Traditional Characters vs. Simplified

(Moved to the Cantonese thread)

I suppose this can't be a positive development if you're a fan of traditional characters either.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?th&emc=th

I thought there was talk of cpod starting a Cantonesepod some time ago, but I haven't heard much about that recently.  Is this article symptomatic of why not?

The original meaning of "友" was "cooperate, collaborate", as you can see from its ancient shape "two right hands". In this sense, the communist version of "love" (爱) also makes much sense, because usually you can't make love without mutual cooperation whether or not you are a communist.  

友 can also indicate friendship (as in 朋友). Love based on friendship may be just as powerful as love based on the (symbolic) heart.

Hi user26513

There is another major difference between traditional 愛 and simplified 爱. The lower part of 愛 originally meant "a foot", while the lower part of 爱, "友", indicated "two right hands". The CCP not only removed 心 from the "love", but also changed "foot" into "hand". Communism power is truly awesome! Which do you like better, complicated love or simple love?

Hi user26513

Vietnamese people also abandoned using Chinese characters after the war and use Latin alphabets now. However, thankfully, Vietnamese is a tone language, like Chinese, so I think a homonym problem in Vietnamese is far less serious, compared to those in Korean and Japanese.

Hi user26513

Korean language has tons of homonyms, which are mainly Chinese/Kanji words borrowed from Chinese and Japanese in the past. Of course, Korean people usually can infer the meaning of homonyms from context, but they sometimes have difficulty especially when they read academic/technical writings that often contain a lot of homonyms and rarely-used Chinese words.

If Korean homonyms/technical terms were written with Chinese characters (as they had been so in the past) and you could read Chinese characters, you would have less difficulty understanding homonyms and unfamiliar words. I must say that Korean people shouldn't have abandoned using Chinese characters because of their nationalism.

Korean and Japanese languages are very similar to each other, except for characters. Korean only uses Korean alphabets (hangul), and Japanese uses Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji (Chinese characters). Japanese writing system is much more complicated than Korean, but interestingly, literacy rate in Japan is higher than in Korea. So it's not a matter of characters, but a matter of education.

Actually, Korean people are recently gradually becoming aware of importance of Chinese characters, partly because the country's ever-increasing economic ties with China, and partly because of their homonym problem. Korean intelligentsia love using Chinese chengyu, but Chinese chengyu written with phonograms should be just bad jokes or nightmares!

A very good example for a language that changed writing system for literacy purposes is Korean. Illiteracy is virtually non existent. However it does not work with a language with so many homonyms like Mandarin. But it could, context considered.

As for simplified characters represeting a change in culture, there is a lot more to middle kingdom's culture than its language. Few linguist believe that culture is directly determinant of language. Look at the Pacific Islands where various Pidgins are spoken or the Indian middle class who master English.

As for ideological change of characters:

"In the character for love, ai, the difference btw the traditional character 愛and the simplified 爱 is that the heart 心 has been removed from it."

That is because the character of gold 金　would not fit in very well.

Hi tvan

Let me explain a little more about the history of  simplified Chinese Characters. As you know, this is one of my favorite topics about Chinese language, hehe.

In Chinese history, there were two kinds of government-imposed artificially simplified character styles. The first one was "Small seal scripts" (小篆) in Qin dynasty (秦朝，221-206BC), and the second one was, of course, that famous "Jiantizi" (简体字) in the PRC.

Small seal scripts (小篆) have rather complicated shapes in the eyes of us modern people, but they were also "simplified characters" that were created by simplifying Large seal scripts (大篆) that had been used in Qin kingdom, the predecessor of Qin dynasty. 

In reality, government officials and intelligentsia in Qin kingdom and dyansty customarily used a more simplified Character style called "Qinli" (秦隶) for daily use, and they were later adopted as the official character style in West Han dynasty (西汉，206-220BC).

Some scholars insist that Qinli (秦隶) was also "artificially" created by some particular persons, and people were forced to use them for ordinary documents and writings by the government of Qin kingdom/dynasty, although this doesn't seem to be the accepted theory yet.

Surprisingly, the shapes of modern traditional Chinese characters (繁体字) are very similar to those of Lishu (隶书) used more than two thousand years ago. Furthermore, 繁体字 have the same shapes as Regular scripts (楷书) appeared in Tang dynasty (唐朝, 618-907 AD).

In other words, you can read without difficulty ancient Chinese characters date back to about the 2nd century BC, provided that you know how to read modern 繁体字, which beautifully demonstrates the strong conservative property of Chinese characters. Why so conservative?

This property is mainly attributed to the Imperial Examination (科举) and the conservativeness of Confucianism (儒教). The examinees were required to use only authentic characters in the exam, and Confucian scholars loved ancient scriptures written with authentic characters.

A lot of dictionaries were made in Chinese history to distinguish authentic characters from non-authentic ones such as variants and simplified characters. The most typical example should be 《干禄字书》 (ca. 700 AD) that was exclusively directed towards 科举 examinees.

This situation remained unchanged until the collapse of Qing dynasty (清朝) in 1911, which is the very reason Chinese characters didn't change much over the past two thousand years. Precisely speaking, it's not that they didn't change, just that they were not allowed to change.

Chinese scholars traditionally love making dictionaries.

I agree with xiaophil and athrun200 that its pretty easy to read the other system, as long as you have a solid foundation in one.  Even with my, as yet, far from complete understanding of simplified charecters, I find it pretty easy to read traditional charecters in stories, or subtitles.  The reason being most of the charecters are the same, so its relativly easy to guess from context what the 2 or 3 different charecters in a sentence are.

That having been said, I do find it hard to read signs, menus, etc (things with only a few charecters, and thus lack the context of normal sentences).

Also, if you truly have never encountered a multi-charecter word, and both the charecters are different between the systems, its hard to look it up.  Whereas if its in the system you are familar with, you'll usually know the component charecters even if the word is new, making looking it up in a dictionary easy.

Also, hand-writing in the other system would be pretty difficult...

愛 -> 爱

The Communists/Maoists love without heart :-)

Hi Changye, you know as a non-native learner I can't disagree with anything you've said, at least not authoritatively.  To tell you the truth, perhaps I've been a bit provocative in my comments.  Of course, the choice rightly belongs to the Chinese people.

Still... @xiaophil, a minor quibble re: stylized.  I think most simplified characters changes involve either switching to the 形声 category or, as in the case of 种, switching the phonetic.  I'm not sure if that qualifies as "more stylized."  In the latter case, perhaps less so.

Hi tvan

If people could use simplified for handwriting, why simplify the printed character?

As I said in my earlier comment here, the purpose of introduction of 简体字 is very clear. The CCP aimed at reducing the burden of learning Chinese characters at school, which I think was a very logical and pragmatic way, although I personally don't like 简体字 very much.

Anyway, I believe that Chinese elementary school teachers just don't want to see their students arbitrarily writing their own "simplified/cursive characters" when they practice writing 汉字 in class. Teachers need to show them standardized "simplified" characters in print.

She like @!#@!% basketball.

Man, I don't even want to know what she does to that basketball.

@sydcarten

That is not hard at all
Because even you don't know the word, you can still predict it.

e.g.  She like @!#@!% basketball.
Than can you guess what dose @!#@!% mean?
Indeed, that is playing

So it is not hard at all.

I don't think hard at all.  Most of the pirated DVDs here use traditional characters in the subtitles.  I have never heard anyone complain about it.  But yeah, I definitely am not an authority on it.  I will ask my Chinese coworkers today.

This raises a question I have been wondering about:

How hard is it for people who have been educated with the simplified system to read traditional?

And, vice versa ?

Hi xiaophil

I agree that almost all the mainlanders don't care about the simplified/traditional issue, but it seems to be a relatively hot issue among some scholars, intelligentsia, and ordinary people who have an interest in the culture/history of Chinese characters. I think this trend will become even stronger as Chinese nationalism and pride in Chinese culture strengthen.

专家；恢复繁体字不可取，建议"识繁用简"
http://news.sohu.com/20090409/n263274399.shtml

Haha, you are radical.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On the one hand, it would seem to take away some of the character of English.  On the other hand, as I alluded to before, we would probably get used to it, and we could spell a helluva lot better.

Concerning English spelling I think it is long overdue for some RADICAL reforms.

My only beef with American spelling reforms is that they were too conservative, and didn't go far enough.

In the meantime, I will stick with British spelling.

Yeah, good point.  Actually, in that case, a lot of meaning has been ripped out.

I just keep thinking about how similar this is to the  American English vs. British English debate.  I have come across several people who spell using the British English convention who insist it preserves culture and is somehow more beautiful, while most Americans don't even think about it.  I think it is the same way with Chinese mainlanders.  I have heard them complain about many things, but I have never heard a peep about the simplified characters.  Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think they care.  I figure this is only an issue in the areas who are still using the traditional characters.

Hi sydcarten

That's a good example. Chinese prople are very pragmatic, especially after the establishment of the PRC. They even simplified "華" into "华", which is a character used in the official name of their country, i.e. 中"华"人民共和国. I understand that they simplified the character for the reason that it's frequently used, but If I had been a person in charge, I wouldn't have simplified the character 華, at least. Maybe "华" was a very symbol of the simplification of Chinese characters in 1950s.

I still remember what a friend of mine from Macau who is very pro-traditional chars told me. 

In the character for love, ai, the difference btw the traditional character 愛and the simplified 爱 is that the heart 心 has been removed from it.

Seems a rather ironic way of 'improving' the means for writing the word Love.

I think this debate is not very important.  Chinese characters still exist.  The radical components of the Chinese characters weren't eliminated; they just went from stylized to even more stylized.  The symbolism is still there; they just take a little more imagination to understand.  (But since when is imagining a bad thing?)  Culture changes.  Sometimes this is good; sometimes it is bad.  Getting rid of foot binding was extremely good; maybe adopting simplified characters was bad (maybe).  Nevertheless, cultures will change.  It should be expected.  Take heart that there is still plenty of culture to be passed around in China, even if some of it is phased out.

But what do I know.  I'm just a dude from Michigan.

@changye, I agree that simplified characters have existed in handwriting for at least a couple of thousand years, probably shortly after they came into common use.  Still, one could argue that this calls the usefulness of 簡體字 even further into question.  If people could use simplified for handwriting, why simplify the printed character?  It takes a typesetter (or pinyin inputter) just as long to create a 書 as it does a 书.  

As @athrun200 points out, though Chinese scripts did undergo several modifications, 繁體字 has by far the greatest historical gravitas and longevity.  Using this fact and the above, I'd posit that you can just add Chinese characters to the long list of Chinese cultural artifacts that Chairman Mao trashed to feed his overinflated ego.

@Calkins, what's the matter with you?  Have you been listening to that, "If you only knew the power of the Dark Side" guy? ;-)

"Simplified Chinese characters" (or cursive style) have long been used by Chinese people in order to "cut corners" when handwriting for more than two thousand years regardless of character style. Modern Chinese people, both in 简体字 regions and 繁体字 regions, also use their own simplified (cursive) characters when handwriting a letter, a memo and a diary. Of course, you're required to exactly write characters in the exam, unfortunately.

An "unofficial" simplified style changed into an official/authentic character style in the past. Clerical scripts (隶书), officially established during West Han dynasty (西汉, 202 ～ 8 BC), originated in simplified forms (used during Qin dynasy) of small seal scripts (小篆), which was the most authentic character style in Qin dynasty (秦朝, 221 ～ 207 BC). The character "书" in 简体字 (made in the PRC) was created based on a cursive form of the traditional character "書".

I live in Hong Kong and I know both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Some of the people in China think that it is very different and complex to write Traditional Chinese, so they simplified most of the Chinese words.

For example: "How are you?"

People may think it is too long to write.

Some they simplified it to "How r u" ?

It is a simple example to explain the Simplified and Traditional Chinese.


In my opinion, I hate Simplified Chinese. Beause it lose the real Chinese culture.

As we know, most of the Chinese words are come from ancient pictures. But after simplified the words it is meaningless  about the Chinese cultures.

So I hate Simplified Chinese.

Now most of the people in China use Simplified Chinese. So if you just want to learn it for communicate, simplified Chinese is your best choice.

But if you want to study or do some research about Chinese words, you should know Traditional Chinese.

I still keep using Traditional Chinese, because only Traditional Chinese is the symbol of the Chinese.

Here is a link to TV documentaries on the history of Chinese characters (subtitled in simplified Chinese) by CCTV (中国中央电视台). I basically don't watch TV in China, but I must admit these programs are very comprehensive and really worth seeing if you're interested in 汉字的历史. Don't miss it.

http://space.tv.cctv.com/page/PAGE1239699633786620

Hi calkins

What do you think of Japanese one "辺"？It's very similar to its counterpart in 简体字. I suppose that SKRITTER may not work well for traditional characters.......

P/S. I've never handwritten the character 邊 before.

I've changed my mind...

For my class homework, I was just writting (about 20 times) the traditional character for the word "biān":

Traditional 邊

Simplified 边

Traditional characters suck!!!!

I agree with RJ, but if I were to answer the second question, i.e. reading comprehension and reading comprehension only, I might let the traditional characters win by a slim margin as their radicals look more like what they are trying to represent then the simplified ones do, thus easier to make an association.  But as for which facilitates the learning process for foreigners more goes, the simplified characters win due to ease of writing.  For me this aspect trumps the slight edge that traditional characters's comprehensibility have over the simplified ones.  I think that the traditional characters look more interesting, but I'm a little thankful that they are not used here in the mainland.  Too many strokes, and so too much time. 

Hi tvan

postwar Japan's literacy rate was on the order of 98%.  The same was also true for Taiwan, despite it's traditional character "handicap."

As you know, Taiwanese people were forced to learn and use Japanese in public appearances when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. So, I guess this might be about Japanese language, but not about 台湾语 (a dialect similar to 闽南语).

Anyway, people used traditional characters both in Taiwan and in Japan before the war, and this was a burden for people, although the number of Chinese characters people needed to learn for Japanese is smaller than that for Chinese.

how much of that was due to simplified characters and how much was due to the fact that Mao's government actually cared about agrarian China's literacy? 

It's a difficult question. All I can say is that the introduction of simplified characters actually reduced the learning burden of Hanzi on Chinese students, which atutomatically means that they could take more time for learning math and physics, for example.

This might be the biggest advantage of using simplified characters. Literacy rate is another story. Regardless of whether you use 简体字 or 繁体字, you have to learn a certain number of characters at school. Otherwise, you can't learn other subjects such as physics and history.

In other words, learning Chinese characters is the first priority at any school in Chinese-speaking countries. The point is that how many hours per week students need to "master" Chinese characters. I think that mainland students obviously have an advantage.....perhaps.

Anyone has data?

I agree that an effective education system is more important for improving literacy rate than a type of characters is.

RJ, no disagreement really.  When I lived in mainland China, in 1981 nobody would teach me Chinese or, for that matter, most Chinese were afraid/unwilling to talk to me; when I subseqently settled in Taiwan, the opposite was true.  Consequently, I learned traditional.

I do believe that it is quite possible that the role of simplified characters in improving China's literacy was/continues-to-be greatly overstated.  If that is true, then the whole simplification exercise was a rather colossal waste of time and money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

I won't comment on the artistic merits since my writing is best described as traditional chicken-scratch and simplified chicken-scratch.

tvan

thats all very interesting but it means little to me when I make a learning choice. I dont care why, I just want to learn that which I will encounter the most (today) in the environment I expect to spend time in. The govt has mandated, and most people are learning in school, the simplified set, so I will do likewise. If I ever master that, I would love to know both to expand my horizons (and certainly I do pick up some now) but your he-man traditional for traditions sake attitude is quite neanderthal and not at all pragmatic. Real men know traditional. Who cares. Now If I was planning to be in HK or TW I would make a different choice. Making a religion out of this is simple minded. It is simply an exercise in pragmatics.

@xiaophil, yeah, our words may be shorter, but we make up for that by inventing lots of words that those "ex-colonial-master, got-their-butts-whipped-by-George-Washington" -types don't have.

However, regarding ease of learning for the native population, I do question that premise.  Part of the rationale for the introduction of simplified characters was to improve literacy on the mainland.  That certainly happened; however, how much of that was due to simplified characters and how much was due to the fact that Mao's government actually cared about agrarian China's literacy?  

It has been pointed out elsewhere on CPod that postwar Japan's literacy rate was on the order of 98%.  The same was also true for Taiwan, despite it's traditional character "handicap."  I would argue that these were both due to the Meiji government's focus on education, not the redesign of the character system.  By extension, pre-1949's dismal literacy rate was due to poor governance, not to mention prolonged warfare.  Ergo simplified characters did little to improve China's literacy; improved governance did that.

One final point:  Literacy rates for Chinese-speaking countries.

Taiwan, Traditional... literacy rate 96.1%
Hong Kong, Traditional... literacy rate 93.1%
Macau, Traditional... literacy rate 91.3%
China, Simplified... literacy rate 90.9%

So pick your poison:  Either, "It pays to have been an ex-colonial-victim-of-imperialism;" or (my favorite) "Simple Characters = Simple Minds."

Linux.

Mac.

Traditional.

Less is more, but when it comes to characters, more is more...more or less :)

Hi 47alden

Simplified characters are naturally easier for both foreign and Chinese people to learn than traditional characters because they are simplified characters, hehe. As for reading comprehension, they are basically the same, at least, for me.

FYI, knowledge about traditional characters is a must for people who want to learn the history of Chinese characters. Some books on Chinese characters published in the PRC are still written with traditional characters.

tvan

I wonder then do you think American English is for simple minds?  (Dialogue/dialog, cheque/check, colour/color and so on.)

Please don't take my comment too seriously.  Just pokin' fun ;)

@tvan

Well said.

rjberki, you're right, there's no doubt quite a few others I left off. The joy of flame wars is seeing adults degenerate into name-calling.  In the words of that American soothsayer and riot-instigator Rodney King, "can't we all just get along?" :-)

pretzellogic

dont forget "great taste" vs "less filling"

One size does not fit all, so it is a pointless argument. Its a personal choice, and you can learn both.

 tvan- behave.:-)

Simple characters for simple minds.

OK, let's start this flame war ;-)

繁體字 = 好看
简体字 = 难看

Examples:
难看:  业, 车, 广, 义, 乡, 艺, ...
好看:  業, 車, 廣, 義, 鄉, 藝, ...

It suppose it depends on whether you plan to live/visit Taiwan or China...

Taiwan use traditional Characters

China use simplified.

Great flame wars:

Linux versus Windows.

PC versus Mac.

Simplified versus Traditional.