In the post Where to Learn Chinese in China, there was some discussion of simplified and traditional characters. It's a topic that interests me, and since it hasn't been covered specifically on Skritter's blog, I figured I'd start a new thread. I don't want to argue for one form over the other, but rather to explore their usage.

Typically, the big divisions are: Simplified in Mainland China; Traditional in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Additionally, overseas communities have tended to use traditional characters, and, if I understand correctly, Singapore uses simplified in print and schools, but traditional remain for signage.

I've lived in the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong. While I rarely ran into simplified characters in Taiwan or Hong Kong, I took note of seeing traditional characters quite regularly in the mainland. Here are places I can think of seeing them: museums, KTV and movie subtitles, signs (especially restaurants and tea houses), advertisements, calligraphy. For the last category many Chinese told me calligraphy had to be in Traditional characters, but it has been pointed out that many of the simplified forms actually came from the calligraphic forms considered most artistic (草书 cǎoshū).

Has anyone else noticed traditional or simplified characters occurring in somewhat unexpected places?

In my opinion, simplification should never have been institutionalized, they should have left habits and history do their jobs (for instance, in Taiwan almost no one (except officials) write "臺灣", they write 台灣 where 台 is a simplified chars), it's one of (among thousands others) greatest mistake of the CPC upon the lame escuse that it will reduce the level of illiteracy (basically that would mean that mainlanders are stupid, right ?) without taking care of the culture and history.

I've made the same notice as you, I can see more and more trads chars in the mainland (mainly in the southern part, from Shanghai (where I saw a small police car printed with trads) to Guangzhou.

Why that ? I don't know exactly but when you talk about music/movies/TV, let us remember that most of the music/tv/movie stars in the mainland are...TWese & HKese ! I think that help as most the mainlanders can read the trads, they won't bother to pay a company to re-sub all the materials. I think they are also eager to rediscover their past and their culture.

But about 書法，I think I know why simps aren't very used, maybe because they are ugly ? :p

As you said, simps chars are very scarce in TW and HK for several reasons (Ideology...law...) but you can see these within some situations :

- Mainlanders brand names (only in HK) i.e China Telecom. They are traditionalized in TW)
- Printing problems (HK & TW) In some case (depends on the size and the shape of the police) it's simply not possible to use trads (for instance the 灣 of the Taiwan Beer is simplified on the cans, even in Taiwan)

...etc.

I guess I don't really know enough to be useful to the debate, but I feel that the push for simplified characters was a natural move for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The CCP never had any kind of respect for culture, apart perhaps at some point during the war against the Japanese, and to an extent in the fight against imperialists (cynically from my point of view). But generally speaking the CCP has been willing to destroy Chinese culture, considered a thing of the past, and slowing down the road to egalitarianism. For the CCP there was always a push to modernism (interdiction of Chinese opera, 3 gorges dam,...), which explains the will to impose simplified characters.

The opposite was true with the Nationalists, who ended up in Taiwan. Considering Singapore, it can be related to French French and Canadian French's differences (Canadian French uses a lot of "out-of-fashion" colloquialisms).

On a more pragmatic level, simplified characters are indeed simpler to learn, and therefore should lead to an increase in literacy. Moreover, on the long term, if Chinese language is willing to compete with English internationally, it has to become more accessible.
Taking into consideration the last two points, I think the shift to simplified characters is justified.

Actually we (french) almost need subtitles when we are watching a canadian movie in...French ! But we rapidly get used to after few days of training :)

Agree with you about the CCP but not about the pragmatic stuff, once again if 97% of the TW and 95% of HK can read and write, everyone can.

First of all, I would like break up a wrong idea : Trads are (much) more laborious to write indeed, but definitely not harder to learn, they are sometime even easier ! For instance, if you learn how to write 書, you also know how to write 畫 but also dozen other words which are very similar. In simp it's 书 and 画, two totally different chars !

But we're talking more about "official" way here because wether in TW, HK, huge simplifications are made on handwritten chars.

Woah, This is getting pretty heated.

I support the introduction of simplified characters, the reason for this is that written language is used for communication and therefore should be quick to write and easy to learn.

Writing systems should be focused on utility, not history or the beauty of their appearance.

The 台 character is an interesting one, I don't know the history well-enough to say if it is an actual simplified form or if 臺 is just a more complex- looking variant form（异体字／異體字 yìtǐzì）. To clarify what I have in mind with variants, here are some other examples: 説 vs. 說 shuō, 為 vs. 爲 wèi, 即 vs 卽 jí, 並 vs. 幷 bìng.

Like Tortue, I would generally be in favor of governments not trying to regulate how language evolves and what characters are used. As a non-native learner, I certainly would have wished for only one set of characters. Still, it seems to me there are some benefits we can acknowledge about simplified characters.

1) They are slightly faster, if not easier, to write.
2) Materials printed in the PRC, since they have a clear character set to follow, contain far fewer of the variant forms that can be terribly annoying when reading materials from HK and Taiwan.

Another thought, but not exactly a benefit, is that the first set of characters approved by the CCP contained many simplifications which were already being used by people in their handwriting. Meaning that, to some degree, they weren't adding new forms, just making common hand-written forms into printed ones.

The natural evolution of language, including written forms, argues against a 'pure' historical form of characters. There has never been a truly standard set of characters. People were always creating new characters that slowly found wider acceptance, some old forms were always falling out of use. On the other hand, governments have also played a significant role. If it weren't for Qin Shihuang's reforms, we might still be reading some form of the squiggly ancient seal script characters. So, while I'm generally not happy with the modern simplified forms, I don't think it's as simple as saying they are 'unhistorical.'

Regardless of what preferences I have, simplified and traditional and variants all exist at this time in history, and I've go to deal with them. Ideally there would be just one set, but even if that came about, I don't think it would last for long before people's creativity pushed new characters into usage.

Re: variants. Have people noticed them in simplified materials? I haven't, but it's not like I've read that much.

@ZachH : You need as much time and effort to learn trads or simps, simps are just indeed, quicker to write. But as I said, we're talking here about "officials" stuff, because in the daily life, chars are over simplfied ! Lately I saw a 灣 written with less than 10 strokes (against 20/22).

@Zhouyi : Agree with you,

The variant characters are definitely a pain, much moreso in traditional than simplified -- but now even more, because the mapping between simplified and traditional is more complex. Now I have 81 sets of these:

Simplified:
台, tai2, platform; Taiwan (abbr.); typhoon; unit; (classical) you (in letters)

Traditional
台, tai2, Taiwan (abbr.); (classical) you (in letters)
檯, tai2, desk; platform
臺, tai2, platform; stage; terrace; Taiwan (abbr.)
颱, tai2, typhoon

(Please let me know if I've gotten any of that wrong.)

And the base list of variants from which I was working, which I thought would have everything since it was pulled from the Unihan database, which makes the Unicode recommendations, isn't actually that complete. I don't have 即 vs 卽 jí or 並 vs. 幷 bìng in there (although 並 does go to 併 or 並, too).

Then there are the handful of traditionals which have two simplified variants -- what's the big idea there?! Skritter is not going to support those, and it'll be slightly incorrect in the case where a simplified has four traditional variants, one of which is a simplified character on its own but also has another simplified character mapped to it, except when written with the left hand on Tuesdays, when it changes to fourth tone and switches stroke order. That only happened twice, though, and with pretty obscure characters.

I disagree: simplified are indeed easier to learn, at first. Later on, greater coherence in composition helps, but to the beginner who is not able to break things down as easily, having ~7 strokes in 还 is a huge advantage over having ~16 strokes in 還. I learned a year of traditional first, then switched to simplified, and simplified were way easier at that stage.

Nick
Re: variants, I wouldn't trouble yourself much over things like 幷 and 卽. My impression from talking with natives about those is that they are used in some printing to give an air of 'ancientness' (for example, in martial arts novels). No one really writes that way, so I wouldn't see a need to have Skritter practice writing them--though if someone took a time to provide a list of the most common variants they find in printed sources, that could be useful (or it could just be in the back of my dictionary...).

The other problem you mention, of multiple trads for one simp is a bit trickier (麵條, 前面 vs. 面条，前面). Those are significant differences as they affect meanings for the traditional readers--so, I'd urge some creative solution if at all possible... but if it can't work, maybe you can just supply an FYI about it someplace.

What's interesting about that kind of change is that it demonstrates how 'easier' isn't such a clear concept in regard to reading and writing. Obviously, only having to remember one characters is 'easier' for writing. But when it comes to reading, having two separate forms makes meaning more obvious.

P.S. - I had no idea my 'left-handed Tuesdays' custom might present difficulties. I'd definitely be willing to give it up to help Skritter.

zhouyi,

We're definitely supporting multiple trads for one simp--that's all the work we've just been doing. It's multiple simps for one trad which we're not going to support (which doesn't happen very often anyway). It's like we're supporting traditional variants, but not simplified variants that share the same traditional.

I just realized that I had switched to my left hand for today, and it's Tuesday. We left-handed-Tuesdayers must band together in solidarity against our common oppressors!

Oh, and for Japanese, we'll have a separate character space, so there won't be any problems with variant collisions with Chinese there, but you won't (and probably wouldn't want to) be able to share progress between Chinese and Japanese versions of a character.

What about a separate Cantonese character space? 得唔得呀？
...
Please?
...
Yeah, I know there wouldn't be a big user pool. But it would be pretty cool.

Cantonese could probably share the same characters (we'd just add the Cantonese-specific ones), but it would need separate definitions, readings, sound files, and vocab lists. I'm not capable of making any of those; there are some Cantonese speakers on campus, but we can't afford to pay anyone to do those yet.

Maybe in the distant future. It'd be easier than adding Japanese will be or adding Korean would be, but would also cover much fewer learners.

"or adding Korean would be, but would also cover much fewer learners"

It could bring the korean (kids) themselves or expat living in there, certainly not as much as Mandarin but I think it worth to be implemented.

The thing is that Korean is a scientifically created writting system (the only 2 in the world with the Armenian, if I'm not wrong) it was designed by some scholars after realizing that the chinese chars were not fitted to the korean language (it's actually a kind of extreme simplification)

Actually, to learn how to read and write Korean is quite easy (1 or 2 days to review and 1 or 2 weeks to memorize) because it's unlike mandarin, the korean has an alphabet.

All right, you got me; I signed up for Korean the day after your last post, Tortue, and I'm three classes in. You're right that hangul is pretty sweet.

There isn't much need to teach hangul with Skritter, since it's so easy. Hanja would be our expertise. But despite the reading I've done, I'm still fuzzy on just how widely used hanja are for Korean. My impression is that they're almost nonexistent. Do foreign learners even bother with them?

I read that learning Korean is a whole is still really difficult for English speakers, but without nearly as much popular draw for foreign learners as Chinese or Japanese. Wikipedia says Korean classes in the US are 80% heritage learners! The first day of class, there were 19 Chinese/Japanese students and me. Interesting stuff.

I'll keep taking beginning Korean, because like you said, it takes almost no time to learn hangul and it'd be cool to be able to read (without understanding). I think it'd be a very distant cloud for Skritter, though.