A Comparative Study On Japanese And Chinese Characters Based On "The 800 Common Frequently-used Chinese Characters Table In Chinese, Japanese And Korean"

Character is a major milestone that represents human-beings’entering civilization age from the unrecorded time. The numerous global characters constitute a culture tree of human civilization with thick leaves and branches. Chinese characters, as one branch of the tree, not only are the writing and recording symbols of Han ethnicity but carry its thousands of years’brilliant culture as well. Owing to its persistent internal centripetal force and external diffusive force, the influence of Chinese characters was spread to neighboring countries and regions within a Chinese characteristic culture circle reaching Korean peninsula, Japan in the east, national minorities in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan in the west, ancient Jurchen and Qidan areas in the north and Vietnam in the south. Nowadays, with the improvement China’s international status, the number of Chinese learners is turning bigger while structure of it is also becoming more complicated. On the basis of the mother tongue of them, foreign Chinese learners, the targets of Chinese education, respectively belong to "Chinese labguage culture circle" and "non-Chinese language culture circle". Compared with the students in non-Chinese language culture circle, students from Chinese language culture circle have inborn advantages in the initial period of learning Chinese for their motherlands, influenced by Chinese characters in history, also use Chinese characters to mark their language. However, on the other side, the character systems in Chinese language culture circle are not totally the same and those systems are greatly different in the pronunciation, font, literal meaning and application of Chinese characters, in Chinese language culture circle, the "negative transfer of native language" has led to "fossilization phenomenon", which is harder to remove than that in non-Chinese language culture circle. Such phenomenon brings much confusion to students from Chinese language culture circle in the middle and advanced period of Chinese learning.In this paper, the author sets the Chinese characters and Japanese Characters from 800 Common Frequently-used Chinese Characters Table in Chinese, Japanese and Korean as the research targets and applies the combination of diachronic research and synchronic research to comparatively study Chinese characters and Japanese characters. The overall structure of the paper is "one line and two planes". "One line", also called diachronic research, applies diachronic research methods to the explanation of the cause of differences between Chinese characters and Japanese characters respectively from the perspectives of geological environment, historical heritage and language cognition. As for "two planes", the first plane, namely the comparative research of Chinese and Japanese characters (pronunciation and vowel, font and literal meaning), compares the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Chinese and Japanese, Chinese vowels and Japanese pronunciation and tones of pronunciation in Chinese and Japanese. In font, it compares four structure elements including "strokes, components, whole characters and order of strokes" in font and the literal meanings of Chinese-and Japanese characters from macro and micro perspectives; the second plane is the research on the teaching of Japanese and Chinese Characters including three parts. First, the author classifies the pronunciation, font and literal mistakes of Japanese Chinese learners based on a Chinese characters statistical experiment conducted among Japanese students in the language database of dynamic composition from Beijing Language and Culture University. Second, the author studies the causes of mistakes made by Japanese students from language transfer, textbooks compilation, language cognition and national characters. The third part offers some suggestions from the perspectives of teaching principles, teaching methods and textbooks compilation and aims at the mistake features of Chinese characters. At last, the paper draws an outlook, summarizing its basic conclusions and putting forward some new research angles and methods for the comparative research subjects of Chinese characters and Japanese characters.