The Origin And The Development Of The Chinese Writing System

Author : William G. Boltz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System written by William G. Boltz and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1994 (hardcover now out of print), this volume has been reprinted in a new paperback format that will make it more attractive and affordable for use in the classroom. The work sketches with extraordinary precision the history of the Chinese writing system from the late Shang (ca. 1200 B.C.) when Chinese characters are first in evidence down to the script's standardization and codification a millennium later in the Ch'in and Han (221 B.C.-A.D. 220). Prof. Boltz takes in part a comparative approach to the origin and early structure and development of Chinese writing, suggesting that in its general principles the process was matched pari passu by the way writing first arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and among the Mayas (for example, that the Chinese script records the sounds of words, not ideas). The author also examines the question of why the Chinese script never became alphabetic, in spite of hints of such tendencies in the third and second centuries B.C. Kidder Smith, of Bowdoin College, said of the original publication: "... this book will be highly valued by anyone concerned with the relationships of language to writing, and should become the point of reference for all discussions of these questions as they pertain to ancient Chinese" (Religious Studies Review Vol. 21, No. 4, October 1995).

Author : William G. Boltz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780940490185
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origin and the Development of the Chinese Writing System written by William G. Boltz and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Thomas S. Mullaney
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262536102
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chinese Typewriter written by Thomas S. Mullaney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

Author : Kihoon Lee
Publisher : Algora Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1628943238
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origin of Chinese Characters written by Kihoon Lee and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jing Tsu
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735214735
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Author : Bo Shi
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Between Heaven and Earth written by Bo Shi and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master calligrapher illuminates the fascinating history and development of the characters of the Chinese alphabet.

Author : Raymond Chang
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393321876
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Speaking of Chinese written by Raymond Chang and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This pleasant, unpretentious account [is] a small stream leading to the ocean of the culture of China."--Scientific American

Author : Steven Roger Fischer
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1861895887
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of Writing written by Steven Roger Fischer and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a format that everyone can follow. Steven Roger Fischer also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for students and specialists as well as a delightful read for lovers of the written word everywhere.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Oxford Bibliographies written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Kang-i Sun Chang
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521855587
Total Pages : 748 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature written by Kang-i Sun Chang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket.