Language and characters
- Why is Chinese called Hanyu 汉语 and its character script Hanzi 汉字? The names stem from the river Han 汉. The area around the river Han became the centre of China’s first golden dynasty, the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). Indeed, also the name of the Han Dynasty originates from the name of this river as is the name of the ethnic group Han.
- China’s people consist of 56 ethnic groups. About 93% of the population are Chinese Han people. The non-Han chinese only occupies 7%. So the other ethnic groups also called minorities (Shaoshu Minzu – 少数民族).
- Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi (汉字) are one of the earliest forms of written language in the world. And though the Chinese script is not the oldest known script however (which is the Cuneiform script from about 5,500 years ago, used in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq and Iran) it now is the longest lived script still in use in the world.
- The written script in China can only be traced back with certainty to the oracle bones of about 1,200BC. However the script had a considerable vocabulary and signs of simplification at that date which strongly suggests the script’s origin goes back much further, probably some 4.000 years. Over time, Chinese history has crystallized in the form of the roughly 50,000 characters that make up modern Chinese script.
- There are some 50.000 Chinese characters in the Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典), the standard national dictionary developed during the 18th and 19th centuries, but the precise quantity of Chinese characters is a mystery; numerous, rare variants have accumulated throughout history. Studies have shown that 90% of Chinese newspapers and magazines tend to use 3,500 basic characters.