Chinese characters
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. By traditional scholarly consensus, it is one of only four writing systems—along with Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the undeciphered Indus script—considered to have been invented independently. Of these, Chinese characters are the only one still in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; as of 2024, nearly 100000 have been identified and included in The Unicode Standard. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning.