Traditional form of 才

[Shelley]

I have recently started learning traditional characters along side simplified. In my NPCR lesson 14 we have cái 才。

 

I tried to find the traditional form but encounter some odd things. Pleco shows both in the headword but no stroke order for it and my headword is set to traditional first simplified second but it shows this the other way round.

 

In my Tuttle Chinese in a Flash set of paper flashcards it doesn't show the traditional form at all, usually it shows both forms with characters that are simplified.

 

I can't find a traditional form in my IME to even show what it does look like. I can find it in a little booklet that is a Conversion Table between Simplified and Complex forms.

 

Is there a reason it seems to be an unused traditional form? Or is something else going on?

 

Thanks for any help.

[Luxi]

Does this help?

 

http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html?find=%E6%89%8D

 

http://www.archchinese.com/chinese_english_dictionary.html?find=%E7%BA%94

 

I'm sure when you see the traditional form you'll instantly know why it isn't very widely used 

[Shelley]

I have actually seen the character and yes at 23 strokes it is no surprise its not used.

 

My question though is more about people and places that use traditional characters, do they also use the simplified version and if they do how many simplified characters are used by traditionalists?

 

Do they pick and choose simplified ones when its easier and is this not some kind of "cheat" or is there a middle ground of this type of use that is acceptable?

[Lu]

才 is used even in traditional texts. I suppose you might come across 纔 on occasion, but it's not widely in use. Something similar is happening with 臺/台: you see the former occasionally (more often than 纔), but the latter is common even in traditional.

Many of the simplified characters have been in wide use well before the communists came along and made them official. The process that gave birth to those simplifications is still going on (and will probably never stop). It's not cheating, it's just language changing.

[Shelley]

Thanks for that. I hadn't remembered about pre-communist simplifications.

 

For some reason I have it in my head (quite wrongly) that simplification started in 1949 and it had never been thought of before. I must remember as you say, language is continually changing and developing.

 

Must admit I am quite glad I don't need to memorise the traditional form

[Lu]

Must admit I am quite glad I don't need to memorise the traditional form.

I imagine that's what the general consensus was, hence the simplification :-)

[Shelley]

Indeed

[Michaelyus]

The story is a little more complicated than that. In books and standard where both were used concurrently, 才 was consistently used for the meaning of "talent" e.g. in 天才, whereas 纔 was an option for the adverb e.g. 剛纔. I believe in the 白話 texts of the Ming 纔 is more common only because this grammatical meaning was more common. The Kangxi dictionary gives both, as well as elucidating its "original meaning" as a dark reddish colour, which in modern Mandarin is pronounced shān.

 

However, 纔 has gone the way of the orthography "to-day" in English in the early 20th century, and PRC simplification just formalised an increasing trend into its standard.

[Shelley]

Thank you for that Michaelyus. I suppose this is not the only character that this has happened to.

 

I had a feeling adding traditional characters to my learning would increase the general information about characters and I have not been disappointed