Chinese Characters across Asia: Unsing "Kanji" to write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

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 long literary tradition, a flourishing culture, and a sophisticated government bureaucracy. In this talk, Professor Handel will explain how the building blocks of the Chinese script were adapted to represent the words and sounds of Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean - and why today, only Japanese still use kanji in their writing.

Zev Handel is a professor of Chinese and chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle.