Chinese characters were introduced into the Korean Peninsula, Japan and Viet Nam and were used as official written language there during certain periods two thousand years ago. Therefore, from Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia came a cultural circle of the Chinese language.
Chinese characters take up a big share in Korean language. Statistics show that no matter in oral language or written language of the Korean, Chinese vocabulary makes up about 60%. Historical records show that in 285, a Korean named Wang Ren went lecturing in Japan with the bookLun Yu(the Analects of Confucius). Some experts think that Chinese characters began to be in use in Korea in 285 at the latest. By the early 5thcentury, learning to write in Chinese characters became a fashion in Korea.
The Chinese language entered Japan together with ancient books and records written in Chinese.Lun Yu(the Analects of Confucius) was the earliest Chinese book introduced into Japan and it was in about the 3rdcentury. Later, Japanese found that the Chinese characters could also be used to record the Japanese characters and they invented two different reading methods in Japanese.
In 1945, the Japanese government publishedthe Table of Chinese Characters Commonly in Use.At present, about 2,000 Chinese characters are still in use in Japanese educational books and general publications.
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