| Which is better? Simplified Chinese Character or Traditional Chinese? | |
|---|---|
| Apr 17, 2007 03:33 |   |
 | Nowadays, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and some other places are still using traditional Chinese. But simlified Chinese seemed more popular. Which do you think is better?? |
| Apr 17, 2007 03:40 | #1 |
| I like simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is too complicated and hard to learn, recognize, write. |
| Apr 17, 2007 03:45 | #2 |
| So do I, I can read few of them acturally. :( |
| Apr 17, 2007 03:47 | #3 |
| For example: 鸡(Ji 1) which means Chick, Rooster are written like this in traditional Chinese: 雞. 观众(Guan 1 Zhong 4), the Audience, is written as 觀衆. 钟楼(Zhong 1 Lou 2), the Bell Tower, is written as 鐘樓. Too complicated to learn! |
| Apr 17, 2007 05:01 | #4 |
| I prefer simplified Chinese, but Oxford spelling in English. Guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite in that respect. I've heard those foreigners who learned Chinese in Taiwan say they prefer traditional characters, so I guess it depends on where you started learning Chinese, or perhaps whether your teachers are from the Mainland or Taiwan. |
| Apr 17, 2007 06:04 | #5 |
| I learnt simplified chinese during my school days, so naturally I prefer simplified chinese. I can't read or write much of traditional chinese anyway! |
| Apr 17, 2007 08:51 | #6 |
| i wonder in chinese calligraphy proper do you write in traditional or simplified? myself i took up the language in traditional, it was hard work, and I think most traditional chinese 'users' can read quite spontaneously simplified Chinese by getting used to it for some time or just being there in China or reading mainland books and magazines. I write only in traditional chinese though |
| Apr 17, 2007 15:34 | #7 |
| "Nowadays, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and some other places are still using traditional Chinese. But simlified Chinese seemed more popular. Which do you think is better??" Better is what make people less illiteral. Even with the simplified characters we still have people who don't know how to write "France" in Chinese, but they can write it in English... I will tell you once again: The Chinese characters were very progressive thousand years ago, when the people had no idea about the phonetic alphabets, but today...It is the same if today someone still do not use guns, airpanes and ships, but only bows, horses and spears, because they are "part of our culture"... That is why in Singapore, Macao, Hongkong and Taiwan more than 6% of the population can't read. In China the situation is almost the same. |
| Apr 17, 2007 20:04 | #8 |
| I prefer traditional Chinese characters and I can read most of them, though I use simplified ones in daily life. I think the traditional Chinese characters should be promoted as they form a very important part of Chinese culture. From many traditional characters, we could know the formation process and the origin of them; however this kind of information may lost when the characters are simplified. That's a pity! |
| Apr 17, 2007 20:33 | #9 |
| Sanyachina, the problem with your argument is that literacy rates in China, including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao where traditional characters are used, are actually pretty good. On this table http://hdr.undp.org/ Hong Kong has a literacy rate of 93.5%, China (meaning the Mainland, I guess) comes in at 85.8%, which is significantly better than many countries that use the phonetic systems of writing you seem to idolise (Algeria 67.8%, Iran 77.1%, Guatemala 69.2%, India 58%...) The figures are for adult literacy, defined as "The percentage of people aged 15 and above who can, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement related to their everyday life." It would seem that literacy has less to do with writing systems and more to do with access to quality education, and in that respect China is doing pretty well for itself, even with Chinese characters. |
| Apr 17, 2007 21:19 | #10 |
| The literacy rates is not caused by how hard the character is but by the government's actions and money. Traditional Chinese is much more pretty but some of the characters are definitely too hard to learn. |
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