Talk:Simplified Chinese character

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For example, 鬥 (fight) as a radical was merged with 門 (door) into 门 (door). was in the Radical subsection and is untrue. 鬥 is simplified to 斗, not 门, so I've removed this sentence. Jutari 05:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Current revision

To: LDHan

I find it difficult to follow the content you restored in the debate section. The argumenents were confusingly listed before, and now seems to be randomly located under irrelevant sub-heading. It's also exhausting to read the arguements: Too many examples with an over-sized explanation.

Also the final remark at the end of debate section is actually duplicated with the opening remark. Yau 1 May 2006

Thanks for your comments. I find the arguments to be fairly well laid out, I can't see how they can be said to be randomly located under irrelevant sub-headings. For readers who are not familar with the subject, examples and explanations are useful and necessary. Of course anyone is free to improve the article but relevant content should not be removed. I have restored the paragraph re the problem in having two systems, it is not a duplicate of the opening remark. LDHan 18:58, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
now I've opened a new sub-heading to include the argument on 書 and 天, though i think it's actually a duplication of the sub-heading "confusion". Also, we need to clean up the text in summary which is apparently a personal view rather than an exhibition of pros and cons. Don't forget we're not giving verdict.
The question in the summary: 1. are two systems making "sheer difficulties" in communication. 2. is it really "not a trivial task" in translating chinese character into a particular system with the help of software? Yau 1 May 2006 (GMT+8)
Seems that the discussion is finished now. i've removed the summary. I think if there's any proponent's view, we better put it back in the sub-heading, instead of making it as a summary which may mislead readers. Yau 2 May 2006 (GMT+8)

In section "Distribution and use", last paragraph, the statement "Simplified character publications other than dictionaries are published on mainland China, for domestic consumption." has me confused. Since I think the paragraph was elaborating on use of Traditional character publications within PRC, shouldn't the first word of the sentence have been 'Traditional'?

Shenme 00:08, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I removed the line about literacy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong being comparable before character simplification. This requires a reference since it's not clear to me that this is the case.

I think simplified characters are also incompatible with some non-Mandarin Chinese dialects. For example, 遠 (yuan) was simplified into 远 because 袁 merely suggests 遠's sound and 袁 is the same with 元 in Mandarin pronunciation. However, 元 had 'ng-' in ancient Chinese and it is preserved in Japanese and some Chinese dialects:

袁: http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/doc.php?query=8881
元: http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/doc.php?query=5143

In short, 袁 and 元 had different sounds in some dialects, so the simplification is inappropriate.

In the same way, 億 was simplified into 亿. However, 億 had '-k' and 乙 had '-t' in ancient Chinese. Both were completely lost in Mandarin but is still preserved in Japanese, Korean and some Chinese dialects.

億: http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/doc.php?query=5104
乙: http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/doc.php?query=4E59
--Nanshu 01:52, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I also believe that the changes regarding the phonetic alteration of several simplified characters is inappropriate for regionalects unrelated to PuTongHua, however, in comparision, they (the non-Mandarin regionalects) constitute a minority in that about 71.5% of the population are able to natively speak Mandarin. Given the situation of having one unified writing system and several mutually unintelligible regionalects, the government would be hard-pressed to find a solution that could both simplify characters and cater to all known ways of pronouncing them. They chose the lesser of two evils, I suppose.

About 97% of all characters in the some 50,000 odd character array consists of semantic-phonetic characters (since the 18th century Kang Xi), wherein the semantic radical provides the idea and the phonetic portion defines the sound and the tone. The problem has existed throughout time because of such, and it cannot be avoided so long as regionalects exist. It should also be noted that children learn the characters by strict memorization; they often do not realize the individual components of the characters until later on in life. --Taoster 14:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hey Taoster, why do you think adding comment on "better education system" is POV? I just want to point out that the improvement of literacy rate may not be the result of the introduction of simplified characters. wshun 03:35, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Of the two the books that I've read concerning this topic (i.e. The Chinese Language, John DeFrancis and A History of Chinese Civilization, Jacques Gernet), both seem to agree that the decline of illiteracy among especially the farmers and laborers was resultant of the simplification initiative.
Personally I don't think that DeFrancis knows what he is talking about. He is a distinguished scholar of the Chinese language, but that doesn't make him an expert on educational systems or language acquisition. -RR

True, the new government played a huge part in this overall increase in the ability to read and write as the once "educated elite" were brought to their knees during the Cultural Revolution, however, the logical revamping of the characters and the conflation of redundancy is directly linked to people's cognitive ability to memorize such vast quantities of characters (particularly the farmers who did not have the resources and the conditions necessary for devoting an entire day's time for the learning of characters).

And they still don't. I know some illiterate people on both sides of the straits. The increase in literacy in both the PRC and Taiwan was accomplished in elementary schools. If you look at literacy rates, they are very age dependent, and you can see the drop where primary education started.

Taiwan cannot be compared to the Mainland in terms of literacy rates per se given their economic situation and the (lack of) governmental disarray.

DeFrancis makes this point. I disagree. First of all, its wasn't clear until the late 1960's (i.e. after the elementary educational system was implemented) that the Taiwan's economy was superior to that of the PRC. Second there was a huge amount of disarray in Taiwan in the 1950's.
Something that *is* noteworthy is that Latin America and India have low literacy rates even given alphabetic scripts.

As such, I will concur that several factors contributed to the ultimate rise of literacy among peasants, but these should be laid to speculation before grounded evidence is introduced. -Taoster

---

Need some eyes to expound on which sets are used to teach overseas Chinese. I know that in the United States, the situation is mixed. I don't know about southeast Asia. User:Roadrunner

[edit] Overseas Chinese schools

Where do mainland expatriates make up the majority? The statment that it "varies by region" is hardly accurate. When there is a significant number of people, there will be more than one school - schools teaching traditional and schools teaching simplified are not far from each other. --Jiang 06:27, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Where do I make the claim that Mainlanders are the majority? I merely indicated that both are taught in equal volumes, which are offset only by certain regional disjunctions. You are making the assertion that Traditional is taught primarily in the US to all overseas Chinese and not Taiwanese or Hongkongese, a broad generalization at best. The Xilin Chinese school system located in Chicagoland is a prime example of this -- they teach Simplified exclusively being that they are targeting overseas Mainland Chinese and not Taiwanese. However, that is not to say that Traditional is not similarly taught, but what evidence have you to claim that Traditional surpasses Simplified? -Taoster

I am making the inference based on the fact there are more overseas Chinese not from mainland China or whose ancestors left mainland China before simplified was introduced. Therefore, these people would logically start traditional chinese schools or send their children to such schools. If such is the case, and there are not equal volumes of overseas mainlanders and overseas taiwanese/hongkongers/etc, then the claim that they are in "equal volumes" cannot be true. What evidence have you to claim that both are taught in equal volumes?

There are probably also plenty of traditional chinese schools in Chicago too - schools that teach the different forms are not segregated regionally, as the current text implies. I am not "making the assertion that Traditional is taught primarily in the US to all overseas Chinese and not Taiwanese or Hongkongese". More likely, mainlander families send their kids to simplified schools and Taiwanese families send their kids to traditional schools, both in the same area.--Jiang 07:32, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The claim in question is "Chinese language schools designed for overseas Chinese are vary, but predominately teach traditional". I omitted the last portion of this sentence, but kept what followed thereafter in the paragraph. They do not "predominately teach" any single character system, and unless you can introduce viable statistics as to which one takes precedence as far as overseas Chinese (a term that is ambiguous unto itself) are concerned, then this claim should not be included. -Taoster

[1] [2] [3] If this is false, the converse is true. No one is claiming the converse. --Jiang

And can you vouch for the veracity of those "sources"? None of them have any relevant statistics to back up their claims. For example:

  • "However, a larger proportion uses the Traditional Chinese writing." (Cao Li)

-- According to whom? Many, if not all, of my Chinese associates write exclusively in Simplified, but does that mean that I should automatically assume that the vast majority does as well? No.

The third website should not have been included. Anyone, delusional maniacs included, can create websites on Geocities to mass-propagate falsities.

As I see it, there is no need to include the interjection in question, as schools of both character disciplines exist and therefore should not be subject to which one reigns supreme. Both Traditional and Simplified have their respective advantages and disadvantages, so neither should be pushed.

Yes, I'll agree that no one on the listed websites are claiming the converse. But are you looking to convey facts based on bias or based on grounded evidence? -Taoster

[edit] Character etymology

Certain Traditional characters do provide useful mneumonics for long-term retention of the character; however, this is not lost in Simplified as the majority are based on variant forms, which are ultimately derived from lesser-known ancient characters. Therefore, etymology does not seem to play a part in the cognition of the character. --Taoster 20:50, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

While it is true that many simplified characters did exist in one form or the other before, in scores of cases parts that hint at its meaning have been removed. And it is a very frequent argument among sinologists that learning traditional is easier, while many others say it doesn't matter. And as it is discussed, I think you have to refer to it when presenting pros and cons. I don't know how you come to the firm conclusion that it doesn't play a part, I, for one actually find learning traditional easier. In any case, a full presentation of the pros and cons must, in my view, contain all the arguments brought forward. --Laca 21:25, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

I was raised on the Simplified set, and while I certainly try to be unbiased towards either of the scripts, I find that -- at times -- Simplified does tend to be better at conveying the meaning (other instances exist, of course, where Traditional is much more cogent as far as clarity is concerned). In addition, it should not dismissed that the two are closely related (with minor nuances at best as a result of the divergence). It is in this manner that I have removed the sentence in question, as it should not be asserted that either set is superior as a result of adhering to the ancient forms. However,if it must be included, then a full dissemination (including examples) should follow. --Taoster 21:51, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

I do admit I'm havily in favour of Traditional characters, for several reasons. However, I was in no way trying to make a case for its superiority here. The part where you erased my text was simply stating some arguments people brought forth in favour or against it, and none of them is dealt with in a full dissamination. In the same way my adition simply wanted to point out a certain oppinion being held by some. I will try to rewrite it once more in a way that I hope will not seem as an assertion of superiority. If you still can't live with it, well I don't want to deal with it in much more detail right now. I might expand it at some time in the future.

The reason why I removed the text in question is because it was POV, and although it was listed in the "Pros and Cons" section, it nonetheless a loose opinion and should not be included unless it can be referenced to a credible source. Addendum: I've viewed your edit and it appears to be worded better now. --Taoster 00:11, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, good we could sort it out then. --Laca 00:39, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Laca and Taoster (I don't think I've worked with either of you folks before, so 'greetings') - I've tried to rewrite pros and cons to be more of a coherent piece, but ask for your help there. Previously, it was simply "Opponents say..." many times over, which not only reads poorly, but isn't very well balanced. We should endeavour to stick with the point of trad vs. simp and not go too far afield, which is why I reverted a sentence on computerization. Please don't take it personally, but I thought it was drifting from the points and instead a criticism of the reality that people do in fact use computers (thank goodness instead of manual typesetting!) and people do watch TV. Look forward to moving the article forward, although I do think it is in quite good shape already from your work. Fuzheado | Talk 01:21, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Hello to you as well, Fuzheado. As for the article, I think the "Pros and Cons" section is invariably POV due to the opinionated nature of it, so we'll have to rearrange it so as to juxtapose the positive and negative aspects of both sets (sects). --Taoster 01:27, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
I think the computers point is worth mentioning: one of the advantages of the simplified system is that fewer strokes are quicker to write manually, but there's no advantage if you're using a computer. Markalexander100 02:20, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
That's what I was trying to say. It might have to be reworded perhaps, though. I certainly do not complain about people using computer (after all that's what I am doing right now...), but I was trying to point out another aspect of computer use that is actually in favour of traditional characters. --Laca 18:45, 23 May 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Tang Origin of "simplified" characters?

This is a fascinating discussion. I come from the Japan side of things, but have a general interest in how the Chinese have "simplified" their characters. I hope we can all agree that a true simplification of the written language would have been to mix their characters with pinyin, dumping as many characters as possible. One only needs to look at the way the Chinese write foreign place names, for instance, to see why this would have been a good idea. Anyhow, as it stands, educated Chinese (a number that is increasing radically) must now know both the original character and the "simplified" one, an unnecessary complication and hardly a reform in any real sense of the word. Now, the reason I put "simplify" in shock quotes is that my understanding of the "simplification" (via a Hong Kong Chinese classmate) is that the new characters are not "new" at all. Rather, they many were taken from Tang-era caligraphy that basically abbreviated the characters for the sake of expediency. Therefore, the PRC reformers simply dipped back into the Chinese past (a traditional Chinese response for dealing with the present) in order to find a solution to their mass illiteracy problem. So, can anyone verify if this is true or not? --John Treiber, PhD Candidate, University of Hawaii at Manoa, dept. of History

By no means were the simplified characters all from the Tang era. Some of the simplified characters were from the past; others from unofficial simplifications prevalent among the population; others were completely new and invented by the simplification board.
Also, regarding: "I hope we can all agree that a true simplification of the written language would have been to mix their characters with pinyin, dumping as many characters as possible." Actually, the exact opposite conclusion was reached by both the PRC and ROC language reform boards; though giving up the characters for romanized forms was once discussed, both boards eventually gave up on the idea because it was simply impractical, because of the large number of homophones in Chinese.
Also, many people are deeply committed to traditional characters and would be strongly opposed to giving them up.
—Lowellian (talk)[[]] 01:13, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
I added an external link in the article today regarding the Chinese to Chinese conversion on Computer text processing. The paper may give you an insight on how meanings are lost after you fold several characters into the same one just because they sound the same. Just imagine you try the same trick with English, try merging "beat", "beet", "our" and "hour" etc. and remove all redundent spellings. Its tru that u kan stil gas what the nu writing mins by reeding within the kontext. But the language wil not b the same animor. I am never a supporter of English spelling reform. Mixing homonyms may be managable in English, but Chinese is difficult when one pronunciation can map to 50 to 60 different characters with different meaning. In China, some books are published in romanized pinyin. They are just too hard to read. Kowloonese 02:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Can Two Traditional Characters Simplify to the Same Form?

I have read that the simplified forms of some traditional characters are the same as those for other traditional characters. In other words, there is not always a 1:1 mapping. Is this true? How common or rare is it? Can we have a few examples here? — Hippietrail 01:17, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's actually pretty common. One example that comes to mind is that 幹 (tree trunk), 乾 (dry), and 干 (sheild and several other meanings) were all simplified to 干. There are many, many others. -Ming888 01:37, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks Ming888. I really feel this should be made clear on a few relevant pages. Do you know anywhere I might find a lits? — Hippietrail 02:00, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
the Chinese version of the article lists more, and also http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hanzi/index.html Xah Lee 15:05, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)
I found a web page on the internet discussing the confusion of combining multiple Traditional characters into one Simplified character. For example, there is no way to tell between "Stem Cells" and "Dried Cells" when 幹 (tree trunk), 乾 (dry) are combined to 干. Interesting reading if you can read Chinese. Kowloonese 02:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Example?

Method of simplification currently says, "獨餘余一人(only I am left alone) will become 独余余一人." Doesn't the 飠radical simplify into 饣, and thus 餘 into 馀? While Unihan does list 余 as a simplified version of 餘, it seems that one would use the simplification that avoids the ambiguity, rather than choosing the one that creates it. Perhaps a better example could be found for this? 208.180.124.100 07:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Details of history of simplifications

I'm very interested in finding a complete list of characters that were officially simplified in the 1956 and 1964 reforms. Documents must have been published at the time. I have seen scans of equivalent documents released in Japan for their 1947 character reform but have been unable to find the same for Chinese.

Does anybody know of online versions? Does anybody know the exact dates and names of these publications? It would be very useful in an article of this nature. How many characters were covered by the 1956 reform? How many by the 1964 reform? Were other characters officially simplified outside these two releases? I guess I could use Unicode sources but I'd much prefer to find something historic. — Hippietrail 12:12, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In answer to my own questions after some lucky research today, I believe the relevant documents are:
  • 1956: 汉字简化方案 (漢字簡化方案), "Scheme of Simplified Chinese Characters"
    • 2 lists which map 544 traditional characters to 515 simplified characters
    • A list of 54 simplified basic components
  • 1964: 简化字总表 (簡化字總表), "General List of Simplified Chinese Characters"
    • A complete list of 2,236 simplified characters from the 3 lists of the 1956 document.
    • This document was re-published in 1986 with major changes including reverting a few characters back to the traditional forms.
Google finds these terms on the Chinese and Finnish Wikipedias but no the English. If anybody is capable of translating even part of this information I think it is of key importance to this article.
I am also very interested in finding more information about what was changed in the 1986 document, including a list of reverted characters. Are the reverted characters included in Chinese character encodings including Unicode, were they never popular and now largely forgotten? — Hippietrail 09:47, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Easier to read, harder to write statement

<snip>

Simplified Chinese is easier to read but harder to write than Traditional Chinese.

</snip>

Somewhat disputed (30%). This statement is 70% correct (which is why I didn't remove it from the article, but there are a few points contrary to what the statement states (sorry -- ran out of words):

  • Simplified Chinese easier to read: Personally, not exactly so. I was in Hong Kong in December 2003; on the road signs there, they have small-print text in traditional Chinese, which appears Herculean to read if you don't get to see the sign through your own eyes; however, I found that they were very easy to read. However, that's not to say that simplified characters aren't easier to read, but some Mainland roads have small-print simplified text which -- your point taken -- should be easier to read. Thing was, it wasn't.
  • Harder to write than Traditional Chinese: Not so if you take "qiang" (strong). I'm sure there are (a few) other characters that fit this except to the rule. Some characters are only one or two strokes more, and some (e.g. "huang" (yellow)) are four strokes, but written differently in SC than in TC.

As said before, your edit is mostly correct -- and a good edit (to a certain extent). Keep the good work up -- edits, even from first-time newbies, are welcome. :-)

--DF08 14:20, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)


This is very rambling. I'm not sure what this has to do with the point of the article.

[edit] A useful distinction?

Speakers and students of Chinese often broadly categorize Chinese characters into simplified and traditional. The latter are generally taken to be the characters used on the Mainland before simplification. While these labels are both widespread and useful, they are not strictly exhaustive. For one thing, they neglect variants specific to Japanese, Korean, and (historically) Vietnamese. Even within the context of Sinitic languages, however, character use is not uniform. While it is commonly asserted that both Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional Chinese characters, one will find considerable variation in their respective character inventories, largely as a result of their different languages. Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong, has many specific characters that are in widespread use locally, but will not be found used in Taiwan (such as 唔). Taiwanese introduces a number of specific characters as well. To get an idea of how divergent this can be, it is estimated that Cantonese employs several thousand special characters that are not widely used outside of Hong Kong and overseas Cantonese-speaking communities. Though these special characters are often considered by native Cantonese speakers as slang characters made up only to represent the Cantonese spoken slang and are not recognized as a part of the written language, they nonetheless have their times and places.

It is therefore useful to point out that when one speaks of simplified Chinese characters, one is referring in fact to an established standard set; whereas traditional characters can, in this context, be simply defined as characters used by speakers of Sinitic languages which have not been simplified. But even this definition is problematic, because many simplified forms of Chinese characters are actually traditional forms in their o

[edit] Wikipedia

Are there two Chinese language Wikipedias - for Simplified and Traditional, or just one? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.161.48.187 (talk • contribs).

There is one. The software does automatic conversions. --Nlu (talk) 06:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison of Japanese reform to Chinese reform

In the section titled Extent, the statement "Compared to Chinese, the Japanese reform is more moderate" is made. At this point I am not sure of the degree of severity of the Chinese reform. The first section of the article states: "Only a fraction of characters were simplified," so I am inclined to believe that the Japanese reform is more severe than its Chinese counterpart. It would be nice to have an indication one way or the other in the article, since a thing more "moderate" (closer to the center of the scale) than an unknown can be either greater or lesser than the unknown.

Your logic is flawed. Or you need a dictionary. By moderate it of course means lesser. -- G.S.K.Lee 01:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll accept that (following a review of the dictionary entry for the adjective), though I still feel it could be less ambiguous.

[edit] weasel words

There are tons of weasel words in this article.

  • "Proponents..." (Who are the proponents?)
  • "Opponents..." (Who are the opponents?)

Frosty 11:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

"Proponents" and "Opponents" are hard to pin down exactly... certainly no one has taken a poll anywhere to gauge support for Traditional or Simplified Chinese. All we know is there are vocal supporters for both sides and that there's no consensus on this matter. -- ran (talk) 19:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spam

The link "Chinese language material", pointing to to http://www.mqzy.com/ is definitely spam. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.101.229.234 (talk) 20:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

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