A Systematic Comparison of Commonly Used Chinese Characters in East Asia

Abstract

Chinese characters have been adopted in the Chinese writing system, which is a logographic system, in contrast with phonographic system in Semitic alphabet, which has been adopted in Arabic, Roman, and Cyrillic scripts. Chinese characters has also been borrowed and modified by China’s neighboring countries such as Korean, Japan and Vietnam during the past two thousand years, yielding variations. While the simplified characters are now used in mainland China since 1950s, the traditional full forms of characters remain to be used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and oversea Chinese communities around the world. At the same time, Japanese has also recently created a set of new characters, which are distinct from both full forms and simplified forms of Chinese characters. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a three-way systematic comparison of the commonly used Chinese characters in contemporary East Asia for the facilitation of teaching and learning Chinese and Japanese writing systems as a second language. Keywords : Chinese Characters, Traditional Characters, Simplified Characters, Japanese Characters 本文以台灣教育部2011年公佈的≪標準字與簡化字對照手冊≫中的4808個常用正體字為基底, 比較其所對應的簡化字, 以及日本政府2010年公佈的≪常用漢字表≫2136個新字體字形的異同, 希冀能對 ｢漢字文化圈｣國家現行所使用的 ｢漢字｣之異同有更深入的瞭解｡ 分析的方法是把這三種漢字(依序為正體字, 簡化字, 日本新字體)依據字形的異同分為八類：一, 三者皆同, 如 ｢地/地/地｣；二, 正體與簡化相同, 但與新字體不同, 如 ｢收/收/収｣；三, 正體與新字體相同, 但與簡化不同, 如 ｢賞/赏/賞｣；四, 簡化與新字體相同, 但與正體不同, 如 ｢醫/医/医｣；五, 三種皆不相同, 如 ｢圖/图/図｣；六, 正體與簡化相同, 但沒有相對應的新字體, 如 ｢泛/泛/X｣；七, 正體與簡化不同, 也沒有相對應的新字體, 如 ｢媽/妈/X｣；八, 新字體中獨有的 ｢和製漢字｣, 沒有相對應的正體與簡化, 如 ｢働｣｡ 依據上述的分類方法把現行常用漢字整理出字形總表｡ 本文也針對多個不同正體字對應同一簡化字以表列出, 如正體字的 ｢髮｣和 ｢發｣都簡化成 ｢发｣, 同時簡單探討正體字與簡化字之間 ｢微別字形｣的差異｡ 關鍵字 : 漢字, 正體字, 簡化字, 日本新字體