Chinese written language

Chinese characters are the unique phenomenon in the modern written languages. This is the only hieroglyphic written language of the world that was invented in 1500 BC and continues existing till nowadays.

Hieroglyphic was invented practically in all centres of ancient civilizations from Asia to America and Europe. And all hieroglyphs disappeared leaving several monuments. And only Chinese hieroglyphic could adapt to the changing conditions of the development of Chinese civilization and is complicated till nowadays but acceptable.

The sign of Chinese hieroglyphic is the complicated graphical figure and is called "character".

The unusual system of Chinese writing was always interesting and provoked curiosity among experts. There is a lot of literature on this topic but the scientific investigation of its history started from the end of the last century after the discovery of the most ancient monuments of the Chinese written language.

Hieroglyphic of China is distinguished by the form and level of the separate signs complicity. There are differences in all qualities of the signs between the alphabetic written language and hieroglyphic.

The graphical difference of hieroglyphs from the alphabetic letters consists in the way of writing. Character is always more complicated than the letter. And the number of such characters may achieve 50 thousand. There was no hieroglyphic that had such number of signs.