Anyway, Simplified Chinese hanzi are very easy to distinguish from Japanese kanji. However, only a small proportion of hanzi were ever simplified - most have been left unchanged. The version on the left is the simplified Chinese hanzi, and the version on the right is used in both traditional Chinese and Japanese. Where hanzi have been simplified, they are immediately identifiable as Chinese. Simplified Chinese is used mainly in Singapore, Malaysia and of course mainland China.
Written Chinese is not alone in having undergone simplification. Japanese kanji were also simplified by the Japanese government after the Second World War. Before this simplification, the written forms of Japanese kanji were equivalent to traditional Chinese hanzi. This is an interesting example. However, what I think often gets lost in all this is the point that in both simplifications, Chinese and Japanese, it was only ever a minority of characters that got changed.
The introduction of Chinese hanzi into Japan was not systematic or done with any speed. It happened over a long period of time, and one result of this is that Japanese kanji often have several extra meanings to their Chinese hanzi counterparts, or have different meanings entirely. As a Japanese kanji, it has several more meanings than the Chinese hanzi. Again though, despite these differences, most of the time the meanings are the same or very similar, leading me to say that hanzi and kanji are generally the same writing system.
A final difference to note. Whilst digital versions of hanzi and kanji are the same e. Consequently, most kanji can still be pronounced in at least two ways, a Chinese on-yomi and a Japanese kun-yomi way, which considerably further complicates the study of the Japanese language. Kanji are used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. But unlike the Chinese language, Japanese cannot be written entirely in kanji.
For grammatical endings and words without corresponding kanji, two additional, syllable-based scripts are being used, hiragana and katakana , each consisting of 46 syllables. Ask in our forum. Home Back. Second, they typically have but not necessarily similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations. Did you notice the high similarities between Japanese and Korean pronunciations?
Japanese and Korean share a considerable number of lexical similarities than may not be applicable to Chinese. The modern way to learn Chinese characters Nowadays, people can easily write in all three languages by using a phone or computer. Before phones and computers, one had to actually learn to write them with a pen and paper.
As with other learning other languages, you need to do a lot of reading, listening, and speaking to become fluent. Learning Chinese characters is a major investment of time, but there is one thing for sure: once you get into these languages, you will see the beauty in them, as well as a reflection of the great culture that created them.
These languages will enrich your life in a way that you can never imagine, and give you a deeper understanding of the people who speak them.
Thanks for this writeup, was very helpful in understanding the the concepts. This was written long ago but I happened upon it. However I think she exaggerates a bit how different the characters are in the three. Simplified Chinese is much more different but the traditional set used in Taiwan and by overseas Chinese is virtually the same as the Korean set. I have been able to learn to read Japanese reasonably well and traditional character Chinese somewhat by knowing hanja with a small percentage of the effort it would take starting from scratch.
On certain subjects for example 20th century military history, a special interest of mine technical terms are almost all the same in Korean and Japanese. Chinese often make the mistake to assume that most words originate in China, this is false. And because of this, it is often ignored and passed off as Chinese. Thank you very much for your helpful information! I think I am getting interested in learning one of these languages for cultural purposes! Great write up! However, the theory that Korean is an Altaic language has been debunked.
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