Chinese character forms () are the shapes and structures of Chinese characters. They are the physical carriers of written Chinese.
Modern Chinese characters appear in the form of square blocks. There are two methods to analyze the forms of Chinese characters, source tracing analysis () and current status analysis (, ). Source tracing analysis is also called the method of character creation (). It takes the form of a character when it was created () as the object of analysis. Current status (or current situation) analysis takes the current regular script standard form (, ) as the object. As an academic subject, modern Chinese characters pay more attention to current status analysis.
Current status analysis studies how the writing units are combined level by level into a complete Chinese character. There are three levels of structural units of Chinese characters: strokes (), components (), and whole characters (). For example, character (character) is composed of two components, each of which is composed of three stokes: = å®Â(ãÂÂãÂÂãÂÂ) + Ã¥ÂÂ(ãÂÂãÂÂãÂÂ).
Strokes (bÃÂhuÃÂ ; ; ) are the smallest writing units of Chinese characters. When writing a Chinese character, the trace of a dot or a line left on the writing material (such as paper) from pen-down to pen-up is called a stroke.
Stroke number is the number of strokes of a Chinese character. It varies, for example, characters "ä¸Â" and "ä¹Â" have only one stroke, while character "é½Â" has 36 strokes, and "é¾Â" (three é¾Âs, dragons) consists of 48 strokes.
Stroke forms refer to the shapes of strokes. The stroke forms of a standard Chinese character set can be classified into a stroke table (or stroke list), for instance, the Unicode CJK strokes list has 36 types of strokes:
Stroke order has two meanings:
Because the direction of strokes is relatively simple, people generally refer to the latter meaning when talking about stroke order.
Strokes can also be used for Chinese character sorting. The important stroke-based sorting methods include stroke-count sorting, stroke-count-stroke-order sorting, GB stroke-based sorting and YES sorting.
Strokes combine with each other in a Chinese character in different ways. There are three types of stroke combinations between two strokes:
Chinese character components (Pinyin: hànzì bùjiàn; Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ) are Chinese character building blocks composed of strokes. In most cases, a component is larger than a stroke (i.e., consists of more than one stroke) and smaller than the whole character (combines with some other components to form a character). For example, in character "件", there are two components ( and ), each with more than one strokes, (亻: ãÂÂãÂÂ) and (çÂÂ: ãÂÂãÂÂãÂÂãÂÂ). In the special cases of one-stroke characters, such as and , a stroke is a component and is a character.
Chinese character component analysis is to divide or separate a character into components. There are two ways for Chinese character dividing, hierarchical dividing and plane dividing. Hierarchical dividing separate layer by layer from larger to smaller components, and finally get the primitive components. Plane dividing separate out the primitive components at one time. Hierarchical dividing can display the external structure of Chinese characters, while plane splitting can be regarded as omitting the higher splitting levels, and directly writing out the final separating result of primitive components.
A component that can independently form a character is a character component, or a component of independent character formation (). For example, component formed character independently, and is a component in characters , and . A component that can not independently form a character is a non-character component, or a component of dependent character formation (). For example, is not a character in modern Chinese, but it is a component in characters , and .
A component that cannot be (further) divided into smaller components by the rules is a primitive component, or basic component (, ). Primitive components are the final-level components of hierarchical dividing. For example, components and in character . A component composed of two or more primitive components is a compound component (). For example, component in character , and .
Radicals () and pianpangs() are components. In Chinese characters, radicals are mostly semantic pianpangs, such as the radicals of , , .
The structure of a Chinese character is the pattern or rule in which the character is formed by its (first level) components. Chinese character structures include:
A Chinese whole character (Pinyin: hànzì zhÃÂngzì; Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ) is a complete Chinese character. It lies at the final level of the stroke-component-character Chinese character composition. According to their structures, Chinese characters can be divided into undecomposable characters and decomposable characters.
An undecomposable character () consists of one primitive component, which is directly formed by strokes and can not be decomposed into smaller components. In the "Specification of the Undecomposable Characters Commonly Used in the Modern Chinese" (), there is the "List of Modern Commonly Used Undecomposable Characters" (256 characters in stroke-based order): ä¸Âä¹ÂäºÂÃ¥ÂÂä¸ÂÃ¥ÂÂä¸ÂÃ¥ÂÂ堫人堥å¿åÂÂå ä¹ÂÃ¥ÂÂäºÂÃ¥ÂÂÃ¥ÂÂä¹ÂÃ¥ÂÂä¸Âå¹²äºÂå·¥åÂÂ士æÂÂä¸Â寸大ä¸Âä¸Âä¸Âä¸Âå°Âå£山巾åÂÂå·Â个æ¹习ä¹Âå¡丸åÂÂ广亡é¨丫ä¹Âä¹Â尸己已巳å¼ÂÃ¥ÂÂå«ä¹Â女åÂÂé£Âä¹ åÂÂ马乡丰çÂÂå¼ÂäºÂ天夫æ äºÂä¸Âä¸Âæ¨äºÂä¸Âç¬太æ¹尤车巨çÂÂ屯æÂÂäºÂç¦æ¢å°Âæ°æÂ¥ä¸Âè´Âå 水è§ÂÃ¥ÂÂçÂÂæÂÂæ°Âæ¯Â壬åÂÂå¤Âé¿çÂÂæ¤çªç¶æÂÂæ°Âå¿丹é¸Âå ÂæÂÂæ¹ç«为æÂÂæ·å¿Âå°ºä¸Âå·´åÂÂäºÂ书çÂÂæªæ«åÂȾ£çÂÂä¸Â澯ä¸Âç³æÂÂé¾Âå¹³ä¸Âå¡å¸ä¸Âæ¨ä¸Âç²ç³çµç°ç±å²央åÂÂç¿å¹åÂÂçÂÂç¢失ä¹Â禾ä¸Âç½æÂ¥çÂÂä¹Âç¨ç©ä¹ÂÃ¥ÂÂÃ¥ÂÂé¸Â主ç«ÂÃ¥ÂÂ头忠永æ°Âå¼ÂåºçÂÂæ¯Âè³äºÂè£åÂÂÃ¥ÂÂ西ç¾èÂÂ页夹夷è«æ²èÂÂå¹´æ±è¼èªè¡Âå¤èÂÂ亦衣产亥ç¾Âç±³å·ÂÃ¥ÂÂ严æ±Âç«æ´æÂÂ两é ÂæÂ¥å¤éÂÂ串æÂÂ身å±è¨Âç¾Âå¼ÂäºÂé¨æÂÂÃ¥ÂÂç§ÂèÂÂé¶æ¿é©æŽ¢éÂÂ鬼禹é¦Â堼象é¼Â
It is estimated that the number of undecomposable characters accounts for approximately 4% of modern Chinese characters.
A decomposable character () consists of more than one component. There are two frequently used modes of component combination in the study of Chinese character structures: first-level component combination and primitive component combination.
According to first-level component combination, the structures of decomposable characters can be divided into 13 categories:
According to primitive component combination, the structures of decomposable characters can be divided into:
The popular fonts of modern Chinese characters include Song or Ming (, ; , ), Fangsong (, ), Kai (regular, , ), Li (clerical, , ), Hei (black, sans-serif, , ) and Wei (, ).
In Chinese, in addition to the international "points" system, a unique "number" () system is used for character sizes. For example, the Simplified Chinese version of MS Word allows setting font sizes by points or by numbers. The sizes of the number systems include (in ascending order of font sizes): Size No. 8 (), No. 7 (), Small No. 6 (), No. 6 (), Small No. 5 (), No. 5 (), Small No. 4 (), No. 4 (), Small No. 3 (), No. 3 (), Small No. 2 (), No. 2 (), small No. 1 (), No. 1 (), Small initial number (), Initial number ().