Teachers who teach Traditional Characters?!! Why?

[Ian_Lee]

Well, it seems this topic is never ended.

Unlike many posters who claimed that the so-called scholars in PRC just adopted the cursory writing (grass script) that had been used for hundreds of years, in fact, many of the simplified characters are self-invented within PRC.

Some drawbacks of the simplified script:

(1) Distortion of the original meaning:

In traditional script, 愛 (love) has the "heart" in the center. But for simplified script, 爱 has the "friendship" as the main component.

But love is from the heart and not based on friendship.

(2) Unnecessary simplification:

In traditional script, the first character of Macau (Aomen) 澳 has 16 strokes. But under simplified script, 澳 has 15 strokes. But why simplify just for the sake of one stroke?

(3) Aesthetic:

In traditional script, 業 (business/occupation) is undeniably more complicated. But for the simplified script which was self-invented after '49, 业 looks like some dog excrements on the grass.

(4) Putonghua-centric:

In Cantonese, 裡 and 里 sound differently and mean differently. But for those scholars in Beijing, they never bother about the dialect and equate both characters.

Actually I also doubt that the real motive for those so-called scholars in the simplification process was trying to severe the cultural link of PRC with China's past and the other Chinese-speaking communities.

[sfr@rcn.com]

So what do you think the real motive was?

Sandra

[SAINT]

Traditional is useful as many ancient writings and good books are written with traditional script.

[geraldc]

From a Reuters News article about the rules regarding the naming of buildings in Shanghai.

"Traditional Chinese characters -- used in Hong Kong and Taiwan but phased out on the mainland by the Communists -- are on the banned list too. Their use has been on the rise in China in recent years because they are seen as more classy and cultured. "

[bathrobe]

To understand the motivation behind the simplification of characters, I think you have to go back to the time it happened (and earlier), which is almost another world now.

Some possible angles to consider:

* In 19th and 20th centuries, the use of characters was associated with economic and political backwardness. Many intellectuals and reformers agonised over the drag that traditional practices and attitudes exercised on the modernisation of China.

* Simplification was only one part of language reform. In trying to catch up with the West, China adopted the Western ideals of standard written and spoken language and universal education. This was opposed to the old situation of many unintelligible dialects and literacy confined to a certain class of society -- a situation that was natural under China's old order but was intolerable if a modern, powerful state was to be created that could stand up to the West. In order to reform the language, some pretty drastic decisions had to be taken, perhaps overly drastic from our current point of view. A standard dialect had to be decided on and the writing system had to be reformed to make it easier for the masses (not just a privileged elite) to learn.

* The Communists at that time were iconoclasts, with a desire to destroy the past simply because it is 'feudalistic' or 'bourgeous'. The fundamental ideology of Communism is not sentimental about the past, which it sees as the product of doomed social systems. The future lies in casting off the shackles of the past.

* I don't think the Mainland Chinese government had any conception of 'Greater China'. Greater China, as we know it today, was all going to come under the control of Beijing. Traditional characters would have fallen by the wayside everywhere. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

[sfr@rcn.com]

Since Ian_Lee hasn't responded to questions about his July post, I'll stick my ignorant two cents in.

in fact, many of the simplified characters are self-invented within PRC.

Maybe, but my Chinese friends have told me that if they know grass characters, they can read most simplified standard written Chinese (jian ti zi).

My problems with your four points are that they assume some sacredness to traditional characters (fan ti zi).

(1) Distortion of the original meaning:

In traditional script, 愛 (love) has the "heart" in the center. But for simplified script, 爱 has the "friendship" as the main component.

But love is from the heart and not based on friendship.

This strikes me as a limited theory of marriage rather than a broad critique of the linguistic decisions made about simplifying 愛to 愛. In addition, I find 愛 as easily recognizable as 愛， so that conversion is a no-brainer.

(2) Unnecessary simplification:

In traditional script, the first character of Macau (Aomen) 澳 has 16 strokes. But under simplified script, 澳 has 15 strokes. But why simplify just for the sake of one stroke?

Perhaps just to be as consistent as possible? If they've made a practice of simplifying an element in one way, it helps the reader if they try to maintain as much consistency as possible in an impossible world.

(3) Aesthetic:

In traditional script, 業 (business/occupation) is undeniably more complicated. But for the simplified script which was self-invented after '49, 业 looks like some dog excrements on the grass.

Whose aesthetic? And do you also hate American-English spelling, such as

asthetic instead of aesthetic and anasthesia instead of anaesethesia? (Where's that spell checker when you need it?)

(4) Putonghua-centric:

In Cantonese, 裡 and 里 sound differently and mean differently. But for those scholars in Beijing, they never bother about the dialect and equate both characters.

Right. And that's the point of a standard language, isn't it? You pick one dialect (or however else you create your single standard for pronunciation) and then apply it to the whole country. To a speaker of one of the non-standard dialects, this process seems pretty cut-throat. But there may not be any other way to unify a country's languages.

Actually I also doubt that the real motive for those so-called scholars in the simplification process was trying to severe the cultural link of PRC with China's past and the other Chinese-speaking communities.

Bathrobe's comments respond to this far better than I could.

Like a lot of foreigners who go into another country (or even another town and state in their own country), I'm trying to imitate a romanticized Old China. (but with electricity and running water))--that is, in the case of characters, the beautiful old ones I used to see on scrolls. (Just as summer people in a small rural town protest the coming of a new Wal-Mart, while the locals love the idea because it means they don't have to drive 120 miles each way to buy the brand of barbecue they see advertised on TV.) I also follow the teachings of my (PRC) Chinese teacher who believes that I need a basis of traditional characters in order to properly understand the structure of both the written and spoken language, and that simplified will be easier to learn after traditional. (Just as Picasso learned how to paint beautifully "realistic" portraits so that he knew what rules to break free of.)

I think we've squeezed the life out of this topic, but I'm back after a long hiatus and so had a terrible urge to post. Sorry.

Sandra

[Ian_Lee]

Sandra:

(1)

This strikes me as a limited theory of marriage rather than a broad critique of the linguistic decisions made about simplifying 愛to 愛

See. Even you have problem in writing 爱.

This strikes me as a limited theory of marriage

Where did I say the word is related to marriage? I said love should be based from the feeling in the heart and not merely friendship. And unlike English, it is utmost awkward to say "You love your friend" in Chinese.

(2)

Perhaps just to be as consistent as possible?

Do you mean Chinese should be consistent with Japanese? Japanese writes 澳 as 澳 though.

(3)

Whose aesthetic? 業 or 业?

Everyone who has taken Art 101 class can tell.

(4)

But there may not be any other way to unify a country's languages.

Why is there the need to unify a country's language? Do you mean those bilingual schools in California should be abolished? Now you sound really chauvinistic!

(5)

Actually I also doubt that the real motive for those so-called scholars in the simplification process was trying to severe the cultural link of PRC with China's past and the other Chinese-speaking communities.

Bathrobe's comments respond to this far better than I could.

Do you mean I should agree with what the Communist did during the Cultural Revolution like what Bathrobe described:--

The Communists at that time were iconoclasts, with a desire to destroy the past simply because it is 'feudalistic' or 'bourgeous'.

[bhchao]

Personally I prefer traditional characters. Simplified form may be easier to write, but it looks ugly and vandalizes traditional form by taking bits and pieces.

In Taiwan, they don't teach you simplified form. Everyone learns the phonetics first and traditional characters.

When I am lazy and wish to post something online, I use simplified form. But I never use simplified form offline, for example when writing formal business correspondence.

[hparade]

I see friendship one of many forms of love;

how about Japanese to be consistent with Chinese? be it simplified or traditional...;

I saw somewhere says 业 is an "old" character which original meaning is grass or something, not a new invenion;

I do see there's a need to have a "standard" for a country with many "dialects", while not abolishing these dialects though;

What the communist did in the ealry period was extreme and destructive, but not all the old things are good I would say, reforms are necessary.

[yonglan]

While I'll admit to being completely partisan in favor of traditional characters -- simplified characters are just hideously ugly -- I would like to suggest that aside from the loss of meaning elements in simplification or the fact that many forms come from 行書 and 草書 or the fact that Taiwan and HK have had fantastic literacy rates for decades with traditional characters and China still has a problem with illiteracy or even, according to what I've read, that Mao wanted to do away with characters altogether, there is another important element.

If the government passes a law to keep people from using the traditional characters (and from what I've read this has been increasingly enforced in preparation for the Olympics) and then after 50 years of requiring simplified characters and not allowing traditional ones people still want to use traditional ones, doesn't that say something?

And as a side note, in the computer age when one can type Chinese (trad. or simp.) as fast or faster than one can type alphabetical languages, what would the Chairman say?

My prediction: when China changes to a democracy things will be printed in tradtional but -- just as in Taiwan for many characters -- people will often write things by hand in simplified or semi-cursive (hardly anyone knows cursive these days).

[amperel]

While I'll admit to being completely partisan in favor of traditional characters -- simplified characters are just hideously ugly

hear, hear!... but no use trying to convert the philistines ... maybe they should include calligraphy as a requirement for learning chinese - nopes - scratch that - screw that arts! we need more engineers and bussiness men i say!

[bhchao]

I agree with Ian on the correct scripting of "love". Love is definitely from the heart and the traditional form best illustrates this. The simplified form makes no sense.

Another example is 買, which means "buy" because shells were used as a form of money to buy things in ancient times, and the character resembles shells. Look at how ugly the simplified form, 买, is. The symbolic meaning of "buy" is lost with the simplified form.

[madizi]

The lower part of mai买 is tou头. Maybe the meaning is that we have to use our head (brain) when go shopping.

[Mark Baker]

Rather than re-type it all, I'll just link to it:

http://www.chinese-outpost.com/language/characters/traditional-vs-simplified-chinese-characters.asp

[kentsuarez]

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

No. Traditional characters are an important part of the history of China, and are useful in many other countries like Taiwan. To understand etymology, famous historical calligraphy and so on, you have to go back to traditional characters. I happen to prefer them because I feel they are more beautiful, plus I like studying ancient calligraphy and etymology.

Is their usage somehow snobbish?

Perhaps there are a few people who would use them out of snobbery, but I think most users just like their beauty, their tradition, and the archaic (in the PRC) feel. Whether you choose to learn them is up to you, but let's not go around calling other people snobbish just because they’ve learned something different or value tradition more than you do.

On the issue of where the simplifieds come from, bokane makes a good point that *some* predate traditional forms, and several others have pointed out that many simplified graphs are from 草書 cao3shu1 'cursive' or 行書xing2shu1 'semicursive' forms. But cursive is not the only source. Some, like lai2 ‘come’ are from clerical forms. Others are even older, going all the way back to the oracle bones, bronze or seal forms, like 从 cong2. The structure of 队 (隊)dui4 ‘squad, team’ is another good example; it represents a man falling from a cliff or high place, which is the meaning preserved in 墜 zhui4 ‘to fall’ (adding the tu3 ‘earth/mound’ element); except that in the OB form, the man was inverted. The truth is, there have been simpler and more complex variants existing simultaneously since the very earliest times.

Some scholars even believe that many of the OB forms may be simplified versions with unattested complex variants, because the bones were difficult to carve on, which impelled simplification. But other than a few bronzes, most writing (e.g., on what we presume to have been bamboo or wood slat books), which would have contained the evidence of these complex forms, has been lost.

Speaking of which, many of the OB forms and inferred original forms are really easier to write. Imagine if they'd gone back to 早 (minus the lower horizontal stroke) for 匙, for example. Or even 匕, for that matter, since it may have originally been a poyinzi with one reading like chi2, 'spoon'. 筆 bi3 would be just a vertical stroke, with two little tufts of hair added at 45 degree angles at the bottom. MUCH easier to write, and perfectly obvious in meaning. The OB forms of 賓 bin1, 蟲 chong2, 丑 chou3, 出 chu1, and many, many others are also easier and more obvious in meaning than their modern forms. Hell, let's return to the good old days of oracle bones! ;)

[Eulloba]

The primary purpose of simplification was not in anyway to "improve" or as a matter of fact, to simplify the script. It was a a declared first step for the total erradication of Chinese Characters. The mislead authorities could not do right away the Chinese script and substitute it for an alfabetic system of writing, pinyin, for the simple reason that they needed to introduce first a "putong hua". This means that the introduction of simplification was done for the wrong reason

I entirely agree with the illuminating views about the tremendous benefits of learning traditional characters. Of course you need to know simplified characters as well but you can do that with no effort when you learn both systems at the same time. You must give prevalence to traditional characters, because, as pointed out, they are the ones that make sense.

Simplified characters where developed by the wrong reasons: as a step to entirely do away with characters. The authorities thought it to be a great idea to substitute characters by the western alphabetic system of writing. The problem was that the had to make sure all the population could speak Putong Hua (to develop a unique transcription, of course). So the first step to achieve, they thought, was to simplify characters. The additional problem they created was that simplified characters are not simple, they are more difficult to learn that traditional ones because they do not make sense.

The aim of simplification was not to try to improve, or to "simplify" the characters. The aim was to eliminate characters via taking that preliminary step. The authorities did not put any care in trying to improve ways of learnig or etymological explanation of characters, etc.

To me, simplification has undoubtedly been of the the greatest tragedies of human kind. It was a reversal of Confucius "rectification of names", as a matter of fact it has been a "confusing of names".

Fortunately, this can be reversed, and I think it will be reverse. I meet an increasing number of Chinese people from mainland China that think that traditional characters will make a glorious come back, it is what I think, hope and expect.

As a matter of fact, simplified characters never succeeded. Past literature and writings for 2000 years are all over the place, not only in writings but also inscribed in momuments, etc. And outside China, the great majority of Chinese never accepted simplification. The Chinese people are very practical, acceptance or refusal of simplification has never been a political issue. If simplification was an advatage, why had it to be imposed, why was it not accepted outside of China?

When Confucius said that if he had the power to run a state his first measure would be "the rectification of names". One of his students could not help but exclaim, what a silly thing to say!. But Confucius exponded on the far reaching and disastrous effects of a seemingly slight deviation in meaning. When the names of things are not correct, confusion and chaos ensue.

We must all strive for the beautiful and profound chinese characters, the traditional characters.

But we must not despair about simplification, I think, that for the moment, Chinese writing is much more interesting and fun, because thanks to simplification, the chinese writing system has been made still more difficult and complex: more characters to be learnt, what fun!!

Eugenio Llorente, from Madrid, Spain.

__________________

eulloba

[bashFish]

@ first post

I think it's really important to teach the old, traditional charakters, too!

I'm from germany and we had a lot of different dialects and fonts in past...

Today, we have even one dialect teached (called "Hochdeutsch"), with arabic figures and latin letters...

OK! It's more simplified to learn german (writing skills) right now, but it's not german.!? It's a mix of everything but not of germanys culture/history!!

I feel very (very) sad, when I see an old german book and it's really hard for me to read it..!

Our old fonts were very beautiful, they were a part of german culture! Typical german... An attribute of germany and it was even of germany!!!

You can see the arabic numbers everywhere today... In USA, in Germany, ..... And the letters, too!

But these old german fonts are nearly forgotten... You can study them in a few (just a few) universitys with focus on languages..

But I can neither write nor well read them and, of course, we are loosing a part of our culture, of our traditions!

I think you can't difference Germany from USA (or other nations) in a few years..!

So I really hope, that chinese don't make the same fault like germans! It's important to save traditions and so I hope they save their language and they'll not attach themselves to the "new/modern/universal" language/culture

(e.g. I can't believe why so many beautiful chinese songs are destroyed with some lonely english phrases (sh) )

so far-- greetings

[djwebb2004]

My feelings are totally mixed on the issue of characters. I suppose that in theory I am on the side of tradition, but in fact I learned the simplified characters and I much prefer to read them, as they are easier on the eye. I just wish that the simplification has been done in another way. It is difficult to believe that 于 was once 於, but 淤 was not simplified. There is little logic to the simplification. 堕 is the simplified form of 墮, but 惰 was not simplified, and so on. People on this thread seem to think that the fantizi will make a comeback at least in print when China politically reforms. But what about the possibility that in 2047 when Hong Kong's autonomy runs out, the simplified characters will be imposed on what will then become the Xianggang Municipality, a 直辖市, along the lines of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing??

[xichg]

The funny thing is simplified character users accept traditional scripts while the hardcore traidtional script users (learners, promoters...) can't tolerate the simplified scripts and bend on destroying the simplified scripts. Their passion (or hatred) really amazes me but at the same time make their argument less credible.

Me? I was educated in simplified system and am now living overseas so unavoidably I learn to read and appareciate traditional characters. I find many traditional Hanzi beautiful especially when they are written big as in shop signs. But some of them are darn ugly and unnecessarily difficult and contray to what many believe don't make sense at all. Simplified characters? Many are ugly when compared to traditional ones, but surprisingly some of them are more beautiful than their traditional version. And thank god it's so much easier to write. However the real bliss is to read newspapers and printed materials in simplified scripts when you don't have to see the 'black dot'. To be honest I couldn't even see clearly many traditonal characters in many posts of this thread when they were used to prove how much sense they make. All I can see are 'black box'.

I don't hope to see China revert to traditional usages. At the same time I am happy to see traditional characters are preserved in Chinese communities outside mainland China. Neither system is perfect. I like to enjoy the benifits of simplifed system (mainly its easiness) and at the same time feel lucky and grateful that the elegant traditional characters which to a great extent define Chinese culture and 'Chineseness' prosperous outside Mainland China. Even in Mainland China the traditional characters are still widely used. I surely don't want the 春联 at my door written in simplified Hanzi. I also believe with the advancement of technelogy and increaces communication among different part of world and Chinese world, the simplified/traditional won't be a big issue when many people will be versed in both systems.

[atitarev]

I am not so interested in the fight traditional vs simplified. I just accept the fact that both system exists, they have a lot of supporters and are used heavily. My personal preference is simplified because I personally have more material for simplified but I am learning traditional as well and I also find learning, reading, writing and looking up simplified easier (be it 4%, even 3%, it's a lot when you learn Chinese!) Having said this, I don't want to discourage anyone from learning traditional, they are important.

I find quite interesting learning texts that have both versions. I learn texts with the focus on simplified, and then the same text in tradition script. Sometimes it's challenging to guess and understand but it's quite interesting. Try New Practical Chinese Reader or Integrated Chinese (starting from volume 2).

As for the simplification process, there are at least 6 methods, so you can't say that it doesn't make sense, since you need to understand ALL of them. It only becomes a problem if you have to remember both versions, otherwise you just accept that that character is what you should be using. Yes, sometimes simplification wasn't perfect (symmetricity, tradition, etc) but it's a standard script in China.