- Zhuang logogram
Zhuang logograms or "sawndip" are
logogram s created as a derivative characters ofHan characters and used byZhuang inGuangxi ,China . In Chinese, it is called Gǔ Zhuàngzì ( _zh. 古壮字) or Fāngkuài Zhuàngzì ( _zh. 方块壮字), meaning "old Zhuang" or "square shaped Zhuang".History
"Sawndip" is a Zhuang word that means immature character. Though it is not clarified when was the time of its creation, but the present oldest record of this logograms is a
stela built in 689,Tang dynasty . These logograms were used earlier than VietnameseChu Nom .They have been used for over 1300 years by Zhuang singers and
shaman s to record poems and scriptures. Though the romanized script forZhuang language was created in 1957 as the official script, sawndip continues to be used to this day.Published in 1989 the Sawndip Sawdenj (Sawndip Dictionary, zh-cp|c=古壮字字典|p=Gǔ Zhuàngzì Zìdiàn, Dictionary of Ancient Zhuang Characters) includes characters written in manuscipts dated before the end of the
Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).Some logograms are used as a part of Han characters for Guangxi place names, such as _zh. linktext|岜 "bya" for mountain or _zh. linktext|崬 "ndoeng" for forest and are encoded as
Unicode ideogram s. However, many thousands of Zhuang logograms have yet to be encoded in Unicode.See also
*
Ideogram
*Han characters
*Chữ nôm
*Zhuang language External links
* [http://east-chr-data.sourceforge.net Asian Character Tables] , Free (GPL) Sawndip data.
* [http://iea.cass.cn/mzwz/42.htm Chinese minority's character database -- Zhuang logogram information and image]
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