123 |
124 |
155 |
156 |
157 |
158 |
159 |
160 |
161 |
162 |
177 |
178 |
179 |
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/.gitignore:
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1 | ## Ignore Visual Studio temporary files, build results, and
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323 | *.tss
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326 | *.jmconfig
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353 | healthchecksdb
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356 | MigrationBackup/
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358 | # Ionide (cross platform F# VS Code tools) working folder
359 | .ionide/
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361 | # Fody - auto-generated XML schema
362 | FodyWeavers.xsd
363 |
364 | # Access
365 | *.accdb
366 | *.mdb
367 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/docs/_posts/2018-04-23-simplification-of-chinese-character.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Simplification of Chinese Characters
3 | ---
4 |
5 | Richard Sears
6 |
7 | # Simplification of Chinese Characters
8 |
9 | ## The Problem in 1950
10 |
11 | 1. For 2000 years there had been no real control over the proliferation of Chinese characters.
12 | 1. The standard Kangxi dictionary had 47,000 characters of which only about 7000 were useful or common.
13 | 1. There were many variant characters that meant the same thing, or nearly the same thing
14 | 1. The characters were very complicated and hard to write
15 | 1. Most people could not read
16 |
17 | ## The Fix
18 |
19 | 1. Analyze common variant characters and mandate which ones will be standard and which ones will be banned.
20 | 1. Analyze which characters are useful and ban all the rest
21 | 1. Simplify and standardize the written form of complicated characters
22 |
23 | ## The Questions to ask
24 |
25 | 1. Who made these rules
26 | 1. What were the rules
27 | 1. What was the logic behind these rules
28 | 1. What changes were made to these rules over history.
29 |
30 | ## Traditional to Simplified
31 |
32 | 1. First apply any variant rule that may apply (discussed below)
33 | 1. Second apply any simplification rule that may apply (discussed below)
34 | 1. Third apply any font rule that may apply
35 |
36 | ## Simplified to Traditional
37 |
38 | To go from simplified to traditional you may have to figure out which of several traditional characters is it supposed to be.
39 |
40 | You may have to consult an associated rule:
41 | 1. Variant Rule
42 | 1. Simplification Rule
43 | 1. Applied Rule
44 | 1. Font Rule
45 | 1. Total Character List
46 |
47 | (discussed below)
48 |
49 | # Variant Rule V001 to V810
50 |
51 | Standard table of Variants 第一批异体字整理表
52 |
53 | ## Definitions:
54 |
55 | **Variants**: Two or more characters which have
56 |
57 | 1. exact same pronunciation
58 | 1. exact same meaning
59 | 1. equivalent logic.
60 |
61 | **Equivalent Logic**: 碴 and 𦉆 are both pronounced “cha” and both mean “chip”
62 |
63 | 1. In one the logic means it may be a chip from a rock 石 shí
64 |
65 | 1. In the other the logic means it may be a chip from a piece of pottery
66 |
67 | 缶 fǒu These two characters have “equivalent logic”
68 |
69 | **Same Character**: 报報 and 𡙈 are derived from the same ancient character. 㚔 is derived from the original pictograph. 幸 is derived from 㚔 and 扌is derived from 幸. They are the same character.
70 |
71 | Substituted Character:
72 |
73 | ## History
74 |
75 | In 1956 the government published a list of 810 acceptable variant characters and 1055 associated variant characters which were to be banned.
76 |
77 | ## Problems:
78 |
79 | 1. A variant should be the exact same meaning and pronunciation. But some of the characters only had the same pronunciation but had different meanings. They were in fact substitutions.
80 | 1. There were some special rules associated with this list, where you could use the banned version in some situations depending on its meaning or pronunciation.
81 | 1. This resulted in modern generation of Chinese not being able to recognize many common traditional variant characters.
82 | 1. Over the years, some modifications were made and some banned characters were resurrected. The most recent table has
83 |
84 | 796 accepted characters.
85 |
86 | 1024 banned characters.
87 |
88 | # Simplification Rule A001-A350
89 |
90 | Stand Alone Simplification Only 个不作简化偏旁用的简化字
91 |
92 | ## The History
93 |
94 | In 1955, a list of 350 characters was published which were given simplified forms.
95 |
96 | These characters were to be simplified in their stand alone form, but not if they are part of another character.
97 |
98 | Actually here are cases where they are simplified as components.
99 |
100 | ## The Problems
101 |
102 | 1. In several cases multiple characters are converged to one character.
103 | 1. In several cases the character convergences have been resurrected.
104 | 1. Sometimes the character is substituted for a rare traditional character.
105 | - This complicates the definition of what is a traditional character and what is a traditional character.
106 | 1. Sometimes new characters are formed because of the simplification logic.
107 | - These new characters never existed in any dictionary previously and so I call them “new” characters, even though they may have existed in hand written Chinese for a long time.
108 | 1. In some characters, even the radical component is simplified
109 | 1. In some cases, the character is not simplified because of some special use.
110 |
111 | # Simplification Rule B001-B123
112 |
113 | Simplified as Stand Alone or as Radical 个可作简化偏旁用的简化字和简化偏旁
114 |
115 | ## The History
116 |
117 | In 1955, a list of 132 characters was published which are simplified in their standalone form and are also simplified when used as components of another character.
118 |
119 | There are 1 to n convergences due to table 5
120 |
121 | # Simplification Rule R01-R14
122 |
123 | Simplified radicals 简化偏旁14个
124 |
125 | ## The History
126 |
127 | In 1955 a set of 14 components that if they have stand alone forms, the standalone forms are not simplified. Some of these characters never have stand alone forms. They are just components of characters. There are also places where characters are components, but not simplified.
128 |
129 | # Applied Rule:
130 |
131 | Rule based simplification 1753个应用第二表所列简化字和简化偏旁得出来的简化字
132 |
133 | ## The History
134 |
135 | There were 1753 Characters that were simplified according to table 1, 2, 3 and 4
136 |
137 | There are characters that are simplified using other rules that are not included in Table 1,2 and 3
138 |
139 | Some of these characters are quite uncommon characters.
140 |
141 | ## The Problems
142 |
143 | 1. In some cases the rules are not strictly applied and the simplified character is an anomaly.
144 | 1. Sometimes the rules are applied to banned alternates and you come up with strange situations.
145 | 1. The number 1753 was applied to the original list of printed characters, so that list is not complete now.
146 | 1. This list is out of date. There are characters from this list that are not included in the 2013 standard list of characters and there are simplifications in the 2013 list of characters that are beyond this list.
147 |
148 | # Complete Simplified Character List and the New Character Font
149 |
150 | ## Purpose of a Complete Character list
151 |
152 | 1. Limit the number of useless characters
153 | 1. Establish Standard Printed Forms using the above “variant rules” and “simplification rules”
154 | 1. Establish exact printed form for characters called the “new character forms”
155 | 1. Establish Literacy Standard
156 |
157 | ## The History
158 |
159 | There have been four publications that can be considered complete lists of simplified characters
160 | 1. 印刷通用汉字字形表 1965 list of 6196 simplified characters for publishers
161 | 1. 1980 list of standard simplified computer characters GB2312-80
162 | 1. 現代漢語常用字表 1988 list of 7000 simplified characters
163 | 1. 通用規範漢字表 2013 list of 8105 simplified characters
164 |
165 | ## The Problems
166 |
167 | 1. There are always characters not in the list that you think you need that you don’t have
168 | 1. The “New Character Forms”
169 | 1. The lists were published with no associated traditional characters.
170 |
171 | # 新字形 New Character Forms and the 標楷體 Standard Kai Form
172 |
173 | ## Font Rule
174 |
175 | Besides following all the rules for simplification of characters, the exact character form was specified in what is called the “new character form”. These forms were probably barely noticed by most people but when computers came along, it caused a number of characters to have different code points because of the difference in how governments thought characters were supposed to be written.
176 |
177 | ## Example
178 |
179 | 黄 and 黃 are two different code points and ways to write the character for “yellow”
180 |
181 | 黄 is the new character form and
182 |
183 | 黃 is the standard Kai form or Old Character forms
184 |
185 | # The Unicode Standard and Han Unification
186 |
187 | ## The Problem
188 |
189 | Over the years there had evolved some differences in how Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hongkong and Vietnam wrote the same Chinese character.
190 |
191 | ## The Solution
192 |
193 | 1. Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hongkong and Vietnam decided to get together and decide on code points and character structure for all the useful Han characters. If they could agree that the characters were the same, they were all put in one code point, if not, there were different code points for instance 黄 and 黃 are two different code points, even though they are the same character.
194 | 1. Today almost all Han characters on computers are encoded in Unicode.
195 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/docs/_posts/2017-09-18-spoken-chinese-and-other-languages.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Spoken Chinese and Other Languages
3 | ---
4 |
5 | Richard Sears
6 |
7 | # Spoken Chinese and Other Languages
8 |
9 | ## Table of Contents
10 |
11 | - [Spoken Chinese and Other Languages](#spoken-chinese-and-other-languages)
12 | - [Table of Contents](#table-of-contents)
13 | - [Mandarin Language and Script](#mandarin-language-and-script)
14 | - [Taiwanese Language and Script](#taiwanese-language-and-script)
15 | - [Book References:](#book-references)
16 | - [Cantonese Language and Characters](#cantonese-language-and-characters)
17 | - [Book References:](#book-references-1)
18 | - [Japanese Language and Script](#japanese-language-and-script)
19 | - [Korean Language and Script](#korean-language-and-script)
20 | - [Vietnamese Language and Script](#vietnamese-language-and-script)
21 |
22 | ## Mandarin Language and Script
23 |
24 | Mandarin originally refers to the language spoken by Chinese officials who were mainly from Beijing. This language was called Guan-Yu 官語 Official-Language. The Sanskrit word Mandari comes through Portuguese and means commander related to English Mand-ate The early Portuguese referred to these people and their language as Mandarin. The BeiJingHua 北京話 Beijing-Talk Spoken in Beijing PuTongHua 普通話 Common Talk spoken in Canton, the HuaYu 華語 Chinese Language spoken in South East Asia and the GuoYu 國語 National Language spoken in Taipei are the same language with only very minor differences.
25 |
26 | PuTongHua is spoken by almost all Chinese although 80% of them will speak some other dialect at home. When speaking of Chinese Dialects we usually mean different languages. Often although the dialects will be closely related, If you have not had experience with it, you will understand almost nothing.
27 |
28 | Modern written Chinese is a direct rendition of spoken Mandarin. In English we always refer to it as Chinese.In Chinese it is usually called HanYu 漢語 Chinese Language This is Mandarin as defined in the dictionary. Almost No one speaks exactly like the Dictionary. But most well educated Chinese have studied tones, and pinying and can pronounce correctly if reading from the dictionary. See Cantonese, Taiwanese.
29 |
30 | ## Taiwanese Language and Script
31 |
32 | Taiwanese is an important language as far as Chinese Etymology is concerned and as far as China is concerned.
33 |
34 | In Chinese it is referred to technically as MinNanHua 閩南話 Southern Min Language It is spoken in Southern FuJian 福建 province and in Taiwan. It is often referred to as TaiWanHua 台灣話 Taiwanese Language or XiaMenHua 厦門話 Amoy Language. Amoy (XiaMen) is the main Chinese coastal city in FuJian where this language is spoken. It is also called TaiYu 台語 Taiwanese. It is not understandable by Mandarin speakers who have never been exposed to it. I estimates that about 80% of Taiwanese has the same etymology as Mandarin, but with very significant phonetic shifts. Written Mandarin can be read in Taiwanese, but it is a very stilted and does not reflect the grammatical structure of real spoken Taiwanese. Unlike Cantonese, Taiwanese in most cases did not invent new characters. When there is a Taiwanese word which has no Mandarin equivalent, they usually took Mandarin characters which when pronounced in Taiwanese would sounded like the Taiwanese word in question. Some characters will be used in places with the usual Mandarin meaning and other characters will be used for the sound. The average Mandarin will not understand written Taiwanese. MinBeiHua 閩北話 Northern Min Language is the other dialect spoken in FuJian, and is quite different from MinNan. FuZhouHua 福州話 is spoken in FuZhou and is also very different. Many of the Chinese emigrants to South East Asia came from ChaoZhou in southern Fukin and speak a language called ChaoJouHua 潮州話 CaoJou is similar to and for the most part understandable by Taiwanese.
35 |
36 | Taiwanese is important etymologically because when we compare the pronunciation of character phonetics in Taiwanese we sometimes find that they are closer than in Mandarin.
37 |
38 | Taiwanese has 7 tones. The teaching materials say 8, but this is so that the saying of all the tones will sound more fluent. There are 2337 unique syllabic utterances in Taiwanese. The database of syllabic utterances was done by Sharry Wu
39 |
40 | ### Book References:
41 |
42 | - 台灣話大詞典 閩南話漳泉二腔系部份 by ChenShou 陳修 主編
43 |
44 | Probably the most extensive Taiwanese to Chinese dictionary
45 |
46 | used for my Taiwanese syllabic database.
47 |
48 | ## Cantonese Language and Characters
49 |
50 | GuangDongHua (GongDongWa) 廣東話 Cantonese is the most common dialect spoken by over-seas Chinese. Its formal name is YueYu (YutYu) 粤語 It is in fact a different language from Manderin, although closely related to it. A person who has grown up in BeiJing and has never heard Cantonese, would understand almost nothing. About 80% of Cantonese words have the same root as Mandarin although the pronunciation may be shifted quite drastically. The other 20 percent is strictly Cantonese and has no Mandarin equivalent. These words are called JukJi Cantonese is spoken in GuangDong province, HongKong, Macao and all around the world. The TaiShanHua (HoiSanWa) 台山話 TaiShan dialect of Cantonese is spoken in SanFrancisco the largest collection of JukJi is a set of about 4500 characters published by the city government of HongKong, The average Cantonese probably only uses a few hundred. These characters can not be found in a HanYuDaZiDian dictionary.
51 |
52 | ### Book References:
53 |
54 | - A Practical Cantonese-English Dictionary 實用粤英詞典 by Sidney Lao 劉緆祥
55 | The Cantonese to English dictionary which I used for my Cantonese syllabic database.
56 |
57 | ## Japanese Language and Script
58 |
59 | The Chinese word HanZi 漢字 means “Chinese Character”. When borrowed by the Japanese the pronunciation became KanJi. 漢字 The Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system starting in the Tang dynasty about 1400 years ago. Japanese grammar is quite different from Chinese. Japanese is a Ural Altaic language more closely related to Turkish than to Chinese, The Chinese writing did not fit well with Japanese. As a result, several things happened. (1) They borrowed the Chinese characters and used them to represent Japanese words and gave them the Japanese pronunciations called Kunyomi 訓読, (2) In many cases they borrowed the Chinese pronunciation too in this case they used the Onyomi 音読 pronunciation which corresponds to the original Chinese pronunciation. (3) Some Chinese characters were used as phonetics for Japanese words. Originally these phonetics were used mainly by women and other semi literate Japanese. Ultimately the cursive form of these phonetics developed into two precise phonetic alphabets. One called Hiragana ひらがな which is used to write the Japanese words which have no Chinese or other foreign etymology. The Kai forms of these phonetics developed into a precise phonetic alphabet called Katakana カタカナ which was used to write the words in Japanese which are derived from languages other than Japanese or Chinese, mostly English. (4) Since the kanji was borrowed so long ago, in many cases the written form has changed somewhat, the meaning has changed, sometimes a lot. One example is the 読 in Onyomi which in Chinese is 讀 (5) In modern Japanese there has been a move to reduce the number of Chinese characters to around 2200 and some of those characters are rare or non existent in modern Chinese. As a rough eye ball estimate, I would say 80% of kanji is pronounced similar to and has a similar meaning to the Chinese.
60 |
61 | ## Korean Language and Script
62 |
63 | Korean is also Ural Altaic and originally borrowed Chinese characters like the Japanese. Korean never derived special Hiragana and Katakana type alphabets. Instead in 1426 King SeJong 世宗 invented an alphabet for initial central and final sounds of the Korean syllables. The letters of this alphabet are called Hangul 한글 and do not appear to have any connection to Chinese characters. The way these letters are stacked into square boxes that correspond to syllabic utterances and in Korean was obviously influenced by Chinese. These spellings were used for several hundred years for syllables of strictly Korean origin and syllables of Chinese etymology were written in Chinese called Hanja 漢字. In the past 30 years Korean news papers at least have gone completely Hangul.
64 |
65 | ## Vietnamese Language and Script
66 |
67 | Vietnamese has a similar grammatical and morphological structure to Chinese but percentage wise very few syllables are etymologically related to Chinese. The Vietnamese took an approach similar to the Cantonese starting in about the 10th century, but they had to design a large number of new characters. These characters are called ChuNom. When you see old Vietnamese written it is obviously derived from Chinese type characters, but a Chinese literate person will understand almost none of the characters.
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