CJK is the shorthand collective name for the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean [writing systems](/glossary/writing_system), all of which include Chinese [characters](/glossary/character) and derivatives. The “C” represents both the traditional version and simplified version of Chinese; the “J” represents Japanese Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji (the latter being Chinese characters used in Japanese); and the “K” represents the Korean Hangeul and Hanja (the latter being Chinese characters used in Korean).

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![Characters from Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, set in Noto Sans.](images/thumbnail.svg)

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These languages each have many thousands of characters and therefore their [fonts](/glossary/font) also contain many [glyphs](/glossary/glyph) (and [Latin](/glossary/latin) glyphs, too), which is why the individual writing systems—including the traditional and simplified versions of Chinese—are separated out into their own dedicated fonts, such as [Noto Sans Traditional Chinese](https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+TC). It’s unusual for a single CJK font to contain more than a single writing system.