Simplified Chinese vs Traditional Chinese
Chinese is the official language of the United Nations (“UN”) which was established on February 1st, 1946. The existence of this determination is due to the large number of Chinese speakers, so it is considered important to be used in the work of various international organizations to ensure clarity in communicating with each other. Based on data published by Ethnologue, Chinese speakers in 2023 reached 920 million people. This makes Chinese worthy of the title as the language with the largest number of native speakers in the world.
As a language with the largest number of native speakers in the world, Chinese has two writing systems, namely Simple Chinese and Traditional Chinese. The existence of these different writing systems certainly raises various questions for many people, such as the difference between Simple Chinese and Traditional Chinese writing systems, how the history of these writing systems, and the division of regions that use Ssimple writing systems and Traditional writing systems.
Differences in Writing System Between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
Simple Chinese is a simplified form of the alphabet used in Traditional Chinese. This simplification can be done in two ways, namely the reduction of strokes or the smallest unit in writing Chinese characters and the merging of characters. Firstly, stroke reduction in Simplified Chinese aims to make the characters easier to read and write. In this case, Simplified Chinese has fewer brush strokes than Traditional Chinese. For example, the character 叶 which means leaf has fewer strokes than the character 葉 in Traditional Chinese. Secondly, character merging is a process where unnecessary components are removed to form a new simple version. In this case, although written in different ways, the characters in Simple and Traditional Chinese are usually pronounced in the same way.
History of Simplified Chinese
The simplification of the Chinese writing system is not a new thing. In this case, various interpretations and practices of simplifying the Chinese writing system have been circulating unofficially in the 19th century. Following this, in 1949 the government of the People’s Republic of China as a sovereign and newly established government realized its initiative to develop a Simple Chinese writing system officially. The purpose of this simplification was motivated by the high illiteracy rate in China at that time. At this time, the Simplified Chinese writing system became the standard and official writing system for all citizens of the People’s Republic of China.
Where is Simplified and Traditional Chinese Spoken?
Traditional Chinese is the writing system used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. There are two officially recognized variations of the traditional mandarin writing system, namely Traditional Chinese for Taiwan and Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong. The difference between these two variations lies in the style and pronunciation. In this case, there are some unique characters found in Traditional Chinese spoken in Hong Kong but not found in Traditional Chinese spoken in Taiwan.
Simplified Chinese is the standardized writing system used by Mainland Chinese (People’s Republic of China). A small portion of the population is the older generation who are still able to understand Traditional Chinese. In addition, people of Chinese descent living in Singapore and Malaysia generally use Simplified Chinese as a means for them to communicate with each other.
Writer : Patrick (Foreign Language and Culture Department)
