Sinosphere

Sinosphere
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 漢字文化圏
Simplified Chinese 汉字文化圈
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ Hán tự văn hoá khuyên (Sino-Viet.)
Khu vực văn hóa chữ Hán (native)[1][2]
Hán-Nôm 漢字文化圈 (Sino-Viet.)
區域文化𡨸漢 (native)
Korean name
Hangul 한자문화권
Hanja 漢字文化圈
Japanese name
Kanji 漢字文化圏
Kana かんじぶんかけん

In areal linguistics, Sinosphere (simplified Chinese: 汉字文化圈; traditional Chinese: 漢字文化圏; pinyin: Hànzì Wénhuà Quān; literally "Chinese character culture circle") refers to a grouping of countries and regions that are currently inhabited with a majority of Chinese population or were historically under Chinese cultural influence. The linguist James Matisoff coined the term "Sinosphere" in 1990, contrasting with the Indosphere, "I refer to the Chinese and Indian areas of linguistic / cultural influence in Southeast Asia as the 'Sinosphere' and the 'Indosphere'."[3]

The terms Chinese cultural sphere and Chinese character cultural sphere are used interchangeably with "Sinosphere" but have different denotations. Chinese cultural sphere denotes a grouping of countries, regions, and people which have participated in or been heavily influenced by the Culture of China, such as Tibet or Sichuan. Countries such as Japan or Viet Nam which did in the past or do now use the Chinese writing system denote the other sense. For Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) the term has been glossed as "Sinosphere: a socio-political sphere of MSEA, subsuming those countries, cultures, and languages that have historically come under influence from the politics, culture, religion, and languages of China (notably Vietnam, Southwestern China, northern parts of Laos, as well as most urban centers in MSEA)."[4]

Contents

Origins

In linguistic (and German) terms, the Sinosphere is a Sprachbund or "language league." This cultural region closely corresponds to the ancient "Sinic civilization" and its descendants, the "Far Eastern civilizations" (the Mainland and the Japanese ones), which Arnold J. Toynbee presented in the 1930s in "A Study of History", along with the Western, Islamic, Eastern Orthodox, Indic, etc. civilizations, among the major "units of study" of the world's history.[5]

Defining characteristics

The Sinosphere is generally unified by first written language ability in Chinese. This defines the unifying factor as the influence of traditional Chinese cultural beliefs, marked by Confucianist social and moral ethics, Taoist or Mahayana Buddhist religious beliefs, as embodied in text using Chinese characters (Hanzi in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and Hán tự in Vietnamese) whether within China proper or in a peripheral culture before it emerged from the dominance of the center.

Another indicator is the everyday use of chopsticks, which generally believed to be originated in ancient China.

See also

References

  • Ankerl, Guy (2000). Global communication without universal civilization. INU societal research. Vol.1: Coexisting contemporary civilizations : Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5. 
  • Joshua A. Fogel, Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures; 2007). ISBN 2008041259

Notes

  1. ^ "Thời Trung đại trong văn học các nước khu vực văn hoá chữ Hán". Vienvanhoc.org.vn. 2009-09-24. http://www.vienvanhoc.org.vn/reader/?id=80&menu=107. Retrieved 2010-05-03. 
  2. ^ Thư mời hội thảo Quá trình hiện đại hóa văn học Nhật Bản và các nước khu vực văn hóa chữ Hán
  3. ^ Matisoff, James A. (1990). On Megalocomparison. Language 66.1, p. 113.
  4. ^ N.J. Areal Linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia, Annual Review of Anthropology 2005. 34:181–206 [1]
  5. ^ See the "family tree" of Toynbee's "civilizations" in any edition of Toynbee's own work, or e.g. as Fig.1 on p.16 of: "The Rhythms of History: A Universal Theory of Civilizations", By Stephen Blaha. Pingree-Hill Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-9720795-7-2.

External links