Editing Written Chinese (section)

== Literacy ==
Because the majority of modern Chinese words contain more than one character, there are at least two measuring sticks for Chinese literacy: the number of characters known, and the number of words known. [[John DeFrancis]], in the introduction to his ''Advanced Chinese Reader'', estimates that a typical Chinese college graduate recognizes 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words.{{sfnp|DeFrancis|1968}} [[Jerry Norman (sinologist)|Jerry Norman]], in ''Chinese'', places the number of characters somewhat lower, at 3,000 to 4,000.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|p=73}} These counts are complicated by the tangled development of Chinese characters. In many cases, a single character came to have multiple [[variant Chinese characters|variants]]. This development was restrained to an extent by the standardization of the seal script during the Qin dynasty, but soon started again. Although the ''Shuowen Jiezi'' lists 10,516 characters—9,353 of them unique (some of which may already have been out of use by the time it was compiled) plus 1,163 graphic variants—the ''[[Jiyun]]'' of the Northern [[Song dynasty]], compiled less than a thousand years later in 1039, contains 53,525 characters, most of them graphic variants.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|p=72}}

=== Dictionaries ===
{{Main|Chinese dictionary}}
{{See also|Chinese character orders}}
Written Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary, so Chinese dictionaries, as well as dictionaries that define Chinese characters in other languages, cannot easily be alphabetized or otherwise lexically ordered, as English dictionaries are. The need to arrange Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to a considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters.{{sfnp|DeFrancis|1984|p=92}}

A traditional mechanism is the method of radicals, which uses a set of character roots. These roots, or radicals, generally but imperfectly align with the parts used to compose characters by means of logical aggregation and phonetic complex. A [[canonical form|canonical]] set of 214 radicals was developed during the rule of the [[Kangxi Emperor]] (around the year 1700); these are sometimes called the Kangxi radicals. The radicals are ordered first by stroke count (that is, the number of strokes required to write the radical); within a given stroke count, the radicals also have a prescribed order.{{sfnp|Wieger|1915|p=19}}

Every Chinese character falls (sometimes arbitrarily or incorrectly) under the heading of exactly one of these 214 radicals.{{sfnp|DeFrancis|1984|p=92}} In many cases, the radicals are themselves characters, which naturally come first under their own heading. All other characters under a given radical are ordered by the stroke count of the character. Usually, however, there are still many characters with a given stroke count under a given radical. At this point, characters are not given in any recognizable order; the user must locate the character by going through all the characters with that stroke count, typically listed for convenience at the top of the page on which they occur.{{sfnp|Björkstén|1994|pp=17–18}}

Because the method of radicals is applied only to the written character, one need not know how to pronounce a character before looking it up; the entry, once located, usually gives the pronunciation. However, it is not always easy to identify which of the various roots of a character is the proper radical. Accordingly, dictionaries often include a list of hard to locate characters, indexed by total stroke count, near the beginning of the dictionary. Some dictionaries include almost one-seventh of all characters in this list.{{sfnp|DeFrancis|1984|p=92}} Alternatively, some dictionaries list "difficult" characters under more than one radical, with all but one of those entries redirecting the reader to the "canonical" location of the character according to Kangxi.

Other methods of organization exist, often in an attempt to address the shortcomings of the radical method, but are less common. For instance, it is common for a dictionary ordered principally by the Kangxi radicals to have an auxiliary index by pronunciation, expressed typically in either [[pinyin]] or [[bopomofo]].{{sfnp|McNaughton|Ying|1999|p=20}} This index points to the page in the main dictionary where the desired character can be found. Other methods use only the structure of the characters, such as the [[four-corner method]], in which characters are indexed according to the kinds of strokes located nearest the four corners (hence the name of the method),<ref name="WangWang1994">{{Cite journal |last1=Wang |first1=Gwo-En |last2=Wang |first2=Jhing-Fa |year=1994 |title=A New Hierarchical Approach for Recognition of Unconstrained Handwritten Numerals |journal=IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=428–436 |doi=10.1109/30.320824 |s2cid=40291502}}</ref> or the [[Cangjie method]], in which characters are broken down into a set of 24 basic components.<ref name="Su2005">{{Cite thesis |last=Su |first=Hsi-Yao |title=Language Styling and Switching in Speech and Online Contexts: Identity and Language Ideologies in Taiwan |degree=Ph.D. |publisher=University of Texas |url=http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/1800 |place=Austin |year=2005}}</ref> Neither the four-corner method nor the Cangjie method requires the user to identify the proper radical, although many strokes or components have alternate forms, which must be memorized in order to use these methods effectively.

The availability of computerized Chinese dictionaries now makes it possible to look characters up by any of the indexing schemes described, thereby shortening the search process.

=== Transliteration ===
{{main|Transliteration of Chinese}}
{{see also|Romanization of Chinese}}

Chinese characters do not reliably indicate their pronunciation. Therefore, many transliteration systems have been developed to write the sounds of different varieties of Chinese. While many use the [[Latin alphabet]], systems using the [[Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic]] and [[Perso-Arabic alphabet]]s have also been designed. Among other purposes, these systems are used by students learning the corresponding varieties. The replacement of Chinese characters with a phonetic writing system was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, partly motivated by a desire to increase the country's literacy rate. The idea gained further support following the victory of the Communists in 1949, who immediately began two parallel programs regarding written Chinese. The first was the development of an alphabet to write the sounds of Mandarin, the variety spoken by around two-thirds of the Chinese population.{{sfnp|Ramsey|1987|p=88}} The other program investigated the simplification of the standard character forms. Initially, character simplification was not competing with the idea of a phonetic script; rather, simplification was intended to make the transition to a fully phonetic writing system easier.{{sfnp|Ramsey|1987|p=143}}

By 1958, official priorities had shifted towards character simplification. The [[Hanyu Pinyin]] (or simply 'pinyin') alphabet had been developed, but plans to replace Chinese characters with it were deferred, and the idea is no longer actively pursued. This change in priorities may have been due in part to pinyin's design being specific to Mandarin, to the exclusion of other dialects.{{sfnp|Ramsey|1987|pp=144–154}}

Pinyin uses the Latin alphabet with [[diacritics]] to represent the phonology of Standard Chinese. For the most part, pinyin uses phonetic values for letters that reflect their existing pronunciations in Romance languages and the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] (IPA). However, pairs of letters such as {{transliteration|zh|b}} and {{transliteration|zh|p}} that correspond to a [[Voice (phonetics)|voicing]] distinction in languages such as French instead represent the [[aspiration (phonetics)|aspiration]] distinction that is more abundant in Mandarin.{{sfnp|Ramsey|1987|p=88}} Pinyin also uses several consonantal letters to represent markedly different sounds from their assignments in other languages. For example, pinyin {{transliteration|zh|q}} and {{transliteration|zh|x}} correspond to sounds similar to English ''ch'' and ''sh'', respectively. While pinyin has become the predominant transliteration system for Mandarin, others include [[bopomofo]], [[Wade–Giles]], [[Yale romanization of Mandarin|Yale]], [[EFEO Chinese transcription|EFEO]] and [[Gwoyeu Romatzyh]].{{sfnp|DeFrancis|1984|p=265}}