Job Discussion Forums

[SolitaryThrush]

Hello,
This question doesn't really deal with teaching in Taiwan, but I'm curious to know the opinions of people over there.

Talking with a penpal, she is concerned/upset about the diminishing importance of traditional Chinese characters. As people overseas are putting more emphasis on learning Chinese, as the PRC becomes a bigger economic power, and as places like Singapore, HK, and Malaysia also get more attention, she feels sad that trad. characters may soon fade away. Furthermore, her friends pay less attention to this: she writes that they spend more time with English and with simp. Chinese, and neglect their trad. characters.

She concedes that some languages grow less important over time, and that others die out altogether. Also, her friends seem less concerned/troubled by it.

I'm curious if anyone you've encountered is worried by the (what seems to be) ever-decreasing importance of trad. characters. Is it linguistic genocide, politics, both, or something different altogether?

(I'm not looking for a scientific or academic explanation . . . just your impressions.)

Thanks, and I'll be interested to see what you all have to say.

[Tamago86]

I'd say it's a mix between all of them..It's sad really, simplified characters are possibly the ugliest thing I've ever seen. However I don't expect the official transition to happen anytime soon in places use them such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, both places hold too much pride of being a seperate ilk compared to the "dirty mainland".

A big fear of mine is the characters being eliminated all together. This also isn't something that would happen in our lifetime but it's a real possibility, and languages like Korean and Japanese show that it's very possible to switch from a writing system that involves all Chinese characters to no Chinese characters at all (Korean) or a large amount of Chinese characters but with phonetic scripts (Japanese). I also understand that there's writing system in Taiwan that doesn't involve characters, but is mostly used by children.

As a speaker of Japanese & Mandarin, China switching to something like a Japanese script isn't possible, or if it is it would be extremely difficult to structure, because for the most part the phonetic scripts in Japanese are used for conjugations and particles and grammatical purposes. Mandarin seriously lacks grammar on that level, so their only other option would be one of the systems of pinyin (romanized Chinese usually showing the tones).

Anyways knowing traditional characters will still be very important for at least another century to those honestly interested in Chinese, even if the importance is lessened most major documents and things that are pre-this decade are written in traditional script. Also, a good amount of the characters used in Japanese also look very similar to traditional, or a mix between traditional and simplified which lean more towards traditional in complexity. Anyone wishing to read old Korean scripts or even modern Korean scripts which always have hanja (Chinese characters used in Korean) will need a knowledge of traditional Chinese characters as well. Simplified won't help at all in this aspect. And as it is if you can read traditional chances are you can make out simplified, this isn't always true the other way around.

Just my 2 en..

[killian]

no worries. the vast majority of characters are the same in both taiwan and china. that things will continue to change is life's only guarantee.

chinese charcters have a long history of changing. oracle bones to large sea to small seal to clerical to today and whole lotta "in-betweens".

defrancis showed that chinese script is/was phonetic. the sooner china re-acquaints itself with this idea the sooner her students can spend thousands of hours more effectively than on rote memorization.

additionally, there is "japanese style system" for writing chinese. it was developed in the mainland and now is pretty much only used in taiwan. it is called Bo Po Mo Fo casually. Kids use it until they have a better mastery of the characters.

writing and systems of writing is highly political. how one writes conveys all kinds of layers of political crud.

[Aristotle]

The biggest problem with Chinese is that it is so hard to read write. It makes it impractical for use as an international language. Much the same as Japanese.
One of the few things that Taiwan has in it's favor is the ability to speak and read Chinese. If Taiwan wants to fully exploit that resource then the locals will have to give up the traditional characters.
Chinese characters have evolved many times throughout history and holding on to past idiosyncrasies is not going to make embracing the future any easier.
If the moronic government in Taipei finally take a pragmatic approach to globalization, then the adoption of the simplified characters and pinyin will be a crucial step to reversing Taiwan's current decline.
I don't see that ever happening in the Republic of China as there is no money in it for the corrupt officials in charge and it may actually empower the people of Taiwan.
A.

[clark.w.griswald]

I for one hope that Taiwan never converts to the simplified system. I see no real reason for it, and disagree that there would be any economic benefits in doing so.

[martinphipps]

I predict that simplified characters will become the norm for handwriting but people will still use traditional characters in advertising and kaligraphy.

Martin

[Aristotle]

[martinphipps]

[martinphipps]

[Aristotle]

[martinphipps]

[Ben H Nevis Jnr.]

I'd doubt traditional characters are going anywhere fast, not because of their use in the global Chinese community, but becase they are still used on the mainland. Almost all the university students I've taught here on the mainland can read traditional characters, even if they can't write them. Many of the pirate DVDs use traditional subtitles as opposed to simplified, and it's no problem for the students. You also see them sometimes on advertising and various other places where someone would wish to convey that something is a cut above the rest, due to their percieved beauty. Personally as someone with no political conditioning or bias with regards to the subject, I don't mind the simplified ones. If you choose to see it all within the context of the global minimalist, modernist utilitarian drive within the arts after the Second World War, it might be a bit like criticising Sydney Opera House for its lack of gargoyles or stained glass windows.

I'm guessing that far from Mao having killed off traditional characters, their use, as a proportion of the overall poulation may have remained constant. Before 1949, maybe a quarter of the population would have been literate. Nowadays that figure is over three quarters, a quarter of which can still use traditional. So simplification has just made it easier for those with more limited means to pick up what is necessary to communicate on an everyday basis.

Lots of ifs, buts and maybes here. Perhaps someone who actually has reliable information on this can validate/oppose my wild hypothesising.

[markholmes]

[trukesehammer]

[martinphipps]

Another point that doesn't get mentioned is that people in Taiwan and Hong Kong have adopted simplified characters for handwriting because it is faster, almost like a shorthand. Indeed, when people quickly write traditional characters they are almost illegible. I like to think that most of the simplifications are the kind of things people would do anyway when they write lazily, things like replacing four dots with a single dash, for example. A lot of the simplifications arise naturally from the switch from using brushes to ball point pens: it's easy to make dots with a brush but tedious when you are using a pen.

We can make the analogy with the way we use printed and cursive writing in English: most people use cursive writing when they write English but you don't see cursive writing in newspapers, books, magazines and advertising. Cursive writing is considered more difficult to read. Similarly, people used to traditional characters find some simplified characters difficult to read: the simplification process has the effect of making characters with vastly different meanings and pronounciations suddenly appear similar. So there's a place for both traditional and simplified characters in Chinese, just like printed and cursive writing in English.

Martin