Traditional Chinese character
Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets. The modern shapes of Traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the
clerical script during the
Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the
5th century during the
Southern and Northern Dynasties. The term "traditional" is used to contrast Traditional characters with another standardized set —
simplified Chinese characters, standardized by the government of the
People's Republic of China since
1950s.
Today traditional characters are used in
Republic of China on
Taiwan,
Hong Kong,
Macau, and by some
overseas Chinese communities, especially those originating from the aforementioned regions/countries or who emigrated before the widespread adoption of simplified characters in the
People's Republic of China. In contrast, simplified characters are used in
mainland China,
Singapore, and in some
overseas Chinese communities; especially those from aforementioned countries who emigrated after the widespread adoption of simplified Chinese characters.
Debate over Traditional and Simplified Chinese is a long running debate among Chinese communities.
Among Chinese speakers, traditional Chinese characters are referred to by several different names, each with different implications. The government of the
Republic of China on
Taiwan officially calls traditional Chinese characters
Standard characters or
orthodox characters (), which implies that traditional characters are the full and correct forms of the characters. Users of traditional characters may also call them
complete-bodied characters (), which also has the same implication.
In contrast, users of simplified characters call them
complex characters (), or, informally,
old characters (), with the implication that traditional Chinese characters have been replaced and are obsolete.
Traditional character users argue that traditional characters cannot be called "complex" as they were never made more complex; the characters were preserved the way they were. Conversely supporters of simplified Chinese characters object strongly to the description of these characters as "standard," since they view the new simplified characters as the contemporary standard. They also point out that traditional characters are not truly traditional as Chinese characters have changed significantly over time.
Curiously, although the character which is generally translated as "complex" itself comprises numerous, if not complex strokes, the character has not undergone simplification; this is perhaps intentional as it demonstrates the
relative complexity of the Traditional characters in contrast to the Simplified versions. Additionally, while "complex" bears somewhat of a negative connotation in English, the Chinese character per se does not imply anything to the extent that it might be construed as "complex" or "troublesome"; rather, the meaning is rather vague and remains neutral unless coupled with other characters.
Some older people refer to traditional characters as
proper characters () and simplified characters as
simplified-stroke characters () or
reduced-stroke characters () (
simplified- and
reduced- are actually homonyms in
Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).
When printing text, people in Mainland China and Singapore mainly use the simplified system, which was developed by the People's Republic of China government in the
1950s. However, the PRC also prints material intended to be read outside of
Mainland China using traditional characters. In handwritten text, most people use informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an alternative character (異"字) would be used in place of one with more strokes, such as " for ". Contrary to popular belief, most of these are still part of the set of traditional Chinese characters, but informally and confusingly called simplified form (簡寫). Though not standard, these are usually accepted outside schools, and some are extremely widespread, notably the 台
tái in 台灣
Táiwān as opposed to the standard character (臺).
In the past, Traditional Chinese was most often rendered using the
Big5 character encoding scheme, a character encoding scheme that favors Traditional Chinese.
Unicode, however, has become increasingly popular as a way to render Traditional Chinese. Unicode gives equal weight to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters and does not favor either over the other. There are various
IMEs (Input Method Editors) available to
input Chinese characters.
Traditional characters are also used in
Korean Hanja, and moderately simplified traditional characters are used in modern
Japanese Kanji.
*
Learn Traditional Chinese Characters*
Kaishu*
Chinese character*
Simplifications on written Chinese in Hong Kong
