Last change: $Id: stroke-names.html,v 1.1 2004/01/21 08:08:09 haraldalbrecht Exp $
In principle, Chinese writing is founded on a more or less
manageable set of
well-defined strokes. The purpose of this article is thus to
provide some basic background information about strokes. In particular,
the information given herein is relevant to the process of digitizing
the strokes of
Chinese character within the Dragon-Char project. We decided to adopt
for our project the same stroke classification as laid out in the
character writing dictionary
[XieZi01].
We first start with the six basic strokes, which are the generic
bones Chinese characters are made from.
| 横 |
héng | The horizontal stroke, which is written left to right. |
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| 竖 |
shù | The vertical stroke, which is written top to bottom. |
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| 撇 |
piě | The sweeping left stroke, which is written top right to left bottom. |
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| 点 |
diǎn | The dot. |
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| 捺 | nà | The sweeping right stroke, which is written top left to right bottom. |
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| 提 |
tí | The rising stroke, which is written from bottom left to top right. |
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That's really easy
you might now think. Well, too easy in
fact –
at least for China: no real mastery without all the peculiar details.
Thus, you should be well aware that
there is more to a simple dot (diǎn) than just a simple blob of ink:
there are leftward dots (向左点), rightward dots (向右点),
vertical dots (直点), elongated dots (长点), curved dots (曲抱点), two-faced
dots
(两向点), left-and-right dots (左右点), hooked dots (钩点), level dots (评点), …
okay, you've probably got the scheme by now.
The basic strokes can be combined into more complex, derived
strokes. Such a derived stroke, while consisting of several basic
strokes, is still regarded as a single stroke and is also written
straight off.
| 横折 |
héng zhé | The stroke is written first
horizontally, and then turns downwards. |
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| 横撇 |
héng piě | The stroke is written first
horizontally, followed by a sweeping left stroke. |
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| 横钩 | héng gōu | The first part is written
horizontally and ends in a downward hook. |
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| héng zhé gōu |  |
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| héng zhé tí |  |
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| héng zhé wān |  |
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| héng zhé zhé |  |
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| héng zhé xiĕ gōu |  |
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| héng zhé wān gōu |  |
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| héng piě wān gōu |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù |  |
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| shù zhé zhé gōu |  |
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| wān gōu |  |