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Chinese Simplified Characters | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes  Studies: English* | Message 1 of 7 05 May 2005 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Chinese, however it was done, managed to simplify their character system. I always thought this to be an advantage to learning the language, even though I knew that Beijing uses the simplified and other places use the traditional. The other day a Chinese lady pointed out to me that my newspaper is written in both!
As I see it, China only managed to create a harder written language for foreigners. Also, most Chinese can read both "easy" and "hard". What are your thoughts on this? I believe it was totally unecessary, it's not like they alphabetized it! (though I am glad they didn't) Also, does anyone know the percentage of characters that have been simplified? I believe it to be around 50 percent ( a total guess). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7256 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 7 05 May 2005 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am speaking from second-hand knowledge on this topic, but I have several good friends who are cultivated teachers of Chinese, and they all concur that the "simplification" of characters is tantamount to their mutiliation. The ostensible goal was to facilitate their acqusition, but you are right, it is such a half step, that it is obvious that the real goal was that part and parcel of the "cultural revolution" during which it occurred, namely to sever the people from their heritage. I have not heard that most Chinese can read both systems. I have heard that someone who can read the traditional characters can easily read the simplified ones since the consist mainly of standard abbreviations anyway, but that those who have been educated only in the simplified characters cannot read texts written in the traditional ones. This was the real goal: to cut the population off from Confucius.
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| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7223 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 3 of 7 05 May 2005 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, firstly it's pretty questionable whether cutting the population off from the works of classical thinkers such as Confucius was really the goal of the PRC's simplification campaigns. If the simplification was in fact solely a product of the Cultural Revolution this might be more likely, but the reforms precede the CR by years. Furthermore, it would hardly have been necessary to cut the masses of peasants and factory workers that the reforms were meant to lead to literacy off from Confucius; the difficulty of the texts for anyone who hasn't been taught to read them specifically would have been quite sufficient to do that for them. I'm inclined to give the Communists the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they genuinely sought to bring literacy to the masses. This would certainly be in-line with policies in the Soviet Union and other Communist-states. Yes, it was a half-step, but eventually reducing the writing system to a regular alphabet was the policy all along; there was just too much resistance. As to mutual intelligibility, while most people (literate Chinese people from Taiwan and/or the PRC that is) that I've talked to tend to *assume* they can read both, both types of people seem to have some difficulty in actually doing so. Not that it's difficult for them to do so or anything; it's just that it takes a little bit of getting used to, and a small amount of effort to pick up a few of the more common differences. Even though the investment of time and effort is minimal, a great many people just never get around to it because there's really no point. As has been said, people used to the traditional characters seem to have less trouble adapting to the simplified ones than vice versa, but not to any great degree. There's no question that simplified characters are easier to write, but whether they're actually easier to learn is a whole different matter. Some of the simplified characters are constructed more logicallly, which provides some benefit for foreign learners, and the smaller number of strokes means (very slightly) less work for Chinese people. Literacy has been growing in the PRC ever since the simplification, but there's no way to tell whether this has anything to do with the reforms or has just happened because of the PRC's general development of education programs throughout the countryside. I think it all comes down to personal choice really, since if there is any difference it's subtle at best. Personally I prefer the traditional characters; I think they're easier on the eyes, and I've always had a bit of trouble with how the simplified characters take several traditional characters and reduce them all down to one with even more meanings than usual to choose from. That said, I also don't have anything against simplified characters; the Chinese writing system is absurd enough as it is, why not make it even more so? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| guillaume Pentaglot Groupie France Joined 7181 days ago 59 posts - 57 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 7 06 May 2005 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to prefer learning the traditionnal characters since it's often easier to see the constituting parts of the character and this helps with me with learning.
As for Chinese people knowing the traditionnal characters, in Shanghai many people I met could read them easily mainly because they sometimes had traditionnal subtitles when singing in KTVs (karaoke). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 06 May 2005 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Depending on how you define success, one can say that the simplified characters have both failed and succeeded. Succeeded, because most continental Chinese do not use traditional characters themselves. Failed, because other Chinese speakers who use traditional characters are influencing them. That is to say that more and more traditional characters are now used in continental China than they were around 10 years ago.
The simplification process simplified the most commonly used but somewhat difficult to write characters. If just counting by characters, most of the simplification was done in the radicals. This may be less known, in fact there were more than one simplification processes. The 3rd and 4th, I believe, was rejected. There are still people who use these simplified characters that were abandoned. For our Chinese learners here, two common examples are can1 (meal) and xiàng (like). I feel that something must be done about the current situation of two character sets. It not only confuses learners of the language, but money is wasted to print two versions of the same thing. As well, there is a general feeling that one character set is somewhat superior to the other. Edited by victor on 06 May 2005 at 8:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Giordano Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7174 days ago 213 posts - 218 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Cantonese, Greek | Message 6 of 7 06 May 2005 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's interesting that traditional characters have been increasing in popularity for the last 10 years, as China only began to enter the modern world (in terms of greedy consumer-capitalism, against all good socialist principle) in the mid-eighties. Even into the mid-late eighties, little had changed from the Maoist era. With the rise of capitalism and a free-market economy came an abandonment of Maoist values and rejection of the communist ideals. It seems that, if china continues its rise to Superpowerdom, Simplified characters will continue to fall in popularity, untill their total abandonment, reduced to relics from what was, in effect, a blip in Chinese history (what's 50 years out of 3.500-5.000 years of history, after all?).
I wonder... will Simplified characters thrive or be erased from popular memory within a generation or two? In the communications era, it makes no sense to have to publish every book, newspaper, and website in essentially two written languages. The weaker one will probably die out. Considering that Traditional characters are seen as more aesthetic, and are more well-loved, transcending time to the very roots of Chinese civilization, I think they're here to stay. Simplified characters, which were rarely simplified logically, and are often completely un-related to the Traditional characters they are derived from, should go. Anyway, they were only intended as a transition in a larger scheme to implement an alphabetic writing system (which would have been a crime against one of the World's oldest and greatest civilizations). Edited by Giordano on 06 May 2005 at 9:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7315 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 7 of 7 09 May 2005 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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The fact remains that both forms are here to stay. I'd also like to point out that learning only one form, unless you're living in a Chinese-speaking country that uses that particular form, will inevitably lead to frustration. The key is to become familiar with both forms to the point where you can pick up anything written in Chinese and not feel offended on discouraged.
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