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Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. 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 the 1950s.

Traditional characters are used officially in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Macau. Among overseas Chinese communities (except for Singapore and Malaysia), traditional characters are most commonly used.^[1], although the number of printed material in simplified characters is growing in Australia, USA and Canada, targeting or created by new arrivals from mainland China. A large number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow to switch between both sets. In contrast, Simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia in official publications. The debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities.

Symbol of Traditional Chinese Character in Computers.

[edit] Chinese names

Among Chinese speakers, traditional Chinese characters are referred to by several different names.

The government of the Republic of China (ROC) officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional Chinese: 正體字, simplified Chinese: 正体字 Hanyu Pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Tongyong Pinyin: jhèngtǐzìh zhuyin:ㄓㄥˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). It should be noted, however, that the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters (traditional Chinese: 異體字, simplified Chinese: 异体字; pinyin: yìtǐzì zhuyin:ㄧˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).^[2]

In contrast, other users of traditional Chinese outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities, and users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: 繁體字, simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzìzhuyin:ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). An informal name sometimes used by users of simplified characters is "old characters" (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozìzhuyin:ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).

Users of traditional characters may also call them "complete-bodied characters" (traditional Chinese: 全體字, simplified Chinese: 全体字; pinyin: quántǐzì zhuyin:ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).

Some traditional character users argue that traditional characters are the original form of the Chinese characters and cannot be called "complex" as they were never made more complex. The characters were preserved the way they are, each stroke has its logical meaning, and also that simplified characters cannot be "standard" because simplified characters are not used in all Chinese-speaking regions. Simplified Characters are simply made to be easily written, an example is in the Traditional character 餘 (left,spare, pinyin:ú zhuyin:ㄩˊ) there is a 食 (food,eat, pinyin:shí zhuyin: ㄕˊ) on the left, originally because of leftovers as in "food". The simpified form for this word 余(Traditional meaning:A chinese last name, pinyin:ú zhuyin:ㄩˊ) however took away the "食". The Simplified form is just chosen from a Traditional Chinese word that is pronounced the same. The form of the characters itself do not make any logical sense whatsoever. They have lost the original art in the language, and the meaning in the character is sacrified. Which leads to the fact that if there were no Traditional Characters in the first place, the Simplified Characters do not have the ability to make Chinese a proper language at all. ^[3]. Conversely, supporters of simplified Chinese characters object to the description of traditional characters as "standard," since they view the new simplified characters as the contemporary standard used by the vast majority of Chinese speakers. They also point out that traditional characters are not truly traditional as Chinese characters have changed significantly over time. Many characters since the Han Dynasty had been made more elaborate than the original standard.^[4] However, a majority of the Chinese-speaking world does use Simplified Characters. Many people that have been educated in Chinese Simplified education systems are capable of reading Traditional Characters, and a majority of these Simplified users admit that Traditional Characters are more aesthetic rather than Simplified.

Some older people refer to traditional characters as "proper characters" (Chinese: 正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) and modernized characters as "modernized-stroke characters" (Traditional Chinese: 簡筆字, simplified Chinese: 简笔字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) or "reduced-stroke characters" (Traditional Chinese: 減筆字,simplified Chinese: 减笔字; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) (simplified- and reduced- are actually homonyms in Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).

[edit] Printed text

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 sometimes prints material intended to be read outside of mainland China using traditional characters (the reverse is also true). In handwritten text, most people use informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an alternative character (異體字) would be used in place of one with more strokes, such as 体 for 體. Some simplifications are extremely widespread, such as, notably, the 台 tái in 台灣 Táiwan as opposed to the standard character (臺). Additionally, there were two main usages of alternative characters in the old days. First, alternative characters were used to avoid using the characters of the formal name of an important person in less formal contexts as a way of showing respect to the said person by preserving the characters of the person's name. This act is called "offense-avoidance" (避諱) in Chinese (See naming taboo.). Secondly, alternative characters were used when the same characters were repeated in context to show that the repetition was intentional rather than an editorial mistake (筆誤).

[edit] Computer character encoding

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. There are still many Unicode characters that cannot be written using most IMEs; one example would be the character used in the Shanghainese dialect instead of 嗎, which is U+20C8E 𠲎 (伐 with a 口 radical).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Web pages

The World Wide Web Consortium recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant as a language attribute value and Content-Language value to specify web-page content in Traditional Chinese^[5].

[edit] Usage in other languages

Traditional Chinese characters are also known as Korean Hanja (in the 20th century almost completely replaced with Hangul, native Korean alphabet), and moderately simplified traditional characters are known as modern Japanese Kanji. Japanese Kanji were also simplified. The reform affected a smaller number of Japanese characters, compared the Chinese reform, many simplified Kanji coincide with those simplified in China but a smaller number were simplified differently thus creating a third version (e.g. "dragon" 竜 current standard Japanese (tatsu/RYŪ), 龙 (Chinese simplified), 龍 (Chinese traditional) lóng（Mandarin）, "lung4"(Cantonese)).

[edit] See also

• Kanji
• Hanja
• Kaishu
• Chinese character
• Simplifications to written Chinese in Hong Kong
• Kyūjitai (旧字体 or 舊字體 - Japanese traditional characters)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Evolution of Chinese Characters
• Chinese Characters and Cultures
• Traditional Chinese Flashcards
• Traditional Chinese Calligraphy