New characters?

I'm sure if the Chinese really wanted to, they could "invent" brand new Hanzi characters and attach a sound to them. (Although my Chinese friend who has a Ph.D in Chinese Language disagrees with me). It is possible, for example, the Canadian eskimos did not have their own written language until some westerners developed a system (that looks like geometric shapes).

Even the most delicious little dish or the most poisonous gas will *not* create [...] Sorry. Gathering some correction driven MAU-points again.

can anybody please guide me how to get different lessons on this site

henning, theoretically there are a number of slots in the hanzi 'periodic table' that are still free, probably even including HongKong, Taiwan and Japan variations. Just taking the L|R or T/B (left, right, top, bottom), it's not hard to find unused radical+phonetic combinations (部首 bùshǒu + 声旁 shēngpáng). I would think biosciences are a good example, with possible new characters based on the 疒 (nì) radical for new diseases, new compounds but possibly also new characters. Equally, I wouldn't be surprised if some would characters fall into disuse... Whether it actually happens for political / practical reasons is another story, but if you look at the debate around traditional / simplified, you see that it's exactly what's been happening over the past millenia, with characters constantly being created / abandoned / recycled. Incidentally, my tutor at CPod didn't know the 熵 character either, I had to 'spell it' for her (a good example that doesn't seem to appear in any character compound).

and here's an example

Hi henning, hi all. Unlike Mandarin, the set of characters used for transcribing spoken Cantonese hasn't really been codified in any serious sort of way. If you don't mind a very anecdotal (vs "scientific") perspective, once on a visit to Hong Kong my (pretty highly-educated) host showed me a copy of the "Apple Daily" and pointed out perhaps 3 to 5 characters on every page which were fairly recent inventions, as in they were devised only in the last 5 - 10 years. According to wikipedia, my memories may not be so far off the mark. In the "written Cantonese" entry, specifically under the "marked phonetic loans" heading, there is an interesting section on the Cantonese love of "inventing" new characters by using the “口" radical paired with a form that approximates the sound in Cantonese of a word which does not exist in "written Chinese"/ Mandarin". The 口 radical alerts the reader that the character is being used for its phonetic value, rather than any symbolic value that could be deduced from the elements of the character. For what it's worth, the wiki article gives the following examples: * 㗎 (function word) * 叻 lek7 (adj. smart, clever; originally refers to Singapore) * 吓 haa4 (function word) * 吔 (function word) * 呃 ngaak7 (v. cheat, hoax) Standard Chinese: 騙 * 噉 gam2 (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這樣 e.g. 噉就死喇 * 咁 gam5 (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這麽 e.g. 咁大件 * 咗 zo2 (function word past tense) Standard Chinese: 了 * 咩 me1 (function word) * 哂 sai3 (function word complete e.g. 搬哂 moved all, finished moving) Standard Chinese: 掉, 完 * 哋 dei6 (function word; to show plural from of pronoun) Standard Chinese: 們 * 呢 ni1 (adv. this) Standard Chinese: 這 * 唔 m4 (adv. not, no, cannot; originally a function word) Standard Chinese: 不 * 唥 (function word) * 啱 ngaam1 (adv. yes, just, nearly) Standard Chinese: 剛 * 啲 di1(genitive, similar to 's but pluralizing i.e. 呢個this one->呢啲these, 快點=快啲=hurry) Standard Chinese: 的, 些, 點 * 喐 yuk7 (v. move) Standard Chinese: 動 * 喥 dou6 (adv. there, here) Standard Chinese: 裏 * 喺 hai2 (prep.) At, in, during (time), at, in (place) Standard Chinese: 在 * 嗰 go2 (adv. that) Standard Chinese: 那 * 嘅 ge3 (genitive, similar to 's; sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 的 * 嘜 maak1 (n. mark, trademark; transliteration of "mark") * 嘞 (function word) * 喇 (function word) * 嘢 ye5 (n. thing, stuff) Standard Chinese: 東西, 事 * 嘥 saai1 (v. waste) * 嚟 lei4 (v. come, sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 來 * 嚡 (function word) * 嚿 (function word) * 囖 etc. Henning, as a seasoned Chinese speaker, I think that maybe these characters would be interesting to you. Many of them are indispensible in written vernacular Cantonese. According to my host, as the status of the Cantonese language has grown, Cantonese characters which aren't merely imaginative phonemes are also being thrown up, the Chinese equivalent of newly-coined English words like "truthiness" or "flaming" (in a BB context) or "replicant/ blade-runner" etc. Afraid I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head; but I'm quite sure -- after watching the "Infernal Affairs" trilogy -- that "Sorry, Sir" is now a legitimate Cantonese word! It's not only loan-words, there were a few other words I noticed which I have no idea how to write but have a "constructed" feel to them. Very sorry, but I don't know anything about the evolution of Chinese characters used for Mandarin. Good luck!

Following the phonetic-semantic (形声字 xíng-shēngzì) model, with arithmetic only : 214 radicals X 300+ pinyin combos -> 60,000 possible combinations, which is a conservative estimate (probably twice if you include L|R and T/B, 2-3 times again if you take homo-phonetic options).

I have no idea, but I just assumed that new characters were continually being created, like new words in any language. But I guess existing characters could be combined to create new words. This is interesting...I'm curious as well.

Wow, now I'm really confused. I always thought Hanzi characters are the same for everyone, no matter what language is spoken (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka etc..) ?

paulc, the technical term here is glyph, I suggest you look at the Unihan overview, which lists the various pieces that make up the CJK Unified Ideographs (Unihan). This referes to characters that are part of the Unicode encoding standard, so basically you will be able to type them. The 'moa-chi' example shows a character made up of [米|麻] which auntie68 is familiar with but still has no Unicode, unlike another combination of the same elements (糜 méi in 普通话 pǔtōnghuà i.e. Mandarin). I don't think those new characters are made up in other dialects just because there is no corresponding sound in Mandarin, as many (most?) characters in use do carry different readings.

according to that [pdf] academic article, the total number of Chinese characters in the world continues to increase (beyond the 65,536 Unicode limit :-))

@henning Yes, I have come across plenty of characters newly created to represent chemical elements. They typically contain the metal or the gas radical + an easily recognisable phonetic component that would hint phonetically at what element in the periodic table it stands for. Can't post any examples from where I am now... Also, I've seen some new characters created as jokes.

Highly interesting information in here, thank you all. I still think the PC-encoding facet of this gives it a new direction, though, as it thwarts new "inventions". Even the most delicious little dish or the most poisonous gas will create sustainable new characters if we cannot easily put them in an Email, a short message, a word file, PDF document, or on a web page. This will naturally lead to a point where new words are predominanly be written with characters which are chosen for their phonetic aspect exclusively. On the other hand, I acknowledge the potential of new characters because of stronger dialects, as this has the more the character of coming up with a writing system for a scriptless language - but if those characters are chosen to mimick the sound again, the journey goes into the same direction. To cite John: "Given enough time, so many characters will have their meanings muddled that the writing system will be reduced to the world’s most cumbersome phonetic system." http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/12/16/filthy-delicious So Paul definately does have a point here.

Hmm, goulniky, I have to confess that I "got" the characters for "moa-chi" almost instantly because I grew up eating the stuff (ethnically, most Chinese Singaporeans are actually minnan/ hokkien, like so many Taiwanese are...)!