Will Chinese Characters Be Simplified Again
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More than Than Yous Want To Know
About Simplified Characters
Outline:
- Introduction (Read this!)
- Principle ane: Simplifying Ordinarily Occurring Parts of Characters
- Principle 2: Replacing Whole Characters
- Principle 3: Other Reductions
- Principle 4: Homographs Are Left Unresolved
- Popular Reaction i: Enthusiasm
- Popular Reaction 2: Resistance
- Evaluation
Introduction
Everyone has heard of "simplified characters," the Chinese characters used to write Chinese today, every bit contrasted with the "traditional characters" used in earlier periods.
Beginning early in the XXth century, Chinese linguists adult schemes for the simplification of the writing organisation so every bit to promote popular literacy. Simplified characters are the fruit of these efforts.
Every bit we begin, information technology is important to note that Chinese have used simplified versions of complex characters for centuries. Occasionally writing yú 于 ("go") for yú 於 ("at") goes dorsum at to the lowest degree 2 grand years, and in contempo centuries simply the truly bloody-minded have insisted that cái 才 ("talent") cannot non routinely replace cái 纔 ("only then").
In other words, the concept itself of character simplification is non new. What this folio deals with is the authorities-sponsored, thorough-going updating of the entire writing system to incorporate such simplifications in a way intended to be, insofar equally practicable, both rational and consequent, while retaining continuity with written traditon. (For this case, 于 and 才 are both now the official writings.)
The modern system of "simplified characters," that is to say, the corpus of both modified and unmodified characters that makes up the standard writing system of Cathay today, was first promulgated in a tentative draft in 1956. For the next decade or so, much publishing made use of mixed simplified and traditional type fonts that conformed to neither the new standard nor traditional usage. That transitional stage did not outlive the destruction of the publishing industry during the Cultural Revolution.
Today, except in Taiwan and Hong Kong, virtually all publishing conforms to the new standard except when the intended audition is Chinese exterior of Red china.
Even though many characters were non changed, the total official writing arrangement is usually chosen "simplified characters" (jiǎntǐzì 簡體字 /简体字). The contrasting proper noun for the traditional grapheme set is usually "traditional" in English, or in Chinese "circuitous" (fántǐzì 繁體字 /繁体字). (In Taiwan the traditional set is sometimes called "proper characters" —zhèngtǐzì 正體字 /正体字— as a slap at the mainland standard.)
Exterior of the People'due south Commonwealth, simplified characters were initially embraced only in Singapore. Elsewhere Chinese ignored them every bit unnecessary or resisted them as objectionable. In Taiwan they were directly prohibited. Today they are chop-chop moving into use throughout the world, except in Taiwan. In Taiwan occasional mainland books in simplified characters accept been imported since the end of martial constabulary in 1987, and such Taiwanese products as computerized dictionaries, must include simplified characters to be salable.
Given that near all Chinese speakers in the mod world now employ simplified characters in nigh all written communications, it is extremely unlikely that whatsoever area, including Taiwan, will be using but traditional characters a century from at present.
In this article I volition attempt to requite you some thought of the nature of the simplification scheme and of the principles by which decisions seem to have been made about the official forms of characters. I volition also endeavor to point to some of the bug that the reformers faced, some of their approaches and compromises, and some of the challenges that the simplification did non confront.
In this essay, simplified characters are printed in cerise. Traditional characters which take been replaced by simplifications are printed in blue. And characters which are shared by both simplified and traditional orthographies are printed in blackness. (Many characters are traditional simply also serve as simplifications of others, then they alter color depending on the context.)
An important have-away message is that there is not a one-to-ane correspondence between simplified and traditional characters, and that any procedure (or computer programme) that "converts" between the 2 systems is destined to make mistakes if it does not take account of context. For case, hòu 後 "afterwards" and hòu 后 "queen" are both now written 后. Converting from the simplified 后 back to the traditional class requires knowing which traditional course — 後 or 后 — is called for.
For purposes of the nowadays give-and-take, "Red china" obviously excludes Taiwan in most cases because of the difference in language policy.
This essay is based entirely on my own observations. If you want to know more than, the best published piece of work I have seen on this bailiwick, taking account of unofficial simplifications and including distribution maps for different character variants, is:
- BÖKSET, Roar
- Long story of brusque forms: the evolution of simplified Chinese characters. Stolkholm: Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University. ISBN: 91-628-6832-2.
Click here for a general essay on this web site nearly Chinese languages in general, including an introduction to how Chinese is written.
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Principle 1: Simplifying Commonly Occurring Parts of Characters
Considering Chinese characters are often made upward of parts, i important principle of simplification is to simplify frequently occurring parts in all contexts where they occur. For instance, yán 言 refers to speech. Although it occurs every bit in contained word, it also is a graphic element appearing in a large number of other characters, in nearly all of which the simplified variants reduce information technology to two strokes (equally has been done for hundreds of years in various styles of calligraphy):
zhào 詔 = 诏= edict
píng 評 = 评= comment
shī 詩 = 诗 = poem
jiè 誡 = 诫 = admonish
yǔ 語 = 语 = spoken communication
shuō 說 = 说 = say
huà 話 = 话 = speech
dìng 訂 = 订 = to concur, society
Similarly the chemical element wéi 韋 occurs in many words of similar sound, and is consistently simplified to 韦:
huì 諱 = 讳 = to taboo
wéi 違 = 违 = disobey
wéi 圍 = 围 = enclose
wěi 緯 = 纬 = weft
Some characters undergo simplification of more than one chemical element past the application of such rules. Thus huì 諱, "to taboo," which is fabricated upwards of exactly the 2 elements we have been discussing — yán 言 and wéi 韋 — simplifies both of them: 讳.
(There remain occasional exceptions. For case, the simplification of 言 to ii strokes does not occur in kuā 誇, "boast," because the character has always had an alternative writing, 夸, which is simpler notwithstanding, and therefore 夸 was simply officialized as the simplified form. Similarly 言 is not simplified in shì 誓, "adjuration," which remains unchanged, presumably because the 2 stroke simplification struck planners as counter-aesthetic when information technology was on the lesser of the character.)
The consistent simplification of elements that oft occur equally parts of characters immediately generated thousands of simplifications, constituting the vast majority of all simplified characters.
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Principle 2: Replacing Whole Characters
A second principle involved just replacing whole characters. In some cases, the changes were relatively minor, often a thing of officializing a mutual autograph form or regional writing. For case, tú 圖 "graphic" was simplified to 图, which was formerly regarded every bit a kind of calligraphic shorthand.
Wèi 衛 "guard" was simplified to 卫, quite a different character, but one that had served in southward littoral China every bit a shorthand for 衛 for many generations. Notice, by the way, that this graphic symbol could accept been simplified by irresolute the 韋 part to 韦. Probably that was not done because 卫 was available and was yet simpler.
(There are actually two theories about the possible origin of this southeast coastal simplification, neither particularly convincing. One holds that is was derived from the peak primal portion of the full 衛 version. The other, even less plausible, is that it is derived form the Japanese We ゑ or U ち. [李乐毅 1996 简化字源。北京：华语教学出版社。 P. 248.])
Huá 華, usually translated "flowery," most often refers to Red china, and occurs in a great many expressions referring to Red china, including the official name of the land. (The aforementioned grapheme is used for the surname Huà.) It is simplified to 华, probably inspired by the employ of huà 化 "transformation" equally a audio chemical element in many other words, combined with the cross already on the bottom of the original 華.
The graphic symbol nóng 農 has been normal for a long fourth dimension to refer to agriculture, merely it has been merely one of a great many competitors in popular usage. The simplest of these 农 was selected as the new official form. To meet some of the many other forms that in theory could have been officialized, click here for a web page with xl 4 different means in which 農 /农 has been written over the years. (Information technology is i page from a fascinating lexicon of unofficial alternative writings sponsored by the Standard mandarin Promotion Council, Ministry of Education, Republic of Prc. Y'all may need to gear up the text encoding of your browser manually for "Chinese Traditional Big5-HKSCS" for all characters to display correctly.)
Not all simplifications were made that could have been made. For example the grapheme fó 佛 "buddha" is now written 仏 in Japan. The Japanese simplification derives from a very sometime Chinese usage — indeed nosotros accept it in the calligraphy of the founder of the Táng dynasty himself. Just that abbreviation has been historically rare in China, and "buddha" remains 佛 in official Chinese today. (Japan had its ain, more modest simplification program earlier in the XXth century, just that is a different story. In near cases, the simplified characters called in China and in Nippon differ from each other.)
Characters Inside Characters.
Although only a modest number of simplified parts of characters (like yán 言) are consistently carried across the writing arrangement, many of the whole-character simplifications are as well picked up in boosted simplifications when they occur equally parts of other words. For example the following words are all written with huá 華 /华:
huá 嘩 = 哗 = dissonance
huà 樺 = 桦 birch
huá 驊 = 骅 = a red horse (both elements simplified)
huá 鏵 = 铧 = plowshare (both elements simplified)
This kind of across-the-board simplification includes some characters rare enough that, although the rules generate logical simplifications, neither type fonts nor computer codes include them yet. (There is no Unicode computer code for a simplified version of wěi 韡, "flourishing," for instance, although it is easy to see what the parts would simplify to, and although the simplified character does occur in Chinese dictionaries.)
However, in other cases, although a complex graphic symbol was simplified, and although information technology occurs every bit a part of other characters, the other characters remain unsimplified. For example, the top portion of xīng 興, "felicitous" is reduced to three jots in its simplification 兴. However that same element is left unchanged in the character cuàn "to cook separately," which continues to be written 爨, at least officially. (Some people cheat and write three jots there also.)
Similarly, the give-and-take qiān is used for signatures and also for bamboo slips used for divination in temples. In the second sense, it is often written 籤. In both senses information technology has long been written簽. Today both forms are officially simplified to 签. Nonetheless the word chèn, "prophetic texts," was written by adding the "speech radical" 言 to 籤, producing 讖. The simplified version, for obscure reasons, keeps the unsimplified form of the right-paw side and simplifies only the voice communication radical function: 谶.
In other words, there are some elements that are always simplified, at to the lowest degree in certain positions. Simply there are as well simplifications that are non propagated consistently, fifty-fifty though they could accept been. (Some of these unofficialized possibilities occur as quick forms in mod handwriting.)
Removing Elements.
Merely equally some elements are simplified simply in some contexts, some graphic elements are removed when they occur in some characters, but not when they occur in others. An excellent example is the element biào 髟, which refers to long pilus and was an element in a great many other characters, most of them relating in some fashion to pilus. (An case is zōng 鬃, the mane of a equus caballus.)
In some characters containing the chemical element biào, biào had been added in recent centuries, and primeval Chinese had used the other part of the character standing alone. An instance is hú "bristles, barbaric." In antiquity one grapheme (胡) served for both meanings (for reasons we can easily imagine). Later "beard" was differentiated by the addition of the biào element to show that hú referred to hair: 鬍. "Barbarians" continued to be written with 胡. Today once over again both forms are united in the single official character 胡.
The same story applies to xū, meaning both "must" 須 and "moustache" 鬚. Both are at present written with the grapheme 须, a simplification of 須.
At first glance, it is hard to be enthusiastic about such mergers, since they potentially reduce clarity, but the fact is that very little confusion is caused by them. Just as they worked in antiquity, they work today.
Ancient precedent was not necessary to brand a modify, of course. The biào was sometimes omitted without obvious precedent. This also produced characters with more than one unrelated meaning, and sometimes even dissimilar pronunciations.
| Full Form | Simplified Grade |
|---|---|
| 鬆 sōng = loose | 松 sōng = loose (髟 removed) |
| 松 sōng = pino | 松 sōng = pine (now likewise means loose) |
(In the case of the word fǎ 髮 "hair," the element remaining when the biào 髟 was stripped from information technology, 发, was elevated non only to stand for hair, just also to write the unrelated word fā 發, "to brand," so today both fǎ 髮 and fā 發 are written 发. We shall meet more examples of the aforementioned procedure below.)
Finally, some characters containing biào 髟 were only left unmodified, or were modified only because the other element happened to be simplified and that simplification was carried across.
| Full Form | Simplified Class |
|---|---|
| 鬃 zōng = mane, bristles | 鬃 zōng = mane, beard (髟 not removed) |
| 宗 zōng = ancestor | 宗 zōng = ancestor (鬃 not simplified to this) |
| 鬢 bìn = sideburn | 鬓 bìn = sideburn (髟 not removed) |
| 賓 bīn = guest | 宾 bīn = guest (鬢 not simplified to this) |
| 髦 máo = bangs | 髦 máo = bangs (髟 not removed) |
| 毛 máo = a hair | 毛 máo = a hair (髦 not simplified to this) |
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Principle 3: Other Reductions
Duplicate Character Consolidation.
Sometimes over the grade of history a unmarried discussion has come to be written in more than i way. We saw above that kuā 誇, "boast" had e'er had the culling writing 夸, which is at present the simply official form. The word for "cup," bēi, was written either 盃 or 杯. In the simplification scheme, these were reduced to a unmarried character: 杯. The characters 叢 and 樷 were used interchangeably for cóng, "crowded," and were both consolidated into 丛. That is not equally odd as it seems, since 丛 is fabricated simply by cartoon a line under 从, a shorthand course of "from" 從 (also pronounced cóng;). It's non new. The simplification 丛 has been appearing in shorthand for centuries, beginning in the Hàn dynasty, about 2000 years ago.
How did the original duplicate writings come into being? One mode is the popularization of a "correction." For example, kuā 夸 means "boast," which is a kind of spoken language. Nearly all characters involving speech make apply of the element yán 言, so it is non surprising that somebody sooner or afterwards would write 夸 equally 誇. But that didn't eliminate the original form. This pressure to logical consistency has been with the organisation from the beginning, just like the drag of tradition.
Another example is the give-and-take wèi 衛 /卫 that we met earlier. Information technology refers to guards and guarding. A person tin can be a wèi. Merely the syllable is besides used every bit a verb, so "sanitation" is literally "baby-sit life" (wèishēng 卫生). Should wèi be written with a single character in recognition of the general semantic similarity, or should it take a unlike form for the noun and the verb?
In brusk, over the centuries, countless new characters have been created in recognition of such differences —a qiān 籤 is not really identical with a 簽 in all instances— and at the same fourth dimension countless reforms (or shifts of pop usage) have removed characters that seemed to involve unnecessary distinctions —both 籤 and 簽 are now 签.
What's a indistinguishable? For well-nigh users, it is non always clear why two characters of very like meaning are written differently. For example, fù means "to repeat or to return" and was written 復. On the other paw fù can also mean "double" and was written 複. Both writings appeared in compounds in the sense of "again":
fù xīn 復 新 "repeat + new" = to renew
fù shēng 復 生 "repeat + live" = to alive again
fù yuán 復 原 "repeat + members" = demobilize
fù xìng 複 姓 "double + surname" = two-character surname
fù zá 複雜 = "double + miscellaneous" = complicated
fù yìn 複 印 = "double + impress" = to photocopy
Fù 復 was as well used equally an alternative writing for 覆 "to reply, to embrace, to overturn" in the very special case when it was used for "to answer" equally in fù xìn 覆信 = "reply to a letter." All 3 characters had slightly dissimilar pronunciations in antiquity (and in some southern Chinese languages similar Cantonese). Even so the reformers decided that there was sufficient similarity betwixt 復 and 複 that life would exist made easier past merging them into a unified character: 复. (Fù 覆 was retained as a separate graphic symbol except in those phrases for which people had been tending to write 復 anyhow, where of course it became 复.)
Merging Unrelated Characters.
We have already seen some examples of unrelated characters being lumped together (as in fǎ 髮 "hair" and fā 發 "make" both becoming 发.)
Merging was a adequately full general process, and throughout the simplification ane finds a single simplification doing service for two different semantic fields, 2 dissimilar "words." Most oftentimes information technology occurs when they accept the same sound. We saw that hòu meaning "behind" was traditionally written 後, just in the simplification scheme it was merged with hòu 后 meaning "empress," so both were written 后. This works when at that place are no contexts in which confusion is probable (and indeed this example is found in the Confucian catechism itself). Similarly gǔ 榖 meaning "grain" was lumped with 谷, "valley," and both are now written 谷. (Gǔ 榖 too meant "mulberry," and is retained for that specific meaning.)
(Unfortunately all four of these original characters — hòu 後, hòu 后, gǔ 榖, and gǔ 谷 — also serve as family names, and lumping four characters into ii has the upshot of implying that four ancient descent lines are actually two ancient descent lines. In near parts of Prc marrying someone of the same surname is considered immoral. 後 and 后, although pronounced identically in Mandarin, used to exist 2 different family names, but now they are all written 后. Can they no longer marry each other? In other words, can the character reform have resulted in some marriages existence popularly prohibited now that were allowed in the by? Maybe so, but I know of no evidence of this so far.)
Popular Shorthand.
Sometimes a popular simplification grew upward for a character and became quite general over a limited region, or as a popular shorthand. The term for "shrimp" (xiā) was usually written 蝦, only I have seen Chinese waiters scribble down the much simpler character xià 下, meaning "beneath," which was enough, given the similarity of sound, for the kitchen staff to figure that shrimp must be involved.
"Beneath" is not a very appropriate substitute for "shrimp" in all contexts, of class. The compound "ocean shrimp" is confused with "beneath the sea" that way. But some popular shorthand forms did have potential for general use. Therefore sometimes a character was replaced by a popular simplification that had been used more or less universally for many centuries. The simplified course for shrimp is xiā 虾, midway between the former official version 蝦 and the waiter'south shorthand 下, and information technology is a very one-time simplification.
Another case of the officialization of a popular autograph graphic symbol is wéi 為, which has been written 为 since at least the Sòng 宋 dynasty (period 15).
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Principle 4: Homographs Are Left Unresolved
Chinese has always had a few characters that did double service, continuing for related words that varied in meaning and pronunciation (typically tone). In the simplest case, these are at least related. For example wáng means king, merely wàng means "to reign over." Both have always been written with the same character 王. (It looks as though very ancient Chinese may have had a tendency for related nouns and verbs to contrast in tone, a process that is only faintly visible in later on periods.)
However some words of similar pronunciation take shared a character fifty-fifty when they have been utterly unrelated in meaning. For instance guān means "to come across," and guàn means a hermitage, but they have ever been written with the same grapheme 觀 (观).
Finally, a few words related neither in meaning nor in audio accept been written with identical characters: For example, nǚ 女 means female, simply the same character was ofttimes used to write the pronoun rǔ, meaning "you" (and usually referring to a male person). Although rǔ eventually developed the form 汝, accurate reproductions of one-time texts oft impress 女, and whatever mod dictionary, even in simplified characters, still gives rǔ as one of the pronunciations of 女, and lists 女 equally one of the ways to write rǔ.
Similarly, shí means "stone" and a dàn is an former-fashioned measure out for grain, just both accept e'er been written 石. (Well, to exist honest, dàn was once pronounced shí.)
Different words sharing the aforementioned written graphic symbol are referred to as "homographs," and non-Chinese studying the language tend to recollect of them as "one character with ii pronunciations" rather than (correctly) as "two words written with 1 character."
The simplification scheme did not try to address the problem of homographs for the virtually office. Both guān and guàn, the words formerly written 觀, have been simplified to 观. No endeavor was made to provide split characters for them. The simplification projection was an historical moment when this could have been undertaken, but information technology was decided non to do so.
In a few cases the simplification scheme actually increased the number of homographs. For example huá 划 "to row" and huà 劃 "to plan" were both changed to 划. That is 1 character less to learn, and a lot fewer strokes to write, but it is 1 character more with two unlike spoken syllables associated with information technology. Similarly shè 舍 "business firm" and shě 捨 "abandon" are at present both written 舍, which now has two pronunciations where before it had but one.
In practice at that place is little probability of confusion, but each of these "simplified" characters, 划 and 舍, while reducing 2 characters to one (the one with fewer strokes), also add together to the complication of written Chinese by increasing the number of homographs, obliging the reader to clarify the context in order to cull which referent is intended.
It is not quite universally true that different semantic fields attached to the same character were left together after simplification. For example, the graphic symbol 乾 traditionally represented two different words: qián "male person, father" and gān "clean, dry wearied."
The sense of gān "dry" was consolidated with 干, also pronounced gān, which already had ii unrelated meanings "to be concerned with" and "heavenly stem" (function of a system of counting). The grapheme 乾 is therefore now used only in the reading qián, and 干 has an expanded range of meanings.
Unfortunately, an unrelated character 幹 gàn (sometimes written 榦) "to manage" was too assimilated to 干. Therefore 干 now has not only its original pronunciation and significant, merely too a second meaning inherited from 乾 plus yet another pronunciation and significant inherited from 幹.
Loose Ends.
It is should be clear past at present that some decisions could reasonably have been fabricated differently. A couple of cases slipped through that seem merely to have been bad judgment or infelicitous committee compromise. For instance, the word lá, "to slit," was written 剌 before simplification, and it still tin can exist. However information technology was likewise assimilated to the symbol 拉, which is ordinarily used for lā, pregnant "to lead or elevate." Thus the graphic symbol was both simplified and not, with no difference in meaning, and was also confounded with a character with a dissimilar pronunciation.
Simplified characters occasionally are not the shortest form among the variants that were consolidated. For instance, bī "to force" was traditionally written 逼or 偪. The slightly longer first course was officialized: 逼. The aforementioned thing happened to kuǎn "stipulation": of the two traditional forms 款 and 欵, it is the more complex (by i stroke) that was officialized: 款.
In the aforementioned fashion, zhài "stockade" was traditionally written 寨 or 砦 (and some people considered them different words). They are both now officially written with the more complex graphic symbol 寨. (Yet the Chinese computer standard still retains 砦 for those who recall they are different.)
Similarly, diāo "to carve" was written both 彫 and 雕, which were interchangeable. Only the more than circuitous 雕 survives (and has absorbed the homonymous word 鵰 "vulture" as well — perchance because the right-hand elements niǎo 鳥 and zhuī 隹 both originally represented birds anyway).
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Popular Reaction 1: Enthusiasm
Popular reaction to character simplification was mixed. Perhaps the widest reaction was general enthusiasm for changes that in fact made the learning of characters easier, their writing faster, and their printed forms more legible.
Indeed, one reaction was to join the game and create boosted simplifications, not part of the official scheme. In a short time this process got quite out of hand, and innovative and ingenious, if not always intelligible, simplifications were turning up all across China. But free innovation was ultimately limited by the absence of such forms in standard type fonts, so that innovative colloquial characters could be used in handwriting, but could not easily exist printed. And of course they couldn't be institute in dictionaries.
Adoption of the official scheme did not end the being of the commission charged to create information technology, and while the public was getting used to what was and was non official, the committee connected its piece of work. In the early 1980s it proposed a list of further simplifications. For example, the autograph graphic symbol 辺, borrowing its approximate sound from the simple character dāo 刀 "pocketknife" was proposed every bit a replacement for dào 道 "way" (every bit in Daoism). The widespread reaction to the new listing of changes was revulsion at the thought of having to go through wrenching changes of script all over again, and the entire new listing was rejected. (Dào is still written 道, at least officially.)
Non surprisingly, a few unorthodox additions accept actually achieved general currency. One of the most common occurs in the discussion for restaurant. The traditional term was cāntíng 餐 廳, in which both characters were quite complex. In simplified characters this is 餐 厅, with but the second of the characters (tíng) inverse. In popular usage, nevertheless, the cān 餐 tends to be written using simply the upper left-hand corner 歺, which many people feel provides better visual balance with the 厅, and mitt painted signs are very frequently written 歺厅. The character 歺 is a very ancient variant of dǎi 歹, "evil," but it is non in active use except equally a office in other characters. For this reason, its popular recycling to stand for cān 餐 creates no confusion and is probably destined to be officialized some day. (Meanwhile, information technology sustains a threadbare but educated foreigner's joke to refer to a greasy spoon as a "dǎitíng" 歹 厅.)
Another case of "recycling" of rare but unproblematic characters as breezy simplifications of standard ones is dīng 仃, used merely in a couple of rare fixed expressions. Today 仃 is a mutual "wrong" simplified writing of tíng 停, to "finish" or to "park" a auto (tíngchē 停车 = 仃车).
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Popular Reaction 2: Resistance
Some other reaction to the simplification reform was resistance. Originally, that was probably almost every bit common a reaction as acceptance. Not everybody named Liú 劉 or Yè 葉 was very happy near being told to write his proper name 刘 or 叶. People with the name Hòu 後 had no particular desire to be lumped together with people named Hòu 后. Who could love the conversion of the beautiful character huá 華, which referred both to a flower and to China, into the prosaic character 华, made upward of a phonetic huà (化) with a cross nether it? And what is 1 to make of reformers taking the heart (心) out of the middle of the give-and-take for love, ài 愛 /爱?! The change, every bit expected, was jarring.
Further the objection could easily be made that severe changes in the writing system would cut China off from the immense treasure of its aboriginal literature. Although simplifications similar huá 華 /华, cóng 叢 /丛, wèi 衛 /卫 and xīng 興 /兴 represent an enormous improvement in ease of writing, ease of learning, and clarity of press, information technology is besides clear that very many such wrenching changes could potentially render modern Chinese and then unlike from earlier Chinese that it would become, for practical purposes, a different written language.
Fortunately, there are comparatively few such complete transformations. Far more changes are of the kind that lump together unlike words under a single writing (like 捨 /舍 both becoming 舍 shè), or that owe their simplification to the removal of role of a grapheme (similar tīng 廳 becoming 厅), or where the reduced chemical element is (nearly) always simplified when it occurs as office of something else (similar the left side of shuō "speak" 說 /说 and huà "oral communication" 話 /话).
Thus the person who learns to read simplified characters is non IN FACT confronted with a totally strange arrangement when reading older Chinese. For someone raised on simplified characters, reading traditional ones is a bit of a strain at kickoff, and a minor annoyance for a long time, but it is NOT incommunicable — hú 鬍 may be a mess, but it is easy to come across the 胡 in information technology, and it is difficult to misinterpret given adequate context.
If there is a comparing to exist fabricated with English, maybe someone who is used to simplified Chinese can read traditional Chinese with nigh the same comfort as a person used to mod English can read Shakespeare, or at worst, Chaucer. It's a bit of a stretch, but information technology is by no means impossible.
The various inconsistencies (and many more than seeming inconsistencies) in the system were hands seized upon every bit the basis for heated objections to the whole project. As one elderly Chinese friend of mine commented, "almost every grapheme in the scheme has something the matter with it." (We have seen some of these in our exploration of the inconsistent removal of biào 髟.)
However the scheme was enforced by a regime that controlled all printing and publishing, as well as past the school system. Those who objected to the forms taken past private characters were listened to when the scheme was beingness adult and during a period of public discussion subsequently. Just once it was finalized, the story came to an end. Those who prefer traditional characters have remained gratis to write them if they delight, but find little audience, and no official sympathy.
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Evaluation
The arrangement works. Simplified characters have been in official utilise for over half a century, everyone is accustomed to them, and all only the oldest people in China find it easier to read and write simplified characters than traditional ones. Simplified characters — THESE simplified characters — are surely here to stay.
Just as in Europe in that location is nevertheless a residual apply of Roman numerals and Latin gravestones, and so in Mainland china there is considered to exist a certain elegance about the traditional characters. They are associated with tradition, with the status of the educated elite, and with internationalism, but few would care to read a whole book in traditional characters whatever more, and fewer still feel competent to write continuous text in them, any more than well-nigh Americans can correctly differentiate "thee" from "m" or hands add together XLIII to LXXVII to get CXX.
Because of the lingering sense of elegance, there is all-encompassing use of traditional characters — sometimes incongruously mixed with simplified ones — for book titles, on shop signs, and in other places where they are thought to be more decorative. As fourth dimension passes we can probably await this nostalgia to fade. Merely as Shakespeare's spelling is retained simply in antiquarian editions of his works, traditional characters will exist retained only in antiquarian reprints of one-time Chinese texts.
In Taiwan and Hong Kong, traditional characters are still the universal norm, although the retrocession of Hong Kong to Prc has increased the probability of simplified characters soon becoming more widespread. The vast majority of Chinese web sites are in simplified characters. Overseas Chinese communities vary, with Singapore fully committed to simplified characters, and most other regions still using traditional characters. (My local utility company in California finally changed from traditional to simplified characters only in 2014.) The continued use of traditional characters outside of Red china ways that some publishing intended for consumption in those areas (and almost all of the incredibly prolific publishing that takes place in Taiwan) is still done in traditional characters.
Meanwhile anyone using both systems is in the position of having to make conversions. Equally we have seen, simplified and traditional characters are not in a perfect i-to-i relationship to each other, then conversion, particularly calculator-assisted conversion, and especially conversion from simplified to traditional characters, introduces mistakes that must be removed by a human center sensitive to the larger context of the text. Overlooked mechanical errors in conversion are the depressingly frequent "typographical" errors of modern International Chinese.
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Source: https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.html
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