Traditional or simplified Chinese writing? Options

[SeafoodFriedRice]

What's Hangul?? Korean characters?

yup

[YaoRockets]

As many people have pointed out already, Chinese government didn't invent Simplified Characters. Those characters have existed since Tang/Song dynasties and maybe earlier. What PRC government did was standardize the forms and mandate their usage in printing.

There are people insist on equating Simplified character system with CCP or mainland China government. The reasons behind it are many, some of them are just ignorant, but a vocal few are just ideological "Traditional character" fanboys, and no amount of facts can change their mind.

They are like "Birther" Americans who claim at every opportunity that Obama is an alien and Muslim, they know they are wrong but they still claim otherwise, because what really bother them is that Obama is black. But they can't say that so they have to hold onto any straw to bash Obama.

Likewise, for some TW/HK people, they think they are better than mainland Chinese, but the reality is they can't say they are richer, smarter or better than their Mainland cousins. So they made the simplified characters their mental equivalent of CCP or mainland Chinese, and they need to bash Simplified characters to feel good about themselves. It's an illogical emotional fix for them.

[sewoth]

In fact the Chinese characters have been simplified for many times since ancient times （or it could have been a continuous process perforemd spontaneouly by the users） and even the so called traditional Chinese characters now used in HK and Taiwan are a kind of "simplified" Chinese characters.

But the simplified characters used in mainland are a total failure under the cultural aspect- the simplification has cut off the relation of the characters to their origin and thus makes many of them meaningless, by which I mean that it makes many of the characters fake hieroglyphs. For example, how can one understand the meaning of "後", considering it as a hieroglyp, if it is simplfied by being replaced with the character "后"， which is a totally different "picture"?

I think it reasonable to simplify the complicated traditional characters so that more people can read and write (considering the illiteracy rate in mainland before the simplification of characters; but I'm not arguing that simplification is the best or necessary measure for the fight against illiteracy), but they should have been simplified in a better way! Unfortunately, in my opinion, the simplification turns out to be a cutural disaster.

As to the aesthetic aspect, I personally prefer traditional characters but I think it hard to formulate a thesis asserting that traditional characters are essentially more beautiful or elegant than the simplified characters. Anyway, it's the task of the professors majoriing in aesthetics.

If you want each characters to represent the complete meaning, it's easy. Go back to oracle script. It's pictograph. Really "visual", isn't it? Traditional script is a simplification of the pictographs. It also "cut off the relation of the characters to their origins and thus makes many of them meaningless". Without even going all the way back to oracle script, for example, the character 自and 白 also lost their original meanings. They originally mean nose and acorn. Now they look so similar yet completely unrelated in meaning. In fact, for those who said simplified script is uglier than trad., and there is "NO QUESTION ABOUT IT", why do accept the traditional script in the form that Qing dynasty ended with? You can go back even further. You know, don't accept the Manchu as a legitimate dynasty or whatever.

Although I don't agree with some aspect of the simplification, such as overloading of characters, eg. noodles and face taking up the same character now. You need to include some strong political emotion to conclude that it is a "cultural disaster" and not just as legitimate as every simplification that has been made before.

[papen]

I vote for traditional. It looks more pretty and a lot better than simplified. And some words in simplified lost the pronunciation.

This post has been edited by papen: Dec 29 2010, 05:36 PM

[Tuamingkok]

What's Hangul?? Korean characters?

Hangul is Korean language (한글)
Hanja is Traditional Korean Language (漢字語)

[Tuamingkok]

Do you like traditional Chinese characters, or simplified?

I'm all for traditional Chinese characters. I mean, it's the TRADITION. The Chinese have been using traditional Chinese characters until the idiotic Mao Zedong f*cked up China in every single possible way with his stupid cultural revolution. Now, the Chinese characters are bastardized with its simplified writing.

Only Hong Kong and Taiwan are still using traditional Chinese characters because they've been unaffected by the d*mn cultural revolution. Whenever I watch mainland Chinese dramas and movies, I want to throw my remote control at the TV because all I see are the bastardized simplified Chinese characters. I feel much more at ease watching HK or Taiwanese dramas and movies because their subtitles are in traditional writing.

cultural revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Here's a comparison of traditional and simplified Chinese writing.

Me, I personally can only read traditional Chinese not the Simplified one.

To be frankly, whenever I look at the Simplified Chinese I feel like looking at a person without spirit

[Elani]

I'm biased, 'cause I can only read Traditional. Reading Simplified is like watchin ppl tipe lyk dis. @_@

And really, how can anyone stand to write "love" without "heart", or "horse" without the legs?

[charizardpal]

I prefer traditional, especially when I'm reading. Simplified just looks ugly and messy. Yeah like you said, "ai" with only a claw and not a heart is just stupid.

[avisitor]

Even though the simplified characters existed before the PRC gov't,
the changes were made to reflect that a new gov't had taken over.

As to beauty of the characters themselves, beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and the characters will eventually go through more changes as time passes
Still, being from HK originally, I do like the traditional character set better

[HuJinTao1]

both are fine and both have their uses. Traditional looks better on the eyes while simplified saves time.

[KraterosHellas]

simplified looks horrible. like this character: 广

[Suijen]

Simplified is easier to write. This is just a fact. Writing my surname would require at least an additional second. Is this important? It depends on how you use it. If you're scribbling notes, it probably is. A lot of the traditional characters are just full of pomp and crap that I'd rather not write.

However, just as how Americans are going digital, the Chinese are too. Now we write with pinyin, so it's pretty much irrelevant if you use traditiona/simplified as most mainlanders can read traditional no problem. And considering they're using pinyin, what difference is there in writing speed?

A lot of users argue that it's better looking, which could be true, but like my first statement, it would depend on how you use it. If you're just scribbling, it really makes no difference because it just means nasty simplified to nasty traditional. An example? Most American youth have nasty @$$ writing because they're writing for themselves or just to pass on a few notes. From my experience, the younger generation of Chinese, like their American counterparts, spend so much time typing that their writing skills take a massive hit. In the US now, kids aren't required to learn hand writing and calligraphy anymore. If you want to write beautiful characters, just use calligraphy then. It's not like it's going to break your balls going from simplified to traditional.

[Thefighter]

whatever works better and convenient is the path I take, who cares about beauty in this regard. Also, people who learned the traditional characters can easily adopt simplified. it's a small learning curve.

This post has been edited by Thefighter: Jan 15 2011, 07:04 PM

[orange peel]

LOL, look at all these people trying to defend an ugly character set. Simplified characters are uglier. No question about it.

When I see simplified Chinese packaging on a product, I think "cheap". no matter which way you slice it, there's no need for simplified characters now, because people mostly use computer input nowadays. If the example of 後 and 后 is true, then it's just one more example of why the simplification makes zero sense.

The way I see it, the aesthetic beauty of Asian character sets: traditional > hiragana > simplified > katatana > Thai and other sanskrit character sets > hangul >>>unbridgeable gap >>>>Vietnamese.

notice how only people who use traditional say simplified is ugly where as people in ML China who've grown up with simplified doesn't have such a notion. i tend to think that it is an issue of familiarity.


i agree with the poster who talked about ink distribution, when i just look at a sentence in traditional over all, it looks like there are huge clumps of ink stuck together every once in a while, and so the sentence looks kinda bumpy, when the same sentence is written in simplified the ink distribution is much more evenly spread, and the sentence looks smooth.

[Junzi]

Try to write this in a single box of Chinese school notebook.



Ye right, though, I agree traditional is way more beautiful.

This post has been edited by Junzi: Jan 15 2011, 08:06 PM

[orange peel]

"horse" without the legs?

马 - do you mean those 4 dots that got replaced by the line? that's obviously meant to represent that the horse is running really fast, so you can only see it's legs as a blur. geez.. traditional horses run too slowly

[LittleDeathAngel]

traditional should be left to the elite professional. there is no other way around the issue.

Wtf?

People in Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional chinese everyday. >_>

[KraterosHellas]

traditional looks so much more sophisticated. like these ones: 醫 圍 當 體

compare these with the simplified: 医 囲 当 体

[Elani]

马 - do you mean those 4 dots that got replaced by the line? that's obviously meant to represent that the horse is running really fast, so you can only see it's legs as a blur. geez.. traditional horses run too slowly

LOL in that case, just change the bottom half to a spiral. Like those old road runner cartoons

You'd be saving a whole other stroke!

[Mid-Night_Sun]

proper english vs msn/internet english (dats,u,cuz) to me.