Most recently, countries using Chinese characters have standardised their forms and pronunciations. Over this span, the function and style of characters has evolved greatly. : 82 Chinese characters represent one of the four independent inventions of writing in human history to be universally accepted by scholars, and are the only one of these to be continuously used since its invention, with a documented history spanning more than three millennia. Chinese characters ( traditional Chinese and Japanese: 漢字 simplified Chinese: 汉字 pinyin: hànzì Cantonese Jyutping: hon3 zi6 Wade–Giles: han4 tzŭ4 rōmaji: kanji ' Han characters') are logograms used to write the Chinese languages and several other languages historically influenced by Chinese culture.