How do mainland Chinese people feel when seeing a sign with traditional characters?

[OneEye]

It's true, Taiwanese are pretty passionate about the traditional characters. They call them 正體字, because they're "not complicated, they're correct". Of course, this is a misconception, because many unorthodox forms are used in the ROC standard. But the set used in the ROC is certainly much more correct.

I recently heard someone refer to the simplified characters as 殘體字! I told my teacher, who laughed, but then said it's "not polite". She also told us about 共匪 and then told us it's not polite and not to use it.

[jkhsu]

However, the CCP is not responsible for the creation of many of these simplifications, many were created by the Chinese people through centuries, and a minority was created by a CCP committee.

Yes, you are correct but I don't think any of us care to start a debate on what is "simplification" and whether the "idea" of "simplification" is an issue for Taiwan / HK right? For the purposes of this thread's discussion topic, it's important to define what is meant by "traditional" characters and what is meant by "simplified" characters in relation to welcome signs in airports. The majority of differences in a sign that is in "traditional" characters vs. a sign that is in "simplified" characters at airports now are the result of the CCP. This is an important fact for this discussion as I've pointed out in my initial post.

Maybe you can start a new thread on this. It's kind of like the OP asks us to translate English to Chinese but instead we discuss about how to translate some Chinese words into English.

I agree that the OP is asking about how mainlanders feel about seeing signs in traditional Chinese, however, because the OP's post mentioned welcome signs in many airports being in traditional characters and whether mainland Chinese would be happier if they were written in simplified Chinese, I wanted to offer some background context as to why this is the case and why perhaps, it's difficult for some airports to change.

If we take Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for example, the reason the welcome sign is in traditional Chinese, as I've mentioned already, is that historically the majority of Chinese in L.A. and Chinese travelers came from Taiwan or Hong Kong. I believe just recently (within the last year or two) group tours to the USA were opened to mainland Chinese. Whether these signs or printed material in Chinese need to change will become a hot topic soon as more and more mainland Chinese vist the USA and bring in much needed money. However, the problem is not about making text comfortable to read for the mainland Chinese but about appeasing the historical Chinese community made up of immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, many of whom have a pretty harsh stance against simplified characters.

Here's a link to the "Chinese" section of the LAX website (only in traditional Chinese)

http://www.lawa.org/...LAX.aspx?id=400

The welcome sign outside of LAX with 歡迎

[xiaocai]

Then leave it as traditional then, if it makes whoever holds a harsh stance against simplified characters happy. I don't think many mainlanders will have any problem with that. Whatever, really.

[skylee]

Whether these signs or printed material in Chinese need to change will become a hot topic soon as more and more mainland Chinese vist the USA and bring in much needed money.

It will become a hot topic? Really? Why ever will there be a need for change in the first place? If it is considered necessary for there to be simplified scipt, just add the simplified version. It is patronising to assume that mainlanders can't read / will be offended by the traditional script.

[Iriya]

I see Taiwan as just an island of rebels, holdouts. Kind of like the Japanese holdouts after WWII. The rest of the world have moved on, and yet they still continue their imaginary fight against their imaginary evil.

Who cares about the 繁体字, really? Many languages have undergone orthographic reforms in the 20th century, e.g. German and Russian. All languages go through this process, at one point in time or another. The English speakers no longer write in Ye Olde English. Nobody but the Taiwanese holdouts is really bothered by these reforms. Have you heard of any of the Japanese wanting to go back to 旧字体? Russians yearning for the 19th century spelling? No.

Who would really prefer to write 號聽體聲醫識寶 instead of 号听体声医识宝? It's nonsense. It's hard to write by hand, and it's hard on the eyes. Even the Japanese won't do this. Back in the old days, very few people were literate, and usually they had all the time in the world to sit on their asses all day and write these needlessly complicated characters. But things have changed.

The Taiwanese just want to be different, it's a 62 year campaign of trying to save face. They use a bastardized nonsensical romanization system, because pinyin is "made by the evil communists". Hell, most of the Taiwanese I met online would even refuse to be called 中国人. Then who the hell are you? Didn't you guys want to take over the mainlaind and impose your own regime? Now that you failed, the only thing you can do is try to save face. "We're not really Chinese, we're so different!"

Sorry for the rant. Feel free to move it to another thread, if you want.

[skylee]

I see Taiwan as just an island of rebels, holdouts. Kind of like the Japanese holdouts after WWII. The rest of the world have moved on, and yet they still continue their imaginary fight against their imaginary evil.

I strongly disagree.

Who cares about the 繁体字, really?

Who would really prefer to write 號聽體聲醫識寶 instead of 号听体声医识宝?

I do. And I don't live in Taiwan.

[rezaf]

Who cares about the 繁体字, really?

Your argument could be valid a few decades ago but now because of technology there is really no need to write anything by hand and simplified doesn't have any advantage over traditional in terms of speed.

[knickherboots]

The day my blessed pen starts writing simplified characters is the day you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!

But, seriously, though the simplified/traditional debate can get quite tedious and dogmatic, it is interesting to see the gradual proliferation of traditional characters in mainland China over the past fifteen or so years. Because traditional characters are usually used for signs and in areas with traditional cultural connotations, it's almost as if they take a place between simplified characters and calligraphy. I don't know how much it has to do with drawing the viewer's attention through a different (though comprehensible) appearance as opposed to harkening to Chineseness.

[Don_Horhe]

For the most part, minor differences aside, the differences in Set A and Set B are the result of the CCP.

Do you agree with this?

It was under CCP rule that Set A was promulgated, there's no doubt about that. However, the only thing that truly was the result of the CCP is the act of promulgation itself - they simply made official something that had been going on for centuries. The first advocate of systematic script reform, Lufei Kui, suggested the usage of simplified characters as early as 1909. Furthermore, as Renzhe pointed out above, simplification was initiated by the KMT (cf. 第一批简体字表 from 1935, abandoned the following year), but was halted because of the civil war. The fact that the CCP finished something that had de facto started long before the party's founding (over 50% of the aforementioned 521 simplified characters were already in existence during the Yuan dynasty) does not make simplification itself pro-communist, anti-capitalist or whatever.

[taiwanshaun]

@Iriya

Hmmm, if anything, this is the feeling I've gotten from Chinese people living in the mainland. As I've been informed, the educational material approved by the Chinese government is **strongly** nationalistic, and children are taught from a young age that Taiwan is part of China and needs to be "brought back into the fold" as it were.

Over talks on Skype, and MSN with Chinese people who have lived and grown up in the mainland, I've occasionally made the mistake of accidentally responding to the question, "Are you living in China?" with "oh, I'm living in Taiwan", which was usually met with vitriolic protestations such as "Taiwan is China, Taiwan is part of China, they're the same thing!!" bla bla bla, even though my intent was merely geographical specificity, rather than an attempt at "asserting Taiwanese independence".

Furthermore, I'm not sure I understand why your tone, which sounds both defensive and almost angry to a point. Speaking as a westerner, I strive to be somewhat objective about this whole issue since when it comes down to it, I'm not Chinese.

As far as traditional Chinese goes, I don't think it comes down to some "self-righteous stand" so much as it comes down to habit. They're used to it. As far as literacy goes, if an island of over 20 million people can learn traditional (literacy rates have most recently been pegged around ~95%), then perhaps it's not the supposed complexity of the characters at fault for other region's illiteracy, so much as it is the educational method which is employed to teach them. Personally, having learned some simplified about a decade ago back in university and having already learned how to read and write traditional, I personally find traditional much easier to remember, since I often use the radicals to aid in reconstruction by way of mnemonics, as well as assistance in pronounciation, depending on which of the 六書 etymological methods was used in the character.

-- taiwanshaun

[OneEye]

It was under CCP rule that Set A was promulgated, there's no doubt about that. However, the only thing that truly was the result of the CCP is the act of promulgation itself - they simply made official something that had been going on for centuries. The first advocate of systematic script reform, Lufei Kui, suggested the usage of simplified characters as early as 1909. Furthermore, as Renzhe pointed out above, simplification was initiated by the KMT (cf. 第一批简体字表 from 1935, abandoned the following year), but was halted because of the civil war. The fact that the CCP finished something that had de facto started long before the party's founding (over 50% of the aforementioned 521 simplified characters were already in existence during the Yuan dynasty) does not make simplification itself pro-communist, anti-capitalist or whatever.

This could be a bit misleading. They may have been in existence, but what was the usage? 后 for instance was around, but it did not mean 後 except when (incorrectly) used as a shorthand substitution. Making it official doesn't make much sense when there's a perfectly good character already used for that word. Similarly, the simplified form of 訁 (I don't have a way to type it right now) was around, but it was cursive. Why make incorrect substitutions, shorthands, and straightened-out cursive forms the standard? What's more, many of the characters that were simplified using phonetic substitutions（听 for 聽 for instance) don't work as well in languages other than Mandarin anymore. Some of those don't even make all that much sense in Mandarin, like the aforementioned 听.

I'm not anti-simplification, I just think they did a really terrible job of it.

[Kenny同志]

I'm not anti-simplification, I just think they did a really terrible job of it.

I agree, and that's why I like tradtitional Chinese better.

[Iriya]

Wenlin says:

听 long ago stood for a word yǐn 'smile'; it was already being used instead of 聽 tīng by the 17th century

And really, what's the point of 德 in the complex form? Just to make it look prettier?

[roddy]

I don't want to start another simplified vs. traditional debate, so I'll stop here.

...unless someone else keeps going, in which case I will . .

I also have no intention of starting this debate.

but y'know, if I happen to mentions some stuff, and someone else mentions some stuff, and pretty soon it starts to look like a debate, well, what can I do?

Sorry for the rant. Feel free to move it to another thread, if you want.

. . . but not so sorry I just didn't post it. And hey, I've given you permission to do the extra work I've generated for you, so it's ok.

You folk crack me up, you really do.

[Don_Horhe]

Roddy's right, we got a little carried away. Let's just leave it as it is.

[roddy]

Enjoy yourselves if you want, just don't expect me to figure out which posts should be split where.

[rezaf]

And really, what's the point of 德 in the complex form? Just to make it look prettier?

聽是由耳，壬，直，心四字會意。“壬”我們講過，是人直立的樣子。整個一個字的意思就是聲音通過耳朵直達於心，用心領悟。所以我們看看，古人是怎麼強調“聽”的啊。用“心”啊。而我們今天所謂簡化的听(讀‘引’)《說文解字》上說：“听，笑貌。從口，斤聲。”表示人笑的樣子，和“聽”完全是兩個字。所以我們現在教育學生上課要認真聽講，試問，用“听”字來教育學生，學生怎能不嬉皮笑臉，無動于衷？

http://blog.sina.com...eb0100bmwp.html

It's not 漢字's fault that you don't know about its 說文解字 and other explanations.

Edit: 《說文》：“惪，外得於人，内得於己也。從直心。”

[renzhe]

Why make incorrect substitutions, shorthands, and straightened-out cursive forms the standard?

This is the heart of the issue. Who says that it is incorrect?

Characters like 听 have been used in their current "simplified" form for centuries, by Chinese people, in different contexts (usually not for formal writing, mind you!) And this is "incorrect".

On the other hand, characters like 妳 and 她, which are much more recent additions that were not widely used even in the early 20th century (Lu Xun uses 他 exclusively) are somehow "traditional" and "correct". And what about 哪?

I'm sure that most people will agree that some aspects of the PRC character simplification were unfortunate. With some people, however, it seems to be a religious war -- it is ALL wrong and it is ALL stupid. IMHO, it makes the most sense to think of simplified and traditional as two different standards, similar to American and British English. Writing "color" is not "incorrect"*.

* I still maintain that "aluminum" is flat out wrong, though

[rezaf]

Who says that it is incorrect?

Even the people who wrote them didn't think that those were correct characters, that's why they are called 俗體字 not 正體字. I agree that 簡化 is necessary for taking notes or informal writing where speed is important and precision is not but as Oneye said it doesn't mean that they should become the standard. For example a few weeks ago I had to memorize this: "...,合於四時五臟陰陽..." from 內經. In order to memorize it I simplified it to 45臟 but which one do you think I should write in my exam? 四時五臟 or 45臟? Even though there was some need and application for 俗體字 before, now that writing by hand is no longer necessary there is no need for them either.

[xiaocai]

I don't see this discussion going any where... It seems that most, if not all threads involving comparison between simplified and traditional Chinese that I have read always end up in the same way. Why?