Disputing Characters: Simplified Chinese vs. Traditional Chinese
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
- Simplified or Traditional? That’s a question that often gets brought up when someone is learning how to write in one of the Chinese languages and within the Chinese community itself. There is a whole debate even regarding this, which I go over in this video.
This video felt somewhat rushed due to mainly the fact that I didn’t have much time to do enough research. I’d advise everyone to do more research on their own and take everything I’ve said in this video with a grain of salt.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE :D (this video was uploaded on December 25, 2022)
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Introduction
1:13 - Beginning discussion regarding the practicality of both scripts
1:30 - What is a stroke?
2:48 - Typing Chinese
3:24 - Pinyin
4:08 - Ambiguity
5:06 - Cultural implications
6:03 - Politics
6:48 - Literacy rates
7:19 - Conclusion (+ my opinion on the whole debate)
SOURCES:
Dai, Ruwei, Chenglin Liu, and Baihua Xiao. "Chinese character recognition: history, status and prospects." Frontiers of Computer Science in China 1.2 (2007): 126-136.
Pan, Xiaxing, Huiyuan Jin, and Haitao Liu. "Motives for Chinese script simplification." Language Problems and Language Planning 39.1 (2015): 1-32.
Liu, Tianyin, and Janet Hsiao. "The perception of simplified and traditional Chinese characters in the eye of simplified and traditional Chinese readers." Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Vol. 34. No. 34. 2012.
Su, Hsi-Yao, and Chen-Cheng Chun. "Chineseness, Taiwaneseness, and the traditional and simplified Chinese scripts: Tourism, identity, and linguistic commodification." Language & Communication 77 (2021): 35-45.
Yan, Xi. "‘Macao has died, traditional Chinese characters have died’: a study of netizens' comments on the choice of Chinese scripts in Macao." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37.6 (2016): 564-575.
Gao, Yan, Lianwen Jin, and Weixin Yang. "An empirical comparative study of online handwriting chinese character recognition: simplified vs. traditional." 2013 12th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition. IEEE, 2013.
Tso, Ricky Van-yip, et al. "Holistic processing of Chinese characters in college students with dyslexia." Scientific reports 11.1 (2021): 1-12.
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This is a great video, but I do have one correction: Traditional characters aren't technically older than simplified characters as a whole. That's just a common misconception that even I believed for a long time. Almost all simplified characters that drastically change the appearance of a character and don't just reduce the stroke count for a certain component, already existed before mainland China decided to simplify the writing system. In fact, a lot of these simplified characters had been in use for hundreds of years before they became official and standard. Wherever possible, mainland China explicitly avoided creating new characters in the process of simplification. It's why there was only one wave of simplification. A second wave was supposed to happen that would simplify even more characters, but they couldn't find enough existing characters to justify it, and wanted to avoid just creating a bunch of brand new characters out of thin air
TLDR: I used to think traditional characters were way cooler, and I do still love traditional characters for a lot of the same reasons that other people do, but simplified characters also have their own interesting history that people don't know about
Yeah I should’ve emphasized on that part more, my bad. I said MOST Traditional characters have been around for much longer than Simplified characters, but that could’ve definitely been interpreted wrongly, so I’ll make sure to pin this comment 👍
A good amount of the Simplified characters were inspired by 草书 and vulgar forms derived from vernacular forms of writing Chinese.
@@theqthateducates I apologize, I was just quick to comment because pretty much all the videos I’ve seen targeted towards non-Chinese don’t clarify that, and I only found out about the rest of the story recently
@@theGnostic- no need to apologize!
Yeah a lot of that content often don’t talk about the Simplified characters that have been around way before Traditional forms, like for example 云. It’s important people know about the full picture. Like for instance, because I didn’t know the full story, I was quite surprised to find that the 国民党 had their own plans for simplification!
希望可以支持繁體中文 你能學到更多有關漢字的來源和演變過程
Your statement is too ambiguous and self-contradictory to be helpful.
On the one hand, you say simplified characters are just as old "as a whole” and then seemingly admit that only the ones that were drastically are as old traditional characters. This implies that the ones with slight modifications never existed in their present forms.
Please clarify your comment, so that we understand what point you are trying to make. Thanks!
I follow stroke order - it helps me write better.
Also, I'm learning Cantonese and I find that traditional characters help me learn how to read words - they give me a better guide to what the pronunciation is. Then once I know the Cantonese pronunciation, I can usually figure out the Mandarin afterwards.
Yes, that's a good learning habit to write, it was wrong to say, "who cares about stroke", it matters a lot for writing & memorising the characters.
You don't really need to specifically learn trad. characters to learn Cantonese, that's a major misconception in Canton region. Though, if it helps to learn instead of confusing the learning process, then it's good to at least know how to read trad. characters & more Cantonese language books in trad. characters than in simp.
As a Hongkonger who has suffered so much from mainland's policies, I do have a hate in simplified characters burned into my soul. However, as I really think of the different characters logically, I believe that all of them have nothing wrong (except for those that create unnecessary ambiguity).
I think that using any of the characters are fine as long as one knows that it's appropriate. For example, using simplified characters when time is restricted and efficiency is crucial is okay, but only traditional characters should be used in official documents. I consider the use of characters as an aspect in formality, and not abandoning any of them.
Preserve the traditional, they look and feel so much better.
@@qrsx66 yes, I think they are just more aesthetically pleasing than simplified. for me, writing traditional feels like writing a genuine Chinese script, and writing simplified really feels "simplified", it's like you're missing some important points just for the sake of saving time/efforts
Yes! I'm one for traditional characters and not "simplified for ease of reading."
Traditional characters hold value of how people thought of concepts and ideas. 愛 is such a great example because in simplified, the heart is removed, I think it's impossible to love without a heart, but then again, that just reflects the mainland government.
As someone learning Japanese. Traditional characters as they are much more in line with Japanese versions and probably Korean's very limited use of these Chinese characters and words.
By having Traditional Characters as an American studying what others are doing.
Traditional characters are more practical for other Asians.
The best analogy Traditional Characters are like using a clear reference point of Latin based vocabulary to help learn Italian, French, and Spanish while Simplifications are swapping the words out entirely and making it harder to understand the piece of paper and what is said. It's sloppy hand writing as kind of bad.
As Chinese languages are like Latin for Asians. A huge inspirer of knowledge, wisdom, and generally making learning another easier with words of similar ideals and origins, but in pictograms.
Also by not having traditional characters. The younger generation is forced to relearn their own written language if want to read older documents worse than us English speakers trying to learn Old English. It's not future compatible or future proofed. Traditional characters are easier to READ, but harder to WRITE. The writing aspect should be sacrificed to be easier to tell words apart or be clearer how something sounds.
English isn't phonetic at all, but if gave it a spelling reform, teach both old and new, along side what the older form's grammar and vocabulary choices were.
To me, traditional characters are a nightmare. Horrifying. I'd rather die than have to see more of them...
Simplified characters was not invented by a particular person or a particular group, it has been existing for thousands of years. if you read some calligraphy works thousands ago, you will easily find some simplified characters on it. Simplified characters appears because people always want a shortcut to finish the handwriting, not one exactly invented them. And the simplified plan, no matter KMT's or CCP's, both are just to collect the existing simplified characters cases among the people.
I write in simplified but type in traditional.
My only problem with simplified version is it sometimes make no sense, normally with the base character + element, we able to get the meaning of the word in traditional.
Take example, the base character 枼 (flat/slip), added grass element 葉(leaf)，add insect element 蝶(butterfly)，add stone element 碟(plate).
Only character that got simplified is leaf 叶 (base character 十 ten with mouth element 口)and it can't even bring out the meaning of leaf.
Fun fact: Singapore used to have own simplified characters.
As a mainlander the one simplified character i don't like is 时（時)，why simplify 寺 to 寸，but not in 寺 诗 侍 特 恃or 痔? why it's not consistent?
As someone who grew up on simplified, i dont find that a problem
It should be noted that in Hong Kong, people mostly use Cangjie because we don't speak Mandarin so we don't use Pinyin, and most people don't know Jyutping (basically the Cantonese version of Pinyin). Cangjie is inputting characters by how they are formed.
Many schoolkids are using handwriting or Pinyin in these years. Our generation though, still prefers Quick Cangjie.
@@henrym5034 I use Jyutping, Cantonese Phonetic (the system used to write place names in English in Hong Kong) and Stroke (筆劃) because Cangjie is too hard for me
那這是不是代表香港人“提筆忘字”的情況會比較少，比如說“噴嚏”，“鴛鴦”之類的詞說寫就能寫出來？
@@Half_soda_half_milk 香港人常用鴛鴦這個字，不少人常飲這種咖啡加奶茶製成的本地飲料。加上他們是形聲字，其實還好
真的要試的話，○金香、尋○滋事、售○（指賣光）、膠○咖啡等字會是更好的指標（我就不懂寫）
I've always wanted to learn Cangjie, but it's like Cantonese in that you have to grow up with it to know it well (because god knows I can't get tones 4-6 correctly: 時 市 是).
Also, I've heard argument that it's not entirely reflective on how characters are written, but formed.
This is just anecdotal but in my time with Kanji, they are more often traditional characters or a Japanese variant of the traditional. I haven’t seen as many simplified. And for Korean Hanja it’s almost always traditional except for occasional minor variations or 국자 (kukja).
Yes, Korea (North and south) didn't change/standardize their Chinese characters, as the governments didn't really encourage the use of it. Thus, they actually have the closest character shapes to the standards in the Qing dynasty, compared to Chinese mainland, Hongkong/Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.(Although alot of the younger generation's knowledge of characters are very limited).
As a traditional charcters user in Hong Kong, I don't even care what characters Chinese gonna use. Even they create the new language, none of our business. Only when their new immigrants came and use simpified characters every time they wrote, and their government always try to force us to learn simpified character. That is really lacking of respect. It became a political problem rather than just cultural problem.
Yeah I also don’t see the need to force people to write in Simplified or Traditional
I chose to learn traditional characters because if I visited family back in Taiwan, it would help me more to know traditional character than simplified ones.
Also, most of my Chinese education was homework given to me from my mom, either videos or books that were written in traditional Chinese. I wasn't aware that simplified Chinese existed until I took Chinese for a language credit in middle and high school.
I'd imagine an American Born Chinese who had parents from Mainland China raised in a similar manner with simplified characters would feel the same way about sticking with simplified characters.
There is indeed a lot to debate regarding simplified or traditional Chinese. Glad to see more similar videos about Chinese linguistics and your opinions
About literacy rate, couldn't it be, I guess, that the reason why literacy increased due to modernization of education, as happened in every other modern country of the world without having to change the language or writing, instead of simplification. bc the majority of times simplified just replaces a radical by the 草書 form. In traditional logic is still preserved and it isn't harder to remember than simplified
It was hard to tell to what extent simplification was a significant driving force of literacy even with hindsight, but to be fair the intellectuals of the 20th century were so desperate to the extent that some even proposed full Latinization so Simplification was almost a historical inevitability in that atmosphere.
7:15
@@hugosetiawan8928again that's thanks to the progress on technology and increasing the quality of life on rural areas. Also a Chinese character isn't necessarily harder by being traditional just because it has more strokes. You just have to remember that certain radicals have more strokes and that's it. It's not that every character is a different world to another one. And lastly what are you telling me that every Taiwanese have a superior mind that makes them able to memorize traditional characters?
We support both Traditional Chinese characters (繁體字) and Simplified Chinese ones (简体字) in our own understandings. For example, I wrote my second forename _Maynard_ in both writing systems-梅納德 and 梅纳德. Thank you so much for the very interesting topic!
Yes. No matter simplified or traditional, when you read it out loud, its just Chinese.
@@Imperator_27 And, without the use of Simplified Chinese characters, the entire Chinese culture around the world-not only in China-will not work.
An incredibly refreshing video in a talking space that is often polluted with dogma. In my personal view, the writing system that is used does not really matter, the written word is but an artistic expression of the ideas in our heads. As long as you are understood by the people you are writing for, the style writing does not matter. Be it 草书 or 楷书，繁体 or 简体，Chinese speakers and learners should rejoice that either way, through the language we are able to study and partake in the art and culture of a long-lived and prospering civilization.
Simplified is also more readable in small sizes.
Chinese characters used to be written by hand, with brushes on wide pages of paper. But now its displayed with really small sizes on screens, just like the texts you're reading right now. Think of all those strokes on traditional characters that are used to be written with thick brushes, are now cramped up in small spaces with hair-thin strokes on your phone. Traditional characters are extremely difficult to see in small sizes especially when compared to the roman alphabet. Take a look at 电脑 vs 電腦，互联网 vs 互聯網，手机 vs 手機. Try picking up on the details of those traditional characters without pulling your phone close or squinting your eyes. Simplified is already too complex to be readable compared to the roman alphabet, let alone traditional.
Simplified has a huge advantage in terms of readability, especially nowadays when texts are displayed in such small sizes.
Yes this is most definitely true and a good point to be made for Simplified Chinese
Another example I can think of is 歼击机=殲擊機. HUGE difference
As a traditional Chinese user, I don't think reading traditional characters is hard cuz I have used to it.
As someone who can sorta speak Chinese and can read a little bit (parents are native, but I grew up in the US), I don’t feel a difference. I think that they are both the same.
I feel like when reading, I look at the overall shape of the character, rather than focusing on the individual strokes. It’s a similar story for English. I’m pretty sure most people do not read every word letter-by-letter - that would be slow, but instead, read based off of the entire overall shape of the word.
People who claim that simplified Chinese is "destroying" culture are deeply unserious people ignorant of Chinese culture. Just a few examples: the 伤 from 傷->伤 appears in the calligraphy of Jin Dynasty poet 王羲之, the 杨 from 楊->杨 is used by Ming Dynasty poet 文微明, the 阳 from 陽->阳 is used by 徐渭 of the Ming Dynasty. Lots of simplified characters are actually the cursive calligraphic variants of traditional characters.
What about the 又 simplification? Seems random and inconsistent.
The major components of characters like 漢 對 戲 and many more were replaced with 又. There is some historical precey for some of them, but the rest don't make any sense to me.
Take 观 and 罐, the 雚 is replaced by 又 in one but not the other? Make it make sense!
@@Tyrhonius 观 was used in 徽州文书 as well as in Ming and Qing popular novels like 《清平山堂话本》。The character 罐 with that right radical has always been written that way, it originally meant "owl" in Oracle bone script.
Cursive characters look better with rounded shapes. Making them rigid and angular destroys their beauty. Thus, few calligraphers today use simplified kaishu characters exclusively as they are less aesthetically pleasing than their traditional counterparts.
I seriously doubt ancient calligraphers would have wanted their variant characters to become the standardized!
I guess the simplification was done by the CCP and since during the cultural revolution a lot of ancient Chinese knowledge and artifacts were destroyed people associate the change in the writing as the same
@@masterdeetectiv9520 Only the Second round of simplification related to a cultural revolution. The first round to simplify Chinese characters still adopts the simplified characters that existed in traditional culture and ancient Chinese. The Second round of simplification transformed the meaning of most of the original characters into new ones, causing many Chinese people to not understand these new characters. This also hindered the speed of the CCP’s popularization of character education. And this ultimately made the Second round of simplified fail. Many Chinese (including party members) who have experienced the 1970s and 1980s are disgusted with the Second round of simplified. Only a few Erjian characters have been preserved
In my experience traditional characters are easier to read, because they have greater distinctive features between each other than simplified, although not necessarily at a distance. It's also sometimes easier to guess meaning or pronunciation because there's more information inside a traditional character. On the other hand, simplified is easier to write, or maybe just a bit faster, because there are fewer strokes and sometimes easier to read because that's what you learn in class.
Since I have lost the ability to do either, it makes no difference for me xD
For the foreigners,the simplified chinese characters is easy to learn amd write then the complex chinese characters.
One thing must be mentioned : the simplification of characters was at the time the first step towards their total eradication.
The aim was to romanize entirely the Chinese language, similarly to what was done in Vietnam, or Turkey switching from Arabic script to Latin letters.
It couldn't be implemented in one step because the communists realized that orders and intructions were not understood and followed nation-wide with pinyin only.
In 1976 a second reform was passed, with more extreme simplifications, but was cancelled as everybody was unwilling to adopt the change.
As an American learning Chinese, learning 简体字 is for sure much easier. But what makes me sad for the China and people interested in the history and culture is how 繁体字 had a lot of meaning in their characters, such as how “love” lost the heart radical within the character (愛 -》爱). I can understand why traditionalists would be frustrated by this.
Yeah, the simplification definitely had some flaws in it, such as getting rid of radicals that could’ve helped indicate meaning or phonetics. There was also the merging of characters, which resulted in more ambiguity.
I feel like the 愛 argument is flawed a bit
I think that ABChinese actually explained it quite nicely. If your value in love is the way you write it, you don’t know true love. In English, we don’t write LOVE as L♡VE. Also 爱 does have roots in imperial China.
The best way to say your argument is with characters like 风 where 䖝 is replaced with 㐅. The ancient Chinese thought that insects came with the wind so replacing ‘insect’ with ‘five’ is kinda weird. Also 㐅 is used to replace a lot of unrelated components in a lot of unrelated characters like 区 and the previously used 风 and also many…MANY 又 (树、凤、etc.). And even that rebuttal doesn’t rebut my argument about meaning so…yea…
@@mokbowen37 I think that’s a better way of seeing it 👍
It may have lost the heart radical but it gained a friend radical and you could argue that lovers are friends. I find that argument very weak.
I always read about the difference between the character of love both in simplified and traditional chinese, but actually I think simplified has more success than flaws. I think the love character is only one of some simplified characters that has a flaw, but is not so bad, it gained a ''friend'' radical in the character of love.
有些朋友觉得简体字是没文化，把中华传统文化丢了，这个其实有误解
1) 首先很多繁体字本身也没多长历史，很多繁体字形是明清才出现的，而有些汉字是秦汉时期的写法就一直这么写下了的，如果说是有传统文化意义的汉字，严格来说也只有秦汉唐宋到现在还没变的字算是真正的老传统文化。
2) 很多字其实一直都有异体字，也就是同一个字不同写法，很多异体字长时间存在，部分异体字甚至取代了主流字形变成了新的主流字形。所以汉字写法本身其实也不是从楷书出现开始就一成不变的。
3) 有些繁体字那是繁的毫无意义，既不表音也不表形，部首也毫无规律，完全就是长时间自然演化的冗余沉积，本身也不一定传统可能是近百年才出现的，这种繁体字就改简化
4) 很多简体字是草书楷书化的产物，也就是用草书的字形以楷书的规范笔画写出来，所以要论文化很多简体字也很有文化的。比如馬/马
5) 个别简体字也的确有问题，比如那种简了后变成另一个字了还有歧义，比如麺/面，就不太好
总之要举例的话无论简繁都能找出可以证明对方不好的例子，既然不影响理解也没有什么 好争的，已经用了哪个就继续用。还没学的那我觉得还是学简体吧，降低学习门槛和成本还是有助于汉字传承传播的，就像拼音/注音取缔了五笔一样，即使后者无论从汉字文化角度还是打字速度来看都更好。
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P.S. 个人觉得汉字最优解是简体+注音， 因为汉字音节规律性很高，用有限的注音符号去整理，比起用拉丁字母全部拼出来是更有文化且精简恰当的。但要把注音的拉丁记法从威妥玛拼音换成国标拼音，因为威妥玛是迁就英语母语者发音习惯，但实际上就算发出来也相差甚远，还把好几个汉语辅音混在一起。国标拼音至少保留了辅音的准确性，反正你让不会说汉语的照威妥玛说他们也说不准，还不如让学汉语的人更遵循汉语原本发音。
My opinion:
Writing: simplified
Reading: traditional
The worse thing about the current version of simplified character is that some characters with same pronunciation (and often not the same meaning) were merged into one, to limit the number of characters, also this merge "homophones" was based on mandarin pronunciation, and exclude other chinese varieties with two different pronunciation. This is very northern-minded.
Yes, under certain certain circumstances, I will not use simplified characters. I refuse to write that I want to eat “面” ， I will be eating “麵”，thank you very much. Also, for pleasure, it's "遊山玩水" and not "游山玩水“ for me!
It's so that chinese people are more literate. Simplifying characters definitely helped with literacy
@@hugosetiawan8928 yes it was made for mainlan and it work, but taiwan and hk don't need it at the time I think.
@@thelias91 The Taiwanese and HKers had higher literacy rates and they never used simplified. I think greater access to education is the key. Although I prefer to see traditional, simplified is very convenient when taking quick notes, when you're in a rush.
@@pbworld7858 I genuinely don't understand people who support traditional, simplified is objectively, just, simpler. Easier to understand lol
The truth is: 1.Simplified was used sinced 1949 while traditional usage can date back to thousand years ago, according to 中華history. 2. Taiwan always use traditional writing system (never use simplified system). 3. There are 2 Roman phonetic systems for Chinese languages:1 is Cantonese phonetic system the other is pingyin system. 4.Ancient poems are written in Cantonese, there's no record for simplified Chinese before 1949 when talking about ancient China culture. All Chinese characters were in traditional form before the year 1949.
You did quite a good job for a high school student explaining the traditional and simplified characters debate.As a non-native Chinese speaker, I use simplified characters by default.
This is one of the new cool linguistic channels.Seems there is a trend for animated linguistic videos.
When I started learning Chinese, it was on Taiwan, so I learned the Traditional characters. My teachers took the time to explain what each character/character portion was meant to represent. I thought it was fun, but didn't realise until later that it REALLY helps when you run across a character you don't know - you can sort of suss it out. The Simplified characters are great, but when you run across characters you don't know, you can be left in the dark a bit (and sorry, not being a native speaker, I don't always grasp the context so well). So... personally I stick with Traditional - plus it's what all my Taiwanese in-laws use. I also use British spelling for my English, even though I live in the US now, so I guess I'm old fashioned LOL
3:30 the Latin alphabet keyboard layout is one option. There are other layouts like which for example Bopomofo of which I find a lot cooler.
Also many Simplified characters existed already. The thing has to do more with standardization by both sides.
Chinese but in a slightly different simplification choices. I would say Simplified Chinese may need to evolve more, with some return of characters to a more traditional strokes and some to be simplified further.
Some meanings from Traditional Chinese being lost doesn't really click with me. If yu ken reed dis sentens, den yu knou wat-evr yu wrait juss niid to hav meening. The argument between 爱 and 愛 seems redundant since both can be distinguished to be the same meaning, love, given that one learned both systems. One can even put 🤭 as love, with emoji showing no ❤️ anywhere in 🤭 emoji.
There's a problem with simplification however.
In traditional , 面 is face and 麵 means noodle. In simplified, 面 is for face and for noodles. A workaround of this is of course the Chinese two character for an object, which in this case is 面条 for noodles or different words like 脸 for face or 表面 for surface. But I personally think that for a simplication choices, I would rather they replace the 麵 with something of 米 + 面 as a character. Just some radical or strokes to tell people what kind of 'mian' is in the discussion.
And I like writing 龍 and 魚 instead of 龙 and 鱼. But I still prefer 飞 over 飛. So personally, I prefer if there's a revised simplification for the Simplified Chinese.
There's some things that work and don't work for everyone, but I think whoever is in charge should look again if any of the simplifications really beneficial and if they really should add new characters, which should be the nuclear option.
(From someone who likes to write Chinese characters, but still struggles with learning Chinese language.)
2:03 "who follows stroke order?" I do :I otherwise your characters look clumsy
This times 100. Characters *look* *wrong* if you don’t follow stroke order and for most characters even a non-native soeaker can tell if you’ve messed up the stroke order. It matters.
Traditional Chinese characters are indeed rooted in ancient script forms. One of those forms is 隸書 , or the clerical script, which developed during the Han Dynasty. This script served as a bridge from the oracle bone script and seal script to the standardized script we recognize today. The clerical script is indeed much older than the 草書 , or cursive script. However, it's essential to remember that while some simplified characters might have been inspired by the cursive script, not all simplified characters are direct derivatives of 草書.
Furthermore, when simplifying characters, the creators did not necessarily adhere to the 六書 principles, which are the six principles of Chinese character creation. This can sometimes lead to confusion among learners as to why a particular simplified character looks the way it does, especially if it seems to stray from traditional principles.
In conclusion, both traditional and simplified characters have deep historical and cultural roots. While simplified characters were indeed introduced later, some of their forms might have already existed in various scripts and informal writings. However, it's essential to recognize the foundation of traditional characters in older scripts like 隸書 and understand that not all simplifications align with the 六書 principles.
simplification of Chinese characters was intended as a precursor to completely "latinizing" or Romanizing the Chinese language is a point of some debate. Let's delve into the historical context:
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there were indeed discussions about reforming the Chinese writing system to increase literacy rates. The Chinese Communist Party recognized that the complexity of Chinese characters was a barrier to literacy, especially in rural areas.
The first step was the simplification of Chinese characters, which was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s. This process was aimed at making it easier for people to learn and write Chinese.
Pinyin and Romanization, Around the same time, the Chinese government introduced the Hanyu Pinyin system, a Romanized system for representing the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese. This system was created primarily as a tool for teaching Chinese pronunciation, especially to children and foreigners.
The simplification was influenced by the Russian Communist Party is not entirely accurate. While the Soviet Union had a significant influence on early PRC policies, the drive for script reform in China was more influenced by internal debates about the best way to promote literacy and modernize the country.
There was a movement during the 1950s called the "Latinization Movement," which proposed replacing Chinese characters entirely with the Roman alphabet. While this movement gained some traction initially, it eventually lost out to proponents of the simplified script.
Today, the PRC uses simplified characters, while traditional characters are used in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Pinyin is also widely taught and used for various purposes, such as input methods on computers and smartphones, they made a excuse that simplify chinese were easy to learn that the core of their education which every one looking for easiest way to do anything, easy money, easy industry, easy building, that's the core problem they're going to facing in all kind of field. believe it
totally didnt know before 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Stroke order also can have some variance. I've seen different "official" stroke orders from taiwan, mainland, and hong kong guides. And then u add on top of that the Japanese kanji stroke order 😅
In Malaysia, we are in a bit of an awkward situation here. Most Malaysians (both Chinese and non-Chinese people) who know Chinese characters can read (and write) both traditional and simplified Chinese characters. So really, we don't know where we stand in the Traditional vs Simplified debates. 😂
I used to learn Mandarin and Chinese characters for five years in primary school, and I can read both, though my written Chinese isn't good. Anyway, I guess it didn't matter at the end of the day. You're right, there's no need to fight over which version is better. I guess I just want to say, fly with whichever one you like best.
I remarked that in Malaysia some newspapers and magazines have traditional characters for the titles, simplified for the text of articles.
In-between the two worlds indeed. (I'm 100% pro-traditional)
Just because in the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, Hong Kong and Taiwan culture was the mainstream culture in the overseas Chinese circle. 😂 In the second decade, Hong Kong and Taiwan culture has gradually faded.
A highly personalized note. I decided to learn both character sets at the same time, because the more ways you learn a character, the more hooks there are in your mind when trying to remember them. I also, for the same reason, tried to learn reading, writing and speaking at the same time. Another point is that the great majority of the difference between simplified and traditional characters is limited to the simplification of a much smaller set of character elements called radicals. So if a character's two forms differ entirely in the radical, you can go from one to the other very quickly and you are really mostly having to learn just one thing.
I have a question, do you know how many characters in Japanese that were borrowed from Chinese are simplified? Like, a percentage I guess? I’m trying to learn both languages and I want to do it as efficiently as possible so if it’s a low percentage I’m going to stick with learning traditional Chinese
about Oracle Bone Script - yes, it does look like an ancient form of Chinese Characters, but now it is debated whether this system *is* actually an ancestor of other proven ancestors (Bronze Script, Cleric Script, etc.)
A more conservative approach to simplification, like what the Japanese did, would've been the best option in my opinion.
Good job. One more point is simplified Chinese can be traced back to caoshu 草書, a simplified way of writing back in the days with calligraphy
Vietnamese and Korean simplified Hanzi so hard that they got rid of it.
I’m pretty sure that in the case of Vietnamese, it was mostly the Portuguese and the French who made Vietnamese use the Latin script though I may be wrong about that.
Sidenote, the Latin script kind of sucks for Vietnamese.
@@amberwingthefairycat Wouldn't it be easier for them to replace ph with f? Writing one letter is quicker.
@@pbworld7858 Sure, though one could say the same thing about English-yet nothing has happened.
(I don’t speak Vietnamese and I know very little about it)
@@amberwingthefairycat Well, English is the worst when it comes to phonetic spelling and its correspondence with pronunciation. But it has a very long and complicated history whereas the romanization for Vietnamese was relatively more recent.
As a Chinese language learner I personally do not like simplified characters not because of any of these arguements but because the simplification process has made many characters less logical and harder to remember. For instance 髮 (fā) and 發 (fà) should not have been simplified as one character 发, both are originally separate characters and have different pronunciation. What's more this process made the system less systematic. More than 90% of the charactes are phono-semantic compounds 形声字 ie. part for sound+part for meaning configuration. By simplifying sound parts to something else many characters became less logical and less memorable for instance 樹 shù (orig. had 尌 shù as sound component and now has 对 duì !?!?), huān 歡 (orig. had guàn 雚 as sound component and now it has 又) and many more other examples. The problem was not simplification itself, it has actually been happening naturally over many years, but the illogical and unsystematic way that did not he didn't follow basic rules of the Chinese character system.
Yeah, I also agree that there could have been a bit more systematicity to the simplification process. It is most definitely not a perfect system
First time I've seen... systematicity.... 😅
Well 罐灌 has sound guàn while 勸權(劝权）has sound quán. Which is quite different. Sound components are already quite off in modern Chinese, and wouldn't help *alot* with the pronunciation in alot of cases. Also, in the commonly used characters, only about 60% are 形聲字.
@@Imperator_27 I don't agree. Although the initial is different, the final is still the same, thus helping quite a bit. Just look at the examples of characters such as 还环 （還環）and 坏怀（懷壞） I always have a hard time remembering which is which because they were all unnecessarily simplified using 不.
@@athynasaram The finals and tones are also different though. One has u, and has ü.
As for your second example, although I never had problems with that, I can understand beginners mixing them up.
Your last point about simplified Chinese singlehandedly boosting literacy rate is a bit of a stretch. The government's investments in making education more accessible probably played a bigger role in the statistical increase than the change to simplified characters.
simplified chinese characters are a step forward for chinese just as the post-1918 russian orthographic reform was a step forward for russian.
Chinese writing system has some similarities with the abjad system. Most characters have a sound sign which gives you hints of how to pronounce and shows some long lasting evolutions of sound changes.
*looks at comments* All this strife and conflict over slightly differently shaped letters..
They aren’t letters, but this is just me being petty lol. Anyways yeah some of these comments are…yikes
Spot on.
I also think simplified is better because is more faster to write and more faster to memorize the characters stroke.
From a point of view of someone currently studying hsk5 (=early advanced chinese) once you get used to the components of the characters, traditional characters take the same amount of mental capacity to memorise. I started learning only simplified characters but a few months ago decided to learn traditional as well, and it's worth it. You can enjoy so much more content in the west because Taiwan. And if you wanna learn Cantonese or other Chinese languages, traditional is the way to go.
for me, i write both😀
Same! But I do mainly focus on Simplified
@@theqthateducates You might have wondered why tons of Taiwanese and Hongkongese traditionalists are untruthful about the origin of Simplified Chinese (简体字) characters. For example, one of the vloggers of whom we call “AmeriCantonese91” have urged many of us “not to learn Simplified Chinese characters”. How come he pointed out Simplified Chinese as “a fake Chinese culture”? That is how they have become “mad” at the use of Simplified Chinese.
I must be a moderator for both Chinese writing systems on the debate.
As someone learning Mandarin Chinese I am well into learning simplified 汉字 for practical reasons (1000 characters thus far). As an outsider (who is also non-Western) I think I may be able to provide as unbiased an opinion as one is likely to get on this matter.
1. For the most part Simplified characters are quick to learn and they work.
2. There is some aesthetic value that is sacrificed for the sake of simplification. There are now too many curved strokes which disturbs the overall beauty of the writing system (See such characters as 见，项，and 观). This would not be an issue were Chinese characters an alphabet. However, aesthetics matter for logograms. This fact is made worse by the knowledge that former forms are better in this regard.
3. Pointing to the mainland literacy rate as evidence for the necessity for simplified characters is not a well thought out argument because it conflates correlation with causation. Poor countries have lower literacy and as the state becomes richer, it can deploy greater resources for educating the populace (in the absence of sufficient resources it just takes longer than is tolerable). The reason why the mainland has a high literacy rate is that she has seen her economic prowess grow year on year. To posit simplification as the core reason for greater literacy is to ignore the vast evidence from countries around the globe.
I like simplified characters, but I love traditional characters.
3:55 zhuyin is also used to type out traditional characters
我们的政策是识繁用简
这个政策不错
@@theqthateducates 文明人的習慣是識簡用正。
@@TalaySeedam 哈哈哈 “文明人”。我看你的思維還停留在1912以前吧。
i love both
There is a simple solution: drop ideograms and start using an alphabet or at least a well-designed syllabary. Koreans have a perfect example of a constructed writing system.
Using simplified Chinese is just like typing "I C U" or "Thnx" in English. It is ok in casual texting but how do you think if these English abbreviations appear on New York Times? Yes, Chinese characters evolve over time. But each evolution stayed with the six principals (pictogram, ideogram, compound ideogram, phono-semantic compound, .derivative cognate, phonetic loan). I agree that some complicated characters require simplification. But Chinese simplification has lost them. Such a "casual" simplification also resulted in confusion, like when I see 后, I don't know it means "queen" or "after" without knowing context.
Simplified chinese was initiated by Republic of china (taiwan) but finally implemented by the ccp in the communist china prior to their taiwan brothers. It ended up Republic of china (taiwan) keeping its original writing system.
Simplified Chinese characters works well in Singapore and Malaysia due to the multicultural environment in these two countries. Why ? Because it is quite common for Malays, Indians, Kadazan and other races families to send their children to learn Chinese characters, however they are not from the Chinese background and they 're alien to Chinese culture. In order to reduce the burden and break the cultural barrier, Simplified Chinese character's less strokes is preferrable and easier for the non Chinese etnic groups to understand and learn. As for the Chinese ethnic in Malaysia, learning and utilizing Traditional Chinese characters is more like a symbolic meaning of cultural identity and heritage, so despite simplified Characters is still in use on daily schools lessons, traditional Chinese characters are often used in Calligraphy lessons and other occasions.
Japan used to have more Traditional Chinese based Kenji, but after ww2 Americans found it to difficult to understand so they “canceled” some of them
Korea was using Traditional Chinese for the longest time, they completely throw it away in the 70s just because they want to distance themself with the Chinese. One of the newest and efficient language there is
Understandable policy for both side, But if only they keep them, we can better understand different culture in a more profound way easily
Traditional Characters have an additional advantage not mentioned here: it is easier to remember rare words.
For example rang 让 is a very common character, meaning "let" or "make" someone do sth. You use it all the time. The simplified uses shang 上 (above) for the phonetic part, while the traditional uses a more complicated radical 讓.
Issue is: simplified uses the same complicated radical as the traditional in rarer words, like rang 壤 ("soil"). This rare character is easy for people who write traditional, since they practiced it writing the common 讓 meaning "let". Learning 壤 "soil" is practically 0 effort. There are many examples of this. In other words: learning 100 characters is faster in simplified, but I'm sure getting to something like 8000 and retaining them is much easier in traditional.
There just seems to be a lot of inconsistencies, both in simplified Chinese and post-war Japanese.
All that matters??? Well.... First of all, the fact is that the majority of characters are the SAME in traditional and simplified. It would have been helpful for you to give some idea of HOW MANY characters are different between the two systems. An informal count I made on a lexicon of fairly common words suggests that about 37% of the characters are different between the two systems. (A professional Chinese linguist could probably give you more reliable figures.) That's not a small number, although many of the differences are due to just a single factor--for example, a radical that is always written the same way, although differently in the two. But it's still a considerable task to learn the other system, and for someone who deals mainly with written Chinese, or for a foreigner trying to learn Chinese using e.g. You Tube videos from all over the Chinese-speaking world, it's pretty hard to avoid having to learn both systems. That really slows things down for the learner. As for native Chinese speakers, my experience is that mainlanders simply don't want to go to the trouble of learning traditional characters; but diaspora Chinese who use traditional, usually have little trouble picking up the simplified system.
Japanese and Korean recently "discarded" traditional-scripts. China is second-generation simplified.
Culture of chinese
= Progress is to be able to adapt and be flexible.
= abilities and capabilities producing over achievers
= establish good baselines (good grades and no excuse) leading to spurts and accelerated learning later in life (depart from other cultures)
= ...
Debate on what to not-learn = bad words, negative words (automatic society teach 社会大学)
Debate on right and wrong = 错别字，同音字，万事无绝对，。。。
Debate on how to insult with simplified/traditional scripts = gongfu character strokes after age of 40.
Debate on 诗情画意 (origination of characters)，饮诗作对，...
Debate on how to lose to others = ...
When enemy want to be right... yes, they are right. We are both, all, many, more, ...
Typing is "arguably" faster than writing? Cultural differences =文化差异= whchy. Writing this, quickly, takes +- 8 seconds
Also 80% of simplified characters existed before the 50's ua-cam.com/video/fojzNrwAAyI/v-deo.html
To be honest, it would really have to depend from person to person. From my personal experience and many of my other Chinese friends’, typing is often the way to go due to how quick it is. This is probably due to a phenomenon called “character amnesia”, and also ‘cause our hands get tired lol. Maybe I should’ve specified experiences vary, or at least conducted an experiment. My bad.
When I did the research for the video, I didn’t really spot the 80% statistic anywhere, even though I did view ABChinese’s video. My bad, but I did try searching for that claim online and I couldn’t find it anywhere else other in the video. But, considering how much 草书, vulgar forms, etc there was, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.
@@theqthateducates Don't apologise, there weren't any mistakes in the video- I just wanted to tell you my thoughts about a couple of the topics you discussed
Great video but I feel like you must have been kidding (?) when you said “who even follows stroke order?”. If any beginners are reading this comment, please know that if you don’t follow the correct stroke order, 99 times out of 100, everyone (including non-native speakers) can see that you failed to write the character correctly, and it will look clumsy af. Please don’t spend all that time memorizing characters only to have them look ridiculous. Just get it right.
One last tip, if you learn traditional characters, you will be told that learning simplified afterwards will be much easier but it‘s *not* as easy as they make it sound. Sure, it’s probably easier that trying to learn traditional after learning simplified but it’s a mistake to think that learning traditional first makes learning simplified a breeze. It’s not.
I thought the Chinese character for tree is 木... Hmmm...
Anyways, 漢字 from Japan uses Traditional Characters 😃
In Mandarin, 木 (pinyin: mù) means “wood”.
As with regards to Japanese, yes some characters weren’t simplified, such as the character 風 (rōmaji: kaze) which means “wind”. However, some characters like 国 (rōmaji: kuni), which means “country”, were simplified (國 > 国)
Some characters are actually simplified and some are even modified
japanese character "気" is simplified from 氣
@@theqthateducates 木not quite excatly means wood and can also be tree. Some examples refer to tree using 木 in chinese: 喬木, 鳳凰木, 杉木, 接骨木
2:02 Stroke order doesn't matter? I thought the same while learning Japanese in the mid 1980s. Yamada-sensei told me she could tell every kanji I wrote that was written using incorrect order. I challenged her in a blind test with a few classmates watching on. She thoroughly embarrassed me and I gave newfound respect to stroke order.
Stroke order is just the natural way to write characters when written from top to bottom.
You don't write b by drawing the circle, and then adding a line, right? Same thing with chinese. You don't write 尔 and then 人 to make 你.
@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx Not always
“Who actually follows stroke order”
Damn I never knew…
the pinyin thing is the same for japanese keyboards too!
Yeah there’s I believe the Romaji keyboard
@@theqthateducates im coming over to your house soon btw
@@theqthateducates It's called GODAN (ゴダン)... I use it
@@BlueCruiser
Ah okay 👍
For japanese, there's also a T9 style keyboard that gives you まなかたはさらあ ecc on a grid
To choose the right hiragana, you press on the one with the consonant you want, and slide your finger around to pick the specific hiragana you need
it's pretty neat, and probably something i should learn to use at somepoint
As a abc f your traditional characters. I takes me less time to learn now then when it was taught by Taiwanese teachers. Now I’m able to communicate with people from mainland
I can read both, just a different way to write. I mean even in English, bad writing is harder to read.
I have a way of staying neutral between the two types of characters - instead of using either, I use Japanese shinjitai for to write everything, even for Chinese texts. Is it incorrect? Yes, but it is definitely still intuitively legible to anyone who knows Chinese, and I find it to strike a unique balance.
対不起
stroke order is a serious thing though
Yes, I have to believe that he was kidding when he said that.
TC and SC have become politicized in mainland
你好
Mhh nope Singapore is a malay contry is the chinese that keeps on coming non stop and they forget and just say is their contry😒
10000 IN CHINESE CHARACTERS
萬=TRADITIONAL
万=SIMPLIFIED
traditional chinese is more easier to understand compared to simplified chinese. traditional chinese is more context compared to simplified chinese.
I am a traditional characters supporter and a native cantonese. I wanna make a few comments to your points.
I dont care the handwriting speed that much cuz I dont write that much in daliy but even if I need to I can and most people can write really fast in traditional characters, roughly around 1sec per character.
Second, I dont type chinese pinyin but 速成, some people use 倉頡 or 大易(I didnt learn it in my grade school), some people would use 九方 if they pay. They all have one thing in common and all are available microsoft, mac.
Third, ambiguity and cultrural implication are big problem in simplied chinese but not in traditional but since you are not yet to the advance level of chinese I cant tell you a lot but one thing I can say is simplied chinese is just a complete disaster at that level. Another thing is if taiwan made the simplied chinese why dont the taiwanese or the government use them?
Fourth, literacy rate, well that's due to china gov policy, they made that happen.
I would not give you my full answers so that I can get you to research in a much deeper level.
Last but not least, this is a story I heard from a chinese youtuber in mandarin, simplied chinese user:
...(two parties fighting each other) the 'don' is commonly used in chinese but in traditional chinese the word is written as 黨, black and dirty things under same rooftop, the ancient chinese do that way cuz they knew that things always happen...
I, a traditional chinese user, never heard of that.
Yes, I addressed the writing and typing bit. There is a small difference between writing speeds of Simplified and Traditional characters. Still, it’s objectively true that Simplified characters are faster to write, even if the difference is minimal. However, with regards to typing, yes they are the same speed. Also yes I’m aware there are other systems outside of Pinyin, such as typing Jyutping (which I use when typing Cantonese) and stuff like Wubi (my mom knows Wubi).
I feel like there is still some ambiguity to be addressed with Traditional Chinese. One could argue that since all characters take up the same amount of space, some Traditional characters can feel really “squished” if you know what I mean, and making them harder to read. But, you’re absolutely right when saying that Simplified has several problems with it, such as merging characters which can cause even more ambiguity. I feel like the simplification of characters could’ve been done better. With regards to culture, there were Simplified characters before Traditional characters, just in the form of 草书 and vulgar forms. One could argue that has more cultural significance.
The KMT government didn’t adopt their Simplified version due to opposition from people within the party, like I said in the video. It’s to be said that despite this, Simplified Chinese is used informally in Taiwan. I’ve heard accounts of Taiwanese students who used Simplified characters in their notes to save time. But with regards to official stuff and the government, Traditional Chinese is most definitely used.
There were definitely other factors that contributed to an increase in mainland China’s literacy rate. Still, 97% is pretty impressive and it’s very likely that Simplified Chinese made things a bit easier. But that’s more so just my opinion.
@@theqthateducates There are a lot of things that a native doesnt come across, but if I am at your age and start learn chinese, I would feel the same as yours.
'Squished' problems are due to the fact that you are a beginner to a new language. I learnt to read japanese few years ago and got confused and struggled on its writing as japanese doesnt have spacing between words. Later on I got myself to recognise some particles, learnt the gammmars and volcabularies and started to understand what was going on (although I cant write japanese at this moment). On the other side, too much building blocks in a character. Yes, sometimes too much things is a bit annoying but those are not frequently used. From my point of view, you will start to appreciate the beauty and context of traditional one when you go deeper into the chinese. If simplication can keep up the context of a word, it could be a thing, but it takes trenmendous time and effort to reintroduce and reorganise everything and definitely unrealistic.
The question for which using traditional or simplified characters is better for education purpose has the same nature as children playing video games could cause a prob on their studying that is of course a myth or misunderstanding.
To be honest, we native accept the thing it is, like if it doesnt come to a matter, we just take it.
In fact, one big reason why I don't use and hate simplified chinese is the true evil political purpose behind the chinese communist party that is to destroy chinese and its culture to impose the chinese-style communism. You maybe shocked of this but it is written in the official document.
I dont want to dive to deep into the chinese policy things but make the long story short the gov itself wanna creat that differences.
Despite being a hater of simplified chinese, I do wanna make a fair judgement to both writings and provide comment as a native
@@hochungyip1123
I’m not one to discuss politics when it comes to the nature of these topics. But, I wouldn’t associate all of Simplified Chinese with the communist government, since there were plenty of Simplified characters way before the communists took over. For example, the Simplified 云 is MUCH older than Traditional 雲.
@@theqthateducatesJust to let you know native's thought on this and of course I knew some words were not made to be simplified at that time but the ancient chinese had been using.
Just one more thing comes up in my mind, if you say 書(suu), 晝(zau), 畫(wa) this kind of ambiguity in chinese, similarity in indeed, appears across many languages, say English for example, there are homonym, homophone and homograph like to, two and too; stationary and stationery etc. This kind of similarity still can be acceptable cuz deep down they have different pronounciation, spelling and writing to differentitate them.
🇨🇳 🇸🇬 🇲🇾 > 🇹🇼 🇭🇰 🇲🇴
1919年五四运动后，中文书写模式由文言文转换白话文，从字义转变成词义，学中文是看词义，而非简单字义。
你们说的“发”，“發”，“髮”，在文言文中是不同字义同音字，在中国大陆把它们统一成“发”，变成同音字不同词组，产生不同词义。
中国大陆受到基本教育能看懂繁体书写的文学，而繁体人无法懂得简体书写的文学。
the literacy rate isn't really related to the writing system, no? im not an expert or anything but it stands out as odd to me and something id guess more likely is from social programs/more people going to standardized schooling and such, though id love if anyone could offer me a source that shows otherwise :)
I think that the writing system did play a role here, but it’s to be said that there were certainly other factors involved here. Simplified Chinese helped offer a helping hand essentially
其实也就是大篆与小篆的区别，汉字从甲骨文开始就一直在简化
one is simplifed. the other is traditional. you already know the answer. anyone today likes hand wash your clothes? I would want machines to Simplify the work.
I don’t like simplified Chinese for abandoning right to left top-down direction of reading.
Also the loss of meaning components removed from characters by the CCP in the 50's
simplified didnt abandon top down and left right
@@willl237 Precisely, simplified is reading like we do in the west with left to right and from the top down.
But in Taiwan they use the old way of reading from right to left top down just like they do in Japan for example.
I would have liked them to maintain the old way of reading it like that, but it’s just my opinion, in the end it doesn’t really matter from where you read I guess
发 from 髪 and 發 are disgusting enough i had to use trad over simplified
As a japanese learner i have to say that the the traditional characters look too complicated and the tradicional ones are way too ugly, and japanese is just about right
Traditional (Standard) Characters are actually officially called 正體字, and simplified characters are 簡化字. The shorthand forms that are used in Taiwan are very different from simplified characters used in CCP-occupied territories, they are based on Japanese new characters and few characters have their own forms that are used only by Taiwanese like 奌 as the shorthand form of 點, CCP scrip uses only 点.
正體字 means Standard characters, as in opposite of 異體字 variant characters. Every place has its own 正體字。In Mainland China, the simplified characters are the Standard, and so they are also 正體字。In Hongkong and Macau, while Traditional Characters (繁體字）are still used, some have different standards compared to the ones used in Taiwan (e.g 裡-裏，線-綫，峰-峯). The ones used in Hongkong would be considered Standard characters in HK, and the Taiwan specific ones won't be. 繁體字 is the opposite of 簡體字, 正體字 is not.
正體字，like the term 國語, are limited in Location. Sure, in one place a language is the "National language", and the script is "The standard script"; doesn't mean that it is the same everywhere else.
What you are saying is only good for non-Chinese users trying to learn Chinese. To those born Chinese, the choice of Traditional and Simplified Chinese should not be debatable. Simplified Chinese destory the spirits how anicent Chinese craft our character (the 6 classification). And not to mention the ambiguity Simplified Chinese created, they may as well abandon the writing system together and just used only romanized pinying.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by that it destroyed the 6 classification. Please elaborate on that. I will agree that there are definitely inconsistencies with the simplification. Still though, I’d argue that in the long run, people get by. Also, Pinyin would be WAYYYY more ambiguous (I know you were likely being sarcastic, but you know)
@@theqthateducates The 6 classification (六法) simply refer to how the anicent Chinese contrust our character. The details is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification. It would be too long for me to type out the details. In short, Simplified Chinese bypass/ignore/destory how Chinese got our written language.
@@pngmk2
I’m not quite sure how Chinese character simplification messes with the six classification?
@@theqthateducatesLet me give you a few examples:
The word "後" (it means at the back/left behind) was created with "彳" radical means it is assoicated with movement, and "夋" (the component is not a official word, so I am using a similar one, but you get the idea) is a Pictogram with someone foot got tangled up. And its simplified form "后" (it means queen) was just a homophone of "後", it has zero logic to associate with being left behind.
The word "愛" (it means to love) has a "心" (heart) radical so it is very self-explantory. Its simplified form "爱" simply remove the heart radical altogether.
Or the word "廣" (it means wide/big/to spread) has a radical "广" means it is assoicated with housing, its anicent writing indicate a man standing in a giant palace/hall without walls. Also the component "黃" is also a phonetic component to indicate how to prounce it. And its simplified form "广" is not only just a radical of the "廣" but also prounce differently and is a word of its own with totally different meaning (it means straw hut).
I can go on and on about how simplified Chinese make no logical sense at all with regards to how Chinese construct our written language. But if you ever decided to discuss languages around the world, learning some basic knowledges on the topic about would help a long way. Afterall, Chinese characters are not some random curves and strokes we put together just to confuse foreign people. It is how our ancestor preceive the world and it withstand a test of time until CCP come ruined everything we had in our culture & traditions.
@@pngmk2
Ok I see what you’re saying. Yes there are some parts of the simplification that I also found quite illogical, such as simplifying 聽 (listen) to 听, where the 耳 (ear) component is completely lost and replaced with a 口 (mouth), which doesn’t make sense ‘cause you don’t listen with your mouth and some other irregularities that you’ve already mentioned. Still though, not all simplified characters are illogical, like simplifying 張 to 张 and etc. It’s important to remember that there were several simplified forms derived from 草书 and other vulgar varieties lying around, and that certain Simplified characters have a history WAY longer than Traditional characters (compare the history of 云 to 雲), so you can’t really blame it all on the CCP. Our ancestors crafted Simplified characters BEFORE they were even called Simplified characters.
You have an American understanding which is politically biased towards Taiwan and not quite correct. Both the Simplified and Traditional are standardized sets of characters, one by China and one by Taiwan. You can check Wikipedia for the histories. Before One China Policy of 1979, the US recognised Taiwan as China and China was poorer so their language was not economically important and most overseas Chinese used the Taiwan style. After China became big and important, people are switching to the China style. China has many local spoken dialects as well as writing styles, not only simplified and traditional but more. People need a standardised set of language both spoken and written to communicate and they should all learn one, but which one? Well the answer is obvious, it is China’s Chinese which includes both the Simplified written Chinese and the spoken Chinese which is called Chinese, not Mandarin, again Mandarin is for Taiwan. You learn Chinese not Taiwanese. Chinese classes in schools in Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries with significant Chinese population follow China’s curriculum. In a generation or two people from Africa, Middle East, Latin America, Central Asia and Russia might be speaking as much Chinese as English or Spanish.
I’m pretty sure both 普通话 and 国语 refer to Mandarin
@@theqthateducates First Mandarin doesn’t in China, only Taiwan and US for that matter. Chinese is 中文， Mandarin is 国语. The project to create a standardised Chinese written and spoken language began in the early 20th century by late Qing Dynasty scholars. In the 1920s the KMT was in charge and created 国语 which they later brought to Taiwan. The US recognised Taiwan as China until One China Policy from 1979. That is what on Wikipedia both China and Taiwan have Chinese as official language but Taiwan has an additional language called Mandarin in English and 国语 in Chinese. Technically, Putonghua and Mandarin sound quite different. Watch CCTV and Taiwan media, the spoken language differ quite a bit in word use and even more in pronunciation. Basically the Taiwan southern accent has little R sounds which the Beijing northern accent has more R sounds. Probably that is because a large portion of the two million KMT soldiers fled to Taiwan in 1949 were from Fujian.
@@michael511128 no I’m pretty sure both 普通话 and 国语 refer to Mandarin (I guess if we are being more specific, “Standard Chinese” or “Standard Mandarin” because Mandarin could be used to refer to the entire dialect group 官话, which that naming endeavor is a whole other story and honestly one I disagree with). The only difference is that 普通话 is the term used in China and 国语 is the term used in Taiwan. But either way both refer to Mandarin.
Also I wouldn’t be 100% sure about Wikipedia, it’s a great source but I’ve noticed some inconsistencies 🤔
@@theqthateducates That is another confusion. Mandarin was a 17th Century Portuguese word turned English. It was used by Europeans and Americans to distinguish Cantonese and Beijing spoken language since for a century Canton was the only trading port opened to foreign trade. As explained it was the KMT who chose to follow the Americans to call 国语 Mandarin which has no recognition by China after 1949. Certainly the fact that KMT was headed by Chiang and wife Soong and brother who were educated in the US has a lot to do with it. Therefore from the beginning Mandarin has always been a western invention. That’s the way they like to refer to spoken Chinese which has little to do China.
@@theqthateducates By the same token, there was never a Manchuria in neither. Portuguese sailors took the word Manchu from Japanese map.
I'm learning Chinese and we (my class at school) learn simplified Chinese over traditional. We do use stroke order since we're tested on it, and it usually makes the characters look neater, but like.. man am I glad we learn simplified. writing out the step by step stroke order for 髦 is annoying enough I don't want to write out sth that or more complex for every one 😭
plus we almost never type 🫠
Japanese and Korean recently "discarded" traditional-scripts. China is second-generation simplified.
Culture of chinese
= Progress is to be able to adapt and be flexible.
= abilities and capabilities producing over achievers
= establish good baselines (good grades and no excuse) leading to spurts and accelerated learning later in life (depart from other cultures)
= ...
Debate on what to not-learn = bad words, negative words (automatic society teach 社会大学)
Debate on right and wrong = 错别字，同音字，万事无绝对，。。。
Debate on how to insult with simplified/traditional scripts = gongfu character strokes after age of 40.
Debate on 诗情画意 (origination of characters)，饮诗作对，...
Debate on how to lose to others = ...
When enemy want to be right... yes, they are right. We are both, all, many, more, ...
I can think of only two downsides to traditional characters, and both are extremely minor:
1. If the font is small, characters with a lot of strokes will be slightly more difficult to read. If it's on a computer, you can literally just make the font bigger, though. But my (Taiwanese) wife can read a text from far away with no problem at all, so it doesn't seem to be a problem at all for native speakers.
2. It takes slightly longer to write. An experiment would have to be done to see by how much, but unless you're writing an entire book by hand, I think the difference is negligible and not even a big deal at all. You might save one minute for every 20 pages you write out by hand (just a total guess). But it would depend on the text. That's because a large amount of characters have the exact same form in both systems, or only differ by a stroke or two.
The amount of times you write 话 instead of 話 might make up 1 second over 1 page.
As someone who can sorta speak Chinese and can read a little bit (parents are native, but I grew up in the US), I don’t feel a difference. I think that both Traditional and Simplified feel the same.
I feel like when reading, I look at the overall shape of the character, rather than focusing on the individual strokes. It’s a similar story for English. I’m pretty sure most people do not read every word letter-by-letter - that would be slow, but instead, read based off of the entire overall shape of the word.