Pembentukan Hanzi (Karakter Han)
Hanzi atau Kanji (karakter Han) merupakan inti dalam bahasa Cina. Menurut Xǔ Shèn (許慎/许慎), hanzi sendiri terbentuk dengan enam cara (六書 liùshū). Pada awalnya, hanzi terbentuk dari gambaran benda dalam bentuk nyata yang biasanya disebut dengan piktogram (象形字 xiàngxíngzì). Selain piktogram, Hanzi terbentuk dengan secara ideogram (指事字 zhǐshìzì) yaitu dengan mengambil konsep untuk dijadikan karakter. Karakter bermakna (會意字/会意字 huìyìzì) yang merupakan gabungan antara dua karakter yang menjadi dasar makna dan bentuk karakter baru. Piktofonetik ( 形声字/形聲字 xíngshēngzì) yang menggabungkan unsur bunyi dan unsur makna dari dua unsur karakter yang berbeda. Karakter pinjaman (假借字, Jiǎjièzì) yaitu dengan meminjam karakter lain sehingga makna karakter aslinya semakin hilang dan akhirnya ada penggantian karakter untuk menggantikannya. (转注字 / 轉注字 zhuǎnzhùzì)
Piktogram
Hanzi yang berasal dari perwujudan citra asli suatu benda hanya ada sekitar 9% dari total keseluruhan. Hanzi ini ditandai dengan kemiripan fisik antara tulisan dan bentuk aslinya, misalnya hanzi 人 ren yang berarti orang atau manusia, mirip dengan orang yang sedang melangkah.
Hanzi lain misalnya Da yang artinya besar mirip dengan wujud orang yang melebarkan tangannya.
Chinese characters represent words of the language using several strategies. A few characters, including some of the most commonly used, were originally pictograms, which depicted the objects denoted, or simple ideograms, in which meaning was expressed iconically. Some other words were expressed by compound ideograms, but the vast majority were written using the rebus principle, in which a character for a similarly sounding word was either simply borrowed or (more commonly) extended with a disambiguating semantic marker to form a phono-semantic compound character.[8]
These five methods, together with an obscure category of "transformed cognates", were first enumerated as the liùshū (六书 / 六書) ("six writings") by the scholar Xu Shen in his dictionary Shuowen Jiezi in 100 AD.[9] While this analysis is sometimes problematic and arguably fails to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, it has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.
Pictograms
象形字 xiàngxíngzì ("image-form characters")
Pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. Characters in this class derive from pictures of the objects they denote. Over time they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 rì for "sun", 月 yuè for "moon", 木 mù for "tree" or "wood", and 麻 má for "hemp".
There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen placed approximately 4% of characters in this category.
Simple ideograms
指事字 zhǐshìzì ("point-thing characters")
Also called simple indicatives or simple ideographs, this small category contains characters that are direct iconic illustrations. Examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down", originally a dot above and below a line.
Compound ideograms
会意字 / 會意字 huìyìzì ("assemble-thought characters")
Translated as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters have been interpreted as combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning. Commonly cited examples include 休 "rest" (composed of the pictograms 人 "person" and 木 "tree") and 好 "good" (composed of 女 "woman" and 子 "child").
Xu Shen placed approximately 13% of characters in this category. However, many of these characters are now believed to be phono-semantic compounds whose origin has been obscured by subsequent changes in their form.[10] Some scholars reject the applicability of this category to any of the compound characters devised in ancient times, maintaining that now-lost "secondary readings" are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators.[11]
In contrast, ideographic compounds are common among characters coined in Japan. Also, a few characters coined in China in modern times, such as 鉑 platinum, "white metal" (see chemical elements in East Asian languages) belong to this category.
Rebus
假借字 jiǎjièzì ("false-borrow characters")
Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar or identical pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 zì, which has lost its original meaning of "nose" completely and exclusively means "oneself", or 萬 wàn, which originally meant "scorpion" but is now used only in the sense of "ten thousand".
Rebus was pivotal in the history of writing in China insofar as it represented the stage at which logographic writing could become purely phonetic (phonographic). Chinese characters used purely for their sound values are attested in the Chun Qiu 春秋 and Zhan Guo 戰國 manuscripts, in which zhi 氏 was used to write shi 是 and vice versa, just lines apart; the same happened with shao 勺 for Zhao 趙, with the characters in question being homophonous or nearly homophonous at the time.[12]
Phono-semantic compounds
形声字 / 形聲字 xíngshēngzì ("form–sound characters")
By far the most numerous characters are the phono-semantic compounds, also called semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds. These characters are composed of two parts: one of a limited set of characters (the semantic indicator, often graphically simplified) which suggests the general meaning of the compound character, and another character (the phonetic indicator) whose pronunciation suggests the pronunciation of the compound character. In most cases the semantic indicator is also the radical under which the character is listed in dictionaries.
Examples are 河 hé "river", 湖 hú "lake", 流 liú "stream", 沖 chōng "riptide" (or "flush"), 滑 huá "slippery". All these characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes, which is a simplified pictograph for a river, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 沖 chōng (Old Chinese *ɡ-ljuŋ[13]), the phonetic indicator is 中 zhōng (Old Chinese *k-ljuŋ[14]), which by itself means "middle". In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character is slightly different from that of its phonetic indicator; the process of historical phonetic change means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today.
Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 AD) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.[citation needed]
This method is still sometimes used to form new characters, for example 钚 / 鈈 bù ("plutonium") is the metal radical 金 jīn plus the phonetic component 不 bù, described in Chinese as "不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning". Many Chinese names of elements in the periodic table and many other chemistry-related characters were formed this way.
Occasionally a bisyllabic word is written with two characters that contain the same radical, as in 蝴蝶 húdié "butterfly", where both characters have the insect radical 虫. A notable example is biwa (a Chinese lute, also a fruit, the loquat, of similar shape) – originally written as 批把 with the hand radical, referring to the down and up strokes when playing this instrument, which was then changed to 枇杷 (tree radical), which is still used for the fruit, while the character was changed to 琵琶 when referring to the instrument.[15] In other cases a compound word may coincidentally share a radical without this being meaningful.
Transformed cognates
转注字 / 轉注字 zhuǎnzhùzì ("move-focus characters")
The smallest category of characters is also the least understood.[16] In the postface to the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen gave as an example the characters 考 kǎo "to verify" and 老 lǎo "old", which had similar Old Chinese pronunciations (*khuʔ and *c-ruʔ respectively[17]) and may once have been the same word, meaning "elderly person", but became lexicalized into two separate words. The term does not appear in the body of the dictionary, and is often omitted from modern systems.[10]
Piktogram
Hanzi yang berasal dari perwujudan citra asli suatu benda hanya ada sekitar 9% dari total keseluruhan. Hanzi ini ditandai dengan kemiripan fisik antara tulisan dan bentuk aslinya, misalnya hanzi 人 ren yang berarti orang atau manusia, mirip dengan orang yang sedang melangkah.
Hanzi lain misalnya Da yang artinya besar mirip dengan wujud orang yang melebarkan tangannya.
Chinese characters represent words of the language using several strategies. A few characters, including some of the most commonly used, were originally pictograms, which depicted the objects denoted, or simple ideograms, in which meaning was expressed iconically. Some other words were expressed by compound ideograms, but the vast majority were written using the rebus principle, in which a character for a similarly sounding word was either simply borrowed or (more commonly) extended with a disambiguating semantic marker to form a phono-semantic compound character.[8]
These five methods, together with an obscure category of "transformed cognates", were first enumerated as the liùshū (六书 / 六書) ("six writings") by the scholar Xu Shen in his dictionary Shuowen Jiezi in 100 AD.[9] While this analysis is sometimes problematic and arguably fails to reflect the complete nature of the Chinese writing system, it has been perpetuated by its long history and pervasive use.
Pictograms
象形字 xiàngxíngzì ("image-form characters")
Pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. Characters in this class derive from pictures of the objects they denote. Over time they have been standardized, simplified, and stylized to make them easier to write, and their derivation is therefore not always obvious. Examples include 日 rì for "sun", 月 yuè for "moon", 木 mù for "tree" or "wood", and 麻 má for "hemp".
There is no concrete number for the proportion of modern characters that are pictographic in nature; however, Xu Shen placed approximately 4% of characters in this category.
Simple ideograms
指事字 zhǐshìzì ("point-thing characters")
Also called simple indicatives or simple ideographs, this small category contains characters that are direct iconic illustrations. Examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down", originally a dot above and below a line.
Compound ideograms
会意字 / 會意字 huìyìzì ("assemble-thought characters")
Translated as logical aggregates or associative compounds, these characters have been interpreted as combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning. Commonly cited examples include 休 "rest" (composed of the pictograms 人 "person" and 木 "tree") and 好 "good" (composed of 女 "woman" and 子 "child").
Xu Shen placed approximately 13% of characters in this category. However, many of these characters are now believed to be phono-semantic compounds whose origin has been obscured by subsequent changes in their form.[10] Some scholars reject the applicability of this category to any of the compound characters devised in ancient times, maintaining that now-lost "secondary readings" are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators.[11]
In contrast, ideographic compounds are common among characters coined in Japan. Also, a few characters coined in China in modern times, such as 鉑 platinum, "white metal" (see chemical elements in East Asian languages) belong to this category.
Rebus
假借字 jiǎjièzì ("false-borrow characters")
Also called borrowings or phonetic loan characters, this category covers cases where an existing character is used to represent an unrelated word with similar or identical pronunciation; sometimes the old meaning is then lost completely, as with characters such as 自 zì, which has lost its original meaning of "nose" completely and exclusively means "oneself", or 萬 wàn, which originally meant "scorpion" but is now used only in the sense of "ten thousand".
Rebus was pivotal in the history of writing in China insofar as it represented the stage at which logographic writing could become purely phonetic (phonographic). Chinese characters used purely for their sound values are attested in the Chun Qiu 春秋 and Zhan Guo 戰國 manuscripts, in which zhi 氏 was used to write shi 是 and vice versa, just lines apart; the same happened with shao 勺 for Zhao 趙, with the characters in question being homophonous or nearly homophonous at the time.[12]
Phono-semantic compounds
形声字 / 形聲字 xíngshēngzì ("form–sound characters")
By far the most numerous characters are the phono-semantic compounds, also called semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds. These characters are composed of two parts: one of a limited set of characters (the semantic indicator, often graphically simplified) which suggests the general meaning of the compound character, and another character (the phonetic indicator) whose pronunciation suggests the pronunciation of the compound character. In most cases the semantic indicator is also the radical under which the character is listed in dictionaries.
Examples are 河 hé "river", 湖 hú "lake", 流 liú "stream", 沖 chōng "riptide" (or "flush"), 滑 huá "slippery". All these characters have on the left a radical of three short strokes, which is a simplified pictograph for a river, indicating that the character has a semantic connection with water; the right-hand side in each case is a phonetic indicator. For example, in the case of 沖 chōng (Old Chinese *ɡ-ljuŋ[13]), the phonetic indicator is 中 zhōng (Old Chinese *k-ljuŋ[14]), which by itself means "middle". In this case it can be seen that the pronunciation of the character is slightly different from that of its phonetic indicator; the process of historical phonetic change means that the composition of such characters can sometimes seem arbitrary today.
Xu Shen (c. 100 AD) placed approximately 82% of characters into this category, while in the Kangxi Dictionary (1716 AD) the number is closer to 90%, due to the extremely productive use of this technique to extend the Chinese vocabulary.[citation needed]
This method is still sometimes used to form new characters, for example 钚 / 鈈 bù ("plutonium") is the metal radical 金 jīn plus the phonetic component 不 bù, described in Chinese as "不 gives sound, 金 gives meaning". Many Chinese names of elements in the periodic table and many other chemistry-related characters were formed this way.
Occasionally a bisyllabic word is written with two characters that contain the same radical, as in 蝴蝶 húdié "butterfly", where both characters have the insect radical 虫. A notable example is biwa (a Chinese lute, also a fruit, the loquat, of similar shape) – originally written as 批把 with the hand radical, referring to the down and up strokes when playing this instrument, which was then changed to 枇杷 (tree radical), which is still used for the fruit, while the character was changed to 琵琶 when referring to the instrument.[15] In other cases a compound word may coincidentally share a radical without this being meaningful.
Transformed cognates
转注字 / 轉注字 zhuǎnzhùzì ("move-focus characters")
The smallest category of characters is also the least understood.[16] In the postface to the Shuowen Jiezi, Xu Shen gave as an example the characters 考 kǎo "to verify" and 老 lǎo "old", which had similar Old Chinese pronunciations (*khuʔ and *c-ruʔ respectively[17]) and may once have been the same word, meaning "elderly person", but became lexicalized into two separate words. The term does not appear in the body of the dictionary, and is often omitted from modern systems.[10]
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