{"id":48,"date":"2011-01-09T00:01:52","date_gmt":"2011-01-09T08:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2024-08-10T15:16:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T22:16:02","slug":"chinese-simplified-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/09\/chinese-simplified-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"Simplified Chinese &#8212; 1956 AD, China"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_49\" style=\"width: 110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/simplifiedHorse.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"size-full wp-image-49\" title=\"simplifiedHorse\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/simplifiedHorse.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"97\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-49\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Simplified Chinese &#8220;horse&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In 1956, the People&#8217;s Republic of China promoted a simplified writing scheme, with the goal of improving literacy. Currently, Simplified Chinese is used in the PRC (except for Hong Kong), Malaysia, and Singapore; <a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/08\/chinese-traditional-chinese\/\">Traditional Chinese<\/a> is used everywhere else.\u00a0 The PRC government can fine people for using Traditional Chinese, with exceptions for ceremonial, decorative, or research purposes.<\/p>\n<p>There were several techniques for simplifying the characters, including<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reviving simpler ancient forms of characters.<\/li>\n<li>Making printed forms of cursive shapes that were already in use. These simplified shapes are sort of like abbreviations in Latin script, where some are totally understood and others can be guessed at.\u00a0 You would certainly recognize &#8220;St&#8221; as being an abbreviation for &#8220;street&#8221;, probably would understand &#8220;abbr&#8221; as &#8220;abbreviation&#8221;, and might understand &#8220;bg&#8221; as &#8220;background&#8221; in context.<\/li>\n<li>Merging a character into another, simpler character which has the same sound (in Mandarin, I presume).\u00a0 For example, &#8220;behind&#8221; and &#8220;queen&#8221; have the same pronunciation, and in Simplified Chinese, both use\u00a0 the &#8220;queen&#8221; symbol.<\/li>\n<li>Making new characters and\/or <em>radicals<\/em> (sub-elements) with fewer strokes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Needless to say, the decision was hugely controversial.\u00a0 Opponents thought that simplification tore at the foundations of Chinese culture.\u00a0 Proponents thought that opponents were being overly sentimental about a very practical decision.\u00a0 Both thought that their version of the script was better for reading and learning.\u00a0 Proponents of simplified characters pointed out that there were fewer strokes to learn.\u00a0 Opponents pointed out that the simplification often removed clues that readers could use to figure out the meaning of the word, forcing more rote memorization.\u00a0 Proponents pointed out that the detail in traditional characters was more easily lost at small font sizes.\u00a0 Opponents pointed out that there was more ambiguity in simplified characters (in large part due to merging characters).<\/p>\n<p>Proponents point out that literacy has indeed gone up in the People&#8217;s Republic of China.\u00a0 Opponents counter that many things happened in PRC since simplification, and that correlation does not imply causality.<\/p>\n<p>The sheer size of the PRC is slowly advancing simplified script.\u00a0 For example, while it is not required to use Simplified Chinese in Hong Kong, students find that textbooks printed in Simplified Chinese are cheaper than those printed in Traditional Chinese.\u00a0 On the other hand, there is great affection for Traditional Chinese, and it frequently appears in signs in PRC.\u00a0 (This is very similar to how I see frequently see <a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/chinese-small-script\/\">Small Seal Script<\/a> on restaurant signs in Vancouver.)<\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to look at the progression of Chinese characters throughout time.\u00a0 Below are four versions of the character for &#8220;horse&#8221; &#8212; Oracle Bones, Small Seal Script, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.\u00a0 You can see that the Simplified Chinese character looks nothing like the Oracle Bones one, but if you go step-by-step, you can see how the character evolved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Oracle Bones Horse\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/oracleBonesHorse.png\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Small Seal Horse\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/smallSealHorse.png\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Traditional Horse\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/kaishuHorse1.png\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"simplifiedHorse\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/simplifiedHorse.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There is a very nice service over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chineseetymology.org\/why_study.aspx\">Chinese Etymology<\/a> which lets you look at the evolution of characters over time, including variants.\u00a0 For example, see the (many!) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chineseetymology.org\/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E9%A9%AC&amp;submitButton1=Etymology\">results for &#8220;horse&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Links: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Simplified_Chinese\">Wikipedia<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/writing\/chinese_simplified.htm\">Omniglot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1956, the People&#8217;s Republic of China promoted a simplified writing scheme, with the goal of improving literacy. Currently, Simplified Chinese is used in the PRC (except for Hong Kong), Malaysia, and Singapore; Traditional Chinese is used everywhere else.\u00a0 The &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/09\/chinese-simplified-chinese\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,8,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-mandated","category-logograms-language-types","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}