Advanced - 简体字与繁体字

This is going to start some arguements I imagine. ;)

Wow, bazza, you got the sofa! 我喜欢简体字，简单，方便，快捷！

I 看不起anyone who has bothered to take the time to learn 繁体字 and lives in Mainland China. Takes far too much energy and time, and is not needed. Also, I cant understand them so...

虽然在唯美上简体字真的比不上繁体字，但是对住在大陆上的我来说，学习简体字才是唯一合理的选择。不过，台湾和香港的媒体挺有意思，所以学习繁体字还有用。 多姿多彩才是生活的真正味道！

Great topic! As a student of Chinese living in the US, I have personally come to the conclusion that any advanced students serious about continuing with their Chinese studies should at least learn to recognize both 繁體字 and 简体字, if not learn to write them both since they are bound to come across both forms in their Chinese learning and will be better off for having familiarized themselves with both. Personally, I enjoy writing both and always do drills and homework twice, once in 繁體字 and once in 简体字. I know it sounds crazy, but doing this has really helped become more familiar with how the radicals and the simplification of characters work. Also, many of the Chinese teachers in the colleges here allow students to choose which they want to write with, but make them recognize both on tests, quizzes, etc. So far I think it's working very nicely...

简体字与繁体字都可以，哪个好用就会哪个字体。

I have never sat down and studied traditional characters, but can read a lot just because I used to live in Guangzhou many years ago and picked it up naturally (it is close enough to HK to get more traditional characters than Shanghai or Beijing) . If you are interested and pay some attention, you get the basic ones really quick. Writing though, that is quite a different story. I probably will never even try.

Hi Chittttywangwangwang or Chit4ywang3, It seems that you have forgotten your password again and obtained a new ID name, from which I can see why you hate cumbersome and unmemorable traditional Chinese characters. No offense, of course, only joking!

Chinese character encoding systems have some difficulties in converting simplified characters into traditional ones. Please copy/paste “头发 开发” and try to convert them into 繁体字 with the following online tools. Looks like the site (2) is smarter than (1), at least with regard to “发”. I hear that such misconvertions are caused by imperfection of Chinese Unicode. 头发 开发 (1) http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/converter-tradsimp.html (2) http://www.cozychinese.com/convert/

I've heard the main purpose of maintaining 繁体字mainly is to maintain the chinese heritage, since the 繁体字contain strokes that historically very meaningful.

One that complicates my character grouping quest http://chinesepod.com/connections/viewpost/henning/connect/Character+points (which I am afraid, has taken forms of a stamp / butterfly collection sort of thing): The simplification seems incomplete. E.g.: Motivated by the ultra cool 虐 I was tackling characters with the phonetic component 虍 and the respective "decendends in structure" yesterday. On my way I found 盧 which later turned out to be the complicated form of 卢. As to be expected this also happened with 艫 (-->舻) and 壚 (--> 垆). Most of the rest of this 盧/卢-subgroup with less frequent characters, however, seemingly do not have a simplification. At least it is not listed at zdic.net and I did not find it in other sources as well. These are the ones I found: 罏 lú 缶 earthen stand for wine jug 獹 lú 犭 (old) for a dog 瓐 lú 王 jasper 髗 lú 骨 (old) the skull 黸 lú 黑 black 鑪 lú 釒 fireplace, stove, oven, furnace 蠦 lú 虫 cockroach Or are there simplified versions that I overlooked? I know, I know, those are not appearing not in every second word, but at least they are in Unicode so I consider them a worthy addition to my grouping quest. Btw: Is the 人 over 彡 (right side of 珍) in Unicode?

说到繁体字，如果你们感兴趣古文字(*)的话，要读那新华网篇文章 : 重庆接连发现神秘古书─文字2年无人认识 我已经注解了，下个星期我将在发表

...(*) 古文字 gǔwénzì n. ancient (pre-Qin) script

Henning, yes it is: 㐱.

That picture looks cool. Is your annotation based on the article or he 秘古书-text? ;) BTW: Here is my complete collection of 盧-characters (繁体字-versions only): 鑪 黸 艫 壚 蠦 罏 獹 瓐 髗 盧嚧 蘆 爐 濾 廬 瀘 臚 鱸 矑 顱 纑 轤 艣

Dear CPOD, thank you for yet another lesson that taught a whole lot of "Advanced" vocabulary whilst at the same time dealing with a potentially emotive topic in a very balanced and thoughtful way. I guess I am a product of my country's 写简识繁 approach towards both systems, which means that neither system is ideologically "better" than the other. Meaning, nobody here would be arrogant or crass enough to 看不起 anybody for taking an interest in traditional characters. At the same time, we don't give this choice the kind of political "baggage" that makes it so emotionally difficult for many Taiwanese to even accept the validity of simplified characters alongside the traditional ones. So I am still struggling to get a grip on the simplified characters, but learning to read traditional characters eventually is definitely a goal too. Here I am fortunate because it is much more difficult for somebody raised in the "traditional" system to decode simplified characters, than for somebody like me to recognize a word in its traditional form. This has to do with the fact that the traditional characters include more elements, and hence more clues to the precise meaning of the character. Once again, thanks! For practical reasons, it is accepted that simplified characters are about

Hi henning, Good job. As you said, very rarely used Chinese characters seem to have managed to survive CCP-led simplification or “改造, 下放”. By the way, I have found some simplified hanzi for your “lu” collection. 垆 is the simplified form for both 壚 and 罏 according to my dictionaries. 垆……..罏 lú earthen stand for wine jug 炉……..鑪 lú fireplace, stove, oven, furnace

john, thanks a lot! That is the one I was trying to hunt down. If I got it right it refers to nice woman's hair. It seems to be missing in my font though. The pic is correct; my browser won't show the font version though: "㐱" But in case that I ever actually need it I just write "UTF 8 - 13361"

Thanks, changye. My Excel sheet just got richer in content again!

I'm willing to run the risk of being slammed by some outraged newbie for going on to add that nothing is absolute about Chinese characters. Simplification, as a process, is barely 60 years old; things seem relatively stable now, but I recall that when I began primary school in 1976, it was only the second year that simplified characters were taught in schools. And the first year where hanyu pinyin replaced bopomofo zhuyin. My shell-shocked Chinese teachers, who had been brought up in the traditional system, struggled to teach their students new forms which they had themselves learned in a hurry only weeks before. To this day, I feel for them; they handled the changes with grace. Barely three years later, the Ministry of Education -- for the sake of consistency and out of pragmatism -- repealed those characters which Beijing had deemed "over-simplified", and so some of those simplified characters in our Chinese textbooks acquired additional strokes, overnight. None of this change seems to have led to any lasting harm... Chinese as we learn it in CPOD is in itself an innovation, it was not so many years before 简体字 that the idea of writing colloquial Mandarin would have seemed quite insane to many Chinese in China.

Auntie68 is quite right. I've noticed more and more 繁体字 on signs in Shanghai (to make the business look classy, I guess), and there are tons of unofficial simplifications to be found (like 亻+丁 for 停) written on walls and doors. I even saw 広, which is the Japanese simplification of 广/廣 once in a sign. It's like character soup! Fun stuff.

henning, my upcoming 88news story is the annotated article from 新华网

甲骨文： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script When I was a child, my Chinese homework included writing Chinese characters multiple times on paper using a ballpoint pen. Occasionally, I had to turn in Chinese calligraphy homework. All these penmanship/memorization homework were written using traditional characters. I like both systems. I want to be able to read text in both traditional and simplified. But when it comes to writing by hand, I am just too lazy to write traditional characters because of the additional strokes! Below are some of the words I ended up committing to memory because I had to write them so many times: 豐 丰 龜 龟 進 进 陳 陈 盡 尽 報 报 寶 宝 園 园 戲 戏 幾 几 繼 继 買 买 對 对 隊 队 One thing though, there are times when the traditional characters are more expressive. Last year, when the typhoon hit Shanghai, I discovered that tai in typhoon is written as 台。When I saw it, I thought of 台湾。But upon further investigation, I learned typhoon is actually written as 颱風。I find 颱風 to be more expressive than 台风。But now that I know 颱風, I would rather write 台风.

I think we need another link for this lesson that displays 簡體字與繁體字. :)

不好意思。。。 I have trouble with the following piece of vocab from the Expansion: 带薪休假 It is translated with "Salary vacation". But what is a "salary vacation"? An unpaid vacation? A sabbatical? A maternal leave?

The difference between Fantizi and jiantizi is comparable to a sophisticated and stunning woman before and after (jiantizi) her head has been cut off.

Hi henning, 带薪休假 = paid holiday

henning, Remember that the annotation for the advanced materials are done automatically and not always accurate. When we did our upgrade at the end of last year, the annotations showed up for the first time on advanced lessons, and our users did not want us to remove them, even though they are not always accurate.

Thanks, changye. Clay, that was not meant in a reproachful way. I seriously did not know what 带薪 休假 meant and could find neither "带薪休假" nor "salary vacation" in any online reference (including Wikipedia and the CPod-Dict).

artkho, thanks for the 繁体 － 简体 examples. I believe that the traditional form of 报 (bao4) is still preferred (and even cherished!) on the mastheads of many Chinese-language newspapers around the world. Including quite a few very famous papers whose house style for articles is strictly based on simplified characters. vavictus -- for some simplified characters, the sophisticated and stunning woman looks like she lost some excess weight in the right places. Only tweaking you. Some simplified characters look a bit childish and stark to me after I've had the chance to see the traditional form. Yet others look refreshingly stylish and succinct to me, the traditional forms looking slightly bloated by comparison. For me (at least!), there doesn't seem to be an absolute standard whereby "this is always bad", and "that is always bad". I even love Japanese kanji and Korean hanja... it's like seeing familiar characters after they've been made-over, with great skill and expression, by an inventive stylist/ art director who works for "Vogue"... The spelling of your name -- "Kho" sounds "Malaysian" to me, is that where you were born?

I need your advice.Please tell me a way I can memorise the characters better.

Hello user3919. I myself am struggling with Chinese characters daily, despite being "overseas Chinese", but here are two suggestions that you can try: 1. Try writing the new characters out on a piece of paper. Not once, but a few times, until it feels "natural". 2. Another thing which you can try is looking at the main character's entry in your dictionary, if you have a good dictionary where the entries are organized by hanyu pinyin (and hence by sound). Even just looking at the character compounds -- without getting too stressed out, just relax -- will give you a "feel" for how that character works on its own, as well as with other characters. If your dictionary organizes entries by hanyu pinyin, quite a lot of the time you may find that the entries above -- and below -- are for characters which sound quite similar, and are which are only a radical (and/or) a tone away from your "target" character. No harm looking at those -- again, without too much analysis -- to see how that character's "cognate" functions. If you are lucky, you will end up getting quite a good sense -- instinctively and natural, not analytically -- of what is unique about your "target character". Don't hesitate to just drop this if it doesn't do anything useful for you. Good luck!

hi changye I answered your latest note to me before so much as reading the title of this lesson. I do not believe in extrasensory perception but coincidences would't have a name if they did not occur, like the royal straight flush in poker. I never had one.

P/s: user3919, I believe that you can/should follow your own instincts. Some Chinese teachers feel strongly that the "writing practice" should be done on the traditional kind of exercise notepaper that has evenly-sized squares. For me personally, I've never been able to write natural-looking characters on such "graph paper". Not even when it was an exam composition where the marks were all-important. The only kind of paper I can write "decent" Chinese characters on is plain paper with no lines or squares; not a problem if I am only practising new characters or CPOD sentences that sound cool. Good luck!

although i can read traditional characters,but i like simplified characters more,i would rather read English than thantraditional characters,though my Englsih very bad.

有了微软雅黑字体之后简体也好看多了，我认为大陆需要针对简体字体和字库做优化。

auntie68, kho is the transliteration of the amoy (厦门／闽南话）pronunciation of 许。This spelling has been in existence for at least a century and is found in the Chinese to English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy : http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-English-Dictionary-Vernacular-Language/dp/9579482322/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203332528&sr=1-1 Douglas Carstairs created the Amoy Language dictionary in the 1800s, http://www.amoymagic.com/AM_Douglas_Carstairs3.htm And no, you are incorrect，I'm not from Malaysia. 我是菲律宾出生的。;-)

thanks for the clarification, artkho! For what it's worth, this Auntie is a Doting Tita (shhh!!!) of the Stunt Toddler (aged 2+), who is a true Pinoy-Tsinoy-Tisoy. Today he was eating "pan de sal" like there was no tomorrow! It's his favourite food of the moment! If I'm not wrong (given my family's inability to read genealogical records in Chinese), I think that our ancestors were from the same huge part of China. My family is said to be "fukien/Hokkien" Chinese, my family name -- "Ong" -- is the fukien version of 王。 I have a cousin who married into Filipino Chinese family. Best wishes, Auntie

I have to agree with the Taiwanese in the dialoge: the simplified character structure is sometimes destroyed and some simplified characters don't look right, like like 厂 or 广. The Japanese simplication for 广 looks better, in my opinion. The origanal is 廠 and in Japanese the 敞 is replaced by ㄙ. This looks more balanced.

A working group of scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan have long been discussing ways to unify variant Chinese characters in those countries. Last year, they finally agreed to establish what are called “unified characters” in the near future, which are supposed to replace existing variants in a phased manner. Most irritating thing about the news is that Korean scholars took the initiative in calling for other countries to join the project. I am sorry this is going to sound somewhat nationalistic, but I would just like to say to them, a little ashamed though, that please stay away from this issue because it is none of your business. Ordinary Korean people usually do not read and write Chinese characters anymore, even though they half-heartedly learn modest nine hundred hanzi at school, and the importance of Chinese (as well as English) is increasing in Korean society as their economy is getting more deeply involved with China than ever before. You can hardly find Chinese characters in books and newspapers in Korea, except for some history-related or academic publications. In general, Korean people basically do not care about Chinese characters, let alone “variants”, however I must say the situations in China, Taiwan, and Japan are completely different. As for China, at first the kingdom of hanzi joined the project in a passive manner, because China wanted to keep their simplified characters intact. But the country has recently become positive about the unification, since they think that simplified characters have been becoming a de facto standard for hanzi worldwide. In other words, China already has confidence in holding a stable position of “简体字” around the world and do not have to fear “unification” anymore, therefore China agreed with the plan under the condition that simplified characters will keep status quo, even if their counterparts in “繁体字” are modified for standardization. In my opinion, there is no need to unify variants in Chinese characters in every country, because hanzi themselves have a great recognizability or discriminability, and it would makes almost no different whether or not, e.g. there are few more (or less) strokes in a Chinese character when you discern and read them. On the other hand, such unnecessary hanzi unification could cause certain confusion in a writing system domestically, which means that you cannot maintain notational consistency anymore even between recent past and the near future. In a sense, a minor change might be much more troublesome than a major one. Let me take “学” as an example. Its traditional form is “學”, and it is “学” both in “简体字” and Japanese kanji. As I wrote above, China has no intention to modify their “学”, and other countries have three choices for unification, namely (1) 学, (2) 學, (3) create a new character similar to “学” and “學”. I think all of them are nonsense. Japanese never choose (1) “學” simply because it is too complex. And if Taiwanese people select (2) “学”, it would just mean they accept the simplification as China did two score years ago. If so, I would rather recommend that Taiwan import all the simplified characters from China. The option (3) is out of question. I personally think that some countries should keep using traditional Chinese characters from the point of view of cultural heritage preservation. “繁体字” are not a big burden anymore in this computer era. Of course, it is completely up to the local people to decide to select which set of characters for their mother tongue. I hope hanzi unification will not happen within my own lifetime. Sorry, too long.

no, changye, not too long. As I mentioned in my first post on this thread, it's an emotive issue. For me, I don't think that any one system is "better" than the other as long as I am free to 写简识繁, an approach which rejects ideology and politics. But like you, I think I would feel very strongly opposed to any kind of knee-jerk, "pc" rush to create hybrid characters just for the sake of pleasing everybody, if the end-product is not firmly based on purely linguistic principles. This Auntie would much rather "let Nature take its course", where the evolution of Chinese characters is concerned. In this I believe that the PRC has rich experience, which can only be beneficial to other hanzi/kanji/hanja users; not enough is made of the Beijing's courage and integrity in repealing over-simplified characters at a time when it can't have been politically expedient to do so... I believe that was even before the PRC had its seat in the UN...

Okay, now it's my turn to be "all het up". Sorry. What will such "character unification" mean to written Cantonese, I wonder? I am a Cantonese speaker from infancy, only recently (with my growing interest in Mandarin) I have begun to fall in love with written colloquial Cantonese (nearly, but not quite, an oxymoron!), which includes many "uniquely Cantonese" traditional hanzi 汉字, as well as a number of suprisingly simple-/modern- looking characters which represent Middle Chinese language components which are alive and well in 21st century Cantonese, even if they are extinct in Mandarin and most "northern" dialects. I really wish Governments would let their own people vote with the words that they write, and -- equally -- that the people will be aware and passionate about what matters to them.

I don't practice writing the characters, I use the chinese word program, and I am impressed by the artistic approach to the characters I have found at C-POD. It makes me stop and look at the characters as pictures rather than components of a complex writing system. It is refreshing to have a style/art viewpoint when studying something so complex.

我认为 简体字方便。。。生活中都用得上。

hi Auntie68 I am afraid you can no more vote about scripts/spellings than you can about religion. The vast majority of people will vote for what they're used to. It would be interesting, though, te see how many people would show up at the polls.

我真的不知道簡體是什麽鬼字。 生活中好多事情是不方便可是是很值得。

小时候学书法，偶尔写过繁体字。感觉好多时候，要把简体字写得漂亮更难。大概因为太简单了，所以书写的缺点就暴露无遗，没办法藏在繁复的笔画后面。

雖然我的書法是不好的， 我也覺得寫簡單的字是很難。因爲每一個錯點就會凸出來！

With my Taiwan-Chinese study background, I find traditional characters easier to read that simplified characters. Yes, the traditional characters contain more strokes, but they also contain more information and clues to meaning. My developing Chinese language skill forces me still to translate much of the Chinese text that I read--an unfortunate fact of life. When I read simplified characters, I often find myself translating TWICE--first, from simplified to traditional (when I CAN), then, from traditional to English (when I MUST). My skill leaves something to be desired, of course, and I know that simplified characters are here to stay, but personally, for this student at least, I find that the "simplicity" that simplified characters offer is actually a layer of obscurity that increases my mental processing time, and one that I could do quite well without. As to the issue of WRITING traditional characters, I know that there a few writing conventions that make it possible to write tradtional characters quickly--perhaps as quickly as handwritten simplified characters.

Hello aert. When I wrote that governments should simply let their people "vote with the words they wrote", I was only trying -- clumsily, as usual! -- to make the point that I think people should be allowed to use whatever writing system they prefer. Rather than having new characters imposed upon them by the government of the day, for no obvious reason other than a desire to tinker with something that isn't... broken. I know you agree with me! Most of the time, this BB is a good example of how the users of two very different systems can mix it up without any serious confusion. Jenny 老师, I totally agree with you about the hidden difficulties of writing simplified characters nicely! The Stunt Toddler and I each have Chinese names which are combinations of the characters 王， 义，仁， and 玉. Really easy to learn, but not easy to learn to write nicely! Still, it is easy to pick our own names out on lists, any time... user31534 -- ouch, it's difficult to use 什么鬼 in a way that DOESN'T sound abrupt, even rude. Even if you write it in traditional characters. Bet you were actually aiming for a much friendlier tone.

I don't mean to be rude. Perhaps it is that I learned my Chinese in Taiwan. Like Brotherick, when I look at simplified characters I have to translate twice. First into traditional, then into English. It truly does give me a headache. I suppose if I learned simplified first, I would feel differently. 可能只是習慣方面的問題吧。

Hi auntie68, Thanks for reading my long grumbling. I will buy your "let Nature take its course" policy. I find it much to the point. The Beatles sing “Let It Be”, Maradona has the “invisible God’s hand”, and even China is enthusiastically advocating “free market capitalism” at present. The discussion reminds me of the Indonesian slogan of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”. I hear it is old Javanese (be careful, not “Japanese”). This means “Unity in Diversity”, which sounds very favorable to me, of course, provided diversity is not extreme enough to lead to chaos!

Hi auntie68, As to those "unique traditional hanzi in Canton”, I think they eloquently demonstrate or symbolize one of Chinese traditions, that is, local governments do not easily obey the central authority. Perhaps you can find much more “strange” characters, not listed even in 康熙字典 or 中华字海, all over China and in overseas Chinese societies. How interesting!

Yes that's one of my pet interests, the weird and wonderful characters that appear in the different chinese languages, and the non-standard ways of writing traditional characters that still appear in overseas communities. I've seen alternate forms of many characters in Chinese restaurants and shops in Australia and Taiwan.

I started learning simplified characters at an Australian university, and was always a little depressed that most local Chinese used traditional characters, and I couldn't access local materials relevant to my life. When after two years study and a short summer school in Kunming, I received a scholarship to study in Taipei for a year, I was very excited, but had many difficulties, as the Taiwanese do not have good bridging courses for people with existing high vocab and grammar but no experience with traditional characters. I believe every student of Chinese should learn both systems, if they wish to read widely, but speaking as someone who learnt simplified first, traditional second, I think learning traditional first makes a lot more sense, as I think it's a lot easier for users of 繁體 to guess 简体 than the other way round. While I do personally find 繁體字 more attractive and easier to remember (despite having a more complicated structure, they have a logic and clues in sound and meaning that many 简体 lack), I do recognize that some 繁體 are a real pain to write. The thing is, people are writing by hand less and less, such that many of my Taiwanese friends forget how to write truly complex characters; they're that used to computer input. I use pinyin input for both systems myself.

That's another topic, one I'm sure has been covered but I can't remember if I contributed: I've tried to learn zhuyin, stroke order and cangjie but found them too complicated. A latin alphabet based system is just too easy for an English speaker I guess. I've heard people say those systems are actually better for character learning and retention, as zhuyin requires you to remember the tone (rather than pinyin where you can be lazy) and many of the other systems make you think about the structure (which can be good if there are issues of differing pronunciation between 台灣國語 and 普通话; or for speakers of other Chinese languages)

I do wish people could let go of the politics around the issue. I did find it interesting that students in China are usually required to have at least a large reading knowledge of traditional characters, even if they can't write many, while in Taiwan the opposite is not the case, though I think they're introducing study of simplified in primary, whoops, sorry, "elementary" schools 國小 (They use American English terms for everything, even to the extent of talking about "American" or 美語 as a language - couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry, should be 美式英語) I re-read that and laugh at myself for telling people to let go of the politics of language then getting myself worked up over the spread of American cultural imperialism :oP

Aah, I'm monologuing because I can't sleep. Need to turn this laptop off.

Local time 03:03

Dear daixiong, I enjoyed reading your 3.00am thoughts on this prickly issue. Thanks! It gave me a (to me, balanced-sounding) perspective of how feelings run on the ground in Taiwan, a place about which I know so little. Most thought-provoking of all -- for me -- was the idea that if the attitude in the PRC and Singapore can be said to be 写简识繁, in Taiwan the attitude may possible go so far beyond 写繁识简 as to resemble "写繁嫌简“ or "写繁恨简" instead. Sorry folks, for my clumsy Mandarin; those are my own words, and it's probably bad Chinese. Still, I can understand how emotive the issue can be. Judging by the emotions expressed in the "I have class" lesson over "Standard English" (what's that?), I think that even a simple spelling difference like "harbour vs harbor", "grey vs gray" could involve a lot of emotion.

daixiong, whenever the mixing of politics and language/culture threatens to weigh too heavily on me, I remind myself of an encounter I had with an Angry Young Catalan in London, when I was still in Bar Stool -- oops, Bar School. During the few months that he was at my hostel, he made it a point to speak only English to the many Spaniards in my building because, "djou ("you"), djou know, Catalan ees so berry diferente from the Espanish that eet ees actually clo-ser to the Heng-gleesh. Therefore, I prefer es-speak Heng-gleesh". In the thickest Spanish accent I have ever heard so far in my life. To me, it was like those scenes in vintage movies where everybody in the scene is a German soldier but they are all speaking English... Hope this didn't offend any Catalans out there! I visit the Gerona region every year and have good Catalan friends who seem pretty relaxed about speaking Spanish once in a while, probably because they are fluent in Catalan, English, French, and Spanish.

hey Changye. My account expired so needed a new username. Although it is a true I am a bit thick. Anyway I just wanted to start some arguments, in response to Bazzas first post. Just a shame everyone is so damned polite! Anyone who wants a fight can meet me tonight at peoples square. Ill be the one with boxing gloves and a "jiantiza rules" t shirt.

Hi auntie68, I have googled and found a lot of phrase “识繁写简” on the Internet. This might be the most practical and pragmatic way to “socialize” with Chinese characters for people who live in “简体字” regions. I hear that Taiwanese people also use very “simplified characters” when handwriting something.

I wonder if it would be possible to make a movement for having 繁體字 in print and allowing people to write 简体字 when they please. No one can debate that 简体字 is much easier to write and even people in Taiwan will write the simplified version for many characters. 比如说：醫院的“医”。People on both sides of the straits also commonly resort to using their cell phones to look up characters that they can't remember. I think we should all remember why simplified characters came up in the first place. Yes, the government wanted to get rid of illiteracy (same reason why Japan simplified their characters in the post-war era) but from the early 20th century their was a movement in China to get rid of characters entirely becaue Chinese intellectuals were listening to the sanctimonious commments of Westerners who thought their languages were better and found Chinese archaic and stale. Now these same Westerners tatoo their bodies with Chinese characters that they now find beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. There does have to be some system to allow people to write Chinese characters quickly and more efficiently. However, we must remember that Chinese characters are than just a language, they are an art form and the quintessential expression of China's cultural heritage. Something must be said for the fact that they were exported to 3 countries in East Asia (Korea, Japan, and Vietnam) and continue to have aesthetic appeal around the world. As much as the lesson reports that the characters have changed, since the Han dynasty the written form of the characters have not changed.much until the 1950s.

hi everybody Many thanks to Chinesepod and users for a fascinating lesson and discussion. I want to add one writing style which I found mentioned (and shown) in a Russian book of 1968. It was found in the early Han period in the walls of Confucius's house when this was demolished and was hence called bì zhōng shū. The strokes of this script look like tadpoles (due to the writing technique), and is now known as the kē dòu shū. I have nowhere come across another reference to this script. Can anyone provide a link to a site with more information?

Hi user43682, I enjoyed reading your posting. Your proposal, sort of 写简识繁 in auntie68’s comment, might be somewhat provocative but there is a certain amount of truth in it. In fact, to some extent 写简 has already been achieved by using PCs and word processors, although my old mother is not a beneficiary of those gadgets. As I mentioned before, ordinary people usually tend to use “their own simplified Chinese characters”, regardless of 繁体字 and 简体字, for handwriting to save the trouble, therefore I think writing 繁体字 is not a big burden anymore. If 毛泽东 had used a word processor, 简体字 would not have been created. Like in China, Japan also had several “get rid of hanzi” movements in the past century. Some scholars advocated complete romanization, some insisted using only Japanese phonograms, Katakana or Hiragana. Surprisingly, a few radical scholars proposed to abandon Japanese and adopt French as the national language. The biggest “crisis” came soon after the World War II ended. The American Occupation Army in Japan tried to purge Chinese characters out of good will and conducted a nationwide survey on literacy rate, however they gave up the purge project immediately after they found the literacy rate in Japan was incredibly 98%. Japanese contains abundant borrowed words from Chinese, and there are a large number of homonyms among them, therefore using only phonograms would definitely reduce readability of Japanese. PC can help you in writing, but not much in reading. And in general, you spend more time reading than writing in your life. Japanese people never give up Chinese characters!

Hi aert, Thanks for your interesting info on 蝌蚪书. I have just found a relevant web page that has a big picture of the characters. Wow, they look really cute! The explanation tells us that they are a kind of handwritten form of 篆书. http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=313970564

Hi aert, I have found another ancient script, “bird script” !! "鸟书" http://baike.baidu.com/view/751752.htm

Hi Changye Thanks for the link. The bird script looks quite different from the tadpole one. I wonder if this zoo has more inhabitants. My Russian source says that according to tradition, a prince Lu Gongwang wanted to rebuild his palace and to add Confucius' old house to it. When this was demolished, the bamboo slats with tadpole script were found.

PS The author (A.Ya Sher) also mentions that for writing a small pointed bamboo stick was used, which was dipped in a special kind of laquer. I think a little blob was dropped on the bamboo from which the rest was drawn in the desired direction.

PPSS Sorry, I missed the other link. But even the tadpole one looks quite different from the one reproduced by Sher. Unfortunately I cannot transmit pictures. As a matter of fact, I have for some time been without a working printer and write the few letters I have to write by hand.

aert, Not the right font, put check out these crazy cool characters from a 道观 in 西安:

hi John The scripts in the pictures were interesting to look at, but neither is like the one on Sher's picture. On the latter only the old radical 123 yáng is easily identifiable. Of your pictures the top one might as well be Mongolian as Chinese as far as I am concerned. The bottom one, starting from the top of the right column starts with huǒ dào "smoke passage, flue", a once used compound listed in Oshanin's Chinese-Russian dictionary (which gives only the more common ones), but which I did not find anywhere else. On Sher's picture the strokes look like real tadpoles: a clear round head with a thinner tail which shrinks towards the end into a sharp point. BTW an earlier comment you added reminded me of signs "4 sale" I saw in the US and Canada. There is something to be said for characters as well as for simplification.

On the mobile version of the site this lesson tag says: Newbie - 简体字与繁体字 This isn't a Newbie lesson. Does it say that on the regular version of the site as well? (I don't have a way to check it now)

True... they will sometimes use simplified characters in Taiwan in handwriting or other non-official situations, like cartoons or shop signs, but not always the same as the PRC system, instead they'll use ancient simplified forms or even some Japanese 漢字, even some Japanese kana eg replacing 的 with の, 楽 instead of 乐 for 樂

Then you have to recognise when they're using 漢字 to write Bân-lâm-gú (閩南語, or 台語 as they like to call it). Sometimes they're just really weird characters that are obviously not Mandarin, other times they're using 漢字 almost phonetically.

Dear daixiong, it all sounds as fun and wild as Hong Kong, character-wise! Don't you enjoy this?

daxiong, I know that 繁體 v. 简体 is a different subject, but isn't handwriting generally simplified? Also, I ran into a reference in an old (1964) textbook by DeFrancis which mentioned 间笔字/間筆字。 Does anyone have any idea what this refers to?

johnb: 我同意你的看法。 审美地来说，繁体字比简体字完整又漂亮。 最近在中国大陆好像流行挂繁体字的招牌，或制造繁体的名片。我听说斯斯文文的人普及用繁体字这是真的还是传闻？

I think someone could be intersted in this: http://www.shodo.it/download/calligrafia-cinese.pdf be careful, it's a pretty heavy file

It would be nice to see picture examples of each type of characters mentioned in the lesson. For example what is the difference between "li shu and zhuan shu and jia gu wen, etc...

Hello user28880. There are plenty of great examples in the Wikipedia entry for "Chinese calligraphy". There is even hanyu pinyin in the main table there. Enjoy.

I chose to focus on 简体字 by accident; that was what my first text used, also what CPOD uses. I've since learned to recognize a number of 繁体字， but it really cuts down my reading ability. The local Chinese papers (SF Bay Area) use 繁体字. I think I could almost read them now, except for that. Anyway, very interesting lesson. I'd like to hear more about the older writing forms in a future lesson.

我觉得这种历史性的课文挺有意思的。涉及到很多知识，可以跟着兴趣自己研究一下，为了更加了解这些话题。其实，我对字体的演变不那么感兴趣，但是我还欣赏这个播颗的内容。

hi tvan, 简体字 (Jiǎntǐzì) are sometimes called 简笔字 (Jiǎnbǐzì)

我觉得还是简体字方便！繁体字虽然又好看又完整，不过繁体字其实写得也可能浪费宝贵时间！ 但，能学得到就试一试，这样可以很容易了解每个字里面的含义。…………

great lesson!

@Daixiong "I believe every student of Chinese should learn both systems, if they wish to read widely,...I think learning traditional first makes a lot more sense, ...The thing is, people are writing by hand less and less, such that many of my Taiwanese friends forget how to write truly complex characters; they're that used to computer input. I use pinyin input for both systems myself." I use pinyin for both systems as well. Haven't had the problem of needing to type on a Taiwanese keyboard in bpmf for a long time. I've heard the comment (from laowai) that CSL learners should start with full-form characters (the most accurate, politically neutral way I know to say that, my teacher from the PRC calls them "complicated" characters) and then master the simple form. That's what I have done, since I started in Taiwan and then continued in North America (Shanghai in 5 months!!). Now I can read both, though I prefer traditional, and am more proficient in it. Ironically, in the case of native speakers, I have found most (educated) people from the PRC can read both quite well, whereas people from Taiwan often fail to recognize even the simplest official simplified characters (you just NEVER see them in common use there, people use old handwriting styles instead for easier writing). In my books, people that find simplified more convenient just aren't doing enough karaoke :p

um.. yeah to whom ever is chitttywangwangwant...Just because you don't understand Traditional dosn't mean that we should be 看不起 by others... Don't you feel a lack of "Tradition" in yourself?

I can't read a character written in 簡體字...I even have to use a converter to change the 漢字into 繁體字。我打算學簡體字though.

作为生活在大陆的中国人，从小学到高中，我的语文课一直是学简体字，但是大家都认识繁体字，因为简体字与繁体字在结构上有相同的地方。但是小时候只学习过繁体字的台湾人和香港人，他们在阅读简体字的时候可能没那么轻松，阅读速度会严重下降。 中国的古书都是用繁体字写的，所以我推荐外国朋友们先从简体字学起，如果对古汉语兴趣浓厚的话再继续学习繁体字。繁体字更能体现中国的文化与传统。

简体字是汉字演变的逻辑结果。汉字从甲骨文、金文变为篆书，再变为隶书、楷书，其总趋势就是从繁到简。隶书是篆书的简化，草书、行书又是隶书的简化，而简体字正是楷书的简化。楷书在魏晋时开始出现，而简体字已见于南北朝（４－６世纪）的碑刻，到隋唐时代简化字逐渐增多，在民间相当普遍，被称为“俗体字”。我们今天使用的许多简化字，在这时候就已经开始出现。唐代颜元孙着《干禄字书》和王仁［日句］着《刊谬补缺切韵》，都收了极多的俗体字。宋代以后，随着印刷术的发明，简体字由碑刻和手写转到雕版印刷的书籍上，从而扩大了简体字的流行范围，数量大大增多。根据《宋元以来俗字谱》，宋元明清１２种民间刻本中所用的简体字多达６２４０个，合为繁体字共１６０４个，平均每个繁体字有３．９个不同的简化字，与今天使用的简体字完全相同的有“实”、“宝”、“听”、“万”、“礼”、“旧”、“与”、“庄”、“梦”、“虽”、“医”、“阳”、“凤”、“声”、“义”、“乱”、“台”、“党”、“归”、“办”、“辞”、“断”、“罗”、“会”、“怜”、“怀”等等共达３３０多个。 １９０９年，陆费逵在《教育杂志》创刊号上发表论文《普通教育应当采用俗体字》，这是历史上第一次公开提倡使用简体字。 １９２２年，陆费逵又发表论文《整理汉字的意见》，建议采用已在民间流行的简体字，并把其它笔画多的字也简化。 １９２２年，钱玄同在国语统一筹备委员会上提出《减省现行汉字的笔画案》，得到陆基、黎逦酢顦溥_的联署。这是历史上有关简体字的第一个具体方案，主张把过去只在民间流行的简体字作为正体字应用于一切正规的书面语。它提出的八种简化汉字的方法，实际上也就是现行简体字的产生依据，影响深远。 １９２８年，胡怀琛出版《简易字说》，收简体字３００多个。 １９３０年，中央研究院历史语言研究所出版刘复、李家瑞合编的《宋元以来俗字表》，反映了一千年来简体字的发展情况。 １９３２年，国民政府教育部公布出版国语筹备委员会编订的《国音常用字汇》，收入不少简体字，并指出：“现在应该把它（简体字）推行，使书写处于约易。” １９３４年，中国图书馆服务社出版杜定友的《简字标准字表》，收简体字３５３个。徐则敏在《论语半月刊》发表《５５０俗字表》。钱玄同在国语统一筹备委员会提出《搜集固有而较适用的简体字案》。 １９３５年，钱玄同主持编成《简体字谱》草稿，收简体字２４００多个。同年８月，国民党政府教育部采用这份草稿的一部分，公布“第一批简体字表”，收字３２４个，虽然在第二年的２月又通令收回，但毕竟是历史上由政府公布的第一个简体字表。也就是在这一年，上海文化界组织“手头字推行会”，发起推行“手头字（即简体字）”邉印? １９３６年１０月，容庚的《简体字典》出版，收字达４４４５，基本上本自草书。同年１１月，陈光尧出版《常用简字表》，收字３１５０个，约一半本自草书，一半来自俗体字。 １９３７年，北平研究所字体研究会发表《简体字表》第一表，收字１７００个。 抗日战争爆发，简体字仍继续推行，而主要在共产党统治区继续发展。共产党夺取政权后，立即着手继续推行简化汉字。 １９５０年，中央人民政府教育部社会教育司编制《常用简体字登记表》。 １９５１年，在上表的基础上，根据“述而不作”的原则，拟出《第一批简体字表》，收字５５５个。 １９５２年２月５日，中国文字改革研究委员会成立。 １９５４年底，文改委在《第一批简体字表》的基础上，拟出《汉字简化方案〔草案〕》，收字７９８个，简化偏旁５６个，并废除４００个异体字。 １９５５年２月２日，《汉字简化方案〔草案〕》发表，把其中的２６１个字分３批在全国５０多种报刊上试用。同年７月１３日，国务院成立汉字简化方案审订委员会。同年１０月，举行全国文字改革会议，讨论通过《汉字简化方案〔修正草案〕》，收字减少为５１５个，简化偏旁减少为５４个。 １９５６年１月２８日，《汉字简化方案》经汉字简化方案审订委员会审订，由国务院全体会议第２３次会议通过，３１日在《人民日报》正式公布，在全国推行。以后这个方案根据使用情况而略有改变，１９６４年５月，文改委出版了《简化字总表》，共分三表：第一表是３５２个不作偏旁用的简化字，第二表是１３２个可作偏旁用的简化字和１４个简化偏旁，第三表是经过偏旁类推而成的１７５４个简化字；共２２３８字（因“签”、“须”两字重见，实际为２２３６常用字，就是今天中国大陆的用字标准。

Just finally listened to this lesson. Loved it! I am probably going to do my dissertation on the simplification of Chinese characters... from some aspect or another. Anyway, I didn't read all the posts here (yet so many are deep and helpful in advanced Chinese studies!), but I was wondering: What is Connie's Chinese name in simplified and in traditional? Ever since the move to ChinesePo V3.0 a year ago (dang, I forgot to wish it a happy birthday), we no longer see Jenny's and Connie's name in Chinese for the advanced lessons (before the Advanced lessons had it's own ChinesePod website, all in Chinese... menus, buttons, etc... do hope ChinesePod v4.0 allows a choice of language for the entire site) Anyway... please let me know what Connie's name is in traditional Chinese... really want to see if it is as hard to write as she said in the lesson!

还有一个问题: 这节课有"推行"这个词. 几节高级课以前我们也学了"执行"这个词(I believe it was the lesson on minimum wages). 这两个词有什么区别?

Hi rich. Here are the two words as defined by my little dictionary; the sense I get is that 推行 conveys the idea of promoting (or increasing awareness about) something, whereas 执行 means to carry out or implement something: 推行 tui1xing2: (动）推广经验，办法等，使能够普遍通用，实行。 Eg. 国家正大力推行环境保护政策。 执行 zhi2xing2 (动）按照决定，命令等去行动。 Eg: 军人要严格执行命令。 Eg. 由于计划生育政策执行得很好，中国的人口得到了有效得控制。

Thanks Auntie! That helps.

你们怎么关于这个题目唠唠叨叨呀 晕 嘿嘿

我的座右铭就是：”看繁體，些简体“。

My motto is: "Read traditional, write simplified."

 

虽然繁体字比较，嗯，博大精深。不过简体字更符合现代人的生活习惯--方便，简洁。这是文化发展必须经历的阶段。

甲骨文好还是繁体字好？

 

Hi queeniemcbear

我认为甲骨文比较好一些，因为其实许多甲骨文的字形结构比它们对应的繁体字更简洁，而且甲骨文的数量较少，到现在为止发现的只有四千多，当然比繁体字更容易学会。从今天起大家开始学习甲骨文吧！(.....别当真啊)