Common examples of words using phonetic characters are the names of countries, such as Canada, which is pronounced "Jiānádà" (加拿大) in Chinese. While the third character 大 "dà", which has the meaning "big/large/great", seems to describe Canada well, since it is a big country, the first two characters 加 "jiā", meaning "to add", and 拿 "ná", meaning "to take", have no obvious relation to Canada. Therefore, it is safe to say that these characters were chosen only because the pronunciation of each character sounds similar to the syllables of the English name of the country.
Nobody knows exactly how many Chinese characters there are, but the biggest Chinese dictionaries list about fifty thousand characters, even though most of them are only variants of other characters seen in very old texts. For example, the character 回 (huí) has also been written as the variant characters 迴，廻，囬，逥，廽，and 囘, although most Chinese people only know and use the variant 回. Studies in China show that normally three to four thousand characters are used in daily life, so it is safe to say that someone needs to know three to four thousand characters to be functionally literate in Chinese, or be able to read everyday writing without serious problems.
Characters are a kind of graphic language, much different from languages that use an alphabet such as English. The correct way to tell between them is to remember the structure and meaning of every character, not pronunciation, because there is a very close relationship between meaning and structure of characters. Example: 房(house)=户+方. 房 is a shape-pronunciation character. 户 is for shape and 方 is for pronunciation. 户 means 'door'. 房 means 'A person lives behind a door'. 方 pronunciation is "fang" and tone is 1, and with the tone mark it is written as "fāng". 房 pronunciation is also "fang", but tone is 2, with the tone mark it is written as "fáng".
Chinese characters have been used to write other languages.
There are still many Chinese characters that are used in Japanese and Korean. Generally the educational level of a Japanese person is decided by the number of Chinese characters understood by this person. While Koreans nowadays mostly write in hangul, the native Korean alphabet, people have found that some meanings cannot be expressed clearly by just hangul, so people need to use Chinese characters as a note with a bracket. Before 1446, Korean people only used Chinese characters.
In Japanese, characters that are borrowed from the Chinese language are called kanji. Kanji can be used to write both native Japanese words and Chinese loanwords. Japanese writing uses a mix of kanji and two kana systems. Kanji is mostly used to show a word's meaning, while hiragana and katakana are syllabaries that show the pronunciation of Japanese words. Both writing systems are used often when writing Japanese.
In Korean, they are called hanja. Throughout most of Korean history, hanja was the only writing system most literate Koreans knew. Even though hangul was invented in 1446, it was only used by commoners and not the government until Korea gained independence from Japan. Nowadays, most Koreans write mostly in hangul. In North Korea, people write almost completely in hangul since Kim Il-sung abolished hanja from Korean. In South Korea, people mostly write in hangul, and they sometimes write hanja. Native Korean words are almost always written in hangul. Hanja are usually only used to write words that are borrowed from the Chinese language, and are usually only used when the word's meaning isn't obvious based on the context.
In Vietnamese, they are called chữ Nôm. Many Chinese loanwords were used in Vietnamese, especially in old Vietnamese literature. While Vietnamese used many Chinese characters, they also invented tens of thousands of their own characters to write Vietnamese words. The radicals used in chữ Nôm were usually a mix of the words' meanings and pronunciations.
Improvisation
Improvisation is the art of performing without a script or rehearsal.
In music, improvisation is the art of playing an instrument (or singing) in which the musician or musicians make up the music as they play. Improvising is inventing at the same time as one does something. Some musicians only play music when they have written music in front of them, but it can be great fun to improvise music. It is a way of composing. Improvisation is common during a jam session.
In Baroque times all musicians were taught to improvise because composers often did not bother to write all the notes down. Musicians would have improvised lots of ornaments, and even whole sections.
Many great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt were famous for their keyboard improvisations.
Organists are often expected to improvise during a service. In this way they can fill in gaps in the service when there would otherwise be silence, they can make a smooth link between one piece of music and the next, and they can create the right atmosphere. In Baroque times in the Lutheran church organists would improvise a chorale prelude. This was a piece of music which uses the melody of the chorale (hymn) that the congregation sang. Bach was one of many composers who wrote many of his chorale preludes down. In more recent times some famous concert organists often finish an organ recital by playing an improvisation. This might be quite a long piece with several linked movements, finishing with a fugue. Somebody may give them the theme written on a piece of paper, so that it is quite unprepared. Charles Tournemire, Marcel Dupré, Pierre Cochereau, Pierre Pincemaille are known to be great organ improviser.
A lot of people who play folk music improvise. Traditional folk music would not have been written down.
In traditional jazz the musicians usually improvise. It is quite tricky when a group of people are improvising together. They have to listen to one another and get ideas from one another. It can be a very exciting way of making music.
Improvisation also refers to a type of performance. Improvisation (or improv for short) is often used in comedy. Actors or "Improvisers" will create an entire show that they make up as they go along. They will often ask the audience for an idea or suggestion. They will then do a short performance based on the suggestion. This lets them do many different short performances during each night's show. This is called "Short-form improv".
Reichstag (building)
The Reichstag building was designed as a home to the parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894. The original building's design was made by Paul Wallot. It was built on the site of an old palace in Berlin, Germany.
The building was used by the parliament of the German Empire until 1918. The parliament of the Weimar Republic, also called the Reichstag sat there until the 1933 Reichstag fire. The Third Reich seldom used its parliament, so the building remained empty and derelict until after German reunification.
Then it became the seat of the German parliament again in 1999 after a reconstruction led by British architect Lord Norman Foster.
Today's parliament of Germany is called the "Bundestag." The "Reichstag" as a parliament dates back to the Holy Roman Empire and ceased to act as a true parliament in the years of Nazi Germany (1933-1945). In today's usage, the German term "Reichstag" refers to the building, while the term "Bundestag" refers to the institution.