The Origin of Chinese Characters

The Origin of Chinese Characters PDF Author: Kihoon Lee
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628943238
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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The Origin of Chinese Characters

The Origin of Chinese Characters PDF Author: Kihoon Lee
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628943238
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


The Beginning of Chinese Characters

The Beginning of Chinese Characters PDF Author: Ethel R. Nelson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780937869031
Category : Chinese characters
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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A History of the Chinese Language

A History of the Chinese Language PDF Author: Hongyuan Dong
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429559682
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
A History of the Chinese Language provides a comprehensive introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language from its Proto-Sino-Tibetan roots in prehistoric times to Modern Standard Chinese. Taking a highly accessible and balanced approach, it presents a chronological survey of the various stages of the Chinese language, covering key aspects such as phonology, syntax, and semantics. The second edition presents a revised and updated version that reflects recent scholarship in Chinese historical linguistics and new developments in related disciplines. Features include: Coverage of the major historical stages in Chinese language development, such as Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Modern Chinese, and Modern Standard Chinese. Treatment of core linguistic aspects of the Chinese language, including phonological changes, grammatical development, lexical evolution, vernacular writing, the Chinese writing system, and Chinese dialects. Inclusion of authentic Chinese texts throughout the book, presented within a rigorous framework of linguistic analysis to help students to build up critical and evaluative skills and acquire valuable cultural knowledge. Integration of materials from different disciplines, such as archaeology, genetics, history, and sociolinguistics, to highlight the cultural and social background of each period of the language. Written by a highly experienced instructor, A History of the Chinese Language will be an essential resource for students of Chinese language and linguistics and for anyone interested in the history and culture of China.

Analysis of Chinese Characters

Analysis of Chinese Characters PDF Author: George Durand Wilder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chinese language
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms

Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms PDF Author: Gam Go
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780962311345
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The principal unit of a Chinese character, called the Radical (RADIX-root), gives the general meaning of the character. Most of the time, it is placed on the left-hand side of the character. The 5,000 characters are arranged ALPHABETICALLY according to the English names of their Radicals. Mr. Go (author of "Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms") found that over 3,000 characters (about 60%) can be found knowing only 27 simple, easy-to-recognize Radicals (such as Man, Hand, Mouth, Water, Tree). A Rapid Access Index allows the user to have immediate access to the character by recognizing a second writing-unit. There are 214 writing-units in total & their English meanings are explained on the basis of their ancestral forms. The dictionary also contains the SIMPLIFIED & ROMANIZED (so called "PINYIN") forms of the characters now officially being used in the People's Republic of China. This is certainly a book that should be on the shelf of the reference section of all libraries. Phone orders accepted: (415) 564-5494.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
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.

Beginning Mandarin Chinese Characters Volume 1

Beginning Mandarin Chinese Characters Volume 1 PDF Author: Haohsiang Liao
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 9780804845076
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Learn the essential Mandarin Chinese characters and words in everyday use in China! Anyone planning to learn Chinese knows that there are 300 primary characters they must learn to function in China. This systematic introduction to Mandarin is designed to help you learn them fast—along with how to pronounce, write, and remember 1,200 key vocabulary words and phrases. Essential for anyone wishing to pass the official Chinese government HSK Level 1 & 2 proficiency exam or the Advanced Placement (AP) Chinese Language and Culture Exam, Beginning Mandarin Chinese Characters, Volume 1 presents these 300 characters in a series of very simple and easy lessons that: The characters are grouped into themes with a warm-up narrative for each character Each character's pronunciation and meanings in combination with other characters are presented Exercises to practice recognizing the characters and using the vocabulary are provided Writing guides show you how to write each correctly Includes easy access to online native speaker audio recordings and free, printable flashcards

The Chinese Typewriter

The Chinese Typewriter PDF Author: Thomas S. Mullaney
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262536102
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
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 Characters

Chinese Characters PDF Author: L‚on Wieger
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486213218
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
The heart of this book is a series of etymological lessons, in which approximately 2300 Chinese characters are classidied according to 224 'primitives' upon which they are based. For each character Father Wieger gives the modern form, its archaic form, literary pronunciation (Wade system), explanations of origin, semantic content of component parts, related characters, variants forms, quotations of classical usage, and similar material. To make his book more useful Father Wieger has also incorporated a tremendous number of reading aids for the student - listings of the primitives; an index of the characters analyzed, arranged by number of strokes; a listing of 858 phonetic elements, arranged by number of strokes; a listing of about 10,000 characters by phonetic element; a lexicon by transliteration, comprising about 7,000 characters; and a lexicon of about 10,000 characters according to the customary modern system of 214 radicals devised by K'ang-hsi.

Chinese Characters

Chinese Characters PDF Author: James Trapp
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
ISBN: 1908273739
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
Classical Chinese calligraphy is a popular and valuable art form. Characters expressing concepts such as love, peace, respect and happiness are reproduced in a large format, with an accessible and inspiring explanation of how the character developed, what the particular strokes symbolize, and its various different meanings.