Japanese and Chinese

[KirillZl]

When somebody talks to me about Chinese Letters I get confused. What is a Chinese Letter, and what is a Chinese character or symbol or whatever. And what is the difference between Chinese and Japanese?
Jake.

[Stan]

Hi Krill, The Chinese and Japanese porcelains are different, even though the Japanese have been copying the Chinese for hundreds of years and the Chinese likewise, there are striking differences, you find the differences in the shapes, detail and materials used, by studying both you will learn the difference, it does not happen over night, it takes years of studying and handling both, and then you will get an idea of the differences, it has only been in the last 5 to 6 years that I have really been studying the two and it seems like I have barely touched on the subject, like I say before I stumbled onto this site I did not know the difference between  Chinese and Japanese porcelain, and now I can easily tell the difference, hang in there and you will learn.

[peterp]

Hi Jake,
There are no letters in Chinese, I think "character" is the accepted, proper word. "Symbols" is what some western people call them. Basically, their origin is pictorial, over time pictures were stylized or started to look more abstract. Both Chinese and Japanese use Chinese characters, the Chinese exclusively, but Japanese uses only a limited number (about 2000) of them (they call them Kanji) combined with two Japanese syllable systems. Basically, neither uses letters.

[peterp]

I split this post off from the other as it seems to be unrelated. Stan, you seem to have thought it is related to the bowl post ...sorry for hijacking the thread.