Category talk:Chinese hanzi
Latest comment: 1 month ago by Benwing2 in topic RFM discussion: October 2016–March 2024
Would someone like to sort these by radical, as is done in Category:Japanese kanji? - dcljr 22:10, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Aaah edit
My God this category is such a mess. Who's volunteering with me to help clean it up? ---> Tooironic 01:37, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
Category:Japanese kanji to Category:Japanese logograms
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Category:Korean hanja to Category:Korean logograms
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Category:Vietnamese Han tu to Category:Vietnamese logograms
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All of these categories represent the same thing, except that they all use local names for them. Using a common name would probably be beneficial. —CodeCat 13:12, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose. Logograms? No, "logogram" is very generic and is not used to refer to characters in each of these languages. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 14:04, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- Abstain. Maybe the word sinogram could do the trick? --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- The point is to make it generic so that it can be applied to multiple languages. What reason is there for using different terms for each of these? Is there an essential difference between Kanji and Hanja other than the language? —CodeCat 14:22, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- There are differences but the problem is with the naming. 漢字 or "Han character" is what is common for hanzi, Hán tự, hanja and kanji. I suspect there will be opposition from editors of CJKV languages. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- But if we are going to include the script name, then should we have separate Category:English Latin letters, Category:Russian Cyrillic letters and so on? —CodeCat 14:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- We could just do this only for languages that have multiple scripts. --WikiTiki89 14:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- Then it would not apply to Chinese. —CodeCat 14:54, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- "Han character" is the most common and neutral translation of 漢字 from all CJKV languages without stressing "Chinese" (if it's causing any problems), even though 漢 means Han/Chinese. Sino-Xenic languages use Han (or Kan in Japanese) prefix to refer to the Chinese layer of their respective languages. @CodeCat, I don't get the joke about Category:Russian Cyrillic letters :). You seem to contradict yourself. It's you who are asking for the merger. There still will be Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese in the cat name, it's just the 2nd part, which is currently different. "Logogram" doesn't describe well the role hanzi/kanji, etc. in these languages. "Sinogram", although uncommon is the closest equivalent. Han characters have long deviated from the original solely logographic usage. Han characters are very different from other logographic scripts. There are a lot of phonetic elements, mixed and the original meanings are often lost or unknown. Although JKV languages have their own, home-made Han characters, especially Japanese and Vietnamese, they all have Chinese origin by nature and design. Japanese also differs from other Sino-Xenic languages in the way kanji are used to write native words and attach parts of the word in kana. There is hardly an equivalent of Japanese kanji. I think Japanese editors/users will oppose referring to "kanji" as "logograms". Perhaps "kanji", more than hanzi/hanja/Hán tự has become a too common term to be replaced with something else. I think it's better to move or link this discussion in the BP to make it more visible. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose, agreeing with Anatoli. User: PalkiaX50 talk to meh 00:19, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- My reasoning for calling the categories "logograms" is that they are then parallel to categories for other kinds of written symbols, like Category:English letters and Category:Japanese syllables. I'm not sure what the benefit of including the name of the script in the name is. Your proposal, to name the categories "Han characters", is parallel to having categories like Category:English Latin letters or Category:Russian Cyrillic letters. That is, a category that includes the name of the script, and contains only the characters in that one script. So what I wonder is, why do we not include the name "Latin" in Category:English letters, but we do see fit to include various language-specific names for Chinese characters in the category names? It's not very consistent. —CodeCat 00:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Hmm, they are called hanzi/kanja/hanja/Hán tự (Han tu) here because they are called so in the native languages and by linguists who work with these languages. ("Hanzi" is less settled because of the variety of transliterations and topolects in Chinese, e.g. Cantonese would be "hon3 zi6" in Jyutping and "hon jih" in Yale transliteration.) I personally don't see the problem in using "Chinese" or "Han" in the category name because this is what they are normally called as. We can't call them "letters" because they are not. "Han character" is the term parallel to "letters", "symbols", "syllables" if we need a generic term for all 4 CJKV languages. You seem to dislike it simply because it contains a language name. (I'm not voting yet on "Han character" categories, I need to see a broader discussion on this, I'm just saying it's the only common and correct term for this, IMO.) --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- As far as I know, people don't call them "Han characters" most of the time, they just call them "characters". In the same way that people say "what letter is that" when pointing at A, they would presumably say "what character is that" when pointing at 漢. So should we call them Category:Chinese characters, Category:Japanese characters etc? That might be too broad... —CodeCat 00:41, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, characters are too broad and using "characters" may be used to refer to Chinese, since only Han characters (hanzi) are used, it's obvious and "hanzi" is rather new. For Japanese and Korean, it becomes immediately wrong to use simply "characters" because katakana, hiragana and hangeul are also characters. "Han characters" ARE quite common but less common than kanja/hanja/Hán tự and, as I said, for Chinese, people refer to hanzi as simply "characters" because it's more obvious (it's the only script for the language, unless you talk about say, mixed Min Nan text with hanzi and pe̍h-ōe-jī, then you have to be more specific) and Chinese themselves usually simply use 字, which is not the case with other JKV (字 is also too generic and may also refer to e.g. Roman letters in different contexts). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- That's why I suggested using "logograms". It's equivalent to "letters". It's not used as often, no, but for lack of a better word that generically describes the type of character like "letter" does, I'm not sure what else we could use. Maybe we should consider just what use Category:English letters is supposed to convey. Is it the fact that it's, specifically, an alphabetic character, or is its main use to hold characters used for writing words? If the latter is the case, then maybe we should move all the "letters" categories to "characters" and then, for languages written in multiple scripts, subdivide by script. So then we would have Category:Japanese Han characters and Category:Japanese Hiragana characters, and they would have the generic Category:Japanese characters as their parent. —CodeCat 01:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't know. I'm a bit lost in your logic. The same way "Han characters" can also be subcategories of "character" categories. Why? There's no reason to invent something, which is not normally used, just to avoid the commonly used terms, which seem less politically correct(?). I liken this to inventing "Old East Slavic" term instead of "Old Russian", which even contradicts the naming in the East Slavic languages themselves and most other languages, cf. "Oudrussisch" in your native language (which didn't simply copy the term from English). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- That's why I suggested using "logograms". It's equivalent to "letters". It's not used as often, no, but for lack of a better word that generically describes the type of character like "letter" does, I'm not sure what else we could use. Maybe we should consider just what use Category:English letters is supposed to convey. Is it the fact that it's, specifically, an alphabetic character, or is its main use to hold characters used for writing words? If the latter is the case, then maybe we should move all the "letters" categories to "characters" and then, for languages written in multiple scripts, subdivide by script. So then we would have Category:Japanese Han characters and Category:Japanese Hiragana characters, and they would have the generic Category:Japanese characters as their parent. —CodeCat 01:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, characters are too broad and using "characters" may be used to refer to Chinese, since only Han characters (hanzi) are used, it's obvious and "hanzi" is rather new. For Japanese and Korean, it becomes immediately wrong to use simply "characters" because katakana, hiragana and hangeul are also characters. "Han characters" ARE quite common but less common than kanja/hanja/Hán tự and, as I said, for Chinese, people refer to hanzi as simply "characters" because it's more obvious (it's the only script for the language, unless you talk about say, mixed Min Nan text with hanzi and pe̍h-ōe-jī, then you have to be more specific) and Chinese themselves usually simply use 字, which is not the case with other JKV (字 is also too generic and may also refer to e.g. Roman letters in different contexts). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- As far as I know, people don't call them "Han characters" most of the time, they just call them "characters". In the same way that people say "what letter is that" when pointing at A, they would presumably say "what character is that" when pointing at 漢. So should we call them Category:Chinese characters, Category:Japanese characters etc? That might be too broad... —CodeCat 00:41, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Hmm, they are called hanzi/kanja/hanja/Hán tự (Han tu) here because they are called so in the native languages and by linguists who work with these languages. ("Hanzi" is less settled because of the variety of transliterations and topolects in Chinese, e.g. Cantonese would be "hon3 zi6" in Jyutping and "hon jih" in Yale transliteration.) I personally don't see the problem in using "Chinese" or "Han" in the category name because this is what they are normally called as. We can't call them "letters" because they are not. "Han character" is the term parallel to "letters", "symbols", "syllables" if we need a generic term for all 4 CJKV languages. You seem to dislike it simply because it contains a language name. (I'm not voting yet on "Han character" categories, I need to see a broader discussion on this, I'm just saying it's the only common and correct term for this, IMO.) --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- "Han character" is the most common and neutral translation of 漢字 from all CJKV languages without stressing "Chinese" (if it's causing any problems), even though 漢 means Han/Chinese. Sino-Xenic languages use Han (or Kan in Japanese) prefix to refer to the Chinese layer of their respective languages. @CodeCat, I don't get the joke about Category:Russian Cyrillic letters :). You seem to contradict yourself. It's you who are asking for the merger. There still will be Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese in the cat name, it's just the 2nd part, which is currently different. "Logogram" doesn't describe well the role hanzi/kanji, etc. in these languages. "Sinogram", although uncommon is the closest equivalent. Han characters have long deviated from the original solely logographic usage. Han characters are very different from other logographic scripts. There are a lot of phonetic elements, mixed and the original meanings are often lost or unknown. Although JKV languages have their own, home-made Han characters, especially Japanese and Vietnamese, they all have Chinese origin by nature and design. Japanese also differs from other Sino-Xenic languages in the way kanji are used to write native words and attach parts of the word in kana. There is hardly an equivalent of Japanese kanji. I think Japanese editors/users will oppose referring to "kanji" as "logograms". Perhaps "kanji", more than hanzi/hanja/Hán tự has become a too common term to be replaced with something else. I think it's better to move or link this discussion in the BP to make it more visible. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Then it would not apply to Chinese. —CodeCat 14:54, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- We could just do this only for languages that have multiple scripts. --WikiTiki89 14:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- But if we are going to include the script name, then should we have separate Category:English Latin letters, Category:Russian Cyrillic letters and so on? —CodeCat 14:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- There are differences but the problem is with the naming. 漢字 or "Han character" is what is common for hanzi, Hán tự, hanja and kanji. I suspect there will be opposition from editors of CJKV languages. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
- And I'm a bit lost trying to explain it, sorry. I'll try to reword it in a more step-by-step way.
- Right now, we have various categories with different names, which all contain the same basic thing: characters in the Han script.
- When we look at what categories other languages use for their characters, things are very different. For languages written in alphabetic scripts, there is only a "letters" category, with no mention of the script.
- Thus, my initial thought was to make the Han character categories match that, and I came up with "logograms". "Logogram" describes the type of character, just like "letter", so it is parallel and fits well alongside it.
- But as others have said, quite rightly, the name "logogram" itself is not widely used, and is therefore less informative. So I wondered what other ways we could change our current category names so that they are more similar across languages.
- And so, I suggest that for all languages, characters used for writing words in the language are placed in a generic "characters" category, which is itself a subcategory of "symbols" (the top level). The "letters" categories would thus be renamed to "characters" in all languages, including English. A#English would go in Category:English characters. Chinese characters would, appropriately, end up in Category:Chinese characters.
- For languages like Japanese or Serbo-Croatian, which are written in multiple scripts, a subcategory for each script is created. This would give Category:Japanese Han characters, Category:Japanese Hiragana characters, Category:Japanese Katakana characters and also Category:Serbo-Croatian Latin characters and Category:Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic characters.
- Is it more clear this way? (Also, just to note, we have Oudoostslavisch too) —CodeCat 01:53, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- We already have Category:Han characters, which can be a subcategory of Category:characters. Category:Japanese hiragana sounds much better than Category:Japanese Hiragana characters and it still can be a subcat of Category:characters, even if it's missing the word "characters". I'm not sure if the community accepts renaming "letters" to "characters" for Latin, Cyrillic, etc, based languages. Category:Han characters is better than Category:Chinese characters as an umbrella term for hanzi/kanji... for CJKV languages. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- The problem with trying to generalize is that Han characters are the product of the writing system evolving over thousands of years in very complex ways until the result is impossible to categorize. A character can be a word, a syllable, a morpheme, or an idea- but it's usually some combination. Unlike in most writing systems, characters are made up of recognizable parts that can be combined, so that a given character may have a parts that are phonetic and parts that are semantic. In Japanese, it gets even more complicated, with many successive borrowings of words and their native equivalents all spelled with the same characters, but pronounced differently, depending on the context. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and all the dialects of Chinese share enough letters that many chunks of text can be read by all, but when read aloud they can be completely unintelligible between languages. Or there can be a thread of related sounds shared between the languages for a given character. The only comparable phenomenon I can think of would be the cuneiform system, and that's been dead for millenia. Sure, you could call them logograms, but you would also have to call them syllables and/or morphemes and/or particles- it varies unpredictably. I vote for avoiding that whole tangle of intertwining possibilities and just calling them Han characters. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- That's why I think simply "characters" (preceded by the language) is the most general. But I agree that people might not like renaming Category:English letters. I'm just not sure. Are Han characters really that unique that they would deserve their own name in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/symbols? I'm not really happy with Category:Chinese Han characters standing on the same footing as Category:English letters, because the former says specifically what script the characters belong to while the latter instead specifies what class of writing system they belong to. My main aim is to make the names generic enough that they can be reused easily by many languages, but also to make the category tree internally consistent. So either all the categories specify the class (letters vs. logograms), or they all specify the script name (Han characters vs Latin characters), or do neither (just "characters"). But I suppose if there is no other sensible way to do it, we'll just have to settle for "Han characters". It's still better than all the language-specific names. —CodeCat 20:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Category:Chinese Han characters can be a subcategory of Category:Chinese characters, which would be on the same level as Category:English letters. That way JKV scripts (katakana, hiragana, hangeul), including Han characters end up on the same level as Category:Chinese Han characters. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
- That's why I think simply "characters" (preceded by the language) is the most general. But I agree that people might not like renaming Category:English letters. I'm just not sure. Are Han characters really that unique that they would deserve their own name in Module:category tree/poscatboiler/symbols? I'm not really happy with Category:Chinese Han characters standing on the same footing as Category:English letters, because the former says specifically what script the characters belong to while the latter instead specifies what class of writing system they belong to. My main aim is to make the names generic enough that they can be reused easily by many languages, but also to make the category tree internally consistent. So either all the categories specify the class (letters vs. logograms), or they all specify the script name (Han characters vs Latin characters), or do neither (just "characters"). But I suppose if there is no other sensible way to do it, we'll just have to settle for "Han characters". It's still better than all the language-specific names. —CodeCat 20:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- The problem with trying to generalize is that Han characters are the product of the writing system evolving over thousands of years in very complex ways until the result is impossible to categorize. A character can be a word, a syllable, a morpheme, or an idea- but it's usually some combination. Unlike in most writing systems, characters are made up of recognizable parts that can be combined, so that a given character may have a parts that are phonetic and parts that are semantic. In Japanese, it gets even more complicated, with many successive borrowings of words and their native equivalents all spelled with the same characters, but pronounced differently, depending on the context. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and all the dialects of Chinese share enough letters that many chunks of text can be read by all, but when read aloud they can be completely unintelligible between languages. Or there can be a thread of related sounds shared between the languages for a given character. The only comparable phenomenon I can think of would be the cuneiform system, and that's been dead for millenia. Sure, you could call them logograms, but you would also have to call them syllables and/or morphemes and/or particles- it varies unpredictably. I vote for avoiding that whole tangle of intertwining possibilities and just calling them Han characters. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- I oppose moving these categories. Virtually no one says "Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese Han characters" or "Vietnamese logograms" (search in Google Books). "Chinese Han characters" sounds redundant and contrived. Wyang (talk) 23:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
- Could you not have said so before I did most of it already? *sigh* —CodeCat 01:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- In addition to opposing the moves, I also oppose you starting it when nobody has voted support. --kc_kennylau (talk) 01:43, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Then what about the whole discussion that followed, in which the conclusion was, it seemed, that "Han characters" was ok? There was no further comment on that so I assumed it was ok. —CodeCat 01:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- AFAIK, people do not dislike Category:Han characters, but Category:Chinese Han characters is not brought up until 2014/08/12 20:29 (UTC), and then Anatoli says that this category can be parallel with blah blah blah, without ever mentioning his support. PostScriptum: I prefer the word "sinogram" if the categories have to be unified. --kc_kennylau (talk) 01:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- I personally warmed to the idea of "Chinese Han characters", which essentially means the same as "Chinese hanzi", even though "Han=Chinese=Sinetic". My preference is also hanzi/kanji/hanja/Hán tự but if we need to merge them into one category, "Han character" is a better translation of all these. Merging would also possibly allow us to eliminate cmn-hanzi, hak-hanzi, yue-hanzi. I didn't express support but just mentioned that Han characters, IMO, is a better term than logogram. "Sinogram" is also correct but it doesn't seem as common as "Han character" when referring generically to Chinese characters. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- AFAIK, people do not dislike Category:Han characters, but Category:Chinese Han characters is not brought up until 2014/08/12 20:29 (UTC), and then Anatoli says that this category can be parallel with blah blah blah, without ever mentioning his support. PostScriptum: I prefer the word "sinogram" if the categories have to be unified. --kc_kennylau (talk) 01:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Then what about the whole discussion that followed, in which the conclusion was, it seemed, that "Han characters" was ok? There was no further comment on that so I assumed it was ok. —CodeCat 01:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- In addition to opposing the moves, I also oppose you starting it when nobody has voted support. --kc_kennylau (talk) 01:43, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Could you not have said so before I did most of it already? *sigh* —CodeCat 01:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Apparently this is not happening. Closed. — Keφr 13:41, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
What distinguishes these two? —suzukaze (t・c) 03:31, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
(Discussion that misunderstood the language-specificity of these categories.)
- We have Category:Latin script characters and other subcategories of Category:Characters by script.
- To follow suit, maybe we should merge Category:Chinese hanzi and Category:Chinese Han characters into
Category:Chinese script charactersCategory:Han script characters. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 03:35, 9 October 2016 (UTC)- Oppose merging both into the already existing Category:Han script characters as it is for all hanzi, while the two being discussed here are for Chinese hanzi only. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:00, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
- Allright. Apparently, these two categories are for single-character entries. We have Category:Japanese terms written with one Han script character, so these could be merged into Category:Chinese terms written with one Han script character, and we could populate Category:Chinese character counts like Category:Japanese character counts. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 04:04, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose this one too since Japanese entries have Category:Japanese Han characters, for any kanji used in the Japanese language (regardless of whether it can be used independently as a word or not), while Category:Japanese terms written with one Han script character is for words that feature only one kanji, such as 好き. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:17, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
- Allright. Apparently, these two categories are for single-character entries. We have Category:Japanese terms written with one Han script character, so these could be merged into Category:Chinese terms written with one Han script character, and we could populate Category:Chinese character counts like Category:Japanese character counts. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 04:04, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
- Oppose merging both into the already existing Category:Han script characters as it is for all hanzi, while the two being discussed here are for Chinese hanzi only. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:00, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
If there is no meaningful difference between these, I propose keeping Category:Chinese Han characters as it is managed by {{poscatboiler}} and merging Category:Chinese hanzi into it. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:17, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
- @Wyang, Atitarev, is there a difference between Category:Chinese hanzi and Category:Chinese Han characters, or can Category:Chinese hanzi be merged into Category:Chinese Han characters as suzukaze proposes? - -sche (discuss) 00:27, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
- They can be merged, IMO. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:52, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
- (reviving this discussion after almost three years) Merge per Suzukaze-c's proposal above. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 03:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
There seems to be no notable difference between the two categories so they should be merged I guess. Ffffrr (talk) 21:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
Update? For reference, it looks like the "Chinese hanzi" category is populated by this code in Module:zh-pron. 70.172.194.25 00:21, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Theknightwho @Wpi Any objections to merging these two categories? Seems like everyone so far agrees in merging. Benwing2 (talk) 06:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: please merge, I can't see any functional difference between the two. – wpi (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Done. Benwing2 (talk) 02:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: please merge, I can't see any functional difference between the two. – wpi (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
