Traditional and Simplified Forms
There are two forms of Chinese writing, the “traditional” form and the “simplified” form. The traditional characters are the inherited characters, which were created and officially accepted before the 20th century. They are the original form without being modified or simplified during the programme of standardising the Chinese script in 1949. We are going to focus on the simplified forms in Pichinese.
Here is the historical development of Chinese characters
The government introduced the simplification of the Chinese writing system in the early 1950s. The simplified characters were created by removing certain strokes and simplifying the forms of the traditional characters. The purpose of creating simplified Chinese characters was to make it easier to learn to read and write which improves the literacy rate. Sometimes the meaning and sound implication are lost in the simplified form.
Traditional characters illustrate the shape or idea of the object more closely than the simplified form. For example: with the character for “electricity”, its traditional form is 電 (diàn) and its simplified form is 电. As you can see some strokes have been removed from the traditional character to form the simplified version; it only remains the basic structure of the character.
There are still many characters, which did not get simplified and have remained their traditional forms. For example: with the character for “sky”, its tradition form and simplified form are the same, which is 天. Whether the character is in its traditional form or simplified form, its meaning is the same. This case also applies to English used in different areas; some words have different spelling but mean the same. For example, ‘center’ and ‘centre’.
We are going to focus on the simplified forms in Pichinese, however, we also include the traditional forms to help you understand the root of the characters.
China is one of the world’s four ancient civilisations, which has become the oldest culture in the world. Chinese people speak different dialects in different provinces, which made it difficult to communicate, as they cannot understand each other. In 1912, after the Republic of China was established, the government promoted Mandarin to be the common national language.
Traditional characters are the written language of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and some overseas Chinese communities. Simplified Chinese is the standard Chinese characters used in the People’s Republic of China, Malaysia and Singapore.
As China has the biggest population (1.3 billion people) in the world, Mandarin has become one of the most spoken language (1.107 billion speakers) in the world. The other most spoken language is English (1.121 speakers). Knowing English and Mandarin allows you to communicate with over half the world’s population.
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