Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

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Xenops
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Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby Xenops » Thu Mar 30, 2023 4:56 pm

I’m on my phone, so I dare not search on HTLAL—but what’s the overlap of usage between the three? I know Mandarin varies somewhat, as it has simplified characters versus more traditional characters in Japanese. What percentage do Korean and Japanese share, for example?
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby brilliantyears » Thu Mar 30, 2023 8:01 pm

Very roughly the character situation can be laid out like this:
- Traditional Chinese characters were used before the 1950s and are still used in Taiwan these days. Quite a few characters are already (way) more simple than they used to be way back in the day.
- Then there's Simplified Chinese, in use since the 1950s. Some characters haven't changed though. Many characters are a bit more blocky looking, and to me personally they feel less fluent to write by hand :)
- Japanese uses a more simplified version derived from (old) traditional Chinese characters - meaning many characters are a bit more simple than what's still used in Taiwan but more complicated than what's used in China (also, not blocky).

Japanese characters and Simplified Chinese characters evolved separately from each other.

This is a cool page that shows you some differences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differenc ... characters
And also has some of the percentages you're asking for :D

As for Korean, I'm not an expert. But unrelated to the above: all I know is I've seen a lot of hanja at work and there often seems something a little bit off about them :) Where Japanese and Chinese characters neatly fit into a box, hanja often seems... somewhat unbalanced. Remind me next week and I'll find a few books to take photos of as an example.
Last edited by brilliantyears on Fri Mar 31, 2023 6:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby leosmith » Fri Mar 31, 2023 1:06 am

Xenops wrote:what’s the overlap of usage between the three?
I don't know any percentages, but:

An uncomplicated way of thinking about it would be everyone uses traditional characters, but Mainland China swapped out about 2200 of theirs for simplified characters. There are over 50k characters, so even Mainland China uses mostly traditional.

But it’s actually more complicated than that. Characters evolve, and different languages borrowed characters at different stages. Some made their own characters too.

Most Japanese kanji match standard Chinese traditional, but they borrowed characters at several different times, so some are older versions and some even match simplified. They invented some of their own too (to be clear - I’m talking about kanji here, not kana).

Taiwan uses traditional, but they use different versions of certain characters.

Cantonese uses traditional, but they invented some of their own too. Also, they use a different combination of characters for many words, so you can’t just read traditional standard Chinese with Cantonese pronunciation and be speaking correct Cantonese, in case you were wondering about that.

Korean hanja is traditional, but borrowed a long time ago, so it’s pretty common to see slightly different versions of characters; when they differ, they are almost always a bit more complicated than standard traditional.

I know you didn’t ask about it, and it’s no longer used, but Vietnamese borrowed traditional characters long ago, and also made many of their own characters too. Standard traditional Chinese characters are normally used to convey both meaning and phonology, but sometimes just used for phonology, like in the case of some loan words. But in Vietnamese Chinese script it was very common for characters to have phonology without meaning. Even more so than Cantonese, you couldn’t just read standard traditional Chinese with Vietnamese pronunciation and hope to be understood.
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby Axon » Fri Mar 31, 2023 8:03 am

In general, a Japanese or Korean person reading Chinese text is almost definitely going to see characters they have no idea about. An educated Chinese person reading a Japanese or Korean text that has kanji/hanja is likely to recognize all of them, unless they happen not to be familiar with the particular variant used. That is, as far as I know there are very few hanja or kanji used in everyday Japanese or Korean that are extremely rare Chinese characters that have gone out of use in China and been replaced with completely different words. One example of this is the Korean 箇, which is an old form of the Chinese word 個/个. I'm not sure how common this is for Chinese people to know on sight; I only know it from having studied old dictionaries.

Japan and South Korea both publish lists of characters for official use. I did some quick statistics using the "Basic Hanja for educational use" and "List of jōyō kanji" lists on Wikipedia as my base. Of the 1800 hanja, 77% appear in the kanji list. Of the 2136 kanji, 65% appear in the hanja list. I'm rounding these to full percentages to account for if some of them got counted incorrectly somehow.

One fact I wish was more well-known about character simplification: simplified forms originate from handwriting styles, and in fact most simplified forms in China existed in some printed books well before the 1950s, even though they weren't yet official. People who are literate in characters can get used to alternate character forms very easily, especially if they have formal education in how characters are written.
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby bolaobo » Fri Mar 31, 2023 5:10 pm

I don't know of an exact percentage, but the overlap between Japanese and Chinese is certainly huge. I know traditional and simplified, and it's rare that I encounter a kanji I've never seen before although the meaning could be divergent. If I didn't know traditional, it would be a little harder but I'd still recognize the vast majority. Traditional and Simplified Chinese aren't as different as some people think and I could pick up the former in a few months after knowing the latter.
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby Gaoling97 » Sun Apr 02, 2023 12:29 am

See this table on the Chinese Wikipedia article for Hanja to get an impression of some of the differences between "traditional Chinese*" and Hanja. First row is Hanja, second is traditional, third is simplified, fourth is Japanese shinjitai. You can see that there are indeed some differences between Hanja and traditional Chinese, with the Hanja variants allegedly being slightly older/more conservative. Most famous example being 爲, which is seemingly no longer taught in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and has been replaced with 為 (simplified: 为).

I had always thought Hanja was basically the same as traditional Chinese, but with slight differences, but now that I am looking at this table and really thinking about it, it must actually technically be a good percentage of all characters in use. Consider that 者 has one extra little diagonal stroke added in the top right corner of the 日 part. Not a big deal, obviously...but there are tons of characters that have 者 as a component (者,都,緒,豬,賭,諸,etc.) which are immediately all also affected. The same appears to be the same for 青(靑),俞(兪),真(眞),and a few other components.

Annoyingly, not all of the variants can even be typed separately from their traditional Chinese counterparts due to Han Unification, other than if you manually change the font on whatever you are using.

*i.e. the standards used today in 2023, which in and of themselves differ somewhat between different regions. 裏 is the official form in Hong Kong and 裡 is the official form in Taiwan of li3面的li3 (which annoyingly enough is 里 in simplified Chinese...which already existed in traditional Chinese as a completely separate character!).

You can also, now that I am thinking about it, take that table with a grain of salt. It claims that 戶 is used in traditional Chinese, which is correct...in Taiwan. 户 is used in Hong Kong (and also in simplified Chinese).
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby leosmith » Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:26 am

Gaoling97 wrote:this table
Sweet table! Do you know of a similar comparison with Chữ Hán, the Chinese characters used for Vietnamese?
青(靑)
Aren't these just 2 different ways to write the same character?
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Re: Overlap between hanzi/kanji/hanja?

Postby Querneus » Wed Apr 05, 2023 12:58 am

Gaoling97 wrote:Most famous example being 爲, which is seemingly no longer taught in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and has been replaced with 為 (simplified: 为).

It may no longer be taught in schools, but I see 爲 often enough anyway... Incidentally, I'm quite annoyed the Linux Chinese input I use prefers 爲 over 為.
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