Sinosphere

Sinosphere
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	漢字文化圏
Simplified Chinese	汉字文化圈
Transcriptions Hakka - Romanization hon55 sii55 vun11 fa55 kien24 Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Hànzì Wénhuà Quān Min - Hokkien POJ hàn-jī bûn-huà-khuan Wu - Romanization hoe去 zy去 ven平 ho去 jioe上 Cantonese (Yue) - Jyutping hon3 zi6 man4 faa3 hyun1
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ	Hán tự văn hoá khuyên (Sino-Viet.) Khu vực văn hóa chữ Hán (native)
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
Transcriptions - Revised Romanization hanja munhwagwon
Japanese name
Kanji	漢字文化圏
Kana	かんじぶんかけん
Transcriptions - Romanization kanji bunkaken

The ways of saying "Sinosphere" in major languages of Sinosphere.

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'."

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)."

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.

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, Hán tự in Vietnamese, hanja in Korean and kanji in Japanese) whether within China proper or in a peripheral culture before it emerged from the dominance of the center.

Others indicators are Calligraphy(writing brush, writing ink, Rice paper and Inkstone), painting, sculpture, architecture(Ornament), clothing, music(musical instruments), cuisine(eating utensils, ingredients and cooking methods), logic(Confucianism), political system, appliance(furniture, art crafts) and so on, which generally believed to be originated in ancient China.

See also

• All under heaven
• Greater China
• Sinocentrism
• Sinoxenic

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

• Chinese Cultural Sphere and the Use of Chinese Characters, Zhe Shiya, Lianhe Zaobao, 24 June 2004, Singapore (in Chinese)
• Export of Chinese Culture and Balance of Power in the World, Shinfeng, People's Daily, 28 March 2006, Beijing (in Chinese)

External links

• Asia for Educators. Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.