Traditional vs Simplified characters

f1b1
July 03, 2007, 12:03 PM posted in General Discussion

Could anybody tell me roughly the percentage difference in the most commonly used characters? Say, of the 4000 most commonly used characters, how many were simplified?

Cheers,

Phoebe 

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aaronpan
July 03, 2007, 12:17 PM

As I know,when a Chinesel student graduate from senior high school,he must know about 3500 characters,and all of these are commonly used characters.But totality of characters about 80,000

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man2toe
July 14, 2007, 01:48 AM

Hi franch, Your list of traditional there looks accurate. What does this sentence mean? "(This is the top-ten I gathered from John's list, according to which all of these should have been turned complicated)"

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aaronpan
July 03, 2007, 02:01 PM

About 2,000

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daizi
July 03, 2007, 02:04 PM

Someshere in the neighborhood of 1,700-1,800 characters have been simplified over the centuries. What a great idea, no? That way, if one wants to be truly literate in written Chinese, one needs to know not 3,500 characters but 3,500 characters plus all those 3,500 characters which also have simplified versions. It's time to move to an alphabet.

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f1b1
July 03, 2007, 02:17 PM

So not as little as 10%, but more like 50%?

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bazza
July 03, 2007, 02:21 PM

Here is a comparison you might find useful. I like to think of them and uppercase and lowercase characters.

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bazza
July 03, 2007, 02:22 PM

Sorry that was a telepathic link, here is a physical one. ;) http://wiki.chinesepod.com/index.php?title=Simplified/Traditional_Comparison

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franch
July 03, 2007, 03:21 PM

How 多此一举... Why didn't they put only the 500 most common characters which have actually been simplified? :6

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franch
July 03, 2007, 03:30 PM

Nevermind my mindless comment :P

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John
July 03, 2007, 03:41 PM

Another relevant link: http://flect.us/chinese/simp-trad/ A lot of the simplifications were systematic, such as 話 to 话, or 紙 to 纸. If you count all of those, it makes the number way higher, but they don't actually represent that much more time and effort to learn. This is why the above link is good.

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f1b1
July 03, 2007, 01:20 PM

Sorry aaronpan, maybe I didn't explain well. How many traditional characters were simplified?

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Lantian
July 03, 2007, 04:22 PM

Daphne - today I saw this name in hanzi 达芙妮。 I thought that was like the most beautiful translation/transliteration , whatever you call it, ever.

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aeflow
July 03, 2007, 05:38 PM

There was an aborted second round of simplifications (二简字) in 1977. Many of those were pretty radical, for instance, replacing 感 with 干 + 心 or 酒 with 氵+ 九 If a "second-round-simplified" font existed, it would be amusing to try to read existing text with it, to see how much of it could be deciphered.

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henning
July 03, 2007, 05:54 PM

AuntieSue once found this valuable article on the subject: http://www.cjk.org/cjk/c2c/c2cbasis.htm (source: http://forum.chinesepod.com/viewtopic.php?t=1512)

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f1b1
July 04, 2007, 12:19 AM

Thanks for the links. Looks like roughly 30-40% are different, but as John pointed out (I think that's what he meant) they differ by one radical? So there looks to be about 20-30 characters alone with 门, so that's 20-30 characters you should be able to learn just once. Have I interpreted you correctly, John?

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goulnik
July 04, 2007, 05:09 AM

on a related topic, I find myself collapsing characters with similar L|R elements when handwriting them, e.g. 但是 (dànshì) => 偍 (which actually exists = tí). I know it's a mistake, I just wonder whether I'm the only one to this ?

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goulnik
July 04, 2007, 05:15 AM

one of the things henning's cjk.org article makes clear is why converting from simplified to traditional cannot easily be automated. not sure how NJStar does it, but Wenlin prompts you to manually select, e.g. 干 => 乾, 幹 or 干

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man2toe
July 04, 2007, 05:43 AM

http://www.khngai.com/chinese/tools/convert.php This website might help some people. It's pretty much a straight convert for trad-to-simple or simple-to-trad.

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franch
July 04, 2007, 10:04 AM

Man2Toe, that tool stunned my computer, it's weevil. Could you tell me if the second line is all-traditional? 才出关了千体听郁龟艺. 才出關了千體聽郁龜藝. (This is the top-ten I gathered from John's list, according to which all of these should have been turned complicated)

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franch
July 03, 2007, 04:14 PM

John, thanks a lot for the link, now I can read Man2Toe. I hadn't realized that the multiple pronunciations of a single character were the result of simplification. How about the 破字? I also got a better idea of what the work might have been. I wish I knew more about the process and the experts involved, but I'll soon learn about it all. The top ten of the most annoying: 才出关了千体听郁龟艺. Sorry I don't have the traditional fonts :( useless...