Why simplified writing
maxell577
December 11, 2009, 02:16 PM posted in General DiscussionWhy does Chinese Pod use the simplified chinese character set? People in Taiwan, can not read these characters. Wouldn't it be more beneficial if they used the traditional chinese character set?
0h0h0h0h
December 12, 2009, 09:31 PMThe problem is, well, a lot of the traditional texts here contain mistakes (because CPod employees never learned traditional script).
E.g. 什么 shenme (what?) is written trad. here 甚麼 (outdated), but in Taiwan everybody uses 什麼.
Another one:
干净 ganjing (clean) is written trad. here 乾凈 (ice radical), but in Taiwan everybody uses 乾淨 (water radical).
Sometimes it's totally wrong (see http://bit.ly/4vnQi3 )
In the Supplementary Vocabulary you see
不幹凈 bù gānjìng not clean
幹凈 is totally wrong, must be 乾淨
Etc., etc.
And not to forget the words which are different from the mainland version:
E.g. taxi:
出租車 (PRC) <--> 計程車 (TW, never used here)
OK, may be only tiny mistakes, but if you learn languages, you may want to learn just the stuff that is in daily use around you.
The cogwheel button will not help you in the above cases.
changye
December 13, 2009, 02:47 AMChinesepod is a podcast for learning "mainland Mandarin", but not for learning 台湾国语, which has a lot of words and usages that are different from those in 普通话.
cy38250
December 13, 2009, 02:59 AMhi,chengye,
You should know 台湾 is a part of 中国，there is no 台湾国or台湾国语，the people in 台湾 use 繁体中文（old chinese language），mainland people use 简体中文，both chinese
do you unders?
cy38250
December 13, 2009, 03:03 AMpeople in Hongkong also use 繁体中文（old chinese word），you know hongkong is a part of CHINA
changye
December 13, 2009, 03:17 AMHi cy38240
Incidentally, the term "国语" has a longer history than 普通话. "国语" first appeared in mainland China about one hundred years ago and was broadly/officially used in China in the first half of the 20th century. "国语" is a loan word from Japanese.
You like it or not, the term "国语" is actually used in Taiwan now. I've just found that even 百度百科 lists an entry "台湾国语".
http://baike.baidu.com/view/296039.htm
tvan
December 13, 2009, 07:54 PM@OhOhOhOh, as one of "China's" wisest politicians once replied to Deng Xiaoping, "一國兩個政府“ or something like that. ;-)
I have noticed the 乾凈/干凈 translation problem before in many programs (including Google's 輸入法) when using traditional characters. CPod similarly uses a machine translator for its conversion, and this is the reason for the problem.
There are a couple of other instances but, speaking for myself (only!), I'll take 99.99% accuracy as good enough for me.
0h0h0h0h
December 14, 2009, 04:14 PMI don't think it's a machine translator, why then it's totally wrong - only here ... http://bit.ly/4vnQi3
不幹凈 bù gānjìng not clean
幹凈 is totally wrong, must be 乾淨
CPod should correct this, but nobody seems to care!
0h0h0h0h
December 15, 2009, 02:53 PMChinesePod,
would somebody be so kind and correct this?
Lesson A0406
simonpettersson
December 11, 2009, 04:54 PMThere are a lot more people in China than in Taiwan ... Anyway, it's a moot question since there's support for both. Simplified is the default, but you can change it yourself. Look for the cogwheel button in the vocabulary tab.