The document provides an overview of Chinese writing and language. It discusses oracle bones as an early form of Chinese writing dating back thousands of years. It also summarizes that Chinese uses characters rather than an alphabet, with over 60,000 characters in the writing system. Finally, it notes that simplified Chinese uses simpler versions of traditional characters, as seen on some early oracle bones.

1. The Writing of China
By Nathaniel Maddalene and Ethan Scher

2. Introduction
Do you know about the Chinese Writing
system? About simplified Chinese? The Chinese
oracle bone? Chinese symbols? Chinese language?
Chinese alphabet and reading in Chinese? About
how many Chinese symbols? Well if you don’t, too
bad but it might not be too bad any more because
you have this slide show about Chinese writing to
see!

3. Oracle bone
Oracle bone is a type of
Chinese writing. An oracle bone is
made of turtle shell or bone. The
emperor wrote a question on the
oracle bone and an oracle looked at
the cracks for the answer. The oracle
bone had characters on it. Oracle
bone was also called “dragon bone”.
An oracle is someone who determines
your fate.

4. The Chinese Language
The Chinese language is a
member of the Sino – Tibetan family of
languages. Chinese is a native
language. Chinese language is one of
four official languages of Singapore,
and one of the six languages in the
United nations. There are several
variations of the Chinese language.
The languages are: Mandarin, Wu,
Cantonese, Min, Jin, Xiang, Hakka,
Ganshu, and Pinguha Chinese. China
has a lot of languages. About one –
fifth of the world speaks some form of
Chinese.

5. Chinese Alphabet
The Chinese alphabet has 29 symbols. There are 3 more
symbols in their alphabet than ours. Many of the symbols looked like
today’s English letters. One symbol looked like “k”. Another symbol
looked like “z”. In the Chinese dictionary, there are 60,000 symbols.

6. Chinese Writing System
The Chinese writing system is what all
Chinese writing is based on. The Chinese
writing system goes back 4,000 years ago
maybe even more. That’s before Christ (B.C.).
The Chinese writing system is based on
logographics (a character that represents one
word). The Chinese writing system brought all
the Chinese languages into one. The Chinese
writing system is the oldest writing system in the
world. The Chinese writing system has over
60,000 characters. The Chinese writing system
was invented in 2,000 B.C. The Chinese didn’t
actually have letters. They had characters.

7. Chinese Translation
The people who translate
Chinese have to be fluent in Chinese
and the other language. Chinese
can be translated in: Movies,
Speeches, Videos, Video tapes, and
just plain talking. Some places
Chinese translators can be found
are: The U.N., Offices, Factory’s,
and Consulats. Different people and
factory’s have different needs for
Chinese translators.

8. Simplified
Chinese
Simplified Chinese is really just
Chinese characters but more
simple. For example, instead of n
being person, this is person.
Here are some simplified Chinese
characters: Mountain= ,
sun= , mouth= , soil= ,
and tree= . All simplified
Chinese are logograms. The
characters have names like sun
or is ri, rain or is yu.
You can sometimes find simplified
Chinese characters on oracle
bone.