CJK Unified Ideographs
The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. In the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named "CJK Unified Ideographs". As of Unicode 8.0, Unicode defines a total of 80,388 CJK Unified Ideographs.[1]
The terms ideographs or ideograms may be misleading, since the Chinese script is not strictly a picture writing system.
Historically, Vietnam used Chinese ideographs too, so sometimes the abbreviation "CJKV" is used. This system was replaced by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet in the 1920s.
Contents
- 1 CJK Unified Ideographs blocks
- 2 Known issues
- 3 Other CJK Ideographs in Unicode, not Unified
- 4 Unicode version history
- 5 Notes
- 6 See also
CJK Unified Ideographs blocks
CJK Unified Ideographs
The basic block named CJK Unified Ideographs (4E00–9FFF) contains 20,950 basic Chinese characters in the range U+4E00 through U+9FD5. The block not only includes characters used in the Chinese writing system but also kanji used in the Japanese writing system and hanja, whose use is diminishing in Korea. Many characters in this block are used in all three writing systems, while others are in only one or two of the three. Chinese characters were also used in Vietnam's Nôm script (now obsolete). The first 20,902 characters in the block are arranged according to the Kangxi Dictionary ordering of radicals. In this system the characters written with the fewest strokes are listed first. The remaining characters were added later, and so are not in radical order.
The block is the result of Han unification,[2] which was somewhat controversial in the Far East.[3] Since Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters were coded in the same location, the appearance of a selected glyph could depend on the particular font being used. However, the source separation rule states that characters encoded separately in an earlier character set would remain separate in the new Unicode encoding.[4]
Using variation selectors, it is possible to specify certain variant CJK ideograms within Unicode. The Adobe-Japan1 character set proposal, which actually calls for 14,679 ideographic variation sequences,[5] is an extreme example of the use of variation selectors.[6]
Charts
4E00-62FF, 6300-77FF, 7800-8CFF, 8D00-9FFF.
Sources
Note: Most characters appear in multiple sources, making the sum of individual character counts (102,371) far more than the number of encoded characters (20,950).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | G0 | GB 2312-80 | 6,763 | 20,913 |
| G1 | GB 12345-90 | 2,202 | ||
| G3 | GB 7589-87 traditional form | 4,834 | ||
| G5 | GB 7590-87 traditional form | 2,841 | ||
| G7 | Modern Chinese general character chart | 42 | ||
| G8 | GB8565-88 | 290 | ||
| G9 | GB18030-2000 | 8 | ||
| GE | GB16500-95 | 3,779 | ||
| GFC | Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary (现代汉语规范词典) | 2 | ||
| GGFZ | General Chinese Standard Dictionary (通用规范汉字字典) | 1 | ||
| GH | GB/T 15564-1995 | 59 | ||
| GHZ | Hanyu Da Zidian | 1 | ||
| GK | GB 12052-89 | 89 | ||
| GKX | Kangxi Dictionary | 2 | ||
| Hong Kong | H | Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set | 2,292 | 15,353 |
| HB0 | Computer Chinese Glyph and Character Code Mapping Table, Technical Report C-26 (電腦用中文字型與字碼對照表, 技術通報C-26) |
10 | ||
| HB1 | Big-5, Level 1 | 5,401 | ||
| HB2 | Big-5, Level 2 | 7,650 | ||
| Japan | J0 | JIS X 0208-1990 | 6,356 | 12,563 |
| J1 | JIS X 0212-1990 | 3,058 | ||
| J3 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 | 1,132 | ||
| J3A | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 addendum | 9 | ||
| J4 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 4 | 2,005 | ||
| JARIB | ARIB STD-B24 | 3 | ||
| North Korea | KP0 | KPS 9566-97 | 4,652 | 15,011 |
| KP1 | KPS 10721-2000 | 10,359 | ||
| South Korea | K0 | KS C 5601-87 (now KS X 1001:2004) | 4,620 | 15,391 |
| K1 | KS C 5657-91 (now KS X 1002:2004) | 2,856 | ||
| K2 | PKS C 5700-1:1994 | 7,911 | ||
| K4 | PKS 5700-3:1998 | 4 | ||
| Taiwan | T1 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 1 | 5,413 | 18,370 |
| T2 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 2 | 7,650 | ||
| T3 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 3 | 4,144 | ||
| T4 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 4 | 894 | ||
| T5 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 5 | 63 | ||
| T6 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 6 | 31 | ||
| T7 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 7 | 16 | ||
| TC | CNS 11643-1992 plane 12 | 1 | ||
| TF | CNS 11643-1992 plane 15 | 158 | ||
| Unicode | UTC | UTC sources | 13 | 13 |
| Vietnam | V0 | TCVN 5773-1993 | 593 | 4,757 |
| V1 | TCVN 6056-1995 | 3,310 | ||
| V2 | VHN 01-1998 | 763 | ||
| V3 | VHN 02-1998 | 91 |
In Unicode 4.1, 14 HKSCS-2004 characters and 8 GB 18030 characters were assigned to between U+9FA6 and U+9FBB code points.
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A (3400–4DBF) contains 6,582 additional characters in the range U+3400 through U+4DB5 that were added in Unicode 3.0 (1999).
Charts
Sources
Note: Most characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (18,754) far more than the number of encoded characters (6,582).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | G3 | GB 7589-87 traditional form | 2,391 | 6,192 |
| G5 | GB 7590-87 traditional form | 1,226 | ||
| G7 | Modern Chinese general character chart | 120 | ||
| GHZ | Hanyu Da Zidian | 339 | ||
| GKX | Kangxi Zidian | 1,890 | ||
| GS | Singapore Chinese characters | 226 | ||
| Hong Kong | H | Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set | 572 | 572 |
| Japan | J3 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 | 19 | 738 |
| J4 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 4 | 145 | ||
| JA | Japanese IT Vendors Contemporary Ideographs, 1993 | 574 | ||
| North Korea | KP0 | KPS 9566-97 | 1 | 3,189 |
| KP1 | KPS 10721-2000 | 3,188 | ||
| South Korea | K3 | PKS C 5700-2:1994 | 1,834 | 1,836 |
| K4 | PKS 5700-3:1998 | 2 | ||
| Taiwan | T3 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 3 | 2,178 | 5,906 |
| T4 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 4 | 2,917 | ||
| T5 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 5 | 395 | ||
| T6 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 6 | 197 | ||
| T7 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 7 | 133 | ||
| TF | CNS 11643-1992 plane 15 | 86 | ||
| Unicode | UTC | UTC sources | 13 | 13 |
| Vietnam | V0 | TCVN 5773-1993 | 138 | 308 |
| V2 | VHN 01-1998 | 151 | ||
| V3 | VHN 02-1998 | 19 |
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B (20000–2A6DF) contains 42,711 characters in the range U+20000 through U+2A6D6 that were added in Unicode 3.1 (2001). These include most of the characters used in the Kangxi Dictionary that are not in the basic CJK Unified Ideographs block, as well as many Nôm characters that were formerly used to write Vietnamese.
Charts
20000-215FF, 21600-230FF, 23100-245FF, 24600-260FF, 26100-275FF, 27600-290FF, 29100-2A6DF.
Sources
Note: Many characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (72,923) far more than the number of encoded characters (42,711).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | G3 | GB 7589-87 traditional form | 1 | 30,525 |
| G4K | Siku Quanshu | 522 | ||
| G9 | GB18030-2000 | 6 | ||
| GBK | Encyclopedia of China | 86 | ||
| GCH | Cihai | 247 | ||
| GCY | Ciyuan | 66 | ||
| GFZ | Founder Press System | 65 | ||
| GHC | Hanyu Da Cidian | 553 | ||
| GHZ | Hanyu Da Zidian | 10,510 | ||
| GKX | Kangxi Dictionary | 18,469 | ||
| Hong Kong | H | Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set | 1,702 | 1,702 |
| Japan | J3 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 | 25 | 303 |
| J3A | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 addendum | 1 | ||
| J4 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 4 | 277 | ||
| North Korea | KP1 | KPS 10721-2000 | 5,766 | 5,766 |
| South Korea | K4 | PKS 5700-3:1998 | 166 | 166 |
| Taiwan | T3 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 3 | 25 | 30,178 |
| T4 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 4 | 3,408 | ||
| T5 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 5 | 8,111 | ||
| T6 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 6 | 5,934 | ||
| T7 | CNS 11643-1992 plane 7 | 6,299 | ||
| TF | CNS 11643-1992 plane 15 | 6,401 | ||
| Unicode | UTC / UCI | UTC sources (UTC 48 + UCI 4) | 52 | 52 |
| Vietnam | V0 | TCVN 5773-1993 | 1,515 | 4,231 |
| V2 | VHN 01-1998 | 2,290 | ||
| V3 | VHN 02-1998 | 425 | ||
| V4 | Dictionary on Nom (Từ điển chữ Nôm) Dictionary on Nom of Tay ethnic (Từ điển chữ Nôm Tày) Lookup Table for Nom in the South (Bảng tra chữ Nôm miền Nam) |
1 |
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (2A700–2B73F) contains 4,149 characters in the range U+2A700 through U+2B734 that were added in Unicode 5.2 (2009).
Charts
Sources
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (4,531) more than the number of encoded characters (4,149).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | GBK | Encyclopedia of China | 74 | 1,119 |
| GCH | Cihai | 264 | ||
| GCY | Ciyuan | 1 | ||
| GCYY | Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping ideographs | 55 | ||
| GFZ | Founder Press System | 1 | ||
| GGH | Old Chinese Dictionary (古代汉语词典) | 50 | ||
| GHC | Hanyu Da Cidian | 14 | ||
| GHZ | Hanyu Da Zidian | 1 | ||
| GJZ | Commercial Press ideographs | 61 | ||
| GKX | Kangxi Dictionary | 6 | ||
| GXC | Xiandai Hanyu Cidian | 25 | ||
| GZFY | Dictionary of Chinese Dialects (汉语方言大辞典) | 202 | ||
| GZJW | Collections of Bronze Inscriptions from Yin and Zhou Dynasties (殷周金文集成引得) |
365 | ||
| Hong Kong | H | Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set | 1 | 1 |
| Japan | JK | Japanese Kokuji Collection | 367 | 367 |
| Macau | MAC | Macao Information System Character Set (澳門資訊系統字集) | 16 | 16 |
| North Korea | KP1 | KPS 10721-2000 | 8 | 8 |
| South Korea | K5 | Korean IRG Hanja Character Set | 404 | 404 |
| Taiwan | TC | CNS 11643-1992 plane 12 | 634 | 1,750 |
| TD | CNS 11643-1992 plane 13 | 766 | ||
| TE | CNS 11643-1992 plane 14 | 350 | ||
| Unicode | UTC / UCI | UTC sources (UTC 80 + UCI 1) | 81 | 81 |
| Vietnam | V1 | TCVN 6056:1995 | 1 | 785 |
| V4 | Dictionary on Nom (Từ điển chữ Nôm) Dictionary on Nom of Tay ethnic (Từ điển chữ Nôm Tày) Lookup Table for Nom in the South (Bảng tra chữ Nôm miền Nam) |
784 |
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D (2B740–2B81F) contains 222 characters in the range U+2B740 through U+2B81D that were added in Unicode 6.0 (2010).
Charts
Sources
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (226) more than the number of encoded characters (222).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | GCH | Cihai | 1 | 76 |
| GIDC | ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China | 32 | ||
| GXC | Xiandai Hanyu Cidian | 4 | ||
| GZH | Zhonghua Zihai | 39 | ||
| Japan | JH | Hanyo-Denshi Program (汎用電子情報交換環境整備プログラム) | 107 | 107 |
| Unicode | UTC | UTC sources | 19 | 19 |
| Taiwan | TB | CNS 11643-1992 plane 15 | 24 | 24 |
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E (2B820–2CEAF) contains 5,762 characters in the range U+2B820 through U+2CEA1 that were added in Unicode 8.0 (2015).
Charts
Sources
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (5,790) more than the number of encoded characters (5,762).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | GBK | Encyclopedia of China | 15 | 2,815 |
| GCH | Cihai | 112 | ||
| GCY | Ciyuan | 3 | ||
| GCYY | Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping ideographs | 98 | ||
| GDZ | Geology Press ideographs | 1 | ||
| GGH | Old Chinese Dictionary (古代汉语词典) | 176 | ||
| GHC | Hanyu Da Cidian | 7 | ||
| GIDC | ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China | 36 | ||
| GJZ | Commercial Press ideographs | 147 | ||
| GKX | Kangxi Dictionary | 22 | ||
| GRM | People's Daily ideographs | 3 | ||
| GWZ | Hanyu Da Cidian Press ideographs | 12 | ||
| GXC | Xiandai Hanyu Cidian | 57 | ||
| GXH | Xinhua Zidian | 4 | ||
| GZFY | Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian (汉语方言大辞典, Dictionary of Chinese Dialects) | 712 | ||
| GZJW | Collections of Bronze Inscriptions from Yin and Zhou Dynasties (殷周金文集成引得) |
1,410 | ||
| Japan | JK | Japanese Kokuji Collection | 415 | 415 |
| Macau | MAC | Macao Information System Character Set (澳門資訊系統字集) | 48 | 48 |
| Taiwan | TC | CNS 11643-1992 plane 12 | 323 | 1257 |
| TD | CNS 11643-1992 plane 13 | 595 | ||
| TE | CNS 11643-1992 plane 14 | 339 | ||
| Unicode | UTC | UTC sources | 227 | 227 |
| Vietnam | V4 | Dictionary on Nom (Từ điển chữ Nôm) Dictionary on Nom of Tay ethnic (Từ điển chữ Nôm Tày) Lookup Table for Nom in the South (Bảng tra chữ Nôm miền Nam) |
1,028 | 1,028 |
CJK Compatibility Ideographs
The block named CJK Compatibility Ideographs (F900–FAFF) was created to retain round-trip compatibility with other standards. Only twelve of its characters have the "Unified Ideograph" property: U+FA0E, FA0F, FA11, FA13, FA14, FA1F, FA21, FA23, FA24, FA27, FA28 and FA29.[1] None of the other characters in this and other "Compatibility" blocks relate to CJK Unification.
Charts
Sources
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (22) more than the number of encoded Unified characters (12).[7]
| Country | Code | Standard | Character count | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | J3 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 3 | 4 | 8 |
| J4 | JIS X 0213-2004 Level 4 | 3 | ||
| JA | Japanese IT Vendors Contemporary Ideographs, 1993 | 1 | ||
| Taiwan | TF | CNS 11643-1992 plane 15 | 1 | 1 |
| Unicode | UTC | UTC sources | 12 | 12 |
| Vietnam | V2 | VHN 01-1998 | 1 | 1 |
UTC Sources
The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) bears the formal responsibility of developing extensions to the encoded repertoires of unified CJK ideographs. The Unicode Consortium participates in this group as a liaison member of ISO. The characters submitted by the Unicode Technical Committee bear the prefix "UTC". All CJK Unified Ideographs in ISO/IEC10646 are required to have at least one source identifier. Changes to IRG source information, however, can leave a given ideograph without any such sources. In such cases, the ideograph is included in the U-source database to guarantee it has at least one source. Such ideographs are indicated by a source prefix of "UCI" instead of "UTC".[8]
The UTC sources consist of the following:
- ABC Chinese-English Dictionary by John DeFrancis
- The Adobe-CNS1 glyph collection
- The Adobe-Japan1 glyph collection
- A Complete Checklist of Species and Subspecies of Chinese Birds (中国鸟类系统检索)
- The Great Nom Dictionary (Đại Tự Điển Chữ Nôm)
- Annotations to Shuowen Jiezi (annotated by Duan Yucai)
- GB18030-2000
- Required Character List Supplied by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Hong Kong)
- New Commercial Dictionary (商务新词典), Hong Kong
- Defect reports filed against the Unicode Standard or other direct communication with the Unicode editorial committee
- Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents
- Modern Chinese Dictionary (现代汉语词典), by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linguistics Research Institute, Dictionary Editorial Office
- Working Group (WG2) documents
- Wenlin (文林) http://www.wenlin.com/
Known issues
Disunification of U+4039
The character U+4039 (䀹) was a unification of two different characters (one with jiā 夾 phonetic and one with shǎn 㚒 phonetic) until Unicode 5.0. However, they were lexically different characters that should not have been unified; they have different pronunciations and different meanings.
The proposal of disunification of U+4039[9] was accepted and the new character is encoded at U+9FC3 in Unicode 5.1.
Unifiable variants and exact duplicates in Extension B
In CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B, hundreds of glyph variants were encoded.[10] In addition to the deliberate encoding of close glyph variants, six exact duplicates (where the same character has inadvertently been encoded twice) and two semi-duplicates (where the CJK-B character represents a de facto disunification of two glyph forms unified in the corresponding BMP character) were encoded by mistake:[11]
- U+34A8 㒨 = U+20457 𠑗 : U+20457 is the same as the China-source glyph for U+34A8, but it is significantly different from the Taiwan-source glyph for U+34A8
- U+3DB7 㶷 = U+2420E 𤈎 : same glyph shapes
- U+8641 虁 = U+27144 𧅄 : U+27144 is the same as the Korean-source glyph for U+8641, but it is significantly different from the China-, Taiwan- and Japan-source glyphs for U+8641
- U+204F2 𠓲 = U+23515 𣔕 : same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
- U+249BC 𤦼 = U+249E9 𤧩 : same glyph shapes
- U+24BD2 𤯒 = U+2A415 𪐕 : same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
- U+26842 𦡂 = U+26866 𦡦 : same glyph shapes
- U+FA23 﨣 = U+27EAF 𧺯 : same glyph shapes (U+FA23 﨣 is a unified CJK ideograph, despite its name "CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FA23.")
Other CJK Ideographs in Unicode, not Unified
Apart from the six blocks of "Unified Ideographs", Unicode has about a dozen more blocks with not-unified CJK-characters. These are mainly CJK radicals, strokes, punctuation, marks, symbols and compatibility characters. Although some characters have their (decomposable) counterparts in other blocks, the usages can be different.
Four blocks of compatibility characters are included for compatibility with legacy text handling systems and older character sets:
- CJK Compatibility (3300-33FF)
- CJK Compatibility Forms (FE30-FE4F)
- CJK Compatibility Ideographs (F900-FAFF)
- CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement (2F800-2FA1F)
They include forms of characters for vertical text layout and rich text characters that Unicode recommends handling through other means. Therefore their use is discouraged.
Usually, compatibility characters are those that would not have been encoded except for compatibility and round-trip convertibility with other standards. However, the amount of CJK ideographs within any non-Unicode standard is too big to fit into Unicode's CJK Compatibility Ideographs blocks. Instead, code points are assigned when the affected characters are approved by the Unicode Consortium, but have yet to assign any code points within the CJK Unified Ideographs blocks.
Unicode version history
| CJK unified Ideographs additions per Unicode version | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode version | Addition | Plane | Characters added | Total Characters |
| 1.0 (1991) | CJK Unified Ideographs | Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) | 20,902 | 20,914 |
| CJK Compatibility Ideographs | BMP | 12 | ||
| 3.0 (1999) | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A | BMP | 6,582 | 27,496 |
| 3.1 (2001) | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B | Supplementary Ideographic Plane (SIP) | 42,711 | 70,207 |
| 4.1 (2005) | CJK Unified Ideographs: Ideographs from HKSCS-2004 and GB 18030-2000 not in ISO 10646 | BMP | 22 | 70,229 |
| 5.1 (2008) | CJK Unified Ideographs: Ideographs from Adobe Japan and disunification of U+4039 | BMP | 8 | 70,237 |
| 5.2 (2009) | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C | SIP | 4,149 | 74,394 |
| 8 other characters from ARIB #47, #95, #93 and HKSCS | BMP | 8 | ||
| 6.0 (2010) | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D | SIP | 222 | 74,616 |
| 6.1 (2012) | 1 character corresponding to Adobe-Japan1-6 CID+20156 | BMP | 1 | 74,617 |
| 8.0 (2015) | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E | SIP | 5,762 | 80,388 |
| 9 other characters | BMP | 9 | ||
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ The Unicode Standard 4.0, Appendix A - Han Unification History
- ↑ Suzanne Topping, "The secret life of Unicode"
- ↑ "Chapter 11 - East Asian scripts", The Unicode standard, 4.0.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ PRI 108: Combined registration of the Adobe Japan1 collection and of sequences in that collection
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Andrew West and John Jenkins, proposal of disunification of U+4039
- ↑ unifiable glyph variants
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
