How Chinese Characters Became Kanji: Adaptation of Chinese Script Across Asia

In this talk, Zev Handel explains how Chinese characters, the oldest type of writing in East Asia, spread beyond China’s borders to write the words and sounds of three very different languages: Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Today, as kanji and kana, they are still used to write Japanese, while Vietnam and Korea have since replaced Chinese characters with alphabetic writing.

 Chinese characters originated in China over 3,000 years ago. Prior to their creation, East Asia was completely devoid of writing. By the time of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), China already had a centuries-long literary tradition and a sophisticated government bureaucracy. Over subsequent centuries, Chinese writing and culture exerted an enormous influence on surrounding peoples and places, including the areas of modern-day Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Eventually, the Chinese-character script was adapted to write the languages spoken in these three places, languages very different from Chinese. In this talk, Zev Handel will explain how the building blocks of the Chinese script were adapted to represent the words and sounds of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese — even though today, only Japanese still uses kanji in its writing. Along the way, we’ll gain insights into the function of Chinese characters and how they differ from alphabetic writing.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and the Class of 1960 Scholars Program

Zev Handel is professor of Chinese and chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. Trained at UC Berkeley in Chinese historical linguistics with a specialization in the pronunciation of the earliest stages of the Chinese language, Professor Handel’s research interests now encompass East Asian writing systems. He is a co-editor of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics and the author of Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script. His new book, Chinese Characters across Asia, is written for a general readership and will be out from University of Washington Press in January 2025.