Allow me to direct your attention to an excellent Danwei post (via an equally interesting post by James Fallows) detailing a new proposal for China to revert to traditional characters, the writing system abandoned on the mainland in the 1950s.
To summarize: a representative named Pan Qinglin proposed junking simplified characters due to three reasons, two obvious and one that had never occurred to me before.
First, the simplification process occurred too hastily and wasn’t done properly, not surprising given that the man behind the change, then-Chairman Mao Zedong, didn’t favor deliberation in implementing his policy goals.
Secondly, reverting to traditional characters would be China on equal linguistic footing with Taiwan, a change that wouldn’t hurt cross-Straits relations. And as my boss today wryly pointed out, Hong Kong people would have one less reason to look down on their mainland cousins.
But it is the third reason that I find particularly interesting. Because the widespread use of computers and mobile phones in modern Chinese communication, one of the main rationales behind simplified characters – that they are easier to write- has effectively vanished.
Of course, this point shouldn’t be of any great surprise, but it still hadn’t occurred to me before. I, for one, can type an e-mail in Chinese without much difficulty but struggle to write a one-sentence note on paper for my cleaning lady*. Of the four major skills- reading, writing, speaking, and listening- my writing level lags far, far behind the others. Because I never need to write, why bother doing so? Nobody bothers learning penmanship back in the US anymore, do they?
Implementing traditional characters on the mainland wouldn’t be universally popular and probably wouldn’t happen due to logistical difficulties, anyway.
As someone who has invested ample time in learning simplified characters, I wouldn’t be thrilled to discover one day that they were obsolete. Nevertheless, I can certainly see why purists would applaud the change. As Fallows points out, a good analogy for character simplification would be if, for example, the English word “through” were officially changed to “thru”. Ugh.
One final note- I’ve never believed that simplified characters were any easier to learn, particularly for us foreigners. Learning the character system is what’s difficult; once that happens, learning more complex characters doesn’t require much additional effort. If learning simplified characters is like running a 14 mile race, traditional characters would be akin to making it to 16.
Comments 5
A better analogy for character simplification would be English vs. American. In other words, it doesn’t really matter, so long as we’re all communicating.
Posted 13 Mar 2009 at 5:43 pm ¶A friend of mine is studying philosophy here in Shanghai with one of the intellectuals pushing for the change. He, however, thinks that a compromise should be made and that only characters whose meanings (through the construction of the characters) have been obscured and characters that now represent more than two traditional characters should be changed back.
Posted 16 Mar 2009 at 6:20 am ¶I like this compromise, but then, the mainland’s system would still be different. I suppose the difference would be lessened, but would it even be worth then?
Interesting stuff.
I would propose getting rid of the laws and committees that dictate the use of the language altogether, and seeing where the people take it.
Posted 16 Mar 2009 at 8:38 am ¶I’ve met a few detractors of simplified characters in my day, and they all take offense at the official act of reorganizing the character system. This argument ignores the fact that every dynasty reformed and reshaped characters to the point that the original “oracle bone” inscriptions weren’t recognized for what they were until the early 20th century.
If the people are allowed to write however they want, we are likely to see an unprecedented blossoming in the language. Tradition-minded intellectuals will probably revive old characters and grammar constructs, and young netizens will come up with completely new stuff. Those in-between will put it all together and we’ll see something very interesting emerge.
It was a pity the traditional characters were bastardized when the Communists took over the country! Many traditional, historic, cultural heritages ruined and destroyed forever since (no thanks to them!). Simplified characters perhaps served its purpose (increase literacy rate, easier for foreigners to learn, etc but these excuses are pretty lame).
To change back to traditional characters is not about an inconvenience to 1.3 billion people, nor it about suiting the Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese.
In fact it is about all the Chinese people, all 1.3 billion, or 1300 millions of us; we, as a proud and cultural human race, finally come to respect and recognize these beautiful writing characters again. We have a 5000 years of culture, the traditional Chinese characters took this long to develop and evolve. Some may say tough because in these 60 years since 1949 it is part of the revolution and evolution, too. However, we, as a Chinese race, we are wrong to accept these traditional characters fading out or disappeared simply because of a hasty and wrong decision made by one party or one regime at a bad time. It brought a loss to a race and culture.
Traditional Chinese writing characters are basically logographic writing system, one of the greatest writing systems in the world if not the greatest. By 1400 BC the script included some 2,500 to 3,000 characters, most of which can be read to this day.
The sad fact is judging by some the comments made by the fellow readers, some use rather fowl languages, I have a feeling that majority of people do not even know what the traditional characters are about, rather ignorant and narrow-minded.
The traditional characters are just so much more civilized and aesthetic. It is estimated to be about 2000 characters been simplified, it is really not that many and not that difficult. There are many softwares in the market that can translate both in an instant.
é«®/å‘; 臺/å°; é‚Š/è¾¹; 燦/ç¿; é–€/é—¨; è²/声; 賓/宾; è±/丰
The above short list may put off some of you, but I do think Chinese as a race we should revert and preserve this writing glory and supremacy in order to present ourselves to the world it is something worth doing, it just takes courage and time.
Thank you for your time reading and sharing my thoughts.
Posted 23 Mar 2009 at 10:13 pm ¶“We have a 5000 years of culture,”
Irrelevant. All civilizations have a history dating back thousands of years, one more or less thousand changes nothing.
“Many traditional, historic, cultural heritages ruined and destroyed forever since (no thanks to them!).”
Yes like footbinding. How dare chinese civilization FINALLY begin to move forward and break out of this Dark Age. How dare women have rights. How dare people start living a MODERN life.
“However, we, as a Chinese race, we are wrong to accept these traditional characters fading out or disappeared simply because of a hasty and wrong decision made by one party or one regime at a bad time. ”
That’s called evolution. Successful civilizations change and evolve over time, weak ones stagnate. For example, the English language has changed considerably overtime. This is an example of old english:
“Hwæt! wÄ“ GÄr-Dena in geÄr-dagum,”
That’s from Beowulf. The wikipedia page has more info about that if anyone is interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_english
“one of the greatest writing systems in the world if not the greatest. ”
I dont believe this, you call other people narrow minded for wanting to move on when you make such an ethnocentric remark as this.
“The sad fact is judging by some the comments made by the fellow readers, some use rather fowl languages, I have a feeling that majority of people do not even know what the traditional characters are about, rather ignorant and narrow-minded.”
We all know what it is about, it’s a system of communication just like any other written script.
“The traditional characters are just so much more civilized and aesthetic.”
If being civilized is your concern, why not push people to act more civilized? Being able to write pretty is meaningless when people allow their children to urinate in the streets, when people throw their garbage everywhere, when people spit and smoke everywhere. All you want to do is hold China back, instead of pushing it to develop more and face the future.
“There are many softwares in the market that can translate both in an instant.”
We don’t live in a paperless society, people still need to write using pen and paper sometimes. To overly complicate to fulfill your own desires is selfish.
“but I do think Chinese as a race we should revert and preserve this writing glory and supremacy in order to present ourselves to the world it is something worth doing, it just takes courage and time.”
Supremacy, eh? Yet another narrow minded ethnocentric remark. If you’re so interested in preserving your “supremacy” then why use all of this foreign invented technology? Why not use chinese invented technology only? Come on, how about it?
“The literacy rate in HK is 94.6%, China 90.9%”
The literacy rate in the US is 99%.
Let’s not forget, China was in a Dark Age for most of the Ming dynasty which ran all the way until recently. During that time there was little in the way of new written works, no new ideas, philosophies, inventions (and they even forgot some of their own inventions), because they believed they were perfect and “superior”, even though many people were dying of cyclical famine; a problem that was conquered by another western invention the late Qing wanted no part of – - – fertilizer. China today is getting better, thanks to fresh ideas and technology coming from the west, but in many respects it is still desperately poor and backward. What caused it to fall behind was a combination of racism, complacency, and narrow mindedness. Perhaps we should thank Y Y Chen for showing us that this complacency and narrow mindedness is still alive and well today, ensuring the continuation of the Chinese Dark Age.
Posted 02 Apr 2010 at 10:15 pm ¶Post a Comment