The TRUE Origins of Simplified Chinese
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- ✍️ SYNOPSIS: Were simplified Chinese characters really created in the 1950s? Common wisdom would say yes, but the truth may shock you. Uncover the fascinating evolution of Chinese characters as we learn about the various ways that Chinese was simplified throughout history.
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📍TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - The TRUTH About Simplified Characters
1:48 - The 7 Methods of Simplifying Chinese
2:36 - (1) Vulgar characters
3:03 - (2) Cursive forms
4:33 - (3) Ancient forms
5:27 - (4) Merging homophones
6:31 - (5) Retain the unique portion
7:06 - (6) Substitute the phonetic component
8:09 - (7) Meaningless symbols
▶️ History of Pinyin (1/3): • Why Chinese Created an...
▶️ Simplification of Chinese (2/3): • When They Nearly KILLE...
▶️ The Truth About Simplified Chinese (3/3): This video;)
⚠️ NOTES:
1) I use 正体字/正體字 in this video to mean "traditional characters" because in historical context where there are "proper characters" and "vulgar characters," 正體字 ("proper characters") is the more appropriate term. (As opposed to 繁体字 "complex characters")
2) I make a comparison to the Qing dynasty (1:48), but the situation I described where there's a "proper" set of characters and many "variant" characters has exist in most of China's history. And it's important to clarify that when I say a certain character "has existed since..." it doesn't mean that it was the "proper" character, but a variant that existed ALONGSIDE the official character.
3) I called vulgar characters "俗字" but it says "俗体字" on the slide (2:01). Both mean the same thing.
4) The 爱 character at (3:57) is technically "running script" (行书) or semi-cursive script.
5) The reason the rain radical was added to 云/雲 was because the 云 character took on the meaning of "to say" in ancient China, so adding the rain radical made sense to clarify the meaning (it also matches with other weather related words like 雷/thunder, 雾/fog).
6) The fourth method (merging homophones) also has a Chinese name: 同音代替, meaning to "replace with the same sound". One might think that using this method makes Chinese more confusing, but in reality, these simplifications only happened when the meanings can be deduced from context (like in 乾/幹/干) or when one character has become archaic (like 几/small table). However, machine translation still have some trouble converting simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese because of these consolidated characters.
7) The history of Chinese characters is long and winding, and add in the fact that they were used by 4 modern countries and hundreds of ethnic groups, means there are lots of variations and inconsistencies. And in many cases, it's difficult to say with 100% certainty how a certain character came to be. Students of Chinese can only look through historical artifacts to see when a certain form first appeared. And the "methods of simplification" are merely observations of patterns in simplified characters, and not a rule. These methods can explain the origins of perhaps 95% of simplified characters, but many characters use a mix of these methods and may not fall neatly in a particular category. The remaining 5% use rare "methods" or have an unclear origin.
📚 REFERENCES:
简化字源: amzn.to/3QWPYyP
Long Story of Short Forms (ENG alternative): www.academia.edu/85373701/Lon...
More Than... (shorter read): pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin...
Chart of Chinese scripts: projects.leadr.msu.edu/traditi...
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If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out my videos on the history of simplified characters and the history of pinyin!
▶ History of Simplified Chinese: ua-cam.com/video/SOkab7GyPtI/v-deo.html
▶ History of Pinyin: ua-cam.com/video/1fL_S9GAVzE/v-deo.html
Not politically correct on UA-cam.
love doesn‘t have a heart （心）but has a friend （友）
In both character forms 愛 ／ 爱 the understanding aspect is just a different way to reach the same conclusion.
Love requires a heart
Love requires beginning with a friend
Is that hit youtuber raw coppwr
It has in traditional
@@icyboy771z no, there's a 攵 in it
there's no "heart" in "love" either, since when is this a big deal? Not saying simplifie chinese is perfect, but some people are just making up arbitrary rules to shame simplified chinese for the sake of doing it. Imagine reading 憂鬱的臺灣烏龜 in fine print.
The foremost principle of the simplification project is "述而不作", which translate to "to find, not to make". It means the expert who is responsible for the simplication project generally need to find the existing simpler version of these characters, not to make their own version.
Chinese are always pragmatic
That's exactly the reason why the second round of simplification failed.
Just use pinyin for the ultimate round... :)
@@Baranausko That is a terrible idea.
@@Baranausko no, Google the Chinese poem ' shi shi shi shi shi' and u'll find out why it's a terrible idea.
About ancient forms, sometimes the original, simpler form was changed because of double meanings. In ancient times, 云 originally meant cloud, but it was phonetically loaned for the word "say", which didn't yet have a character. Then the meaning "say" eventually took over the character, and to differentiate, they added the “雨” radical for the original meaning "cloud". Other words like 从 and 网 had something similar but more complicated.
I was going to say that, well done.
Another one is 电. 申 is the original form of both 神 and 電, it is the pictogram of a lightning bolt. However it was borrowed later to mean "to express", and 神 and 電 were created to distinguish these meanings and specialize, with 神 representing the gods that caused the lightning and 電 representing the lightning itself, as 申 was used for both 神 and 電. But because 申 is still used with it's borrowed meaning, the 申 in 電 continued to have it's tip curved to differentiate from 申 when simplifying
@@josefonsecadecarvalhoolive1992 There are many examples of characters like these. 申 is one of the most interesting though for sure
@@xnihilist6510 But I have a question: what extra meanings 从 and 网 had that 從 and 網 didn't? From my research, both were simply considered ancient forms and the meaning was the same
@@josefonsecadecarvalhoolive1992 For 網, there is this weird phenomenon where sometimes a character will have itself as a radical. This is the case for characters like 老，where the radical comes from the pictogram 老 (an old man bent over a cane 匕). Over time, 老 became a radical 耂 itself, and in fact 老 is the radical for many words like 考、孝 etc. 網 has the same thing, where originally it meant net, but then became a radical meaning the same thing, and because of its usage in words like 罔 (deceive). So to differentiate, it ceased to be used (though never really losing its original meaning) in place of 網, which was more phonetic-semantic, but its phonetic component actually contains the original variant form 网.
從 is admittedly far less complicated, its original form was just 从 but some linguist probably realised that two people standing is too ambiguous, and thus added 辵, a word meaning walk.
A bit of extra info:
医 is originally another character unrelated to 醫, which means a container for storing arrows. But this meaning was forgotten with time and later became a variant of 醫
听 is also originally an unrelated character to 聽, which means to have a big mouth or to talk much. It was also forgotten with time and was ressignified with the simplification scheme as the simplified form of 聽
声 is actually the original form of 聲, it is the pictogram of a bell, therefore noise, and later a 殳 (weapon) and a 耳 (ear) were added to specialize the meaning; someone beating a bell with a tool and another one hearing the noise produced by the strikes on the bell
You are wrong about 听 it's a corrupted form from "口厅" mouth radical to the left and 厅 to the right, since 厅 was a very new vulgar character back then it was confused with 斤 so it was recorded as 听.
Source? Check “宋元以來俗字譜”
@@lilythebluespheresfan2897 I've seen 𠯸 some times since I made this comment, and yeah, probably the reason why 听 was chosen to be the simplified form of 聽 was because of that. But is true that 听 is also a character on its own unrelated to 聽. And I know 厅/庁 is an ancient simplified form of 廳
Thanks, I was wondering why they get rid of the “ear” of that character when was fundamental to understand the meaning, but now thinking that it looks like a bell it’s an interesting idea and easier to reming. Learning hanzi is funny, well I’m actually learning Japanese.
@@floptaxie68 characters were added or changed over time based on the usage of the period
听和闻，两字的意义互换，有这很有意思的历史故事
实际上现在还有很多地方保留着原本的含义，听表达鼻嗅，比如【听香】
闻指代耳闻，同古意
This is likely the best video covering simplified characters on UA-cam, without the unnecessary political bs. Well done.
I have been teaching college Chinese classes in the US for over 20 years. Everything you point out here is exactly what I have been explaining to my students since day one. I really appreciate your hard work and well-researched video. I can show this video to my students now:)
also note that the merge meaning/pronunciation simplication method is totally made by mandarin speaker to mandarin speakers… some characters merged have similar pronunciation in mandarin but not in other chinese languages like cantonese or whatever.
Good point. As a Mandarin learner, I actually never thought about that before.
Personally merging homophones was the worst decision to me. Also you should had talked about “第一批简体字表” (The First Batch of Simplified Characters) where the variant form origins are more concise.
I think the idea was to use common homophones to replace them, but yeah
Traditional or simplified both have there advantages. However the biggest problem or 败笔in simplified is the decision to merge characters into one. Even though by context you can still understand, it wouldn’t change much to reinstate a couple characters to differentiate homonyms. Im sure people are smart enough to learn 后 and 後 has two different things so comparatively, why go through the trouble of relying on context when you can just learn a couple extra couple characters. To me merging multiple characters into one just made it more complicated.
Totally agree with you. The CCP have done it as if there's only Mandarin in Chinese. In fact, after merging, local dialects lost their meanings and sounds and had to desigate new pronunciation with Mandarin. In Teochew, for example, they must designate the new sound and meaning of 后 hou + ao after merging the exising word 後 ao.
Mandarin in not just only the common language, but the centralized one.
@@kiloPhyll Exactly. Same tactics since Qing to modern, actively destroying older Han culture.
@@kiloPhyll Did you even watch the video?
I'm all for learning the simplified characters. They're certainly easier to write in many ways. But I like the traditional characters because there are so many beautiful meanings that are still necessary to preserve and hold dear.
My taiwanese friends told me they would actually use some simplify characters to take notes or even write homeworks cus it's quicker, but switch to perfect traditional characters when taking exams.
@@KinLee919 Because nowadays, the traditional Chinese are actually the 'protected due to political reasons'. Mainland Chinese are free to use traditional Chinese in their daily life yet if Taiwanese started using Mainland words or characters they would be called a 'spy'.
Very surprising! I always thought simplified characters were made recently. I think simplified and traditional are both beautiful👌Awesome video and welcome back!
Haha thank you~
This is how I speculated simplified characters came to be too. Simply because languages are living things, you can't force them to bend or change as you wish. The fact that suddenly Chinese govt could change the whole 3thousand year old writing system was a little unbelievable. Now it makes more sense.
They too demonize the Communist Party's ability to destroy a written system in a matter of decades.
that's right, we tried to simplify hanzi the 2nd time and failed in 1970s, this version had more man-made characters than already existed ones.
Languages and characters are constantly evolving with strong government intervention. 秦篆，汉隶，唐楷 are all government-regulated. Who can claim they are the most authoritative?
But the fact is that the simplification of Chinese characters began as early as two thousand years ago in the Han Dynasty.
Authoritative restructuring or reform doesn't work for languages unless all the users also accept the change. How much of the total chinese/mandarin speakers-users are accepting the govt made changes at any given period of history determines whether the reform actually causes changes to the language.
Your videos are always pleasant to watch, and the content is definitely distinguished from the others. I always learn a lot. Thanks and keep it up!
氣気气 you also sometimes get 3 or more versions of the same character
繁體字:氣;日本簡化的字:気;簡體字:气;本字:气
I’m not a Chinese speaker nor learner (I would love to but fear butchering it) but I love your channel. Informational and entertaining simultaneously.
If you want to learn just go for it! It’s the effort that counts
also tbh butchering stuff is natural :0 it’s all a part of acquisition and I totally understand the hesitance!!! but at the end of the day it’s nothing to be ashamed of, really it’s essential to feel a bit rocky and...honestly, _foreign_ when learning a foreign language :0
Trust me, don't fear butchering it. To be honest, you could say that for any skill, because you won't instantly be good at anything. I've started learning mandarin only quite recently, but it has already been extremely rewarding.
@@dankmemewannabe7692 That’s true! Haha you’re making me want to push ahead of my nerves and try. I’ve picked up learning a few languages in the past and dropped them all out of fear 😓
@@rawcopper604 I hope you’ve been enjoying it! Seriously, that’s amazing.
My favorite homophone replacement is 義->义 (comes 乂 from but adds a dot to differentiate)
義訓
Sorry for the long wait! 😭😭😭 Hope this video was worth it and I’ll try to talk slower next time… I realized when editing that I was talking too fast a lot
It's okay, people tend to talk faster on things they are excited about, and this is downright fascinating
you could easily turn this into "how to learn simplified (or traditional) when you only know the other character set. No one has really done such a video; i was really happy when i figured out that i would be able to learn the other character set from the one i started learning, but most newbies don't know that and are all confused about which they should chose to learn and have no idea, none, what the system for simplification is.
or maybe a second shorter video as a lead in or follow up to this.
it's a really good video on an absent topic. thank you!
also i think both character sets should be used and seen as alternative characters. it's often easier to recognize traditional but is certainly easier to hand write simplified.
note: you missed some of the simplifications which drop a stroke or strokes like using two dots bing instead of three dots shui or caozitou but still a great video! again, thank you!
If other people need you to talk slower that's fine but it was fine for me
@@QuizmasterLaw That’s a good idea! I’m currently learning traditional so many I’ll do that later after I feel like I’ve gone through the process haha
Yes you spoke too fast and I missed many points. The purpose of communication is to be understood. It is not a race for who can finish the sentence or video the fastest.
这个视频即便放在中文互联网上，也是算是相当不错的汉字简繁科普了。尤其是“云”字起源我还是第一次听说，其他简化逻辑也总结得相当到位。
Very, very interesting and well presented as always. Teaching seems to come so naturally for you. Well done!
This video is amazing! Thank you for your research
雲 and 云 are both traditional characters. 雲 is emphasizing the original meaning, namely cloud. 云 is the phonetic loan character, meaning "to speak". Using in for example 云云.
You are absolutely right. Simplified characters were from ancient times.
wow thank you for the video! I learn simplified characters but was literally looking down on them :)
understand, you may have influenced by those Taiwanese and Hong Konger who refuse to learn simplified Chinese just because it came from mainland China.
Superb video - I’ve heard talk of this before, but it’s valuable to have this clear explanation.
What a great video! I learned a lot. Super interesting and informative. Thanks.
So informative, great perspective! I never know this before.
I don't know enough Chinese to read printed materials or read subtitles. I only know some words (traditional) from Chinese school (California), some self learning of Shaw Brother movie star names, some words from a dim sum menu and one class in college.
I enjoyed this video and will share it with others. Thanks for your hard work/research!
What a great video!! What is the best VPN to use in China though? I’m going to take a short language course in Beijing and will need one.
真的很有趣的视频, 非常有意思, 谢谢！
just ask any journalist to make a quick note, they will write it as simple as possible(even simplifying already simplifed chinese).
simplified writing system is necessary until digital era, where we start using computer input most of the time. its not a must anymore. but still comes handy when u have to do some hand writing.
the "simplification" and "complixification(which did happen a few times)" of characters is kind of interesting because it kind of reflects the historical political environment.
Qin complicates things to make sure the old characters cannot "pass" as Qin characters, Han more or less doing what Qin did, Jin dynasty simplify(with cursives) because their nobles deliberately rebel against the rules.
Northern and Southern, Sui, and Tang dynasties also simplify because they are multicultural and their nobilities have to learn multiple languages(Han, Xianbei, Turchik, Tibetan, even Arabic), and their peasants has to do more commerce with non Chinese.
Song complixifies because they are a stickler for traditional value and academic excellence.
Yuan simplifies because they are Mongols and has to be bilingual(at least).
Ming complexifies because they want to restore the traditional Han culture and tradition, so much so they kind of overdo it to the point of caricature.
Qing is Manchu so they also has to be multilingual, but they also REALLY wants to keep the people illiterate.
the RoC and PRC both want to ensure maximum literacy rate so both simplified to some degree, but PRC did it WAYYYY more, and RoC partly reverted because PRC simplified(to only keep the simplification they did before the Chinese civil war). also, Japan also developed Shinjitai to simplify their Kanji to maximize literacy, but also reverted partly because PRC's almost insane push for simplification.
I rea,ly like this video as chinese student always interested about chinese characters and its history .Very interesting.
Nice breakdown of the 7 ways characters are simplified. I would like to see a list of all simplified characters organized according to these 7 simplification methods. Anyone know if something like that exists somewhere?
i’m also looking for that
I don't know. Wiktionary is great for etymology, but you'd have to manually look for each character.
This is a very well made video. It's beyond necessary since most foreigners are still clueless about the history of the writing and how the system evolved. While I understood all of this haven married a Chinese spouse who is an epic historian I always find it interesting the use of the word "traditional", given that we know there have been many scripts and as you pointed out some of the simplified ones are in fact quite old, which would make them "traditional". I always wonder why in spoken Mandarin we have 繁体字 Fanti, which should translate to "complex" characters. Instead the word traditional is used which I think brings more confusion. People have this idea that the characters were the same forever until the CCP decided to simplify them, and probably because of the word "traditional" in English. On the other hand you have the word simplified. Complex characters, Simplified characters, I think makes more sense. anyways, just my two cents. Great video. Excellent research and presentation.
complex characters
simple characters
I assume 繁體字 is a modern term invented after simplified became the standard form in mainland China. In the past, they were just called 漢字, and if you wanted to specify, you could say it is 楷書 or whatever style. In Taiwan, they say 正體字, or “standard form”. Historically, they were the standard. Simplified versions were used, but not as the standard.
@@xuexizhongwen obviously，maybe u dont understand what he say in this video yet😆
it's basically like using u/ ure instead of you and you're and call it standard.
u ur yer a pirate
Thank you for making me feel better about 爱 because now I can see how beautiful it is in cursive script. I wonder, would learning simplified Chinese help with recognizing some types of cursive script? It might because so many simplified characters come from cursive script. Besides the types mentioned in the video, does anyone know any other style of cursive script that have characters that look similar to simplified form? And I am also assuming some traditional characters look similar in cursive script as well.
Still not enough. Cursive fonts are very difficult to identify unless you know the context and you make a guess.
If you're not sure about which to learn, know it's probably a cultural difference. I'm interested in visiting Taiwan one day, but I don't trust the mainland government enough to travel there for any lengthy period of time. Combine that with the fact that my college's first two years of Chinese are in traditional, and that set me up for it. It is also easier to go from traditional to simplified than vice versa, but if you are going to be spending most of your time with simplified anyway it won't matter.
Even as a native (and although im mainlander i can read traditional characters with no problems) I'm still struggle with cursive script.
Wow thanks so much for this video!!
Foreigners might find it a bit challenging to understand how Chinese people seem to effortlessly switch between these two writing systems. I haven't learned traditional characters, but it seems that both reading and writing them pose no difficulty. I didn't pay much attention to this until one day I discovered that my child, who was only 10 years old at the time, for some reason, was writing all of his homework in traditional characters. No one had taught him, and he hadn't seemingly studied them much, although he certainly did learn, but it was clearly not deliberate.
Later on, he stopped using traditional characters because it obviously required twice as much writing time. Ha-ha.
Awesome video! Turns out there are many more methods to simplify characters than I thought.
While traditional characters retain deeper cultural meaning, simplified characters definitely help learning Chinese much easier and less intimidating. I guess I would quit learning Chinese altogether if I had to write super common characters like 會, 學, 對, 麼, 還 and 聽. 😂
I love simplified chinese in it's aestethics and simplicity, it facilitates the writing and the reading very much, and as an autistic individual with motor coordination problems, simplified chinese REALLY turns chinese calligraphy accessible to me. However, I also REALLY dislike the inconsistencies and the bad simplifications, and in my chinese class I am known as the student who frequently bashes simplified chinese
It's sort of like how some people think that spellings like "color" and "meter" are simplified versions created by americans but they're actually from Latin.
Love what you’re doing dude. Keep up the good work.
很好的影片😄😃
雖然自己母語是中文，但從這條影片中還是學到了很多之前不了解的方面。
其實無論繁體中文還是簡體中文，都有其價值和美感，都是很值得學習的。
虽然自己母语是中文，但从这条影片中还是学到了很多之前不了解的方面。
其实无论繁体中文还是简体中文，都有其价值和美感，都是很值得学习的。
在一定距离下,看繁体中文的时候有的汉字会模糊成一个黑团,简体中文就十分清晰明亮,这也算是一个优点.
@@ug6746但是，因為我覺得簡體字都好像一樣，因此我認為看繁體中文比看簡體中文幾分簡單
The fact that such a large amount of characters were simplified that way is not only the reason simplified characters were adopted, but also why the so called "second round" of simplification didn't catch on and was abandoned, as most of the second-round characters barely followed these methods, focusing more on ortography.
Sometimes I wonder how the world would look like if chinese was simplified more.
I would assume you would only arrive at the “80% already existed” if you count all characters with simplified radicals as “existing before 1950”. So if you say 语 existed since whenever because 言 has been abbreviated like that since forever. Like this, all simplified characters with 言字旁 would have existed before 1950. However, I don’t think that’s a fair way of counting and if you exclude those, you probably wouldn’t get to the 80% anymore.
Great info! Thanks
have you done a vid
on the weaknesses
of pinyin and simps?
The difficulty of Chinese characters is not the number of strokes, but the frequency of uses (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).
你天天在中文互联网混，水平提高很快的
Never forget Dùi 对 and Nán 难 😆
completely different left radicals (對，難), yet still has the Yóu 又 replacement.
Also there's this random pic I saw on Reddit of a Chinese newspaper, where there's an ultra simplification of the word Yì 意 with an Yǐ 乙 on top and a Xīn 心 at the bottom 😭
Great video and very educational. I may be wrong here, but it seems like there aren't any dialects that actually used simplified (Hokkien, Catonese, Hakka etc.). These dialects tend to be older than Mandarin (as we know it) and better preserved too, however may just be these dialects are better protected and taught in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas where 正體 (or a version of) are used.
These older dialects are better protected because these places weren't as tightly controlled by the Manchurians during Qing dynasty.
@@lunaaa8225 Understood, thank you!
Technically speaking, dialects can't be older or younger than each other. Only more conservative. That is to say, some dialects change more quickly.
Hokkien isn't "older" just because Min split off prior to middle Chinese. Middle Chinese went its own way while Min went its own way, and both kept changing.
old or young is looking at it synchronically if you say archaic vs divergent than thats diachronically also apply to dead lang like hittite elamite etc
If you did some research, the proposal of replacing traditional writing with simplified writing was put forwards by the KMT 国民党 in an effort to reduce the rate of illiteracy, cuz the traditional form was too hard to learn, at the time more than 50% of Chinese were illiterate. The famous Chinese author Lu Xun鲁迅 even once said if the (traditional) Chinese language is not eradicated, China will be doomed implying Chinese transitional forms were very difficult to learn. However the proposal was put on hold due to the Japanese invasion, after that the civil war between the CCP and KMT broke out, and the rest is just history. Replacing traditional forms with simplified forms is not some evil scheme by the CCP, it just makes logical sense. However, the Taiwanese likes to do whatever they could to smear the CCP that’s why they made this claim. It is the same reason for English becoming the international language, before that it was Latin which European scholars spoke to communicate internationally, but it was too hard to learn and hinder the spread of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, so eventually English took over.
Ok, but why did the KMT then not do any simplification during their long rule in Taiwan?
@@nd7915 because the CPC had done it. KMT sure didn't want to follow their enemy.😁 Now Taiwanese see traditional characters as an advantage over mainland.
It's true that simplification was a long process that was in the works since before the PRC. However, that doesn't mean simplified characters are confirmed to improve literacy.
THANK YOU for the amazing vid, i learned a lot from this even as a native speaker. So done with those cliches "simplified Chinese is inferior to traditional one" now I have better argument!!!
Have you ever heard the Second Round Simplified Chinese （二简子） and Singapore Chinese Character (Singapore used to have their own simplification method)? Also Japanese's Chinese characters called "Kanji" have their own simplification method. This is called "Shinjitai". Unreformed Kanji called "Kyujitai"
你现在看到的简体就都是二简字，一简被废除了
二简字 was so f@*ked up that even the forever correct CCP had to abandon it.
No. 二简字 has never been officially used. It was tried in 1977 and abolished in 1986.
错，二简并没有实行多久便被废除了，因为缺乏群众基础，它们大多长得奇形怪状，如今大多是一简字，只有极极少数的二简被保存了下来像“桔”
Japanese Shinji and kyuujitai are allographs, wiktionary glossary covers more like a kanji thats semi homophonous used because the og one is not in the toyo kanji list
i'm still traditional puritan. i believe that straying form originals and standards is bad for next generations. look at thai - they can almost freely read ancient texts, thanks to conservatism
See my comment. I want to know your thoughts.
Chinese people will always be able to read traditional characters; they're just not used in daily life anymore.
From a native speaker's perspective, simplified and traditional characters are not that different. Although handwriting can be difficult, with a little training native speakers can spot patterns and read without difficulty. When I was a child, I often downloaded pornographic novels from Taiwan and read them, all in traditional Chinese characters.
It's not difficult for SC users to read TC. And as the video pointed out, many simplified forms already existed. Finally, you're greatly mistaken if you think character forms are the biggest impediment to reading ancient texts or calligraphy.
As a chinese person, simplified chinese was SO impactful in changing the lives of a billion people through education. i would not have it any other way. Plus, language evolves naturally, the english we speak and write today is SO different from how it used to be. I think simplified chinese users would have a much easier time navigating trad characters that native english speakers would with old english
“…also burned books and killed a bunch of people” 😂😂 Love your videos, so informative. Having spent the past year working through HSK levels 1-3 it is a bit daunting to learn I will need to learn the cursive script as well…it looks like scribble!
I read this comment before watching the video, and assumed it referred to the CCP. Haha
Fascinating, thank you.
Moral of the story
People have been lazy since people have been a thing
As a chinese learner, I find the simplified version way more accessible someone who didn't have a sinitic language (or japanese) as a mother thongue. I mean, learning a writing system based on ideograms is already overwhelming, so learning traditional ideograms that can sometimes have 20, 30 strokes even more frigtning. Sometimes I look at the typing version of traditional characters I can't even distinguish the mass of pixels... That said, I do appreciate the traditional characters for their beauty and their complexity, and maybe I will learn then after my chinese skills are at a good level.
Honestly, I think traditional characters are overall easier to learn for non-native speakers because their structure is more intelligible/symmetric and their cross-relations are more obvious, thus they are easier to remember. In the very beginning, simplified might be easier though.
I mean, a lot traditional Chinese users ago write the simplified version when they wrote. It matter is which one is official. in real life it really doesn't matter, it is not hard to read both. The thing about Chinese characters is, even if people had never seen the character before, it is very easy to guess the sound and the meaning. for example, some Japanese characters isn't in either traditional or simplified Chinese, people still can recognize them.
@@nd7915Easier but harder to find material
The argument that it helps literacy seems not to hold water considering high literacy rate in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And oversees populations all using traditional.
interesting to see this
im hmong, we lost alot of traditional ways living and assimilating in the usa as collective minority group in minnesota
to see things revert towards back
its back to backwards
few days ago i got interested in the simplification methods of chinese characters, and the only characters that i found interesting was those inspired by cursive forms and ancient popular variant, I didn’t know that these represent 80% of the simplified characters !
Nice informative video 😎
The amount of research is insane
Thx for the video...:)
Sometimes I just don't get certain people, why can't they just accept the existence of both different writing systems, and not have to trash-talk one of them in biased of another. Like ok, if you like to write in traditional character then write in traditional character, nobody is stopping you. Just stop trash talk about the simplified character. 🙄
Both writing systems are lovely in their own ways, and two different character users should learn to coexist.
if someone know a dictionary where we can see what inspired the simplified forms, tell me plz !
I really like the endure character being a knife over a heart.
6:10 「乾(qián)」 in 「乾隆帝」 is not replaced into 「干(gān)」 because 「乾」 has two pronunciations in Mandarin Chinese.
awesome video! I'd like to make some additions to how 干 became the simplification of both 乾 and 榦 (and of 干 per se, of course):
like, the substitution of 干 for 榦 started fairly early in the history. ever heard of the "Ten Heavenly-Stems (十天干)"? it's been using 干 as 榦 there, and the ten heavenly-stems form a day-counting system created and applied no later than the Shang Dynasty.
meanwhile, 乾 also needs another form for it's gān pronunciation and its "dry" sense, since it's also used as the name of one of the Eight Trigrams, in which it is pronounced qián and stands for the heaven. 干 is adopted to take that responsibility probably no later than Tang Dynasty, since 干 is also used as "dry, dehydrated" in Japanese.
Perhaps because gan 干 itself means "stick", the word itself also has a similar meaning to the famous “F word” in Chinese.
@@user-nl2js1bk1p yeah, I heard the word "干菜类 (Dried Vegetables Section)" on sign was mistranslated as "F--- Vegetables". Also "干后" means "After Drying" can mistranslated as "after f---ing or f empress"
@@jakeferrison2487 A famous joke in Chinese translation: 干爆鸭子 (dry fried duck) was once translated as " F___ the duck until it booms".
@@user-nl2js1bk1p that's an unusual colocation or culinary style. Normally it's 干煸…，酱爆…，葱爆… so it's probably made up just for a joke.
干的本意就是指盾，没听说过 干戈 这个词吗?
Super explanation
That’s so cool. Why was I never taught this I Chinese class?
I don't know, but in my Chinese class we didn't talk about a ton of linguistic details. I think we actually did learn some of the process of simplification once we started to switch to simplified (my university does first two years in traditional, then the third in simplified).
6:20
OHHHHHHH
I have always been confused as to why sometimes 了 was pronounced as liao while other times le
This is part of the truth, 了 is a 多音字 (word with more than 1 pronunciation) even in traditional Chinese.
(A) 了 means something have already happen when it is pronounced as le
(B) 了 means ended / concluded /settled when it is pronounced as liao
Simplification just group more words with (B).
Fun fact: some Chinese dialects use the same 了 pronunciation for both (A) and (B)
了 liǎo was there for long time in parallel with 瞭. Yeah it means end. 事了拂衣去，深藏身与名。 春花秋月何时了，往事知多少。
Then it's reduced to le in oral form. Even nowadays some people still tend to pronounce liǎo like 讲完了，吃了饭, and it's acceptable.
yes, it could very well be as you say it, since it would have been a nightmare to find arbirary new substitutes for existing characters...but still, that old cloud character would be so easy to remember. for non-chinese people who want to satisfy their curiosity about chinese language, characters that are easier to recognize and remember are better than characters that are easir to write. we can understand why the chinese peoples themselves wold prefer characters that are easier to write, with fewer strokes..:-) adding so many tiny strokes all day long would have been a pain. but, the last approach makes chinese much more difficult for outsiders...
Thanks for the research and video on simplified characters. It can get so political. I see videos like this as helpful to bring about an enlightened understanding between peoples such as those from Mainland China, HK, Taiwan and even the U.S. We all need to get along for a common world prosperity.
I think (and have been told) that some simplifications were taken from the earlier Japanese simplification. The Japanese simplification seems like a middle ground. Probably the same methods were used.
well it's hard to say it was taken from japanese as mentioned in this video, some are taken from cussive calligraphy and more old versions. But some simplified charactors in Chinese and Japanese now are actually the same, some are not.
Great video！
Very well done video
As someone who learned Japanese before Chinese and now is learning Chinese, seeing how drastically changed some characters are (especially those simplified using cursive) feels really uncomfortable :D
There's definitely an element of "what's unfamiliar makes you uncomfortable". I see some japanese shinjitai forms (楽、渋、桜) and I get a bit uncomfortable too lol
@@evolutionzhang1251 那兄弟啊，「乐」、「樱」岂不也是书法吗？这些都是草字楷化。
可是，此两者成为简体字的正体字，楽、桜成日本新字体的。若只习用新字体者见简体自觉奇怪，相反习用简体者见新字体，亦有同感。都是见生者感不适。
与字形是否是书法无关。
@@bocbinsgames6745 ？？？
@@bocbinsgames6745 ？？？
@@bocbinsgames6745 算了，我還是刪評吧，什麼意思？你回我。
Most simplified characters are based on erasing the phonetic part, which is something that is completely insane and irrational.
Why type of Chinese should you learn Simplified or Traditional?
Simplified is used in Mainland China, traditional ist just used in Taiwan and Hong Kong
You know you can learn both right? Its nor that hard actually, most characters arent even simplified anyway
Thank you!) got a lot of interesting and new information)
Can someone explain what the logic behind this was?
沒 -> 没
別 -> 别
It's the same. They just called 異体字(the variant character).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification
Or this 况
冷
oooo now that you mention vulgar characters I hope I go and try and find other characters that fall under that sort of classification, I love all that sort of linguistic variation and nuance n stuff
2:09 2:38 so I can try and remember to write the term down later
8:15 another timestamp I like
also in my mind “blatant omissions” isn’t really a bad thing since that inherently will happen in language
Hahahahaha ! You are good !!! Well done & thanks for this video. Very insightful ! Bravo !
亚 is mainly referring to the second. Asia is 亚细亚洲, and we call it 亚洲 for short.
As a japanese learner, even i realized that japanese kanji aren't fully traditional, and since they were adopted quite a bit earlier than 1949, it means that simplification was already very much a concept way before that.
very interesting it makes us beginners dont hate the simplified one. it is indeed simplified for utility. I wanna ask you how does Japan survive the industrial and computer revolution despite its chinese like script? Where China's script remained the key negative factor for its lower literacy, I presume, then how did Japan remained in competetion, or Japan also has low literacy? Does it also has similar cultural drawback as China due to being isolated geographically, and having a non alphabetic language?
看到最后的“又” 笑死我了
Great.😊
The last way I realised it's meaningful.
又 just means repeat. Chicken is a form of bird
对 means 寸寸 matches = same
树 repeats the wood, so forest.
汉 is the strange one, repeats water particle, can it mean both the yellow river as well as representing the homophone 汗 (sweat)
the "X" probably is just something like "X" in maths, just means several non-important particle, they just switched that to X
Can you explain the origin of Shinjitai (japanese style simplified chinese letter) .. use since 1940 a bit before chinese revolution
for example
呉 図 絵 鉄 関 帰 歯 円 状 歩 広
Shinjitai is the simplification of Japanese after the postwar situation where the American found japanese text so out of sync with time as in their kanji is old but their pronunciation and usage has evolved vastly vice versa as in お湯 this would be soup but of course classical Chinese also used this as hot water, i can't think of the divergence in formal written letter but usual letter is 手紙which is a false friend, 國became国 theres also daiyoji, more info in wiktionary japanese glossary, 呉音 kanji reading of wu times, etc
They did a reformed the Japanese language. Standardized hiragana, because before it wasn’t a concrete list, and there were a lot of different variants of every “kana” along the country, also there were “kana” representing more than one syllables. The writing didn’t match with the spelling just like modern English, the reason why “ha” and “he” sounds “wa” and “e” when particles, it’s because it is a vestige of the old spelling before the reform. They also created the Jōyō Kanji (most common Kanji), to reduce the number of kanji in use, to just maintain the essential, originally the list was of over 1800 kanjis, but after some councils today it is over 2100 kanjis, because they have realized that they left some important characters out.
我 喜欢 你的 视频! 你 是 很 好 老师 谢谢
很好*的*老师
@@snowjin6241 Thank you I also spaced like in english.
Can someone list as much characters as possible that got replaced by 又 and 乂？
其實你有沒有去了解每個字是如何構成的，假如沒有的話，你很大機會會寫錯字的，每一個中文字的結構都藏著古人的智慧。
I was having trouble with hui 会 and kuai 会，but knowing about all this history helps me at least appreciate the difficulties of simplifying and how English is terrible about this too!
I'm really surprised only 550 characters were simplified, I had assumed it was several thousand 👀
550 "core simplification" and not including radicals. It ended up being over 2000 total characters. Anything was consistently simplified for many characters count as one core simplification. i.e. If A -> B and 3 characters have A component, they would all get B component swapped in and that's one simplification.
Regarding the historical event of simplification and standardization of Chinese characters, you seem to have forgotten the contribution made by the Japanese lol. In fact, many abuses of 乂 and 又 are also absorbed from this. The "卫" even comes from katakana.
let's bring up the classic comparison of "depressed turtle" in Chinese:
Traditional: 憂鬱的烏龜
Simplified: 忧郁的乌龟
Should be noted that 郁 also exists in traditional, and means fragrant.
@@owlblocksdavid4955 the two forms are also surnames.
@@owlblocksdavid4955 鬱 and 郁 are homonyms in Mandarin Chinese so it “feels” natural to have one be the simplification of the other, however the two characters have different pronunciations in say like Cantonese, so suddenly 郁 has 2 different pronunciations with different meanings which causes confusion. In fact a lot of the “merging” of characters are based on them being homonyms in Mandarin and so does not really work in other local dialects (languages)
Some may have pre-dated but fell out of use only to be brought back. It wasn't in constant use since ancient times so doesn't make sense to bring it back.
Most of the simplification is reasonable expect the merging method which takes away the meaning of a charater and create chaos, making expression relies more on context.