grammar tips. Contents: Pages 1-118 Alternate pages of lined and squared paper for note-taking and handwriting practice Pages 119-120 Chinese Character charts Pages 121-124 Key vocabulary lists Pages 125-128 Basic grammar tips |
Home | New China
Humboldt, TN 38343 Chinese food for Pickup - Order from New China in Humboldt, TN 38343, phone: 731-337-7114
Chinese language - Wikipedia
Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages [d] spoken natively by the ethnic Han …
China Chef Columbia
China Chef Columbia is a Chinese restaurant serving a wide array of fine traditional Chinese dishes. We not only offer amazing Chinese food but also serve it in a pleasant atmosphere that'll have …
The Best 10 Chinese Restaurants near Crossville, TN 38555 - Yelp
Ah Mah and Son Asian Eatery. “Freshly made Chinese food in a nice clean environment. Great place for a quick lunch or family...” more. 2. China King. 3. A Taste of China. 4. China New Buffet. “Best …
THE BEST 10 CHINESE RESTAURANTS in FRANKLIN, TN - Yelp
Most authentic Chinese cuisine middle Tennessee! Small "hole in the wall" family...” more. 4. New China. 5. Changhong Spicy Hot Pot. “Absolutely amazing, authentic Chinese food! The super …
Chinese - World Languages and Cultures Department
With written records stretching back more than 4000 years, Chinese language and culture are amongst the world’s oldest. In recent decades, the country has become the world’s …
No1 Chinese Chinese Food Franklin, TN 37064 Online Order! , …
No1 Chinese Franklin, TN 37064 Authentic Chinese cuisine available for delivery and carry out. Hunan, Szechuan, Cantonee specialities and lunch specials.
WokChow Fire Seared Asian – Chinese Food in Knoxville TN with …
WokChow is Knoxville’s best place to enjoy your favorite Asian Dishes, whether it be Teriyaki Chicken, Beef Lo-mein, or many other items, WokChow has it! Serving Dine-in, Take-out, or …
The Best Chinese Food in Nashville
Nov 19, 2024 · Whether you want to dine in a hip space with natural wine pairings or grab fast-casual dumplings to go, here are the best restaurants to find Chinese food in Nashville. For all the …
China Garden - Zmenu
China Garden, located at 130 Walmart Dr #100 in Smithville, Tennessee, is a Chinese restaurant offering a variety of dining options for lunch and dinner. With its fast service, China Garden …
Home | New China
Humboldt, TN 38343 Chinese food for Pickup - Order from New China in Humboldt, TN 38343, phone: 731-337-7114
Chinese language - Wikipedia
Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages [d] spoken natively by the ethnic …
China Chef Columbia
China Chef Columbia is a Chinese restaurant serving a wide array of fine traditional Chinese dishes. We not only offer amazing Chinese food but also serve it in a pleasant atmosphere …
The Best 10 Chinese Restaurants near Crossville, TN 38555 - Yelp
Ah Mah and Son Asian Eatery. “Freshly made Chinese food in a nice clean environment. Great place for a quick lunch or family...” more. 2. China King. 3. A Taste of China. 4. China New …
THE BEST 10 CHINESE RESTAURANTS in FRANKLIN, TN - Yelp
Most authentic Chinese cuisine middle Tennessee! Small "hole in the wall" family...” more. 4. New China. 5. Changhong Spicy Hot Pot. “Absolutely amazing, authentic Chinese food! The super …
Chinese - World Languages and Cultures Department
With written records stretching back more than 4000 years, Chinese language and culture are amongst the world’s oldest. In recent decades, the country has become the world’s …
No1 Chinese Chinese Food Franklin, TN 37064 Online Order! , …
No1 Chinese Franklin, TN 37064 Authentic Chinese cuisine available for delivery and carry out. Hunan, Szechuan, Cantonee specialities and lunch specials.
WokChow Fire Seared Asian – Chinese Food in Knoxville TN with …
WokChow is Knoxville’s best place to enjoy your favorite Asian Dishes, whether it be Teriyaki Chicken, Beef Lo-mein, or many other items, WokChow has it! Serving Dine-in, Take-out, or …
The Best Chinese Food in Nashville
Nov 19, 2024 · Whether you want to dine in a hip space with natural wine pairings or grab fast-casual dumplings to go, here are the best restaurants to find Chinese food in Nashville. For all …
China Garden - Zmenu
China Garden, located at 130 Walmart Dr #100 in Smithville, Tennessee, is a Chinese restaurant offering a variety of dining options for lunch and dinner. With its fast service, China Garden …