Chinese Character Simplification
January 17th, 2007 by MarkLast week John B. wrote about his thoughts concerning the simplification of Chinese characters.
Then, in the course of my varied and meaningless reading, I stumbled upon a character that reaffirmed my belief that, for all its faults, simplification was the way to go. The new word I encountered was 抓阄, meaning “to draw lots.” I wasn’t familiar with the second character, so I looked it up only to discover that it was the simplified variant of 鬮, a 26-stroke monster that uses 龜 (simplified: 龟) as its phonetic component (according to Wenlin both 鬮 and 龜 are pronounced gau in Cantonese, but in Mandarin they are jiu and gui, respectively). I’d like to think this character was created to describe thrilling Han Dynasty turtle fights (鬮 = 鬥 (斗, “fight”) + 龜 (龟, “turtle”)) that were later banned by a turtle-loving Emperor, thus leaving people no choice but to draw lots when settling disputes, but more likely it was the result of one-upmanship by bored scholars.
John Biesnecker: Turtles, lots, and proof simplification wasn’t all bad
Simplification is something almost any westerner living in Taiwan will probably think about, too. Living here, we learn traditional characters, but nearly all the resources for learning Chinese online focus on simplified characters. Great services like Chinese Pod, great dictionaries and annotators like Adsotrans, and many other tools target simplified character users. It’s hard to blame people, since 98% of the Mandarin speakers in the world use simplified characters as opposed to traditional, but still it’s hard not to feel unfairly left out. Living in Taiwan, all I see or use are traditional characters.
When I visited the mainland last summer, it was a shock. Everything seemed familiar… but off. I saw all these characters that I couldn’t quite figure out, but they all looked so simple! The amazing thing is that within a few days, I’d picked up dozens of characters without even trying. Even more amazingly, I could write them and I still can. Some characters such as 让 are so simple that I could probably never go back to the mainland, and still be able to write them years from now. The traditional version, 讓, on the other hand, would probably be gone in a matter of months if I moved away from Taiwan. Another thing I noticed is that simplified characters are much more phonetic, or at least that their phonetic components are much more obvious to me. One example would be 達’s simplification into 达 (the character is pronounced as dá). My visit really did change some of my ideas.
I like traditional characters, and one of my reasons for living here so long is that I want to become literate in them. In some cases, the semantic components of simplified characters are less clear or gone altogether. On the other hand, after having experienced their utility first hand, it’s very difficult for me to dislike simplified characters. More importantly, I’ll have to them if I ever want to use my Chinese skills in the west. Regardless of what I think of various simplification choices, the system is used by over a billion people.
Related Posts:
Sinosplice: Thoughts on Simplification
Language Log: Notes on Chinese Character Simplification
January 18th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Interesting post, Mark. I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. I prefer traditional, but I guess it is just what I am used to.
There are some cases where the traditional form is easier to remember or more meaningful than the simplified. I think some of the simplifications were poorly chosen. A more ideal character set would be somewhere in the middle. Two systems is enough already though. I don’t want to suggest the creation of a third simplified/traditional character system.
January 19th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Does this article (”40% of Chinese cannot speak putonghua”) change those numbers a bit (or at least the numbers people might derive from your “98%” figure)? Here’s a quote from within:
That comes from Xinhua, so those numbers are certainly lower than the harsh reality.
Does simplification work? The CIA Factbook says the literacy rate in Taiwan is 96.1% (2003 figure). Read more about Xinhua and Chinese literacy (or lack thereof) here.
January 19th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Tim, I wrote 98% of Mandarin speakers. I realize that a sizable number of older people here, on the mainland, in Singapore, and in HK don’t speak “standard Chinese”, as Xinhua put it.
I’m not completely sure if I understand your question about whether if simplification “works”. If you’re asking whether if people can learn to read or write it, the answer is yes. China has maintained an economic growth rate of about 10% per year for twenty-five years, and in the process surpassed previously richer neighbors such as India, in both wealth and literacy. I really don’t see the what relevance Taiwan’s literacy rate has to character simplification, though. Taiwan was developed extensively by the Japanese before WWII. Furthermore, it has been receiving support and trade from the US for decades that mainland China has had little access to until recently. It’s not a very fair comparison.
I realize that literacy statistics are controversial, but according to the CIA World Factbook you cited, China’s literacy rate is 90.9%. In comparison, India’s is 59.5%. Brazil, a large country that has a significantly higher per capita GDP than China does, has a listed literacy rate of 86.4%.
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