A glossary of Chinese linguistic terms used in the body of this dictionary. See alsoAppendix:Glossary for terms not specific toChinese. This page can be linked to using{{zh-glossary}} or{{zh-lg}}.

• Beijing Mandarin – The variety ofMandarin spoken in the Chinese capital city ofBeijing, which forms the basis ofStandard Chinese.
• bopomofo – Asyllabary devised for transcribing Chinesecharacters, now primarily used in Taiwan. Seebopomofo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Cantonese – A group ofChinese lects, often considered a language or language group. The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong forms the basis ofStandard Cantonese, the only variety of Chinese other thanMandarin with a written standard that enjoys significant use.
• character – The unit of writing in the Chinese writing system. See alsohanzi. Characters are composed ofcomponents, which are usually either other simpler characters orradicals. The majority of characters are composed of asemantic component (a radical indicating the approximate semantic field of the character's meaning) and aphonetic component (usually a simpler character indicating the approximate pronunciation at the time the character was created). Since many characters are old, the phonetic component may no longer accurately represent the pronunciation of the character.
• chengyu – Chinese traditional idiomatic expressions, usually consisting of fourhanzi; typically derived fromClassical Chinese.
• Chinese lect – Any variety of Chinese; often any variety other thanStandard Chinese. These lects are frequently mutually incomprehensible with Standard Chinese, making them separate languages from a linguistic standpoint, but for political and cultural reasons they are often labeled as "dialects". Wiktionary avoids the word "dialect" and uses the neutral terms "lect" or "variety" to indicate such forms.
• Chinese variety – Same asChinese lect.
• Church Romanisation – Same asPe̍h-ōe-jī.
• Classical Chinese – The language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c. the 5th century BCE through the 2nd century CE. Later imitated in the form ofLiterary Chinese.
• component – One of the smaller graphic units into which acharacter can be analyzed. Often either aradical or a character in its own right.

• dialect – In the context of Chinese, same as aChinese lect, but often with the implicit or explicit assertion that all Han Chinese speak the same language.

• erhua – In Beijing, Nanjing, Central Plains, and Southwestern Mandarin, an-r added onto the end of some syllables, often conveying a diminutive sense but sometimes changing the meaning in other ways. The phonological changes associated with erhua are complex but it is always written with the character儿, transliterated as-r inpinyin. The use of erhua inStandard Chinese is generally minimal or absent entirely, achieved either by simply not pronouncing it or by replacing the term containing erhua with some other term, such as哪儿(nǎr,“where”) becoming哪里(nǎlǐ).

• four-character idiom – Same aschengyu.

• Hanyu Pinyin – Generally, same aspinyin.
• hanzi – A single Chinesecharacter, which almost always corresponds to a single pronounced syllable (although theerhua character of spoken Beijing Chinese is an exception).
• historical dictionaries only – A term, sense or character found in one or more historical dictionaries but not in use any more, and often without any existing citations; sometimes aghost word.

• Jyutping – A system for transliteratingStandard Cantonesecharacters into Latin letters, whose main competitor isYale. Jyutping is the transliteration system used for Cantonese in the English Wiktionary. Not to be confused withpinyin, which is the system for writingStandard Chinese (based onMandarin, notCantonese).

• Literary Chinese – the predominant form of written Chinese from the end of theClassical Chinese period through the early 20th century, based on imitating the syntax and vocabulary of Classical Chinese. Generally each word is one character long, and problems arising from homophones in the spoken language are ignored.

• Mandarin – A group ofChinese lects, often considered a language or language group. The variant spoken in Beijing forms the basis ofStandard Chinese.

• obsolete on its own in Standard Chinese – A character, or some sense thereof, that is no longer used inStandard Chinese except sometimes in compounds or fossilized expressions. Some of these senses or characters may still be in use in otherChinese lects.

• phono-semantic compound – A Chinese character (CJKV character) composed of a component which is related to the meaning of the character and another component which is related to the sound of the character. Seephono-semantic compound on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• pinyin – The standard system for transliteratingStandard Chinesecharacters into Latin letters. Sometimes termedHanyu Pinyin, to distinguish it from the relatedTongyong Pinyin system, formerly in use in Taiwan. Pinyin has generally replaced all other methods of transliteratingStandard Chinese into the Latin script (such asWade-Giles andYale), but other methods are used for transliterating otherChinese lects. SeePinyin on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pe̍h-ōe-jī – The most common system for transliteratingHokkien into the Latin script. SeePe̍h-ōe-jī on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• PFS – Same asPha̍k-fa-sṳ.
• Pha̍k-fa-sṳ – A romanisation system similar toPe̍h-ōe-jī forHakka varieties. SeePha̍k-fa-sṳ on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• POJ – Same asPe̍h-ōe-jī.

• radical – A basiccomponent of acharacter that often (but not always) indicates its meaning. The number of radicals is usually fixed, and all characters are assigned a radical, even those for which the radical cannot obviously be analyzed out of the character's components. The predominantKangxi system has 214 radicals intraditional Chinese and 189 insimplified Chinese. SeeChinese character radicals on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• simplified Chinese – The system of Chinese characters in use in Mainland China starting in the 1950's, replacingtraditional Chinese characters. The process of simplification involved in some cases reducing the number ofstrokes ofradicals and othercomponents (often by borrowing already-existing forms used in fluid handwriting), and in some cases merging distinct characters whose pronunciations had become homophonic in Beijing Mandarin (but not necessarily in other Chinese lects). SeeSimplified Chinese characters on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Standard Chinese – A standardized variety of Chinese used in official contexts in China and Taiwan and in almost all written documents (outside of some documents in Hong Kong written in Cantonese, and very occasional poetry and songs in other lects). It is heavily based on spokenBeijing Mandarin but with some Beijing-specific characteristics removed, most notably the use oferhua. SeeStandard Chinese on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• stroke – A basic graphical unit out of which Chinesecharactercomponents, and thuscharacters themselves, are composed. It nominally corresponds to a single pen stroke when writing a given character, and is usually composed of one to three straight or curved lines. The number and form of strokes and order of writing them is largely fixed and standardized for each character, making it possible to order characters according to theirradical and the number of additional strokes (outside of the radical) needed to write the character. This system is in fact used in many dictionaries, including the English Wiktionary. SeeChinese character strokes on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Tâi-lô – The official system for transliteratingHokkien in Taiwan, derived fromPe̍h-ōe-jī. SeeTâi-uân Lô-má-jī Phing-im Hong-àn on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Tongyong Pinyin – A system for transcribingMandarin pronunciation of Chinesecharacters, formerly used in Taiwan from 2002 to 2008. SeeTongyong Pinyin on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• traditional Chinese – The system of Chinese characters in use up through the 1950's in Mainland China (since replaced bysimplified Chinese characters), and still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Generally, there is a many-to-one relationship between traditional and simplified characters, i.e. given a traditional character, the corresponding simplified character can generally be derived, but not vice-versa. For this reason, Wiktionary lemmatizes all Chinese terms using the traditional form. SeeTraditional Chinese characters on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Wade-Giles – A former system of transliteratingStandard Chinese, since replaced bypinyin. SeeWade-Giles on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Yale romanization of Cantonese – A system of transliteratingCantonese into Latin letters. Still popular, unlike the corresponding system for transliteratingMandarin/Standard Chinese. Its main competitor isJyutping, the system used in the English Wiktionary. SeeYale romanization of Cantonese on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Yale romanization of Mandarin – A former system of transliteratingStandard Chinese; once a potential competitor toWade-Giles, since replaced bypinyin. SeeYale romanization of Mandarin on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Zhuyin – Same asbopomofo.
• Zhuyin Fuhao – Same asbopomofo.

• Chinese appendices
• Language-specific Wiktionary glossary pages

• Pages linking to anchors not found in Appendix:Glossary