What is the most complex Chinese character? (2024)
Wikimedia Commons/Erin McCarthy
Chinese characters are made up of strokes. Learning to write them involves not only learning where all the strokes go, but also the order in which they are supposed to be written and the direction of each individual stroke (left to right, up to down, etc.) The simplest character is yī (one), a single stroke written from left to right. The most complex character, biáng (above), is made up of 57 strokes.
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This character occurs in the written form of biángbiáng miàn, or biangbiang noodles, a dish of wide, flat noodles popular in the Chinese province of Shaanxi.
The status of biáng as most complex requires a bit of qualification. The character is not found in dictionaries, and its origin appears to be whimsical: biáng is not a syllable in Standard Mandarin but an onomatopoeia for the sound of noodles slapping on the table as they are being made, or for the lip-smacking sound of people contentedly munching on them. There are different theories about how the character came to be, but the most plausible one is that the owner of a noodle shop made it up.
If obscure or little-used characters count, then one could make a case for zhé, an obsolete character of 64 strokes, that, appropriately enough, meant "verbose."
This character however, is just one single character (for long or "dragon") written four times. Biáng contains within it the characters for speak, horse, grow, moon, heart, knife, eight, roof, and walk, plus a few extra strokes, so though it might have fewer strokes, it has a lot more complexity.
For characters that do appear in modern dictionaries, the complexity winner seems to be nàng, a 36-stroke character referring to the sound your voice makes through a stuffed up nose.
Biáng though, deserves to get the credit for its complexity. Though it is a highly atypical Chinese character, a case can be made for it being most "Chinese" of Chinese characters. As expert Sinologist Victor Mair says in this post at Language Log, "For me, biáng symbolizes the difficulty of accommodating the full fecundity of folk, popular, and local/regional cultures and languages within the bounds of the standard writing system, which enshrines the elite, high culture, and now also the bourgeois, urban, national culture. In other words, biáng is well-nigh bursting at the sides of the scriptal and phonetic boxes within which it is constrained."
Biáng. A local comfort food wrapped up, with a wink, in the ribbons of a 5000-year-old writing tradition. A lip-smacking, calligraphical good time.
The most complex character, biáng (above), is made up of 57 strokes. This character occurs in the written form of biángbiáng miàn, or biangbiang noodles, a dish of wide, flat noodles popular in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The status of biáng as most complex requires a bit of qualification.
There are many variations of the character for biáng, but the most widely accepted version is made up of 58 strokes in its traditional form (42 in simplified Chinese). It is one of the most complex Chinese characters in modern usage, although it is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary.
The "biang" character is onomatopoeic, meant to mimic the sound of dough hitting a counter. It is also more complex to write than any character in the Chinese language, with a whopping 58 strokes (though, depending on whom you ask, this number may vary slightly).
How many Chinese characters do I need to know to be fluent? The average Chinese person only needs to know around 2,000 characters to be recognized as fluent. Those characters represent a basic education level that can help you make it in day-to-day life.
1. 四十四 (sì shí sì) — 44. This one's definitely a tongue twister on its own, having to switch between the consonants s and sh. The pinyin consonants s and sh have the same pronunciation as the pinyin si and shi, so this word contains sounds that you already know from the pinyin alphabet system.
Nicknamed the "Devil's Language" (恶魔之语; Èmó zhī yǔ) for its complexity and difficulty, it is the most divergent division of Wu Chinese, with little to no mutual intelligibility with other Wu dialects or any other variety of Chinese. ...
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Latin characters, numerals and other non-Chinese symbols are prohibited, as they do not constitute part of a Chinese name under government law. Only Chinese characters are permitted; however, characters which are unable to be input on computers are also disallowed.
The evolution of the Chinese character for dragon (long 龍) is illustrated below: Oracle Bone Inscriptions refers to the writings inscribed on the carapaces of tortoises and mammals during the Shang Dynasty (1600 – 1046 B.C.). This is the earliest form of Chinese characters.
The dragon is the most powerful symbol in Chinese culture with supernatural powers and the ability to control cosmic forces. Very much a sacred imperial symbol, it represents the Emperor (just as the phoenix represents the Empress).
Unfortunately, we don't have the " longest" word in China, because all our characters are individual. However, we have the most complex word. This one is "Biang". It is the name of a kind of noodle.
The smallest unit of the Chinese character is the line. The number of basic lines can be reduced to eight. With these eight lines and their variants, we can make 214 basic characters called “key”.
Chinese classics used the word shi 尸 in six meanings: (1) "corpse; body of a dead person" (2) "personator of a dead ancestor" (3) "motionless; inactive" (4) "lay out; arrange; expose"
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.
With the right work and attitude, you can make massive progress in your Chinese learning in three months. And if having a conversation in Mandarin Chinese is your primary goal, it can be achievable with just three months of study, even if you're starting from zero.
Even though figures of English learners in China rise up to 300 million, most statistics about English actual speakers in the country point out that figure of 30-40 million, which is less than 3% of the population.
1. Rural. There's no way you can pronounce this word without twisting your tongue! The double “r” followed by a contradictory “l” makes this seemingly innocent word one of the hardest ones to pronounce in English.
As a mentor for learning English in China, there have been many students that I have encountered that have difficulty pronouncing words such as “the”, “Vietnam”, “that”, “vet”, and “world”. This problem arises from the fact that Mandarin (and their dialects) do not have words that include the sounds “th”, “v” and “rl”.
The English sound [v] is not common in Chinese languages, so speakers often replace it with [w] or [f], e.g. Difficulties with [l] and [n], which in some languages (e.g. Cantonese) don't change the meaning of a word, but do in English so learners have trouble distinguishing, e.g.
Learning expert Scott H. Young states that speaking Mandarin is not only harder than speaking Spanish, but it is fundamentally different. Everything from tones, vocabulary, and character is vastly unique compared to the latin languages, and the learning curve would be quite steep.
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Chinese isn't all bad news, it's near complete lack of tense, mood, gender, grammatical number and inflections means it is grammatically much simpler than Spanish for all but the more advanced nuances.
Generally speaking, we might assert that Korean is easier for an English speaker to learn than Mandarin Chinese. But this is very relative. In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute assigns Mandarin Chinese and Korean the same level of difficulty. Both languages are in “Category Four”.
Do not touch, hug, lock arms, back slap or make any body contact. Clicking fingers or whistling is considered very rude. Never put your feet on a desk or a chair.
Chinese names for China, aside from Zhongguo, include Zhōnghuá (中華/中华, "central beauty"), Huáxià (華夏/华夏, "beautiful grandness"), Shénzhōu (神州, "divine state") and Jiǔzhōu (九州, "nine states").
But the oldest written language that is still in actual use would probably be Chinese, which first appeared around 1500BC… although ancient Greek also appeared in a specific written form around the same time. But when a language got written down for the first time doesn't really have anything to do with how old it is.
The most complex character, biáng (above), is made up of 57 strokes. This character occurs in the written form of biángbiáng miàn, or biangbiang noodles, a dish of wide, flat noodles popular in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The status of biáng as most complex requires a bit of qualification.
The character Fú ( 福, Unicode U+798F) meaning "fortune" or "good luck" is represented both as a Chinese ideograph and, at times, pictorially, in one of its hom*ophonous forms. It is often found on a figurine of the male god of the same name, one of the trio of "star gods" Fú, Lù, Shòu.
what3words can be used in China via a dedicated China-specific app and online map that are configured to work with the Chinese coordinate system. Our online map and 三词地址 Android app use maps provided by AutoNavi, while the 三词地址 iOS app uses Apple Maps.
The Oldest Word in the World. It is believed the first spoken word was “Aa,” which meant hey. “Aa” is thought to have first been spoken by an australopithecine in Ethiopia over a million years ago.
It is widely recognised that a rate between 100 and 120 words per minute (wpm) is optimal for English speeches, although the figure may differ for different speech types. This translates into an optimal speed of 150-180 syllables per minute for Chinese speeches.
The most complex character, biáng (above), is made up of 57 strokes. This character occurs in the written form of biángbiáng miàn, or biangbiang noodles, a dish of wide, flat noodles popular in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The status of biáng as most complex requires a bit of qualification.
Mandarin is the most straightforward Chinese language to learn. The reason is that the language was simplified into four to five tones, making it easy to understand. On the other hand, Cantonese is the most difficult language to learn because it has nine tones.
Simplified Chinese is the standard way of writing in mainland China. Traditional Chinese writing is the preferred system in Taiwan and in Hong Kong. Although the majority of the population uses the Simplified Chinese system, there is a growing trend towards Traditional Chinese.
In elementary school, Chinese pupils are expected to learn about 2,500 characters which are the most used. Then they assimilate about 1,000 more specific ones during middle school and high school. In the end, Chinese students that have finished high school know about 4,500 characters.
In mainland China and Singapore, Mandarin is the spoken language and people use Simplified Chinese (SC) when they write. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant dialect while people write in Traditional Chinese (TC).
Japanese is slightly easier to learn. But, Chinese is much more widely spoken. Both languages have their pros and cons. Ultimately whichever language pulls on your heartstrings the most is the winner.
Learning expert Scott H. Young states that speaking Mandarin is not only harder than speaking Spanish, but it is fundamentally different. Everything from tones, vocabulary, and character is vastly unique compared to the latin languages, and the learning curve would be quite steep.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
The answer really depends on where you will be traveling to — the Simplified Chinese characters are used in Mainland China and Singapore while Traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and by most overseas Chinese.
Most resources teaching “Chinese” or “Mandarin” will be written in simplified. It's arguably easier to learn as it's less complex than traditional characters. Mandarin Chinese and Chinese dialects from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau use traditional characters.
With the most common 500 characters you can recognize 75.8 percent of modern Chinese. Sounds exciting, right? With the most common 1000 characters you can recognize 89.1 percent of modern Chinese. With the most common 1500 characters you can recognize 94.5 percent of modern Chinese.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.
Despite both being tonal languages, they are not mutually intelligible. This means that while Cantonese speakers would be able to decipher Mandarin writing, they would not be able to understand the spoken language, and vice versa.
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