| Which is better? Simplified Chinese Character or Traditional Chinese? | |
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| Apr 18, 2007 02:51 | #11   |
 | Thanks for sharing guys~ Personally, I like traditional Chinese. And I can read most of the common tradtional Chinese. But I'm afraid that fewer and fewer people can read ancient data now. Traditional Chinese has been used for thousands of years, and it's best for us to know it if we want to continue our history and culture. |
| Apr 18, 2007 16:39 | #12 |
| "From many traditional characters, we could know the formation process and the origin of them;" Dear, first of all you can't find enough people who at least know 9000 of the simpliefied characters, who will be able to learn the same number of the traditional characters?! It is terrible, but ... |
| Apr 18, 2007 16:54 | #13 |
| "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." Comparing with the time before the Revolution. Of course today is not so good, but at least people can use Pinyin, so it is some progress! "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%...)" Excuse me, but I was talking about developed societies. Please do not give me examples with countries where people eat without spoon/chopsticks, living in the junngles, do not wash bodies often, etc. At least I am glad you didn't mention Papua-New Guinea or Swaziland. :) Instead of this TELL ME what is easier: a/ To learn 26 to 50+ letters b/ To learn 8 000+ characters? "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." "EVEN" was the keyword ! And anyway, TELL ME WHY: a/ A 7 years old Russian boy can read every Russian text. b/ A 20 years old Chinese man sometimes can't read even "Renmin Ribao" without dictionary? |
| Apr 18, 2007 17:02 | #14 |
| "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." I think it is cause how hard is the character as well. IT IS MUCH EASIER TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE: "I" (It is just a simple, primitive line, means "WO"), than to use 7 lines ("我") to express the same "WO" in Chinese. Or have a look how easy is to express a zero in Western way: "0" and compare with the Chinese one: "零" MORE THAN 10 lines only for one "0"... Well, I think that writing system is really not practical. In my opinion the most practical systems are: -Korean -Cyrillic -Latin The Arabian, Mongolian, Manchurian are difficult to learn too. |
| Apr 18, 2007 17:06 | #15 |
| "Traditional Chinese has been used for thousands of years, and it's best for us to know it if we want to continue our history and culture." The same as horses, bows and spears...But now we are using planes, rockets, computers...So sad, huh? ;) :D... TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE THE HISTORY AND CULTURE MEANS to DEVELOP IT, not to FREEZE IT, NOT TO STOP IT. |
| Apr 18, 2007 22:56 | #16 |
| Sanya, if you can read traditional Chinese, you may not know what exactly the character in ancient books/steles/building/etc tells. So I agree that we have to learn to read traditional Chinese, at least. |
| Apr 19, 2007 00:31 | #17 |
| "Excuse me, but I was talking about developed societies. Please do not give me examples with countries where people eat without spoon/chopsticks, living in the junngles, do not wash bodies often, etc. At least I am glad you didn't mention Papua-New Guinea or Swaziland. :)" Take that racism somewhere else. The fact is literacy has nothing to do with writing systems and everything to do with access to and quality of education. Of course it's easier to learn 26 characters than x1000. So what? Learning to read the 26 letters used in English or the 33 in Russian does not make you literate. "a/ A 7 years old Russian boy can read every Russian text. b/ A 20 years old Chinese man sometimes can't read even "Renmin Ribao" without dictionary?" 1: I'd be very, very surprised if a 7 year old from any country can read any text in his native language. 2: Why not compare a 7 year old Chinese kid who can read Renmin Ribao with a 20 year old Russian who can't read Pravda? I'm sorry, but the facts speak for themselves. Although it is not easy to learn to read and write Chinese, education makes it just as possible as learning to read and write any other language. |
| Apr 19, 2007 17:18 | #18 |
| "Take that racism somewhere else." I really want to know if you are a NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER why sometimes you make so terrible mistakes. Once I told you about one, now is the second time. The meaning of racism is"/// disposition to evaluate superiority using racial traits." If I mean that some SOCIETY is more developed or less developed or developing it is about : -culture -economy -society, etc, BUT NO THE RACE! I.e. I do not mean something racial because: -Iran -Papua-New Guinea -India -Guatemala -Swaziland belongs to different races and subraces, but may be in your imagination they are only one race?! So, please, before type something check well the meaning of the words, otherwise sounds very infantile. "The fact is literacy has nothing to do with writing systems and everything to do with access to and quality of education." It is not true. For example if you have to learn ony 33 letters and your language is phonetic one, you can learn it only for 1-2 moths and to be able to read. We hae enough examples from the East European history about it. BUT IF YOU HAVE TO LEARN 8 000 + CHARACTERS you can learn 10 years and STILL to be not able to read. WHY, WHY, WHY, TELL ME WHY, A GOOD EDUCATED (from UNIVERSITY) Han-Chinese woman 4 days ago told me : "I can't recognize this character!" And the character was just a CHEMICAL ELEMENT like F, H, O, Mg, Cl or Zn. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? "Of course it's easier to learn 26 characters than x1000. So what? Learning to read the 26 letters used in English or the 33 in Russian does not make you literate." In English - may be not, because it is not a phonetical language, but Russian is mostly phonetical ( for example if you type in Russian LAKE you will read it like LHA-KEH, not like LEIK. The same is the good old Latin!) "1: I'd be very, very surprised if a 7 year old from any country can read any text in his native language." Not from any country. Only from countries and peoples where the language is phonetical and the alphabet is practical, easy one. |
| Apr 19, 2007 17:18 | #19 |
| Part 2: "2: Why not compare a 7 year old Chinese kid who can read Renmin Ribao with a 20 year old Russian who can't read Pravda?" Because this case is 1/ 1 000 000, but the first case is not! BY THE WAY in China if a 7 years old can read 5 000 characters the people think that he/she is almost a genius. And still 5 000 are not enough for "Renmin Ribao" . "I'm sorry, but the facts speak for themselves. Although it is not easy to learn to read and write Chinese, education makes it just as possible as learning to read and write any other language." NO! I AM SORRY. Tell me why some countries with not good education like Macedonia* are able to make ~96% of the people able to read, but in the Chinese places they are 6% less. Everyone will tell you that Chinese science, schools, educational plans, etc. are better than Macedonians. But the result is that Macedonians are better in literacy than Chinese. The reason is...? ______ (*Note "Macedonia", "Macedonians" are country and people, not races. It is just in case if someone again misunderstand basic things as society, country, race, development, education, etc.) |
| Apr 19, 2007 17:27 | #20 |
| "Sanya, if you can read traditional Chinese, you may not know what exactly the character in ancient books/steles/building/etc tells. So I agree that we have to learn to read traditional Chinese, at least." I can see that 50% (at least) of the common people can't read all the simplified Chinese. So I really have no idea how to make them AT LEAST to learn traditional Chinese. And if this miracle is done, I really wonder how they will be able to find time to learn at least English/Spanish/Russian or another useful foreign language. And according to your logic the Europeans have to study ancient Greek and Latin, otherwise they don't know what exactly ancient books/steles/building/etc tells. Right? |
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