Sawndip

Zhuang characters, or Sawndip [θaːu˨˦ɗip], are logograms derived from Han characters and used by the Zhuang people of Guangxi, China to write the Zhuang languages for more than one thousand years. In Mandarin Chinese, these are called Gǔ Zhuàngzì (Chinese: 古壮字; literally: "old Zhuang characters") or Fāngkuài Zhuàngzì (方块壮字; "square shaped Zhuang characters"). Sawndip (Sawndip: ) is a Zhuang word that means "immature characters". The Zhuang word for Chinese characters used in the Chinese language is sawgun (Sawndip: 倱; lit. "characters of the Han"), gun is Zhuang for the Han Chinese. The name "old Zhuang script" is usually used to distinguish it of the official alphabet based script Standard Zhuang. Even now, in traditional and less formal domains, Sawndip is more often used than alphabetical scripts.

Etymology

The word "Sawndip" is used with a spectrum of narrow to broad meanings. The narrowest meaning confines its use just to characters created by Zhuang to write Zhuang and excludes existing Chinese characters, and at its broadest includes all the "square" characters used to write Zhuang regardless of whether they are of Chinese or Zhuang origin. Since texts contain a large proportion of characters of Chinese origin and it is not possible to say for certain the origin of some characters, the inclusive broader meaning is most commonly used. Whilst usually Old Zhuang Script (古壮字) and Square Zhuang Script (方块壮字) are usually synonymous, when used contrastively the former is restricted to those characters used before the founding of the Republic of China in 1911.