Chinese characters are symbols used to write the Chinese and Japanese languages. In the past, other languages like Korean and Vietnamese also used them. The beginning of these characters was at least 3000 years ago, making them one of the oldest writing systems in the world that is still used today. In Chinese they are called "hanzi" (), which means "Han character". In Japanese they are called "kanji," "hanja" in Korean, and "Han Nom" in Vietnamese.