Teachers who teach Traditional Characters?!! Why?

[geek_frappa]

Is it a political statement to teach traditional characters in university?

Shouldn't students be learning simplified characters?

I only see simplified in China.... so I wonder why waste time on traditional?

[Haoqide]

Well, isn't it easier to learn the traditional characters first and then scale back to the less complicated ones? I could be wrong, but that seems to be the way to do it. I'm learning both at the same time, but it's going slow.

Then again, it could very well be a political statement...

[Claw]

In addition, most overseas Chinese communities still use traditional characters. I've been learning both, and it's much easier to figure out simplified by yourself after you've learned traditional.

[geraldc]

Quite a few UK university courses spend a lot of time studying chinese classical literature. Makes sense to learn traditional in order to study that.

My teachers expect me to be able to write simplified and at least be able to read traditional. I have quite a few text books that are printed in both traditional and simplified.

[Guest Yau]

I learnt traditional first and spent a week to learn the simplified one. After practices, i can master both so well.

IMO, it's a personal decision to learn either of them. Both are objectively useful or useless, depending on the purpose you learn chinese.

[wushijiao]

Traditional is also used in most of the pirated DVDs in the mainland, which is to say all the DVDs. It's also used a lot on signs to demonstrate class, history, and snobishness. So I think it's worth learning, or at least being able to recognize.

[skylee]

It's also used a lot on signs to demonstrate class, history, and snobishness.

[wushijiao]

Well, almost everyday you can see signs in the mainland that will have, say, 15 characters most will be in simplified, but a few will be in traditional. Why wouldn't the whole sign be in either traditional or simplified? Snobishness or Elitism are the main reasons I can think of.

On an unrelated note, my brother is a graphic designer that has spent years studying the psycological rationale behind using certain fonts in adverting. When he came to China, he constantly ridiculed the cheesiness of all the signs' graphic designs, and the haphazard Photoshopping in pictures. I, however, tried to make the argument that every font and writing style in each culture has its own psychology and history. What's cheesy and lame in one culture isn't nessecarily so in another.

What the Campbell's soup writing makes me think of is not the same as what it makes my grandmother think of. That same writing style would have different implications to a Chinese person. Then, if you think that mainland marketers have TWO scripts to choose from (not to mention all the Western fonts "New Times Roman" etc. but also kaishu, caoshu, lishu...etc.)....this is the type of dull (but slightly interesting) stuff that keep academics busy writng papers that no one will read.

The point is, I predict a comeback in traditional characters in the future as mainland advertising develops. I wouldn't be suprised if some mainland parents even start educating their kids in traditional.

[ala]

Traditional is not going to come back. For us who learned simplified first, we can never write traditional properly (probably not even a full basic sentence), we can only read traditional. It's easier to write and memorize less strokes. Pinyin is even easier to write of course.

[Claw]

Would someone please explain to me why people who use traditional characters are snobs? Many mainlanders I've encountered always seem to voice this sentiment whenever the subject of traditional characters come up, but I never understood why. Ironically, they're the ones who also start touting every single reason why simplified characters are much better... a little snobbishness on their part, don't you think?

IMHO, both character sets have their pros and cons. I just think that learning traditional first helps one to learn simplified much more easily than the other way around. I do like to use simplified characters, especially when I want to jot down a quick note, though I do feel that many of the simplifications aren't as consistent as they should be. I usually end up writing in a pseudo-simplified set, where I simplify things like writing 護 with a 讠 radical instead of using its actual simplification: 护.

[Claw]

Well, almost everyday you can see signs in the mainland that will have, say, 15 characters most will be in simplified, but a few will be in traditional. Why wouldn't the whole sign be in either traditional or simplified?

The funny thing is that sometimes they'll use the wrong traditional character too, like using 發 instead of 髮 for the 发 in 发廊.

[Jose]

The sad state of affairs is that there are two standard systems of writing Chinese, and we have to cope with that fact.

I think which one is preferable should depend on the reason why one studies Chinese. I agree that people who have a purely utilitarian interest in using the language in the mainland can ignore the traditional system altogether.

However, there are in my opinion two reasons why studying the traditional system makes sense, and why some people, including myself, prefer it:

1. The traditional system is the set of characters that remained to a large extent unchanged for over 2000 years. On the other hand, most of the simplified characters were invented a few decades ago. Even if both systems are imperfect (inconsistent phonetic components, characters with more than one reading, and so on), I cannot help thinking of many simplified characters as bogus ones. When you learn the traditional characters you feel that you're learning the real thing, the characters that have been used for centuries. Since I value tradition, this is an important reason for me.

2. The traditional system is still alive and kicking. It is the only system used in HK, Macau and Taiwan. Even if these three territories account for less than 30 million people, their economic prosperity means that the percentage of printed material and websites produced in these places is much more than the population figures would suggest, probably nearly as much as the material produced by the mainland (I'm guessing here. I don't have any actual figures).

For those reasons I think any serious student of Chinese should try to learn the two systems.

This leads to me to one of the main reasons why I dislike the whole simplification thing: It has created an unnecessary split where there didn't need to be one. If characters had not been simplified, we would not have to learn two systems. Some people might feel inclined to lay the blame on the Chinese communities that haven't embraced simplification, but I think the responsibility lies with those who decided to undertake such a brutal overhaul of the system.

As for the claims that simplified characters are easier to learn, they might be marginally so, if at all. In most cases the simplifications don't make the characters easier to remember. The number of strokes is not the main factor in the difficulty of a character. Does anyone find yu2 鱼 easier to remember than 魚, for example? Or take the character hong1 轰 / 轟 , for instance. In terms of stroke count, the simplification gives 8 strokes against 21! But why should it be easier? What's so difficult about remembering "three cars"? and then the traditional form of the car by itself, che1 车/ 車, has a symmetry that I think makes it easier to remember and recognise in the traditional form.

When I started studying Chinese at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid around ten years ago I only did simplified characters. Two years later I started learning traditional characters. Since then I have continued learning the two systems, more or less simultaneously, and I definitely prefer the traditional one. I think those who say that simplified characters are much easier to learn are people who have only studied the simplified system, like most Chinese from the Mainland. Their opinion is biased since they have had a disproportionate exposure to just one of the systems. Also, students who have studied just a few hundred characters tend to think that simplified characters are easier, but that is only the case if you just learn a few characters. To illustrate what I mean, let's take guo2 国 / 國, for example. This must have been one of the first characters we've all learnt, and it seems easier to remember in the simplified form only because it is usually learnt before the more basic characters yu4 玉 / 玉 and huo4 或 / 或, which haven't been simplified. Once a student knows those characters, what's the deal? the thing to remember is that one must enclose either the "jade" or the "or" character in a box. The mental effort is pretty much the same. This is a rather common situation: A certain simplified character can spare you the need to learn some complicated stroke pattern that will eventually appear in another character at a later stage. At that point, the advantage of the simplified character disappears.

In my opinion, the only benefit of simplified characters is faster handwriting, and I don't think such a trivial gain justifies such a breach with tradition.

Also, although I admit this is very subjective, most people find traditional characters more beautiful.

[Haoqide]

Good post, Jose. I prefer the traditional characters myself because of their beauty. I liked your points about the seeming ease of learning of the simplified ones. I'm not well-versed in han zi yet, so I've got a lot to learn. I can only identify maybe 50 characters at this point. Does anybody care to present a counterpoint???

[xuechengfeng]

The way my school teaches sucks!

For courses 101-103, you have to learn traditional characters, and there is about 13 writing tests, so it involves about 200+ characters.

Then for the following courses, all the sudden they say you can choose to use traditional or simplified to write with, but you still have to know how to read both because different texts will use both.

[xuechengfeng]

Personally, I prefer to read and write traditional characters. Much more interesting to write, even though there are a lot more strokes, and they are easier to distinguish.

[Guest Yau]

Interestingly, simplified character is sometimes taken as an inferior form of writing in the mainland. You can see traditional characters appeared occasionally on the advertising, though it can be illegal in the mainland china. Sometimes using traditional one is also fashionable. Reading an ancient book written in traditonal character make a man apparently knowledgable in the mainland too.

To be fair, not every mainlander has this mind-set, but it's not uncommon. And the reverse mind-set in taiwan and hongkong is far less common.

What distinguish one from the another one is obviously the ideology behind that. For the half century, the most censored and communist materials are always delivered on the simplified characters. All of them are mao's quotations or what you can read in people's daily. It's also a character used by one of the poorest country in the world.

Their traditional one, however, is the only form of characters that can show the virtues of freedom of speech, liberal media, and whatever trendy. Of course, all these attributes are in a relative term. Taiwanese removed their censor on newspaper until early 90s, and hongkong can't enjoy reasonable freedom of speech until 70s, but by any sense, it's much better than the mainland china. More importantly, it's the character used in taiwan, hongkong and overseas chinese community, the wealthest places.

Under this circumstance, the emotional criticism can rebound sharply. As Claw mentioned, he heard there's criticism saying that using traditional chinese is snob. In many other sentitive issues you can easily hear the similar response too.

Though it may be interesting to explore the psychological theory behind that, does it mean that simplified character is always inferior? Not exactly. While chinese advocates patriotism days and nights, they instinctively love japanese simplfied characters. Hundreds of taiwanese, hongkongais and mainland-ese food put a japanese chinese characters and kanas on the package, making the food apparently more superior.

It then turns to another question: simplified character isn't inferior by its nature but it's mainland china itself. Whether simplified character will finally win heavily depends on the civilization of mainland china. for how long we can see that day?

[skylee]

Jose, good points and I agree with you. Would like to let you have more support.

Others who disagree might point out that many of the simplified characters were not invented a few decades ago but shorthand that had been in use for centuries etc. I also think that simplified characters were helpful in raising the literacy rate in the past by drastically reducing the strokes of some characters such as 後/后, although the simplification did not seem to take account of the confusions that it would lead to.

[Guest Yau]

Skylee, i think how simplified characters contribute to literacy is just unproved, though you may claim that the illerate people can be more if there's no simplified characters. Who knows. We're only sure that taiwanese and hk people are much literate than mainland chinese.

However, i also believe that simplifying strokes is neccesary, but how should we do it? No consensus and enough academic debate has been drawn so far, and the whole simplified process was only driven by the communists. There's no even any reputed scholars advocating, if not propagandizing, the virtue of simplified characters.

[sfr@rcn.com]

Skylee--thanks for mentioning the centuries-old shorthand. I was about to ask about the remarkable resemblances between cursive handwriting (cao shu) and simplified characters. I've been trying to learn cursive so I can read real-world Chinese, as opposed to printed Chinese and kai shu. One reason it's difficult for me is that I don't remember most of the jian ti zi I learned thirty years ago. (Since then, I've been studying fan ti zi.)

Sandra

[trevelyan]

I'm extraordinarily grateful my University (Toronto) taught both simplified and classical characters. The reason is simple -- I've unexpectedly ended up having to read historical material (circa 1900) for my research, and would be lost without it.

That being said, there was a real tradeoff in taking a course that courses deemphasized oral and conversational Chinese.... my accent still leaves a lot to be desired.

But students don't necessarily know where they'll end-up: Taiwan, Hong Kong, the mainland... so teaching both simplified and classical characters makes sense. Students can decide for themselves which to devote the majority of their time to.