It’s just a slight adjustment of 44 characters, and it doesn’t have much impact on me. I used to write most of the characters as they were changed, and besides, the country will not force older people (to write) to change them immediately. Come on, it's going to take a while. These characters originally do not follow the rules, and the fonts are not beautiful. They are mainly modified for printing (official script is the modified glyph, and other fonts are different). It is modified from the perspective of calligraphy, combining aesthetics and the rules of Chinese characters. It's equivalent to a student always making typos and the teacher correcting them, so there's no need to make a fuss.
1. The significance of the formulation of the "General Standard Chinese Character List"
my country's modern Chinese character standardization work was brewing in the first half of the 20th century. After the founding of New China, under the direct leadership of the State Council, this work created a new situation. Since the 1950s, the language and writing department of the State Council and other relevant departments have successively issued a number of Chinese character specifications, initially realizing the standardization of social characters and promoting the development of my country's education, culture and science and technology. In the past 20 years, with the rapid advancement of national modernization and informatization, my country's language life has undergone tremendous changes. The breadth and depth of the connection between language and written norms and social development and people's lives is unprecedented. In the new era and new situation, the past norms can no longer fully meet the needs of modern language life. Therefore, it is very necessary to re-examine the previous Chinese character standardization work and formulate new feasible norms.
The "General Standard Chinese Character List" was formulated to meet the needs of national informatization development. At the turn of the century, our country implemented an innovative national strategy, and informatization became an important support for achieving this goal. Standardization of language and characters is the foundation of national informatization. Only with the standardization of communication carriers such as Chinese characters can the speed and reliability of information dissemination be guaranteed.
The "General Standard Chinese Character List" was formulated to meet the needs of contemporary language life. The development of science and technology and the improvement of education levels have expanded the scope of scientific and technological terms and quickly entered daily life. The printing industry bid farewell to the "era of lead and fire", and laser phototypesetting became the main means of publishing. Computers are widely used in the compilation of ancient books and dictionaries. Missing characters and typos in computer fonts directly affect the quality and social benefits of printing, publishing and information dissemination. In social life, information storage and retrieval in government departments and service industries such as household registration, postal service, finance, and insurance has been digitized. Irregular and uncommon characters in surnames, names, and place names affect the construction of information systems in many industries and government Social management has also brought great inconvenience to the daily lives of some relevant people. The formulation of Chinese character standards that adapt to modern language life has become a major event concerning people's lives and has become a need of the broad masses of the people.
The "General Standard Chinese Character List" was formulated to implement the needs of the National Language and Writing Law. The "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language" promulgated in October 2000 stipulates: "The state promotes Mandarin and promotes standardized Chinese characters", and further clarifies that "state agencies use Mandarin and standardized Chinese characters as official language." , "Schools and other educational institutions teach Mandarin and standardized Chinese characters through Chinese language courses. The Chinese language teaching materials used should comply with the norms and standards of the national common language." "The public service industry uses standardized Chinese characters as the basic service purpose Character". The promulgation of this law has brought the standardization of Chinese characters to the legal level, and it is necessary to provide a clear "standardized Chinese character" model for general application in society. Formulate a word list, integrate and optimize existing Chinese character specifications, eliminate conflicts between different standard word lists, integrate scattered specifications, clarify the policy direction and legal effect of "standards", and determine "standardized Chinese characters" The extension of this legal concept to the general level enables the "standardized Chinese characters" referred to in the National Standard Language and Writing Law to be implemented at the general level of general society, which is an important measure to ensure the smooth implementation of this law.
2. Principles followed in formulating the "General Standard Chinese Character List"
The formulation of the "General Standard Chinese Character List" followed the following four principles:
( 1) Pay attention to the connection with the original specifications and maintain the basic stability of the Chinese character system.
The formulation of the character list adheres to the basic policy of simplifying Chinese characters, and also follows the State Council's 1986 notice of approving and transmitting the State Language Commission's "Request for Instructions on Abolition of the Second Chinese Character Simplification Plan (Draft)" and on Correcting Confusion in Social Character Use "The principle pointed out in "In the future, we should be cautious about the simplification of Chinese characters so that the shape of Chinese characters remains relatively stable within a period of time." After decades of development, existing Chinese character specifications such as the "First Batch Variant Character List", "Simplified Character List", "Printing Common Chinese Character Form Table", "Modern Chinese Common Character List", "Modern Chinese Common Character List", etc. The test of practice, a lot of spirit and a lot of achievements are worthy of inheritance and learning. The word list inherits the principles and main contents of these norms. For errors, omissions, contradictions and inability to meet the needs of today's society, the Chinese character list is based on detailed investigation and careful analysis, taking full account of the national habits and social habits formed by history. According to the acceptable level, necessary revisions shall be made in accordance with the principle of convenience for the people and the benefit of the country.
(2) Adhere to the scientific spirit of seeking truth from facts and follow the laws of Chinese character structure and evolution. In the process of formulating the character list, many senior philologists in my country were invited to preside over and participate in the work. We also repeatedly listened to the opinions of many other philologists and professionals in related fields, and paid attention to absorbing the latest research on Chinese character studies and history of Chinese characters. Results, using scientific statistical methods to obtain reliable data; at the same time, we also widely draw on the practical experience of basic education, ancient book compilation, dictionary compilation, printing and publishing, computer information processing and other departments, follow the rules of the structure and evolution of Chinese characters, and fully consider the application of Chinese characters. In fact, try to improve the scientific nature and feasibility of Chinese character standards as much as possible.
(3) Broadly listen to opinions from all walks of life and take into account the needs of Chinese character applications in different fields. The formulation of the character list adheres to the mass line and listens to the opinions of the broad masses of the people through various methods, especially the opinions reflected in the fields of basic education and cultural popularization, and tries to meet the different requirements for the use of Chinese characters by people in different fields and with different educational levels. .
(4) Give due consideration to the use of Chinese characters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao and the needs of internationalization. Chinese characters are widely used on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and spread across the country. The formulation of the character list takes into account the objective reality that simplified and traditional glyphs coexist in different countries and regions that use Chinese characters, takes into account the current situation of the use of Chinese characters and the various needs of internationalization, and tries to avoid expanding the differences in the use of Chinese characters between different countries or regions, so as to Facilitate communication and communication between each other.
3. The nature of the "General Standard Chinese Character List"
The standardization of Chinese characters has always been an important basic work in the construction of my country's new culture. The "General Normative Chinese Character List" is a supporting specification for the "National Standard Spoken and Written Language Law" and is a major specification that embodies the national writing and writing policy. It will be approved by the State Council and issued by the Ministry of Education and the National Language and Writing Working Committee.
Article 2 of the description of the "Universal Standardized Chinese Character List" states: "The "Generally Standardized Chinese Character List" is a modern universal standardized character set for recording Chinese, reflecting the character size, character level and Song style fonts of modern universal Chinese characters. Standardization. "The explanation of this definition can be understood from the following three aspects:
Normativity is the primary characteristic of the word list and the essential attribute of the word list. The word list gives a certain word size and word level, realizing the standardization of font shape and word usage. The table stipulates three levels of character sets. The prefixes of the characters included in the character sets at each level have been strictly selected and the glyphs have been organized according to the rules. They can completely become the orthographic characters of Chinese characters in general fields in our society. They have unique glyphs. The only standard function.
Modernity is the second characteristic of the word list. The grading and collection of characters in the character list are based on modern applications, fully taking into account the needs of modern language and writing life, and the collected characters are mainly selected from the modern Chinese corpus. Classical Chinese quotations in modern texts and classical Chinese texts in primary and secondary school Chinese textbooks are necessary for cultural inheritance and cultural learning today, and they need to be printed with simplified characters. The characters they use fall into the category of modern characters, and these characters have also been included in the characters. surface.
Universality is the third feature of the word list. In the field of characters used in modern general society, there is no need to standardize some rare or uncommon characters. The 8,300 characters that have been standardized are all common characters needed by modern society.
Character lists are graded according to their degree of versatility: the first-level character list has the highest versatility, followed by the second-level character list. Although the third-level character list is taken from professional fields, these characters are closely related to the information dissemination of the national economy and people's livelihood, and are also commonly used in computer storage and reading. sex.
4. How to implement the "General Standard Chinese Character List" in relevant fields after it is released
The "General Standard Chinese Character List" was formulated to facilitate the masses and all walks of life to better use Chinese characters. When used in various fields, implementation methods that both adhere to the norms and have a certain degree of laxity can be adopted based on the characteristics of the characters and actual needs:
(1) Professional printing of ancient books, calligraphy and plaques, etc. For handwriting, you can use traditional Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters. For the convenience of social interpretation and for the printing and editing departments to have evidence to rely on, the traditional Chinese characters used in the printing of ancient books must also be organized in a timely manner. Before relevant standards are formulated, it is recommended to use Chinese characters that have been popular in history, that is: the glyphs must have a basis for historical use; when there are multiple glyphs that can be used, try to choose the ones with high popularity and easy recognition; do not create random ones. New characters or randomly changed fonts.
(2) The new Chinese curriculum standard for basic education stipulates that the number of Chinese characters to be read at the primary school level is 3,500. These 3,500 characters should use the first-level character list of the "General Standard Chinese Character List". However, according to teaching needs, when it is necessary to further divide the application subsets within the range of 3500 commonly used words, such as how many words and which words should be learned in the first, second and third stages of school respectively, the education management department can according to the different age groups of children. The cognitive characteristics of Chinese characters are used as parameters, and through scientific research, a suitable application word list is generated. What needs to be emphasized is that the "General Standard Chinese Character Table" only gives the standard fonts of Song fonts, while the texts for grades 1-3 in primary school Chinese textbooks in my country and the new characters of each grade are printed in italics. The two fonts are in the stroke form. There are slight differences. Until there are no new specifications for the fonts of regular fonts, the original fonts of regular fonts will still be used.
(3) Foreign words can be used as needed. If the off-table characters used have traditional Chinese components, according to regulations, simplification by analogy is not allowed. If analogy simplification is really necessary to maintain the consistency of the system, such as the use of words for new chemical elements, etc., it can be reported to the national language and writing department for approval.
(4) After the word list is released, if there are currently used surname words that have not been included, you can report it to the national language and writing department. After expert review and confirmation by relevant departments, the word list will be added in a timely manner.
(5) Industrial products that use Chinese characters, especially information products, must abide by the principles of Chinese character standards and should not violate the character list. Since product updates require a certain period of time, after the word list is published, there may be a transition period for product word changes that are inconsistent with the word list regulations. During this period, active measures should be taken to comply with national standards as soon as possible.
5. The rationale for character grading in the "General Standard Chinese Character List" and the number and inclusion of characters in the first and second-level character lists
As a national standard, the character list will face All users have different cultural levels, different communication scopes, different industry needs, and their requirements for the use of Chinese characters will inevitably be different. Moreover, there are great differences in the frequency of use of Chinese characters themselves, and the degree of universality is also different. Therefore, only by reasonably grading the collected characters can the character list reflect the actual usage of Chinese characters and take into account the different needs of different groups of people, thus improving the practicality of the character list.
The word list contains 8,300 characters, which are divided into three levels according to their generality. The number of words included in the word list at each level, the standard font of each character, and the usage range of some characters are all clearly stated. The first-level character list contains a total of 3,500 characters. It is the most frequently used character set in the general social field. It mainly meets the character needs of basic education and cultural popularization. The second-level character list contains a maximum of 3,000 characters and is often used in general social fields, but its frequency of use is significantly lower than that of the first-level characters; the first and second-level character lists contain a maximum of 6,500 characters, which mainly meet the needs of modern Chinese text printing The need for publishing words. The third-level character list contains only 1,800 characters, which are more common characters used in surnames, place names, scientific terms, and classical Chinese characters in primary and secondary school Chinese textbooks that have not entered the first and second-level character lists. It mainly meets the needs that are closely related to public life. The need for words in specialized fields.
Commonly used words are the most frequently used words. These words cover most of the common corpora and are often used by people when reading and writing. There must be enough common characters, but more is not always better. Accurately determining the number of common characters and including the common characters that should be included is of great significance to the transmission of Chinese character information, as well as applications such as literacy teaching and calligraphy compilation. . The formulation of the "General Standard Chinese Character List" is theoretically based on the important principle of "the rate of diminishing utility of Chinese characters". Frequency reflects the specific usage of Chinese characters. The frequency of use of individual characters is not evenly distributed. As the frequency of characters decreases, the coverage rate of Chinese character usage shows a decreasing trend. When the word frequency drops to a certain level, the coverage basically no longer increases. Therefore, by mastering the following data, we can roughly count the number of commonly used Chinese characters: (1) a descending order of the frequency of use of Chinese characters detected from a certain general corpus; (2) the different frequencies contained in each frequency paragraph corpus. The incremental number of repeated Chinese characters; (3) The increasing number of coverage in each frequency paragraph.
In order to obtain these data, what kind of language materials and how many words of language materials are selected for statistics will directly affect the representativeness, objectivity and accuracy of the statistical results. Formulate the "General Standard Chinese Character List" and select the "Modern Chinese Balanced Corpus" of the National Language Commission as the basic corpus. In accordance with the principle of balancing time and field, this corpus contains 91 million Chinese characters from 1919 to 2002, with 8181 non-duplicated Chinese characters. At the same time, the "Modern News Media Dynamic Circulation Corpus" of Beijing Language and Culture University (collecting 15 kinds of newspaper and periodical corpora with a total of 350 million Chinese characters from 2001 to 2002) and the "Comprehensive Educational Science Popularization Corpus" established by the "General Standard Chinese Character List" research group (collecting The corpus of general textbooks and popular science reading materials for primary and secondary schools from 1951 to 2003 (4.04 million Chinese characters) is used as auxiliary corpus for verification and verification. At the same time, it also refers to the massive corpora of print media, online media, audio media, educational textbooks and dozens of other corpora at home and abroad established by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center from 2005 to 2008. Using these corpora for statistics and analysis, we obtained the basic results of the classification, word size, and character collection of the first and second-level character lists of the "General Standard Chinese Character List".
When determining the number and inclusion of words for the first and second levels, objective statistical data should always be used as the main basis for judgment. However, due to the strong humanistic nature of Chinese characters themselves and the use of Chinese characters, the boundaries of the Chinese character set are not clearly defined. Instead, there are a certain number of "critical characters". For these "critical characters", only manual adjustments can be made. Only in this way can the actual situation of the use of Chinese characters be reflected more scientifically. When determining the first-level character list, the following manual intervention was made: (1) Completed the missing characters in 10 uppercase numbers, 22 stem and branch characters, 31 abbreviated characters for provinces (municipalities) and some commonly used Lianmian words; (2) ) Increase the spoken high-frequency words in the "Children's Literature Corpus" (collecting 5.7 million Chinese characters in children's literature of various genres suitable for basic education reading published after 1949); (3) Propose 300 words with frequencies ranging from 3201 to 3500, to Primary school teachers conducted a questionnaire survey, replaced the relatively less common words with the added words, and reduced the replaced words to the second-level word list. The word size adjusted by manual intervention accounts for about 3. When determining the second-level character list, the main thing is to check and screen the characters in the candidate character list one by one, and exclude the characters in the candidate character list that are far from modern meanings and are physically entangled with other characters, and use the third-level character list. Completion of words with relatively high medium frequency.
Comparing the 3,500 characters in the first-level word list determined this time with the 3,500 words in the original "Modern Chinese Commonly Used Word List", there is a discrepancy of 103 words, but the coverage rate in different corpora is higher than the original commonly used word list. The word is 0.09~0.22 higher. Compared with the 7,000 characters of the original "Modern Chinese Common Character List", the 6,500 characters in the first and second level character lists are reduced by 500 characters, but the coverage rate in different corpora remains basically unchanged. The reason why the number of characters has decreased while the coverage rate has remained unchanged is that, first of all, my country has achieved results in standardizing Chinese characters over the past few decades. Characters with poor applicability have been naturally eliminated, and the characters used in society are relatively concentrated. At the same time, it can also be seen that the character selection and quantitative data in the "General Standard Chinese Character List" are optimized, the method is scientific, and the procedures are reasonable.
6. The reason and nature of the establishment of the third-level character list of the "General Standard Chinese Character List"
The establishment of the third-level character list of the "General Standard Chinese Character List" is mainly to meet the needs of specialized The need for wording in the field to be on a general level. Due to the expansion of word usage brought about by informatization, if the "General Standard Chinese Character List" is limited to the scope of basic common characters, although it can meet the needs of daily life, it cannot solve the problem of computer storage and word usage in specialized fields. Therefore, it is necessary to add some words in specialized fields that are closely related to public life. In addition to the basic common characters, the "General Standard Chinese Character List" adds a three-level character list, appropriately adding characters for surnames and names, characters for place names, characters for scientific terms, and characters for primary and secondary school textbooks in classical Chinese, so as to effectively solve these four areas. Missing characters problem in information processing.
Although level 3 words cannot be collected in the balanced corpus based on word frequency and coverage, they are still words used at a general level. This issue needs to be explained from two aspects:
First, the concept of "universal" needs to be fully understood. "Universal" includes two levels: one is the printing level, and the other is the reading level. Chinese characters that can enter the balanced corpus have popularity in both aspects. But there are also some Chinese characters that are not printed very frequently but are read very frequently. For example, medical names and professional words in diet and nutrition are only used for printing in professional fields, but they can be read by thousands of households. For another example, there are a small number of classical Chinese words used in basic education Chinese textbooks that are not commonly used in society, but they must be used in the printing of textbooks every year. Teachers, students, and parents have to face them, and the number of readers reaches almost thousands of households. These characters also need to unify their glyphs and enter the standard.
Second, in the information age, the concept of "universal" has undergone substantial changes. In addition to human use, computer storage and use must also be considered. In the era when Chinese characters were mainly written by hand, there would not be much of a problem even if there were no standards for the use of characters in these specific fields. However, in the age of computers and the Internet, those characters that are difficult to find in general corpora based on character frequency are still in people's daily life. It does not lose its versatility in life. Some of the information using Chinese characters as a carrier is popular in the circulation field, and some is necessary in the reserve field. For example, names, except for famous people, are not very commonly used in society; place names, except for big cities and famous scenic spots, are also relatively limited in social use. According to word frequency and usage cannot collect them. However, in the ubiquitous postal, financial, transportation and other industries, as well as ID cards, academic certificates, medical insurance, property rights certificates and other documents that no one uses, it is necessary to reserve Chinese characters that may be used. If these words are not standardized in information processing, it will also cause confusion in the storage and use of social information. The words included in the list are determined entirely based on frequency of use and corpus coverage. Words used in these specific fields are difficult to collect, so they must be collected from special words provided in specialized fields. Common words in professional fields are an indispensable supplement to common words in general society.
7. The principles, scope and specific sources of characters to be included in the third-level character list of the "General Standard Chinese Character List"
In determining the characters to be included in the third-level character list of the "General Standard Chinese Character List" When using Chinese characters, the following three principles must be adhered to: (1) Starting from the specific facts of the application of Chinese characters, each character must have its origin, or have a document source, or use cases and sources provided by relevant functional departments; (2) The pronunciation and meaning must be complete, and the names of people must be used appropriately. Suitable for naming; (3) Its universal nature must be ensured, and uncommon words of little use are not allowed. The scope of included words specifically includes: words used in surnames and names, words used in place names, words used in scientific and technological terms, and words used in classical Chinese in primary and secondary school textbooks.
(1) Use characters for the surname and the person’s given name. China is a multi-ethnic country. Surnames not only record the inheritance relationship of ethnicity and blood, but also become a symbol of title for each citizen. The wording cannot be changed casually. The word list should collect as many characters as possible for the surnames in use to ensure the credibility of information dissemination.
As for the Chinese characters used in names, it is now quite confusing. The characters used in some names are even difficult to find in the computer's international coded character set, which has expanded to more than 70,000 characters. As a result, the second-generation ID card cannot be produced due to the incomplete character library. It brings great inconvenience to some people's lives. The "General Standard Chinese Character List" cannot change the confusion and trouble in using existing characters for personal names, but it can provide some easy-to-use characters for future naming (mainly naming newborns) and name changes, and can guide people to reduce the use of uncommon characters. words, avoid using wrong words in naming. This requires trying to collect all the characters used in surnames, and selecting enough suitable Chinese characters for naming among existing names to standardize them, so as to ensure that personal names can effectively circulate in society.
(2) Words used in place names. The words used in place names are often not commonly used across the country, but they are commonly used words for local residents. Within the scope of provincial divisions, the words used in place names above township level are indispensable. Due to dialects, various "dialect words" or self-made words are often produced, causing confusion in word usage. Today, information storage and retrieval in household registration, postal, financial and other industries have been fully digitized. Earth satellite positioning systems are widely used. It is self-evident that confusion in the use of place names will cause information congestion in relevant industries.
(3) Words used in scientific and technological terms. Due to the development of science and technology, the improvement of education level and the popularization of scientific knowledge, many scientific and technical terms have quickly entered people's daily life. Just take the Chinese characters that record chemical elements as an example. Many of them are used in drug names. When prescriptions are no longer written by hand but entered by computer, these characters become a carrier for communication between doctors, pharmacists, patients, and family members. There are also many pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and interior decoration materials that need to be promoted and popularized using their scientific names. As for the use of cosmetics and detergents, explanations of healthy diet, meteorological collection and forecasting, etc., once they enter the field of science popularization, they will receive widespread attention. In particular, these words will be used in the compilation and printing of textbooks in various majors.
(4) Chinese characters used in primary and secondary school textbooks. Standardized Chinese characters are mainly used to write modern Chinese texts. However, tradition, history and modernity are not insulated. Modern texts will quote classical Chinese works, and primary and secondary school Chinese textbooks will also include some excellent classical Chinese works. The former can be collected in a general balanced corpus, but in order to ensure the standardization of textbook printing, it is necessary to specifically collect the words used in classical Chinese in Chinese textbooks.
These four aspects are not only important areas for word use in the information age, but also areas where words are easily missing in information dissemination. The specific number of words collected is as follows:
The 930 characters used for surnames and names are mainly derived from the sample census data of 18 provinces and cities in 1982 and the characters used for surnames and some names provided by the Ministry of Public Security. Appropriate additions are also included Some ancient surnames and influential ancient names.
The 465 characters used in place names are mainly derived from the characters used in place names above townships and towns provided by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the characters used in some village-level place names and some natural entity names provided by the National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, and the words used in commonly used Chinese reference books. The word used for "place name".
The 276 words used in scientific and technological terms are mainly derived from the terms used in 56 categories such as traditional Chinese medicine, botany, genetics, metallurgy, microbiology, and soil science provided by the National Scientific and Technical Terms Approval Committee. , as well as the terminology of science, technology, humanities and social sciences in 33 categories such as astronomy, meteorology, geography, animals, plants, industry, agriculture, politics, economy, culture, and history provided by the Institute of Languages ??of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The 362 characters used in classical Chinese in primary and secondary school textbooks are mainly from the "Classical Chinese Corpus of Primary and Secondary School Chinese Textbooks" established by the word list development working group (collecting primary and secondary Chinese and popular classical Chinese corpora from 1949 to 2007, 5.6 million Chinese characters).
After combining and deduplicating the words used in the above four aspects, removing the words that have entered the first and second level word lists, and then removing difficult words, incorrect words and variant words, etc., the maximum number is 1800 words. Since the third-level characters are obtained by merging words from four aspects and removing duplicates, the attributes of the third-level characters are not all single. Some characters may have different attributes from multiple fields.
8. The "General Standard Chinese Character List" handles the problem of variant characters
Strictly the definition of variant characters should be: identical pronunciation and meaning, exactly the same word-memory function, only different glyphs. A group of words that can be substituted for each other in any context without affecting the meaning of the expression. It can be seen that from a functional point of view, variant characters are redundant of Chinese characters, which only increase the burden of memory and need to be standardized. The description of the "First Batch Variant Character Collection List" issued on December 22, 1955 stated: "From the implementation date, newspapers, magazines, and books published across the country will stop using the variant characters in the brackets in the table. However, reprinting ancient books must use Exceptions can be made for those with original characters in the original text." This explanation clarifies that variant characters belong to the scope of "irregular characters" and cannot be used when writing modern Chinese texts on a general level. However, some of the "variant characters" identified in the variant character arrangement table are not variant characters in the strict sense. Putting these words into the category of "irregular words" and canceling them is sometimes not conducive to the precise expression of meaning.
For details, please see the Chinese Language and Characters Network (website: ).