Traditional Chinese characters

Chinese characters
Scripts
Precursors · Oracle bone script Bronze script · Seal script (large, small) Clerical script · Cursive script Regular script · Semi-cursive script Type styles Imitation Song · Ming · Sans-serif
Properties
Strokes · Stroke order · Radicals Classification · Section headers
Variants
Standards
Kangxi Dictionary (Kyūjitai) Tōyō kanji · Jōyō kanji Standard Form of National Characters List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo
Reform
Japanese script reform Simplified Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters Simplified/traditional debate
Sinoxenic usage
Kanji · Hanja · Hán tự
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Derivatives
Kokuji · Korean hanja · Chữ Nôm Zetian characters · Nü Shu · Idu Kana (Man'yōgana) · Bopomofo · Sawndip Khitan · Jurchen · Tangut

Traditional Chinese characters refers to Chinese characters in any character set which does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. It most commonly refers to characters in the standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, or in the Kangxi Dictionary. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century (during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.) The retronym "traditional Chinese" is used to contrast traditional characters with Simplified Chinese characters, a standardized character set introduced by the government of the People's Republic of China on Mainland China in the 1950s.

Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau. They were also used in mainland China before the People's Republic of China simplified them in the 1950s and 1960s. In overseas Chinese communities other than Singapore and Malaysia, traditional characters are most commonly used^[1], although the number of printed materials in simplified characters is growing in Australia, USA and Canada, targeting or created by new arrivals from mainland China. A large number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia in official publications. The debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities.

Symbol of Traditional Chinese Character in Computers.

Chinese names

Traditional Chinese characters are referred to by several different names within the Chinese-speaking world. The government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional Chinese: 正體字, simplified Chinese: 正体字; Hanyu Pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Tongyong Pinyin: jhèngtǐzìh; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄓㄥˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). However, the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters.^[2]

In contrast, users of traditional Chinese outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities, and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: 繁體字, simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). An informal name sometimes used by users of simplified characters is "old characters" (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).

Users of traditional characters also sometimes refer them as "Full Chinese characters" (simplified Chinese: 全体字; traditional Chinese: 全體字; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.

Some traditional character users argue that traditional characters are the original form of the Chinese characters and cannot be called "complex". Similarly, simplified characters cannot be "standard" because they are not used in all Chinese-speaking regions. Conversely, supporters of simplified Chinese characters object to the description of traditional characters as "standard," since they view the new simplified characters as the contemporary standard used by the vast majority of Chinese speakers. They also point out that traditional characters are not truly traditional as many Chinese characters have been made more elaborate over time.^[3]

Some older people refer to traditional characters as "proper characters" (Chinese: 正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) and modernized characters as "modernized-stroke characters" (simplified Chinese: 简笔字; traditional Chinese: 簡筆字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) or "reduced-stroke characters" (simplified Chinese: 减笔字; traditional Chinese: 減筆字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) (simplified- and reduced- are actually homonyms in Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).

The use of such words as "complex", "standard" and "proper" in the context of such a visceral subject as written language arouses strong emotional reactions, especially since there are also political ramifications in this case. Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters explores the differences of opinion that exist on this matter within Chinese-speaking regions.

Printed text

When printing text, people in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore mainly use the simplified system, developed by the People's Republic of China government in the 1950s. However, the PRC also prints material intended to be read outside of mainland China using traditional characters, and the reverse is also true. In writing, most people use informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an alternative character (異體字) will be used in place of one with more strokes, such as 体 for 體. Some simplifications are extremely widespread, such as, notably, the 台 tái in 台灣 Táiwan as opposed to the traditional character (臺). In the old days, there were two main uses of alternative characters. First, alternative characters were used to avoid using the characters of the formal name of an important person in less formal contexts as a way of showing respect to the said person by preserving the characters of the person's name. This act is called "offense-avoidance" (避諱) in Chinese. Secondly, alternative characters were used when the same characters were repeated in context to show that the repetition was intentional rather than an editorial mistake (筆誤).

Computer encoding

In the past, Traditional Chinese was most often rendered using the Big5 character encoding scheme, a scheme that favors Traditional Chinese. Unicode, however, has become increasingly popular as a rendering method. Unicode gives equal weight to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters. There are various IMEs (Input Method Editors) available to input Chinese characters. There are still many Unicode characters that cannot be written using most IMEs; one example would be the character used in the Shanghainese dialect instead of 嗎, which is U+20C8E 𠲎 (伐 with a 口 radical).

Web pages

The World Wide Web Consortium recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant as a language attribute value and Content-Language value to specify web-page content in Traditional Chinese^[4].

Usage in other languages

Traditional Chinese characters are also known as Hanja in Korean (in the 20th century almost completely replaced with Hangul, native Korean alphabet), and Kanji in Japanese. Japanese Kanji were also simplified. Compared to the Chinese reform, many simplified Kanji were less affected. They coincide with those simplified in China but some were simplified differently, thus being a different standard (e.g. "dragon" 竜 current standard Japanese (tatsu/RYŪ), 龙 (Chinese simplified), 龍 (Chinese traditional) lóng (Mandarin), lung4 (Cantonese)). Some characters like this have fewer strokes in post-reform Kanji than in simplified Chinese, such as the character for round (also used to refer to Japanese and Chinese currency): 円 in new Kanji form, 圆 in simplified Chinese form and 圓 in full form.

See also

• Chinese character
• Chữ Nôm
• Hanja
• Kaishu
• Kanji
• Kyūjitai (旧字体 or 舊字體 - Japanese traditional characters)
• Multiple association of converting Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese
• Simplifications to written Chinese in Hong Kong

References

External links