69-526: The Chinese New Hymnal ( simplified Chinese : 赞美诗（新编） ; traditional Chinese : 讚美詩（新編） ; pinyin : Zànměishī (Xīnbiān) ) was published in the early 1980s and is the main hymnal used by the Protestant churches registered through the TSPM in present-day China. The Chinese New Hymnal was begun being edited in the 1980s when persecution against religion, especially against Christianity, during
138-477: A Chinese dictionary . The radical for a character is typically a semantic component, but can also be another structural component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases the original semantic or phonological connection has become obscure, owing to changes in the meaning or pronunciation of the character over time. The use of the English term radical is based on an analogy between
207-424: A character or a sub-component called a radical —usually involves either a reduction in its total number of strokes , or an apparent streamlining of which strokes are chosen in what places—for example, the ⼓ ' WRAP ' radical used in the traditional character 沒 is simplified to ⼏ ' TABLE ' to form the simplified character 没 . By systematically simplifying radicals, large swaths of
276-601: A character using this radical is yín "silver"; traditionally: 銀, simplified: 银. Many dictionaries support using radical classification to index and look up characters, although many present-day dictionaries supplement it with other methods. For example, modern dictionaries in PRC normally use the Pinyin transcription of a character to perform character lookup. Following the "section-header-and-stroke-count" method of Mei Yingzuo , characters are listed by their radical and then ordered by
345-434: A conversion table. While exercising such derivation, the following rules should be observed: Sample Derivations : The Series One List of Variant Characters reduces the number of total standard characters. First, amongst each set of variant characters sharing identical pronunciation and meaning, one character (usually the simplest in form) is elevated to the standard character set, and the rest are made obsolete. Then amongst
414-548: A dictionary according to the system established by Xu Shen. It is the "head" of a section, assigned for convenience only. Thus, a section heading is usually the element common to all characters belonging to the same section. (Cf. L. Wang, 1962:1.151). The semantic elements of phonetic compounds were usually also used as section headings. However, characters in the same section are not necessarily all phonetic compounds. ...In some sections, such as 品 pin3 "the masses" (S. Xu 1963:48) and 爪 zhua3 "a hand" (S. Xu 1963:63), no phonetic compound
483-480: A dot or horizontal stroke. Some were even artificially extracted groups of strokes, termed "glyphs" by Serruys (1984, p. 657), which never had an independent existence other than being listed in Shuowen . Each character was listed under only one element, which is then referred to as the radical for that character. For example, characters containing 女 nǚ "female" or 木 mù "tree, wood" are often grouped together in
552-407: A few revised forms, and was implemented for official use by China's State Council on 5 June 2013. In Chinese, simplified characters are referred to by their official name 简化字 ; jiǎnhuàzì , or colloquially as 简体字 ; jiǎntǐzì . The latter term refers broadly to all character variants featuring simplifications of character form or structure, a practice which has always been present as
621-501: A four-stroke radical but might also be listed as a three-stroke radical because it is usually written as 忄 when it forms a part of another character. This means that the dictionary user need not know that the two are etymologically identical. It is sometimes possible to find one and the same character indexed under multiple radicals. For example, many dictionaries list 義 under both 羊 and ⼽ 'HALBERD' (the radical of its lower part 我). Furthermore, with digital dictionaries, it
690-610: A newly coined phono-semantic compound : Removing radicals Only retaining single radicals Replacing with ancient forms or variants : Adopting ancient vulgar variants : Readopting abandoned phonetic-loan characters : Copying and modifying another traditional character : Based on 132 characters and 14 components listed in Chart 2 of the Complete List , the 1,753 derived characters found in Chart 3 can be created by systematically simplifying components using Chart 2 as
759-573: A part of the Chinese writing system. The official name tends to refer to the specific, systematic set published by the Chinese government, which includes not only simplifications of individual characters, but also a substantial reduction in the total number of characters through the merger of formerly distinct forms. According to Chinese palaeographer Qiu Xigui , the broadest trend in the evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape ( 字形 ; zìxíng ),
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#1732782907010828-475: A semantic component with a phonetic component, each semantic component tended to recur within a particular section of the dictionary. In the 2nd century AD, the Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen organized his etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi by selecting 540 recurring graphic elements he called bù (部 , "categories"). Most were common semantic components, but they also included shared graphic elements such as
897-410: A system where characters are indexed under more than one radical and/or set of key elements to make it easier to find them. The inflected words of European languages are decomposed into radical and termination . The radical gives the meaning; the termination indicates case, time, mood. The first sinologists applied those grammatical terms belonging to inflected languages, to the Chinese language which
966-440: Is actually more complex than eliminated ones. An example is the character 搾 which is eliminated in favor of the variant form 榨 . The 扌 'HAND' with three strokes on the left of the eliminated 搾 is now seen as more complex, appearing as the ⽊ 'TREE' radical 木 , with four strokes, in the chosen variant 榨 . Not all characters standardised in the simplified set consist of fewer strokes. For instance,
1035-454: Is derived. Merging homophonous characters: Adapting cursive shapes ( 草書楷化 ): Replacing a component with a simple arbitrary symbol (such as 又 and 乂 ): Omitting entire components : Omitting components, then applying further alterations : Structural changes that preserve the basic shape Replacing the phonetic component of phono-semantic compounds : Replacing an uncommon phonetic component : Replacing entirely with
1104-408: Is not an inflected one. It is important to note that the concepts of semantic element and "section heading" (部首 bùshǒu) are different, and should be clearly distinguished. The semantic element is parallel to the phonetic element in terms of the phonetic compound, while the section heading is a terminology of Chinese lexicography, which is a generic heading for the characters arranged in each section of
1173-813: Is now discouraged. A State Language Commission official cited "oversimplification" as the reason for restoring some characters. The language authority declared an open comment period until 31 August 2009, for feedback from the public. In 2013, the List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters was published as a revision of the 1988 lists; it included a total of 8105 characters. It included 45 newly recognized standard characters that were previously considered variant forms, as well as official approval of 226 characters that had been simplified by analogy and had seen wide use but were not explicitly given in previous lists or documents. Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification , eventually arriving at
1242-831: Is now possible to search for characters by cross-reference. Using this "multi-component method" a relatively new development enabled by computing technology, the user can select all of a character's components from a table and the computer will present a list of matching characters. This eliminates the guesswork of choosing the correct radical and calculating the correct stroke count, and cuts down searching time significantly. One can query for characters containing both 羊 and 戈, and get back only five characters (羢, 義, 儀, 羬 and 羲) to search through. The Academia Sinica's 漢字構形資料庫 Chinese character structure database also works this way, returning only seven characters for this query. Harbaugh's Chinese Characters dictionary similarly allows searches based on any component. Some modern computer dictionaries allow
1311-497: Is often less than 214. The Oxford Concise English–Chinese Dictionary has 188. A few dictionaries also introduce new radicals based on the principles first used by Xu Shen, treating groups of radicals that are used together in many different characters as a kind of radical. In modern practice, radicals are primarily used as lexicographic tools and as learning aids when writing characters. They have become increasingly disconnected from semantics , etymology and phonetics . Some of
1380-623: Is referred to as the " big seal script ". The traditional narrative, as also attested in the Shuowen Jiezi dictionary ( c. 100 AD ), is that the Qin small seal script that would later be imposed across China was originally derived from the Zhou big seal script with few modifications. However, the body of epigraphic evidence comparing the character forms used by scribes gives no indication of any real consolidation in character forms prior to
1449-422: Is translated as "indexing component". ). Radicals may appear in any position in a character. For example, 女 appears on the left side in the characters 姐, 媽, 她, 好 and 姓, but it appears at the bottom in 妾. Semantic components tend to appear on the top or on the left side of the character, and phonetic components on the right side or at the bottom. These are loose rules, however, and exceptions are plenty. Sometimes,
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#17327829070101518-547: Is used instead of 叠 in regions using traditional characters. The Chinese government stated that it wished to keep Chinese orthography stable. The Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese was published in 1988 and included 7000 simplified and unsimplified characters. Of these, half were also included in the revised List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese , which specified 2500 common characters and 1000 less common characters. In 2009,
1587-485: The Cultural Revolution subsided and churches were reopened, with the intention to collect both domestic and overseas hymns. Its "Simple notation (in simplified Chinese : 简谱 ; traditional Chinese : 簡譜 ; pinyin : jianpu ) version", using the numbered musical notation system, was published in 1983 and " staff musical notation version" in 1985. The former version is predominantly used in
1656-752: The Lord's Prayer as it is written in the Chinese Union Version and the Apostles' Creed are usually used in the Three-Self churches in China. Simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized character sets widely used to write the Chinese language , with the other being traditional characters . Their mass standardization during the 20th century
1725-592: The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and the State Language Work Committee issued The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components (GF 0011-2009 汉字部首表 ), which includes 201 principal indexing components and 100 associated indexing components (In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any component or 偏旁 piānpáng of Chinese characters, while 部首
1794-403: The "Dot" stroke : The traditional components ⺥ and 爫 become ⺈ : The traditional component 奐 becomes 奂 : Radical (Chinese characters) A radical ( Chinese : 部首 ; pinyin : bùshǒu ; lit. 'section header'), or indexing component , is a visually prominent component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in
1863-459: The "external appearances of individual graphs", and in graphical form ( 字体 ; 字體 ; zìtǐ ), "overall changes in the distinguishing features of graphic[al] shape and calligraphic style, [...] in most cases refer[ring] to rather obvious and rather substantial changes". The initiatives following the founding of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) to universalize the use of their small seal script across
1932-482: The 1986 General List of Simplified Chinese Characters , hereafter the General List . All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Chart 1 and Chart 2 in the 1986 Complete List . Characters in both charts are structurally simplified based on similar set of principles. They are separated into two charts to clearly mark those in Chart 2 as 'usable as simplified character components', based on which Chart 3
2001-520: The 1986 mainland China revisions. Unlike in mainland China, Singapore parents have the option of registering their children's names in traditional characters. Malaysia also promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, though completely identical to the mainland Chinese set. They are used in Chinese-language schools. All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Charts 1 and 2 of
2070-470: The Chinese government published a major revision to the list which included a total of 8300 characters. No new simplifications were introduced. In addition, slight modifications to the orthography of 44 characters to fit traditional calligraphic rules were initially proposed, but were not implemented due to negative public response. Also, the practice of unrestricted simplification of rare and archaic characters by analogy using simplified radicals or components
2139-491: The People's Republic of China and elsewhere has modified a number of components, including those used as radicals. This has created a number of new radical forms. For instance, the character 金 jīn , when used as a radical, is written 釒(that is, with the same number of strokes, and only a minor variation) in traditional writing , but 钅in simplified characters. This means that simplified writing has resulted in significant differences not present in traditional writing. An example of
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2208-428: The character set are altered. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms that embody graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. In addition, variant characters with identical pronunciation and meaning were reduced to a single standardized character, usually the simplest among all variants in form. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification and are thus identical between
2277-407: The chosen variants, those that appear in the "Complete List of Simplified Characters" are also simplified in character structure accordingly. Some examples follow: Sample reduction of equivalent variants : Ancient variants with simple structure are preferred : Simpler vulgar forms are also chosen : The chosen variant was already simplified in Chart 1 : In some instances, the chosen variant
2346-431: The component can depend on its placement with other elements in the character. The shape 阝 is indexed as two different radicals depending on where it appears in the character. Placed on the right, as in 都 ( dū "metropolis", also read as dōu "all-city"), it represents an abbreviated form of 邑 yì "city"; placed on the left, as in 陸 lù "land", it represents an abbreviated radical form of 阜 fù "mound, hill". Some of
2415-473: The country's writing system as a serious impediment to its modernization. In 1916, a multi-part English-language article entitled "The Problem of the Chinese Language" co-authored by the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982) and poet Hu Shih (1891–1962) has been identified as a turning point in the history of the Chinese script—as it was one of the first clear calls for China to move away from
2484-476: The early 20th century. In 1909, the educator and linguist Lufei Kui formally proposed the use of simplified characters in education for the first time. Over the following years—marked by the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that toppled the Qing dynasty , followed by growing social and political discontent that further erupted into the 1919 May Fourth Movement —many anti-imperialist intellectuals throughout China began to see
2553-634: The first official list of simplified forms was published, consisting of 324 characters collated by Peking University professor Qian Xuantong . However, fierce opposition within the KMT resulted in the list being rescinded in 1936. Work throughout the 1950s resulted in the 1956 promulgation of the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme , a draft of 515 simplified characters and 54 simplified components, whose simplifications would be present in most compound characters. Over
2622-463: The first round—but was massively unpopular and never saw consistent use. The second round of simplifications was ultimately retracted officially in 1986, well after they had largely ceased to be used due to their unpopularity and the confusion they caused. In August 2009, China began collecting public comments for a revised list of simplified characters; the resulting List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters lists 8,105 characters, including
2691-475: The following decade, the Script Reform Committee deliberated on characters in the 1956 scheme, collecting public input regarding the recognizability of variants, and often approving forms in small batches. Parallel to simplification, there were also initiatives aimed at eliminating the use of characters entirely and replacing them with pinyin as an official Chinese alphabet, but this possibility
2760-406: The founding of the Qin. The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) that inherited the Qin administration coincided with the perfection of clerical script through the process of libian . Eastward spread of Western learning Though most closely associated with the People's Republic, the idea of a mass simplification of character forms first gained traction in China during
2829-724: The graphically similar radicals are combined in many dictionaries, such as 月 yuè "moon" and the 月 form (⺼) of 肉 ròu , "meat, flesh". After the writing system reform in mainland China , the traditional set of Kangxi radicals became unsuitable for indexing Simplified Chinese characters. In 1983, the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language and the State Administration of Publication of China published The Table of Unified Indexing Chinese Character Components (Draft) ( 汉字统一部首表（草案） ). In 2009,
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2898-466: The increased usage of 朙 was followed by proliferation of a third variant: 眀 , with 目 'eye' on the left—likely derived as a contraction of 朙 . Ultimately, 明 became the character's standard form. The Book of Han (111 AD) describes an earlier attempt made by King Xuan of Zhou ( d. 782 BC ) to unify character forms across the states of ancient China , with his chief chronicler having "[written] fifteen chapters describing" what
2967-446: The latter as determinatives or significs or by some other term. Many radicals are merely artificial extractions of portions of characters, some of which are further truncated or changed when applied (such as 亅 jué or juě in 了 liǎo ), as explained by Serruys (1984), who therefore prefers the term "glyph" extraction rather than graphic extraction. This is even truer of modern dictionaries, which cut radicals to less than half
3036-465: The left, with the 月 'Moon' component on the right. Li Si ( d. 208 BC ), the Chancellor of Qin, attempted to universalize the Qin small seal script across China following the wars that had politically unified the country for the first time. Li prescribed the 朙 form of the word for 'bright', but some scribes ignored this and continued to write the character as 明 . However,
3105-423: The most important variant combining forms (besides 邑 → 阝 and 阜 → 阝per the above) are: Over 80% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds ( 形聲字 ): a semantic component gives a broad category of meaning, while a phonetic component suggests the sound. Usually, the radical is the semantic component. Thus, although some authors use the term radical for semantic components (義符 yìfú ), others distinguish
3174-402: The most prominent Chinese authors of the 20th century, stated that "if Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die" ( 漢字不滅，中國必亡 ). During the 1930s and 1940s, discussions regarding simplification took place within the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party. Many members of the Chinese intelligentsia maintained that simplification would increase literacy rates throughout the country. In 1935,
3243-555: The number in Shuowen , at which point it becomes impossible to have enough to cover a semantic element of every character. A sample of the Far Eastern Chinese English Dictionary of mere artificial extraction of a stroke from sub-entries: Radicals sometimes play a phonetic role instead of a semantic one: In some cases, chosen radicals used phonetically coincidentally are in keeping, in step, semantically. The character simplification pursued in
3312-409: The number of strokes needed to write them. The steps involved in looking up a character are as follows: As a rule of thumb, components at the left or top of the character, or elements which surround the rest of the character, are the ones most likely to be used as radical. For example, 信 is typically indexed under the left-side component 人 instead of the right-side 言; and 套 is typically indexed under
3381-608: The present-day China. Editors include Lin Shengben , a renowned Chinese hymn composer. The Chinese New Hymnal includes 400 hymns, with the addendum of 40 "Short Songs". In addition to the songs from Europe and the Americas, special effort was made to collect the songs written by the Chinese people, such as those from Wang Weifan , T. C. Chao , and Lin Shengben. It was printed by Amity Printing Co. and published by China Christian Council . "The English-Chinese Bilingual New Hymnal"
3450-430: The public and quickly fell out of official use. It was ultimately formally rescinded in 1986. The second-round simplifications were unpopular in large part because most of the forms were completely new, in contrast to the familiar variants comprising the majority of the first round. With the rescission of the second round, work toward further character simplification largely came to an end. In 1986, authorities retracted
3519-547: The radical may span more than one side, as in 園 = 囗 "enclosure" + 袁, or 街 = 行 "go, movement" + 圭. More complicated combinations exist, such as 勝 = 力 "strength" + 朕—the radical is in the lower-right quadrant. In many characters, the components (including radicals) are distorted or modified to fit into a block with other elements. They may be narrowed, shortened, or have different shapes entirely. Changes in shape, rather than simple distortion, may result in fewer pen strokes. In some cases, combinations may have alternates. The shape of
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#17327829070103588-430: The radicals used in Chinese dictionaries, even in the era of Kangxi, were not stand-alone current-usage characters. Instead, they indexed unique characters that lacked more obvious qualifiers. The radical 鬯 ( chàng "sacrificial wine") indexes only a few characters. Modern dictionaries tend to eliminate these when it is possible to find some more widely used graphic element under which a character can be categorized. Some use
3657-465: The recently conquered parts of the empire is generally seen as being the first real attempt at script reform in Chinese history. Before the 20th century, variation in character shape on the part of scribes, which would continue with the later invention of woodblock printing , was ubiquitous. For example, prior to the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) the character meaning 'bright' was written as either 明 or 朙 —with either 日 'Sun' or 囧 'window' on
3726-586: The same fashion as its predecessor. Versions both in numerical and staff notation versions are available. Most of the titles were copyrighted at time of publication. Songs in other hymnals are simpler and thus illiterate and under-educated people prefer hymnals like the Canaan Hymns , used widely in the Chinese house churches . The Chinese Union Version of the Bible, the Chinese New Hymnal,
3795-426: The same set of simplified characters as mainland China. The first round was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969, consisting of 498 simplified characters derived from 502 traditional characters. A second round of 2287 simplified characters was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the mainland China system; these were removed in the final round in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted
3864-592: The same volume. Some of the Chinese-written songs have been adopted by the hymnals of other countries. An additional collection of 200 songs used in worship have been compiled and published as a separate volume in October 2009. This addition contains some much-needed titles suited for various occasions as well as newly written pieces. About a quarter of the titles are locally made and the remainder are imported and Chinese lyrics set. The songs are indexed twice in
3933-467: The second round completely, though they had been largely fallen out of use within a year of their initial introduction. That year, the authorities also promulgated a final version of the General List of Simplified Chinese Characters . It was identical to the 1964 list save for 6 changes—including the restoration of 3 characters that had been simplified in the first round: 叠 , 覆 , 像 ; the form 疊
4002-436: The sections for those radicals. Mei Yingzuo's 1615 dictionary Zihui made two further innovations. He reduced the list of radicals to 214, and arranged characters under each radical in increasing order of the number of additional strokes —the radical-and-stroke method still used in the vast majority of present-day Chinese dictionaries. These innovations were also adopted by the more famous Kangxi Dictionary of 1716. Thus
4071-570: The sometimes arbitrary nature of the selection process. The Kangxi radicals are a de facto standard which, although not implemented exactly in every Chinese dictionary, few dictionary compilers can afford to completely ignore. They serve as the basis for many computer encoding systems. Specifically, the Unicode standard's radical-stroke charts are based on the Kangxi set of radicals. The count of commonly used radicals in modern abridged dictionaries
4140-593: The standard 214 radicals introduced in the Zihui are usually known as the Kangxi radicals . These were first called bùshǒu (部首 'section header') in the Kangxi Dictionary . Although there is some variation in such lists – depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed – these canonical 214 radicals of the Kangxi Dictionary still serve as the basis for most modern Chinese dictionaries . Some of
4209-560: The structure of Chinese characters and the inflection of words in European languages. Radicals are also sometimes called classifiers , but this name is more commonly applied to the grammatical measure words in Chinese. In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as the Erya (3rd century BC), characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories. Because the vast majority of characters are phono-semantic compounds, combining
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#17327829070104278-478: The top 大 instead of the bottom 長. There are, however, idiosyncratic differences between dictionaries, and except for simple cases, the same character cannot be assumed to be indexed the same way in two different dictionaries. In order to further ease dictionary lookup, dictionaries sometimes list radicals both under the number of strokes used to write their canonical form and under the number of strokes used to write their variant forms. For example, 心 can be listed as
4347-427: The traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. The Chinese government has never officially announced the completion of the simplification process after the bulk of characters were introduced by the 1960s. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution , a second round of simplified characters was promulgated in 1977—largely composed of entirely new variants intended to artificially lower the stroke count, in contrast to
4416-833: The traditional character 強 , with 11 strokes is standardised as 强 , with 12 strokes, which is a variant character. Such characters do not constitute simplified characters. The new standardized character forms shown in the Characters for Publishing and revised through the Common Modern Characters list tend to adopt vulgar variant character forms. Since the new forms take vulgar variants, many characters now appear slightly simpler compared to old forms, and as such are often mistaken as structurally simplified characters. Some examples follow: The traditional component 釆 becomes 米 : The traditional component 囚 becomes 日 : The traditional "Break" stroke becomes
4485-522: The use of characters entirely. Instead, Chao proposed that the language be written with an alphabet, which he saw as more logical and efficient. The alphabetization and simplification campaigns would exist alongside one another among the Republican intelligentsia for the next several decades. Recent commentators have echoed some contemporary claims that Chinese characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time. Lu Xun , one of
4554-418: The user to draw characters with a mouse, stylus or finger, ideally tolerating a degree of imperfection, thus eliminating the problem of radical identification altogether. Though radicals are widely accepted as a method to categorize Chinese characters and locate a certain character in a dictionary, there is no universal agreement about either the exact number of radicals or the set of radicals to be used, due to
4623-415: Was abandoned, confirmed by a speech given by Zhou Enlai in 1958. In 1965, the PRC published the List of Commonly Used Characters for Printing [ zh ] (hereafter Characters for Printing ), which included standard printed forms for 6196 characters, including all of the forms from the 1956 scheme. A second round of simplified characters was promulgated in 1977, but was poorly received by
4692-564: Was later published in 1998. This hymnal features two indexes. The first one arranges hymns according to the first notes in the melody and the second one to the first line of text. The Protestant churches in the present-day China almost exclusively select the worship songs from this hymn book. A new printing of the Chinese Union Version Bible by the Amity Foundation in 2004 also incorporates this hymnal under
4761-513: Was part of an initiative by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to promote literacy, and their use in ordinary circumstances on the mainland has been encouraged by the Chinese government since the 1950s. They are the official forms used in mainland China and Singapore , while traditional characters are officially used in Hong Kong , Macau , and Taiwan . Simplification of a component—either
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