Most people know both Chinese and Japanese languages use “Chinese characters” but what is the difference between Chinese and Japanese characters?
Let’s have a look at the Chinese character Hànzì (汉字/漢字) and Japanese Kanji (漢字) individually and then compare the difference.
Chinese character Hànzì (汉字 / 漢字)
Chinese characters originated from pictures, so it is also called pictographic characters (hieroglyphs). In linguistics, a pictographic character is also called a logogram as well. Many other languages used logograms in history like Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world according to some experts.
Chinese characters started about 4,000 years ago. There were many different ways of writing logograms in the beginning. The first Chinese character standardisation was led by the first Emperor – Qin Shi Huang during the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC). He unified the eight calligraphic styles in other states and absorbed some simplified characters and popular style scripts to create the standardised Qinzhuan (Qin-Dynasty seal) script. This significantly advanced the development of Chinese characters. There are some changes since then but the second significant change was led by Chairman Mao during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1964, China government officially adopted simplified Chinese characters for use in mainland China.
Nowadays, we have simplified Chinese characters as the official Chinese language in mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and other international organisations, while traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and to a limited extent in South Korea. While some overseas Chinese media still use traditional Chinese characters, more and more overseas Chinese media changed to simplified Chinese characters. 汉字 is a simplified Chinese character while 漢字 is a traditional Chinese character.
It used to be very hard to convert between simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters before the computer was used in typing and printing. You had to re-write the whole article. However, it is now very easy to convert between simplified and traditional Chinese characters using online conversion or even in MS Word.
It is hard to say which one is better. While it is true that traditional Chinese characters are more meaningful, it is also true to say simplified Chinese characters are much easier to write.
Here is the difference of “Love” between the simplified Chinese character 爱 and the traditional Chinese character 愛. The pronunciation is the same Ài. As shown in the below picture, the simplified Chinese character has no heart 心 (Xīn). Love without a heart? This is the normal criticism of the simplified Chinese character from the Taiwanese.
Initially, most Chinese characters are monosyllabic (one character is a single word), but in the modern Chinese language, more than 60% of the common words are polysyllables, mainly disyllables (two characters to form a word).
How many Chinese characters are there? The answers are varied. The biggest Chinese character dictionary is believed to be the “Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants“, it collected over 100,000 Chinese characters including many no-more-used characters. Normally, most modern Chinese dictionaries. The “Table of General Standard Chinese Characters” (Tōngyòng Guīfàn Hànzì Biǎo 通用规范汉字表 ) published in 2013 includes 8,105 characters, 3,500 as primary, 3,000 as secondary, and 1,605 as tertiary. The new HSK (Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì 汉语水平考试, Chinese Proficiency Test) designed for non-native speakers in July 2021 covers 3,000 characters and 11,092 words at its highest level (level nine).
In summary, there are about 3,000 common Chinese characters in modern life. People use about 500 characters in daily life. Though there are many different dialects in China, they all write the same Chinese characters.
Japanese Kanji
Chinese characters were adopted for recording the Japanese language from the 5th century AD, it is called “kanji” (漢字).
Initially, Chinese words were borrowed into the Japanese language without any change and used Chinese-based pronunciation known as “on’yomi”. Native Japanese words could also be written using a similar meaning to Chinese characters but will keep the native Japanese pronunciation known as “kun’yomi”. For example, the Chinese character “刀” （Dāo）will be read as “Katana” in “kun’yomi” since the word is native to Japanese. While in “日本刀” the pronunciation is “nihontō” (on’yomi) because it is borrowed from Chinese which means “Japanese sword”.
The Japanese government started simplifying Chinese characters after World War II. Some characters were given simplified forms called shinjitai (新字体, new character forms); the older forms were then labelled the kyūjitai (旧字体, old character forms). For example, 龍 is simplified as 竜 (dragon). Pronunciation is the same: ryū (on’yomi) or Tatsu (kun’yomi). Considering the Chinese government only started simplifying Chinese characters in the 1950s, there might be some relations between these. However, the way they simplified Chinese characters is not all the same. Let’s again take the dragon as an example, while the traditional Chinese characters are the same “龍 “, The Japanese simplified Kanji is “竜 ” but the Chinese simplified Chinese character is “龙”(Lóng).
How many Japanese Kanji are there? According to the “Frequently used Chinese characters” (常用漢字 jōyō kanji ) designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education in 2010, there are 2,136 Chinese characters. There are other Kanji used in personal and place names.
In summary, a well-educated Japanese may know about 2,000 – 3, 000 Kanji. Young people know less Kanji these days.
The difference between Chinese and Japanese characters
It is clear from the above that Japanese characters (Kanji) are borrowed from Chinese characters.
While most of the Japanese characters are still the same as the traditional Chinese characters and mostly with similar meanings, there are some differences:
- Japanese Kanji has two different pronunciation systems for Chinese characters: “kun’yomi” (for original Japanese words) and “on’yomi” (for borrowed Chinese words). And the “on’yomi” may not be similar to today’s Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. Some of the “on’yomi” is based on Chinese dialect.
- While traditional Japanese Kanji is the same as traditional Chinese characters, simplified Japanese Kanji (shinjitai, new character forms) might be different from simplified Chinese characters.
- Most Japanese Kanji has a similar meaning to Chinese characters but not always.
The most used Chinese character and Japanese Kanji difference example is “手纸/手紙(Shǒuzhǐ)” and “手紙(Tegami)”. In Chinese characters, it means “toilet paper” while in Japanese it means “letter”.
Hope you understand the difference between the Chinese and Japanse Characters now.
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