List of simplified characters that are older than their traditional counterparts

[tooironic]

Hi all. I'm looking for a list of simplified characters that are older (i.e. have been in use for a longer time through history) than their traditional counterparts.

I was talking with a Chinese friend the other day on QQ. He asked me why I was using such "ancient" characters as 繁體字. I responded by saying that they can't be that ancient if they're still in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong and anyway many simplified characters were in use before their traditional forms came into being. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can elaborate on whether I'm on the right track?

Cheers!

[Kenny同志]

I prefer the term 正體字(Orthodox Chinese Characters). It's saddening to see that many people on the Mainland have not yet realised how ugly and absurd the 簡體字s are.

[大肚男]

beauty is a subjective matter.

I really think that a lot of the simplified characters are genius and beautiful, while some traditional characters look disturbing.

[Kenny同志]

簡體字s are the result of 正體字s being simplified in a way that is inexplicable through rules of how Chinese characters had evolved. Consequently, many 簡體字s do not make sense from a pictographic perspective（visit this blog for information）. What is equally worse is that dozens of sets of single-character homophones or similar-looking characters have been merged, for example 干 is now used for干（支）,乾（燥）, 幹（活）, 后 for （皇）后, 後（來），发 for 發（展） and （頭）髮, 舍 for （屋）舍 and 捨（棄）, 谷 for 谷（surname）and （稻）穀(visit this blog for more information).

These are the two major reasons why 簡體字s are ugly.

[tooironic]

Perhaps I should have made it clear in my original post that I wasn't looking to ignite a debate on simplified versus traditional characters.

I'm just looking for a list of simplified characters which have a longer history of usage than their traditional counterparts...

[skylee]

This might be relevant -> http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_537dfe8001000ack.html

Take a look at note 2 in the third picture.

[skylee]

This might also be relevant (not sure how to read the lower half of each page, though) -> 宋元以來俗字譜

PS - A pdf version can be downloaded here.

[renzhe]

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but this post might be useful.

It lists all simplified characters which existed in their current form before the simplification process (written exactly the same way, but not that some changed meaning in the process). I don't know which ones are older than their traditional counterparts, and I don't know of such a list, but common examples include 你/妳 and 云/雲. 么 is also older than 麼 according to wiktionary.

[Hofmann]

Actually 云 for 雲, 你 for 妳, 网 are the only characters I can think of. 个 possibly (when compared to 個; questionable with 箇).

[DespikableMi]

Beside 云、网、个 the only ones I can think of are:

从（從）

众（眾）

And actually 你 was not merged with 妳. The character "妳" is a recent invention just like "她" but fell out of popular usage in the mainland both due to government standardization and lack of need for the character. One reason is that with context it is almost always clear enough to determine the gender of a second person pronoun. Second is that it would become an unnecessary feature for a language that does not distinguish gender in such a way.

[萌就一個字一控一輩子]

suggest a really good place for this kind of infomation or learning.

http://www.douban.com/group/Sinogram/?ref=1

中國正體漢字促進會

[Hofmann]

Well I was thinking by "Traditional" one meant "what people are taught in ROC and Hong Kong." Not really traditional, else there would be no such characters as 們 and 哪.