CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -At the end of every year, the general public votes for the Chinese character they think embodies the key news and events of the previous 12 months. A total of 20, 858 people out of 193, 214 chose the character “disaster”.

Detailed explanation-2: -The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since had a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records.

Detailed explanation-3: -kanji, (Japanese: “Chinese character”) in the Japanese writing system, ideograms (or characters) adapted from Chinese characters. Kanji constitute one of the two systems used to write the Japanese language, the other being the two indigenous kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana).

Detailed explanation-4: -The Japanese used Chinese in order to study religious and political texts that came from China. At this time, Chinese language was to East Asian civilization what Latin was to early Europe. It was written and read by educated elites in China, Japan, Korea, and what is Vietnam today.

Detailed explanation-5: -While traditional Japanese Kanji is the same as traditional Chinese characters, simplified Japanese Kanji (shinjitai, new character forms) might be different from simplified Chinese characters. Most Japanese Kanji has a similar meaning to Chinese characters but not always.