how should china unify its language?

[yoMAMA]

The written language, I mean.

Most young people in mainland china can't read traditional chinese.....and old poetrys, literatures...etc.

[VV o n g B a]

can they not just translate the old stuff into the new stuff?

[SunWuKong]

how to "unify" the written language? get rid of simplified and bring back the traditional, that's how! there's no point in using simplified. kids can reach reading and writing proficiency in traditional just as well with the right amount of education.

[yoMAMA]

how to "unify" the written language? get rid of simplified and bring back the traditional, that's how! there's no point in using simplified. kids can reach reading and writing proficiency in traditional just as well with the right amount of education.

I like that idea, simplified sucks.

Plus now with word processing, writing in traditional is not as hard and time consuming as before.

[VV o n g B a]

gotta disagree w/ u there. simplified is so much easier for me to learn. screw traditional.

[SunWuKong]

gotta disagree w/ u there. simplified is so much easier for me to learn. screw traditional.

traditional is just as easy to learn if it was taught throughout a child's education.
and if everybody switches to simplified, we'd lose the ability to read historical texts.

[yoMAMA]

traditional is just as easy to learn if it was taught throughout a child's education.
and if everybody switches to simplified, we'd lose the ability to read historical texts.

As someone from the mainland, I can personaly attest to how ugly some of the simplified characters are.

:biggrin:

abolish it so china and taiwan can reunify!

[VV o n g B a]

traditional is just as easy to learn if it was taught throughout a child's education.
and if everybody switches to simplified, we'd lose the ability to read historical texts.
so like i said earlier... why not translate historical texts? am i missing something?

[yellowperilgirl]

pinyin all da way! - YPG

[truMp]

pinyin all da way! - YPG

ROMANIZATION!

[AngryABCGirl]

Bring back the traditional, we are one of the few cultures in the world that can pick up a plate from 800 years ago with poetry on it and read it understandably, why destory that?

[yoMAMA]

Bring back the traditional, we are one of the few cultures in the world that can pick up a plate from 800 years ago with poetry on it and read it understandably, why destory that?

AMEN to that.

[deez nuts]

if you can read and write traditional you can somewhat read simplified or at the very least infer what that simplified character is in relation to the context of the sentence. that's the case with me and my fob friends.

if you can only read and write simplified, you can't read traditional. i'm not sure how true this is because i don't know anybody who can only read simplified.

i say ban simplified. not just for the obvious reasons of reading historical text, language unification, simplified being ugly as hell etc etc. but, also because you'll lose some aspects in the art of calligraphy itself. if i had to go through writing one chinese character over and over and over again till i got it right and it looks pretty and getting beat if i got it wrong and it looked ugly. i'll be damned if the younger generation doesn't have to go through that shit too.

so to summarize:

fan ti zhi is the way to go and it looks pretty.

jian ti zhi is the sucks and looks ugly.

pingyin is for the non mandarin speaking ABC's in a college chinese 101 class.

[VV o n g B a]

if you can only read and write simplified, you can't read traditional. i'm not sure how true this is because i don't know anybody who can only read simplified.
not true. i know a few mainlanders who can comfortably read traditional even tho they've never learned it. its the same thing... inference and what not.

as for ur instance on beating kids... that should be my line. but even i have my limits. no one should be subjected to dreaded traditional.

[deez nuts]

not true. i know a few mainlanders who can comfortably read traditional even tho they've never learned it. its the same thing... inference and what not.

as for ur instance on beating kids... that should be my line. but even i have my limits. no one should be subjected to dreaded traditional.


do they still hit kids in schools there? i got beat hard and often going to school in taiwan.

i like your signature, btw.

[SunWuKong]

so like i said earlier... why not translate historical texts? am i missing something?

because then you wouldn't be reading them in their original form? it's a much more valuable experience reading historical texts in their original form than reading some translated version.

besides, simplified was invented out of the CCP's misguided idea that it would make the written language easier to learn and that it would raise literacy rates. but they've long since realised that it's because they lacked a good system of public education that was keeping the literacy rates low.

[hkRT]

I favor the traditional characters... It's not easy to guess what the simplied ones are...

[AliBabaIncorporated]

because then you wouldn't be reading them in their original form? it's a much more valuable experience reading historical texts in their original form than reading some translated version.
I don't particularly favor simplified either (except when I'm the guy trying to write notes in Chinese while a professor rambles along at supersonic speed). But I don't understand this point. The people who even read the classical books and poetry in the first place, don't read them in the original form the way the authors wrote it with brushstrokes on paper, they read modern computerized reprints. Printing those reprints in traditional or simplified isn't a "translation," it's a font choice. This is like claiming we should read German books in Gothic script instead of modern Roman letters --- what's the difference? it's the same language.

I'd say keep all printing in traditional, but allow people to write in simplified, the way HK is going (e.g. students can use simplified characters on school exams since a few years ago. same for the civil service exams.).

[moser]

Why did China switch to simplified in the first place?

[SunWuKong]

I don't particularly favor simplified either (except when I'm the guy trying to write notes in Chinese while a professor rambles along at supersonic speed). But I don't understand this point. The people who even read the classical books and poetry in the first place, don't read them in the original form the way the authors wrote it with brushstrokes on paper, they read modern computerized reprints. Printing those reprints in traditional or simplified isn't a "translation," it's a font choice. This is like claiming we should read German books in Gothic script instead of modern Roman letters --- what's the difference? it's the same language.

yeah. it's a weak argument. sue me. :tongue:
in all honesty there's not really a good reason to get rid of simplified as opposed to traditional, if the goal is to unify the written language, other than maybe that simplified is ugly (my opinion, of course).

Why did China switch to simplified in the first place?

the thought was that simplified would be easier to learn and that would increase literacy rates. but HK and Taiwan are proof that traditional is just as easy (or difficult) to learn. the low literacy rates in China back then was attributed to the fact that they didn't have a very good public school system.

[yoMAMA]

Dude, simplified is UGLY as hell, and I'm from the mainland!

:biggrin:

[yellowperilgirl]

[b] i thought the reason was because the communist govt was trying to get millions of peasants literate and open up education not just for those who could afford it or for upper classes. if it didnt work it didnt work but i think it was worth a try. some schools in the usa considered using ebonics. -YellowPerilGirl

[Seamus]

[b] i thought the reason was because the communist govt was trying to get millions of peasants literate and open up education not just for those who could afford it or for upper classes. if it didnt work it didnt work but i think it was worth a try. some schools in the usa considered using ebonics. -YellowPerilGirl

Why do you say it didn't work? They've increased their literacy rates from pretty low levels to at least 90% if not close to 100%, which isn't necessarily evidence that simplification was what allowed for the increase in literacy, but it certainly doesn't suggest that it didn't work.

I think simplified characters are easier on the eyes. Traditional characters with too many keystrokes are bad for your eyes and give you handcramps to write. At the very least, I think that simplification of the radicals is a very good idea, even if you don't like the more drastic irregular simplifications. Some of the simplifications are simply formalizations of simplifications that people have been using in handwriting for a very long time. The simplifications that involve writing part of the original character are also nice.

We English-speakers can afford to have a preference for traditional for "aesthetic" reasons because we don't have to write in Chinese day-in-day-out. If Chinese were your primary language and you had to write in Chinese all the time, you'd probably appreciate the practicality of simplified more. A lot of shop signs and artistic writings in the PRC are written in traditional characters, and nobody is telling people they can't use traditional characters. I think the Fraktur and Gothic calligraphy that Germanic languages used to be written in look really nice, but would you really want to have to write in Fraktur?

For everyday communications, traditional just slows you down. We DON'T have the right to tell the Chinese that they should switch back to traditional just because we think it looks "nicer." Hell, if they wanted to abandon characters altogether and switch to the Cyrillic alphabet, that would be perfectly fine by me. I actually think it would be pretty cool if Chinese were written in Cyrillic. You could be walking down the street in Beijing and think you were in Mongolia or Kazakhstan or something. It would also help facilitate the peaceful reunification of the PRC and the Russian Federation.

[kuilong]

If they were going to go and break compatibility, they should have made more wide-ranging reforms. I'm thinking replacing the phonetic with phoneticization (like ㄓㄨㄧㄣ/注音, except those are evil Nationalist symbols), and then reforming the radical system to make it more sane in light of modern Mandarin.

Sure, it would be hard on speakers of dialects, but aside from HK gossip columns, they all write in Mandarin anyway.

Printing those reprints in traditional or simplified isn't a "translation," it's a font choice.

This is (mostly) true when going from traditional to simplified, but simplified --> traditional is a many-to-one mapping, so it's more complicated than simple font choice. A lot of mainlanders I know mess up traditional characters that have been simplified to one character.

Regardless, I think the mainlanders were right that the characters needed some sort of reform. It's just that rather than making subtle reforms to bring them back into line with Mandarin phonology, or the radical reforms I mentioned in the first paragraph, they aimed for a middle ground which got the worst of both worlds.

[AngryABCGirl]

Are there people on the mainland who favor going back to traditional? I'm curious.

[kuilong]

Are there people on the mainland who favor going back to traditional? I'm curious.

I think it's becoming increasingly used in advertising and other applications.

[SunWuKong]

I think it's becoming increasingly used in advertising and other applications.

i've seen it on street advertising signs in some pictures of Shanghai. but i've never actually been to the city, so i may have mistaken some pictures of another city for Shanghai.

Why do you say it didn't work? They've increased their literacy rates from pretty low levels to at least 90% if not close to 100%, which isn't necessarily evidence that simplification was what allowed for the increase in literacy, but it certainly doesn't suggest that it didn't work.

of course, there's no absolute proof that it didn't work. but the fact that HK and Taiwan can achieve high levels of literacy rates with traditional characters only means that simplified is not necessary to raise literacy rates. what China needed was a good system of public education. when they finally had that, literacy rates rose.

We English-speakers can afford to have a preference for traditional for "aesthetic" reasons because we don't have to write in Chinese day-in-day-out. If Chinese were your primary language and you had to write in Chinese all the time, you'd probably appreciate the practicality of simplified more.

not necessarily. i mean i haven't heard anyone in HK wish that simplified was widely used there so they could write in that instead of simplified. as you said, they write Chinese day-in-day-out, so writing traditional characters is just the normal way of writing for them, so they don't really feel any particular want for simplified characters. the same way that some of us may feel that writing Chinese characters is difficult, a lot of Chinese people feel that spelling out English words is difficult and tedious.

well for a lot of people, they type Chinese more than they write it nowadays, especially younger people IMing each other - and in my opinion it's actually faster to type out sentences of Chinese than sentences of English if you know the Cangjie input method.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Why do you say it didn't work? They've increased their literacy rates from pretty low levels to at least 90% if not close to 100%, which isn't necessarily evidence that simplification was what allowed for the increase in literacy, but it certainly doesn't suggest that it didn't work.
Nationmaster (http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ch/Education) claims an 86% literacy rate for China (93% for men, 78% for women; China being about 40% urbanized with most people in the cities being able to read, that means the literacy rate in the countryside is around 3/4 to 4/5). I've seen figures of ~30% for the pre-war era. In any case, compulsory education, not character simplification, was probably responsible for most of this. Simplifying characters probably doesn't help unless you additionally restrict the lexicon to limit the total number of characters used (aka massive enstupidifcation of the language). Other communist countries (even wildly dysfunctional ones like North Korea) attained and maintained 99% literacy rates cuz they didn't have to deal with Chinese characters, only alphabets.


not necessarily. i mean i haven't heard anyone in HK wish that simplified was widely used there so they could write in that instead of simplified. as you said, they write Chinese day-in-day-out, so writing traditional characters is just the normal way of writing for them, so they don't really feel any particular want for simplified characters.
Well, as I mentioned before, HK students are now allowed to write simplified characters on school exams and civil service exams. The demand for that came from somewhere, and it wasn't just "cultural pressure" from the mainland. And people already use informal simplifications widely in everyday life anyway, cuz the standard characters are so unwieldy. Just watch any waiter writing down your order at a restaurant.

This is (mostly) true when going from traditional to simplified, but simplified --> traditional is a many-to-one mapping, so it's more complicated than simple font choice. A lot of mainlanders I know mess up traditional characters that have been simplified to one character.
well yeah, but it can be done, automated, usually. Plenty of mainland websites do on-the-fly gb (simplified) to big5 (traditional) mapping.

[yoMAMA]

I think it's becoming increasingly used in advertising and other applications.

Yep, with the influence of pop and popular cultures from taiwan and hongkong [worshiped by mainland youth], traditional chinese is increasingly making a comeback.

Surprisingly though, singapore uses the simplified form.

[sandra]

i like traditional. the majority of chinese schools here in california first teach traditional, then simplified once you reach the more advanced classes - which really doesn't make sense.

[kuilong]

i like traditional. the majority of chinese schools here in california first teach traditional, then simplified once you reach the more advanced classes - which really doesn't make sense.

I think Stanford's Chinese program is one of the few that teaches simplified first.

[yoMAMA]

I think Stanford's Chinese program is one of the few that teaches simplified first.

stanford is kow towing to the commies!


:wink: :mad: