Dive into the fascinating world of Chinese characters with Hari and Kimi! Discover the incredible history of this logographic writing system, one of only four independently invented writing systems still in use today. Journey from its origins in oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty to its evolution through various script styles like clerical and regular script. Learn how characters generally represent morphemes, units of meaning, unlike alphabets that represent sounds. Explore how characters spread across the Sinosphere, adapting to write languages like Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja), and Vietnamese (chữ Hán). Uncover the principles behind their structure, including pictographs, indicatives, compound ideographs, and the most common type, phono-semantic compounds. Find out how modern technology, from typewriters to computers, adapted to handle thousands of distinct characters. Don't miss this insightful look into a writing system with over three millennia of documented history and its enduring cultural impact!
Source article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_characters
License information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/