About The Edition of Written Chinese

alexyu_yxj
January 21, 2009, 02:27 PM posted in General Discussion

[简体中文版本]

我住在中国大陆,我所学和实用的中文是“简体中文”(simplified Chinese),然而中文事实上还拥有“繁体中文”的书写方式(traditional Chinese),我不知道外国朋友学习的时候使用的是什么版本的中文书写方式,大家的看法又是如何呢?

 

[繁體中文版本]

我住在中國大陸,我所學和實用的中文是“簡體中文”(simplified Chinese),然而中文事實上還擁有“繁體中文”的書寫方式(traditional Chinese),我不知道外國朋友學習的時候使用的是什麼版本的中文書寫方式,大家的看法又是如何呢?

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changye
January 22, 2009, 04:22 AM

Thanks to my knowledge about Japanese Kanji, which falls between simplified and traditional Chinese characters, I have almost no difficulty reading traditional ones without learning them consciously. This is one of the advantages of being a native Japanese when learning Mandarin.

In mainland China, they still sell books and dictionaries, mainly on linguistics, calligraphy and ancient scripts, written in traditional Chinese. Actually, reading these kinds of books in simplified Chinese is a little frustrating to me. Personally, I much prefer the term "传统字" to "繁体字".

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alexyu_yxj
January 22, 2009, 11:02 AM

Yes, today, Traditional Chinese is still being used in Hongkong,Macao and Taiwan, China, where they call this Edition of Character as "正体中文". Many people in mainland China haven't learnt TC, but just like you we can also  read it without any difficulty.

而至少在上世纪的60年代以前,中国大陆也是使用繁体中文的。但胡来为了消除“文盲”(illiteracy),对汉字进行了好几次规模不一的改革,使得汉字的书写更加简单(以便当时文化素质比较低中国民众容易学会),这才形成了现在简体中文。

不过很多大陆这边的人还是挺喜欢繁体中文的——我也是这样,因为看起来,繁体中文就比简体中文好看很多。