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First of all, let me answer the question
raised in the title. Do Chinese letters exist? The quick and definite
answer is: No. There is no such thing as Chinese letters, or the
Chinese alphabet, for that matter. The structure of the Chinese
writing system is quite different from that of Western languages. All
languages in the West, including English, are using an alphabetic
writing system. In other words, they use letters to write words. The
letters stand for individual sounds without any meaning. Even though
the letter "a" in English is also a word, in the word "apple" it has
no meaning, it only represents a sound value.
The Chinese, however, do not use an alphabet. The Chinese characters
or symbols called hanzi (or kanji in Japanese). Originally all of
these characters were separate words and there was basically a
character for each word in the language. So the writing system was
based on words and because of this the basic elements of the script
amounted to thousands. While most Western alphabets have between 30
and 40 letters, there are about 4-6,000 characters even in daily use.
The actual number of characters is astronomical, some dictionaries
list as many as 60,000 characters.
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But when people write emails like "Please
send me the list of all Chinese letters in the Chinese alphabet!" it
is clear that they are under the impression that the Chinese do write
with an alphabet which differs from the English alphabet only in that
it is way cooler. To be honest, Chinese characters are beautiful. This
is the reason why the art of calligraphy has been so highly valued in
Chinese for over two thousand years.
The visual beauty of Chinese characters is especially appealing to us
Westerners. Consider for example, a simple word such as "duck". As far
as the word goes, there is nothing poetic about it. It is a bird that
swims around the pond and flies away when bothered. But when written
in Chinese, it looks way better than in English. To a Chinese, there
is nothing special about the duck, unless it is on a menu in a
restaurant.
Written by Imre Galambos
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