Chinese Writing
Alex Garfin, Noam Oster, and Kiyan Ahmadi
ENGLISH RIGHT?
You write in English, right? If you do, you use just 26 letters to make up
millions of words. But did you know that in Chinese writing there isn’t
an alphabet! They actually have characters which are whole words. And
you won’t believe how many characters they have: 50,000 or even more!
Chinese breaks down into many different categories. The two main
ones are “Traditional Chinese” and “Simplified Chinese.” Simplified
Chinese is the way you’d speak it… it’s the way it sounds. That’s one of
the things that’s on this very slide show.
Traditional Chinese breaks down into two categories: “Modern
Chinese” and “Ancient Chinese.” In Ancient Chinese you have to draw
what you’re trying to say. You will see that in this slide show.
You can also compare Ancient Chinese to Modern Chinese and see
how it changed. It can be very interesting. And that is one of the things
you will find in this slide show.
If you want to find out about any of the three amazing categories, this
is the slide show for you!!
Speaking Chinese
By Kiyan Ahmadi
In the Chinese Language, if you say the same
sound of a word and change your tone of voice,
the meaning changes. Symbols are called
characters. Characters stand for ideas and
things, rather than sounds. The Chinese
language can be written from top to bottom, left
to right, and right to left. However, it must be
read in the same direction as it was written. All
people in China have one written language. But
there are different ways of speaking Chinese.
A person from Northern China may not
understand someone from the south.
Mandarin is the official language of China
because it was the language spoken in Beijing,
the capital city. The Chinese written language
has over 50,000 characters. Every word is
represented as characters. The main tool that is
used in calligraphy is a bamboo strip brush.
How Modern Chinese is
Different from Ancient
Chinese
In the Chinese language there are characters, or
words, which have meanings. Over the years the
characters would get changed. Sometimes it
changed because everyone agreed that it was too
hard. And sometimes, like in the game
“telephone” people will mis-speak a little and
over time it will change into a whole different
thing.
There is a big difference between Modern
Chinese and Ancient Chinese. For example,
like in “sun,” in Modern Chinese is a rectangle
with a line through the middle and in Ancient
Chinese it is a circle with a line half-way though
the middle. But sometimes it didn’t changelike in the word “field” they both have a square
with a cross in the middle. Usually Ancient
Chinese is harder than Modern Chinese
because in Ancient Chinese you have to draw
what you are trying to say.
One huge difference between ancient and modern
Chinese is that in Ancient Chinese, there are more
curves so you can draw freely. In Modern Chinese you
usually to draw many straight lines. In Ancient
Chinese you can see that it is just a couple of lines
straight down from the top… it looks like rain. The
modern one does not look like rain.. right?
In ancient Chinese you have to combine many
characters to make a full sentence. Like in “not rain.”
You put them right next to each other. Sometimes it’s
really hard to tell what they’re trying to say because
Chinese writing can go right to left or up to down
and while it’s not diagonal, it’s still very hard to tell.
I like Ancient Chinese more than Modern. It’s looks
more special. Modern Chinese is very hard to read.
CHARACTERS
In Chinese, 50,000 symbols make up the Chinese alphabet. These
symbols are called characters. I know what you’re thinking… it would
be really hard to make every single character perfect, but don’t worry!
Each character is one word!
Also, if you were royalty or an official in ancient china, then you would
need to practice calligraphy (the art of Chinese writing) for over three
hours per day!
You know what’s cool? Chinese can be written from left to right, right
to left and left to right.
Plus, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese all share a few hundred
characters.
Chinese dated back from 3,500 years ago, but some
people say even farther in the past. Chinese is also one of
the and most continuously used writing system on Earth.
So, as it turns out, Chinese writing is very interesting.