猜文字

Chinese characters, also known as Zhongwen characters, Huawen characters, or Tanghuazi characters, are a logographic writing system invented for writing Chinese. They are widely used across the Sinosphere, and are the world's only logographic system that is still widely used and highly developed, as well as a unique ideographic and semantic compounding writing system. They were first invented by the ancestors of the Huaxia people of the Yellow River civilization in ancient China, and their forms have undergone long-term improvement and evolution over time. While their exact origin is still debated, the earliest known forms can be traced back to pottery inscriptions. Oracle bone script, Zhou script, and bronze script from the Shang Dynasty around 1300 BCE have been deciphered, followed by Zhou script and small seal script during the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and Qin dynasties. The script evolved through the clerical transformation of the Han Dynasty, giving rise to clerical script, cursive script, and regular script (as well as the derived running script). By the Tang Dynasty, regular script was standardized as the handwritten font standard used today, and it is also the modern Chinese characters widely used now. In ancient texts, these characters were simply called "zi" (characters). The term "Hanzi" (Chinese characters) was later adopted to distinguish them from the writing systems of other ethnic groups, referring specifically to the writing system used by the Han people, and this term only became widely used in modern times. As the written language for all varieties of the Chinese language family, Chinese characters are the longest continuously used major writing system in history, and the only one from the ancient major writing systems that has been passed down to the present day. In contrast, the writing systems of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and ancient India have long been extinct. Chinese characters have been the main official writing system of China throughout all dynasties, and are still de facto official writing systems in both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China today. Chinese characters had reached a highly mature level of development in ancient times. They were not only used in China, but also served as the only international common writing system in East Asia for a long period. Before the 20th century, they were the standard written language for the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, the Ryukyu Islands, Japan and other countries. In addition to Chinese, ancient East Asian countries also created their own Chinese characters to varying degrees. Modern Chinese characters can be broadly divided into two major standards: traditional characters/traditional character forms (Traditional Chinese characters) and the later developed simplified characters/simplified character forms (Simplified Chinese characters). The former is mainly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, while the latter was formulated and used by the People's Republic of China, and is also adopted by countries with large Chinese populations such as Singapore and Malaysia. Outside of the Chinese language system, Japan simplified some Chinese characters on its own to create the current new Japanese character forms, and the Republic of Korea has also formulated official standards for the use of Korean Hanja. In countries that historically used Chinese characters, such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia, Chinese characters no longer have official normative status today. Stroke (also written as "bihua" with the variant character 划) refers to a single continuous line written without interruption when writing Chinese characters. In daily use, it generally refers to the strokes of regular script writing and printed character forms (such as Ming typeface). The content described in this entry is no exception. When referring to the strokes of ancient seal scripts or cursive script, additional clarification is usually provided. Strokes are the smallest constituent unit of Chinese characters, and can be divided into two major categories: basic strokes and compound strokes. Stroke order refers to the sequence in which strokes appear when writing Chinese characters.