The shapes of Chinese was changing all the time in the history.
For example:明(ming)
甲文 (Jiagu Wen - Oracle Inscription - Shang dynasty)
金文(Jin Wen - Bronze Inscription/large seal writing - Zhou dynasty)
说文古文 (Shuo Guwen)
小篆 (Xiao Zhuan - Small Seal Writing - Qin dynasty)
隶书 (Li Shu - Official Script - Han onwards)
楷书(Kai Shu - Standard Script - 270 AD onwards)
行书 (Xing Shu - Smooth Script - 280 AD onwards)
草书 (Cao Shu - Cursive Script - 200 AD onwards)

Zhuan characters is an important part,it's older than modern Chinese characters.
Chinese people was using Zhuan characters before Han Dynasty.

Here are some pictures of Zhuan.Can you understand?(unnecessary words)

Zhuan characters also have different styles.









This one may be a little...

Do you have a Zhuan character converter? Need that man...

beautiful.

The one in dark.... I think it says:

雲母屏風燭景深，
長?河漸落曉星沉。
嫦娥應悔偷靈藥，
碧海青天夜夜心。

then

獨在異鄉為異客，
每逢佳節倍思親，
遙知兄弟登高處，
遍插茱萸少一人。

then

少小離家老大回，
鄉音無改鬢毛衰。
兒童相見不相識，
笑問客從何處來。

then

山外青山樓外樓，
西?湖歌無幾時休，
暖風薰得遊人醉，
直把杭州當汴州。

This is similar to the ancient Bai Yue that I have heard of. Maybe, there are some influences of one ove another.

Yep, many peoples learned/adopted Chinese writing throughout history, just like the Roman script, so it's nothing new.

I practice writing Zhuang characters in calligraphy

It's really beautiful. Has a solidity of earth to it that's just magnificent

I used to do zhuangshu. The last picture is awesome.

What exactly is this?

Beautiful! I wonder I could read it...

BTW, what's the circle one about?

It was close to the writing on the bronze drums. So what about the Chinese? It seems that only 3 existing writing in the world today: Chinese, Arabs, and Latin. Now the Latin characters are popular throughout the world for papers. Chinese are for arts such calligraphy. Arabs are for religions or history of human civilization. Now you adopt Latin too. What makes me easy to live can be easily adopted. Adopting a language does not mean a praise.

No, there are many, many others. Greek, Cyrillic, Korean, Hebrew, and Hindi are only a few additional ones.

That last one just looks like a whole bunch of 福 Fu

They are different shapes of one charactoer-----福 F

Sorry,福 Fu.

wow, amazing pics guys.

Cyrillic greek and latin are mostly the same system, or all least they all descend from greek writing.
Hebrew and korean are quite minoritary. But I'd agree that Brahmi derived indian scripts have also a very very deep cultural heritage.

Reading Zhuan script is amazing; as a westerner it feels like almost impossible. If I had to choose I'd study Caoshu though, I like it better.

BTW, rather than a Zhuan converter, wouldn't Zhuan fonts suffice? I'd also like some of those. But complete ones, I have some of 300 characters or so.

Now, can you guys read the Zhuan characters or not?

(Please note the typical Western impatience )

Note that the "Zhuan" writing is more appropriately translated into english as "Seal Writing" as Zhuan characters are still used today in Seal (章) stamp writing used for signature...

There are two types of "Zhuan" characters:

"Da Zhuan 大篆" (Large Seal) - basically the writing form during Zhou dynasty, also called "Jinwen 金文 (Bronze Inscription)"

"Xiao Zhuan 小篆" (Small Seal) - the common written form during Qin dynasty. Li Si, the prime minister of Qin, was ordered by Qinshihuang to simplify the large seal writing. Basically, he compiled all the old form of writing and created the small seal.

For more info about history of chinese writing, refer to http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=2138


An example of the application of Zhuan characters used in seal stamp writing today:

e.g.



For more info about Chinese seal, refer to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_seal

五體書藝字典
http://i-gccs.fst.umac.mo/gccs/big5_main.php
The users need to discern the quality and correctness of the writings.