Chinese WritingAlex Garfin, Noam Oster, and Kiyan Ahmadi

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!!

ENGLISH RIGHT?ENGLISH RIGHT?

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.

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 change- like 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.   

How Modern Chinese is Different from Ancient Chinese

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.