# Distinguishing merged characters in Simplified Characters



## terredepomme

Do mainlanders have difficulties distinguishing the two original senses of a merged simplified character?
For some characters, the difference would be obvious: Everyone would know that 云(雲) and 云(云) don't mean the same thing.
But I noticed that some mainlanders don't realize that 干(幹), 干(乾) and 干(干) are distinct characters. Are there many characters like this that are "fuzzy" to you? For example, can you distinguish when 志 is 志(will) and when it is 誌?(Such as in 三國誌?)

Also, even when it comes to obvious characters like 雲 and 云, can you tell them apart where there is less context, such as in proper names? For example, do you know that in Guanyu's common name, Yunchang(云长), 云 is not 云(say) but actually 雲? For letters like 发 there should be less confusion because of tonal differences, but are there people who "mispronounce" this letter when it comes to proper names? (For example if my name had 發 in it but people pronounced it as 髮?)

Lastly, although completely reverting to traditional characters is not a feasible plan for now, what do you think about the idea of making a partial modification to the simplified chinese by making these merged characters distinguishable? (For example, keeping 髮 as 发 but changing the other 发 to 發, or 発) This would allow a smooth one-to-one transliteration between traditional-simplified, eradicate the semantic confusion, and overcome what is seen arguably the biggest defect of the simplified revision. There are many languages that continuously make orthographic revisions from time to time(such as German spelling reform in 1996), so I see this as a feasible task. What do you think?


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## vvujun

The simplified Chinese is much more easier to learn. In ancient China, people just needed to learn literature and history. But nowadays, we have so many things to learn, English, Chemistry, Physics and so on. Sometime I can not remember some common used simplified characters let alone those traditional characters. But we did learn some traditional characters in school books. For those we hadn't learned, we can guess or learn them easily when we first saw them, but can not write correctly.


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## SuperXW

Again, we are involved in this "old" debate lasting for decades regarding to the pros/cons of simplified Chinese. This question is always sensitive since it has to do with a nation's culture and politics and pride... I was born in Beijing. Personally, I don't think simplified Chinese is "better" or something. I just think it's not very practical for the government to make another modification today. I can provide you some aspects to think about.

1. In a morden society, language is experiencing "bottom-up" changes, not "top-down" changes (unless in Mao's age or 秦始皇's age). I don't know Germany, but I guess their reform should be going through a "two-way" communication, not to mention that China has a much bigger population. Popular will is the most important. Whatever standard you give to regulate the culture, some people would always blame you for something. So better not to try. I'm fully awared that Hongkongese, Taiwanese and some oversea Chinese are complaining, but afterall, they are just "overseas"...

2. Many Chinese characters already have multiple meanings and pronunciations in the traditional system, even different written forms. For example, how would you distinguish the meaning of 發生/發（表）文章/發（派）文章/發動/發財/發洪水? Why don't you ever complain about 長chang2/長zhang3/長長/長大/漲高/長肉/漲價/漲紅臉/長時間/時長/時常...? (Come on it's confusing!! Why don't we change them first?) Other languages are mostly phonetic, but Chinese have a specific character for many things and concepts. We have to admit that it's too complex. In Mao's age, it's much easier for whole country's illiterates to study only one 发 than to memorize different 发s... It's actually very easy to guess which one means 頭髮, but not so easy to write it. (I'm not sure how to write 發 and 髮 even now I'm starring right at them. Seriously, how to write them...) (Personally, I hate many people in my city when they are talking bad about simplified Chinese, while they can't even remember how to write common words in their own ways...Come on!)

3. For the old usages, we can combine them without making much confusions. 云 means "to say", yes, only in the ancient time. Now we only say 說. So forget about the outdated stuffs. By the way, Mao really disliked them...

4. If the morpheme is a verb, it's also possible to add another adjective meaning without causing much confusion, such as 幹gan4活, 曬乾gan1... Believe in people's wisdom, they are able to distinguish these...

5. It hurt scholars' feelings especially when your name comes with these unfortunate characters 雲/發... but in the interests of the immense majority, sorry, we have to sacrifice. Just try to understand its necessity (when Qin unified China...), or at least the advantages (simpler and more practical), you'll feel released. Think more about the future than the past, it may not be a bad thing at all.


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## vvujun

You have to admit that many simplified characters had been accepted by Taiwan and Hongkong, even by Japan, for example *台*湾,大*学*.
I think all the simplified characters will be accepted someday. English is a simplified language too, isn't?


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## SuperXW

vvujun said:


> You have to admit that many simplified characters had been accepted by Taiwan and Hongkong, even by Japan, for example *台*湾,大*学*.


很多簡化字不是大陸官方自創，後來才被外地接受的；而是本來在不同地區就存在異體，俗字，還有些是行書草書的寫法，當年編排的時候把那些比較簡單的選擇為標準。


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## vvujun

SuperXW said:


> 很多簡化字不是大陸官方自創，後來才被外地接受的；而是本來在不同地區就存在異體，當年編排的時候把簡單的異體字選擇為標準。


了解，古代的草书本来就是一种简化，文言文到白话文也是一种简化。总之复杂难学的事物总会被简化，语言也不例外。


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## Ghabi

terredepomme said:


> For letters like 发 there should be less confusion because of tonal differences, but are there people who "mispronounce" this letter when it comes to proper names? (For example if my name had 發 in it but people pronounced it as 髮?)


I have a friend who came from Mainland and has the surname 肖 (Mandarin: xiao1). When he speaks Cantonese, he pronounces his surname as siu1, although 肖 is pronounced as ciu3 in Cantonese; when he writes in traditional characters, he writes it as 肖 instead of "traditionalizing" it into 蕭. I guess that may have caused some confusions in his daily life (cf. 蕭姓 on wiki).


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## vvujun

Ghabi said:


> I have a friend who came from Mainland and has the surname 肖 (Mandarin: xiao1). When he speaks Cantonese, he pronounces his surname as siu1, although 肖 is pronounced as ciu3 in Cantonese; when he writes in traditional characters, he writes it as 肖 instead of "traditionalizing" it into 蕭. I guess that may have caused some confusions in his daily life (cf. 蕭姓 on wiki).



That's why emperor Qin Shihuang standardized Chinese language. Obviously, 肖 is the easiest among 肖, 萧 and 蕭. I think for most of the learner, 肖 would be their choice.


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## terredepomme

Please, let's* not *discuss here the general pros and cons of simplified characters. That is for another thread. My primary question was *whether the users of solely simplified characters can semantically distinguish the merged characters.
*So far only SuperXW has really answered my question to some degree. He said that 幹, 乾 and 干 don't cause much confusion, but when I google these words, I can see quite a few mainlanders asking the difference of these two words(not even being aware of that the third exists as a distinct word) to traditional characters users. So while some people might be "wise" enough to distinguish these, some people seem to be not. Also it seems more or less undistinguishable when it comes to out-of-context usages, such as in proper names. 

Are there any other "semantically fuzzy" characters?


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## vvujun

terredepomme said:


> Please, let's* not *discuss here the general pros and cons of simplified characters. That is for another thread. My primary question was *whether the users of solely simplified characters can semantically distinguish the merged characters.
> *So far only SuperXW has really answered my question to some degree. He said that 幹, 乾 and 干 don't cause much confusion, but when I google these words, I can see quite a few mainlanders asking the difference of these two words(not even being aware of that the third exists as a distinct word) to traditional characters users. So while some people might be "wise" enough to distinguish these, some people seem to be not. Also it seems more or less undistinguishable when it comes to out-of-context usages, such as in proper names.
> 
> Are there any other "semantically fuzzy" characters?



I am not quite sure what you want to know. It sounds like you were complaining about the simplified Chinese. Sorry for that. 

There are a lot of polysemous characters in Chinese language just like 云 干 发, and I think they are difficult to learn for learners. But the amount of the character is reduced. You have no need to memorize so many complex traditional characters.

雲 was simplified to 云, so 云 has two meanings now: cloud and say, but only one pronunciation. If there is no context, how could you know its meaning? 

But it doesn't mean that this would cause some troubles, because all of the students had learned that in elementary schools.


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## terredepomme

> I am not quite sure what you want to know.


I asked you whether there are any other characters that are "semantically fuzzy" to you. For example 幹 and 乾 are just "perceived" as a single character, without people knowing that they were originally two letters. And also I came across this picture: I guess 里 and 裏 are perceived as having the same semantic value as well. (Great Insides of China?)

What I don't understand is why they merged two distinct characters instead of simply coming up with two simplifications, because it certainly didn't make the learning process more simple. They could have simplified 發 as 発 which is just as simple to write as 发, and it's much more intuitive to remember that 発 means to emit and 发 means hair instead of memorizing that 发 can mean both and you have to distinguish the pronunciation according to the context. For 幹 and 乾 they could have just replaced 車 with 车 and you get two fairly simple characters, and leaving the original 干 alone. I guess they were obsessed about reducing the number of characters, without thinking that it would actually make things more complicated.



> 雲 was simplified to 云, so 云 has two meanings now: cloud and say, but only one pronunciation. If there is no context, how could you know its meaning?


Well that's quite a pity. For example if one fails to see the 雲 in 雲長, one also fails to see the mysterious, serene, cloud-like image attributed to Guanyu. It's a big linguistic loss I'd say.

I really hope that PRC reintroduces partial traditional character educations(for, say, one hour per week) so that people would be at least aware of the semantic differences.


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## Ghabi

terredepomme said:


> I asked you whether there are any other characters that are "semantically fuzzy" to you.


A character cannot be  "semantically fuzzy", because a character doesn't mean anything per se. Only a word can mean something. When one sees the character 云, he judges from the context that whether it stands for the word yun2 "cloud", or the word yun2 "sayeth". That's all. Even in the traditional Chinese writing system, there are characters which stand for more than one words. 花 stands for both hua1 "flower" and hua1 "spend", for example.


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## terredepomme

> A character cannot be "semantically fuzzy", because a character doesn't mean anything per se. Only a word can mean something. When one sees the character 云, he judges from the context that whether it stands for the word yun2 "cloud", or the word yun2 "sayeth". That's all. Even in the traditional Chinese writing system, there are characters which stand for more than one words. 花 stands for both hua1 "flower" and hua1 "spend", for example.


My question is this: when a mainlander sees 云, he would classify it in his head as either cloud(雲) or say(云), as these are two distinct semantic values for him. But it seems to me that when he sees 里, he would not necessarily make in his head the distinction whether that character stands for 里 or 裏, and for him it would be a character that kind of stands for both meaning. Hence the semantic distinction between 里 and 裏 is lost. At least that's what I've observed, since there are people who write goofy words like 萬裏長城. So are there other characters where they do not make this mental semantic classification?


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## terredepomme

> a character doesn't mean anything per se.


That's a bit of an exaggeration. 雲 can perfectly stand alone, and the traditional users could tell that it means (essentially) cloud even if it popped out of nowhere, while mainlanders would be asking for context. So what I observe is that the mainlanders need *more* context to tell apart some characters.


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## 南島君

terredepomme said:


> What I don't understand is why they merged two distinct characters  instead of simply coming up with two simplifications, because it  certainly didn't make the learning process more simple. They could have  simplified 發 as 発 which is just as simple to write as 发, and it's much  more intuitive to remember that 発 means to emit and 发 means hair instead  of memorizing that 发 can mean both and you have to distinguish the  pronunciation according to the context. For 幹 and 乾 they could have just  replaced 車 with 车 and you get two fairly simple characters, and leaving  the original 干 alone. I guess they were obsessed about reducing the  number of characters, without thinking that it would actually make  things more complicated.



Hi,

I just want to brief-answer a question of  yours in the quote. 
The reason they simplify 干乾幹 into one character, as  you can observe from _Dictionary of Chinese character Variants_ of Taiwan Education Ministry on this page[you are required to click on those three characters upon entering the page], is that,
in  the ancient texts,　乾 is also written as 干 and something really near to 幹  [still they are considered two different characters theoretically];
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　幹 is also written as 干;
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　干 does not have any variant form;
which means the consideration are made upon practical basis but not just simplifying ideology or theoretical basis. 

Please  note that i did not criticizing it nor saying it is a creditable way of  handling these words. 
For other issues, i will also retain my opinion.


lc


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## terredepomme

Thanks 南島君, that really helps me to understand that issue. Still I would have preferred that they simply replaced the 車 radical with 车, as it would have as much historical basis as 幹 and 乾 written as 干, if we consider 车 as simply a caligraphic variance of 車.


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## bamboobanga

sometimes it won't, but you know, it doesn't really matter..  

  it's like the word 'letter', as letter in the alphabet or letter in an envelope.


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## terredepomme

> it's like the word 'letter', as letter in the alphabet or letter in an envelope.


Yes, but the two usages are not semantically fuzzy, like 里(里) and 里(裏).


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## bamboobanga

well if someone receives a letter inside an envelope, opens it, and sees a big letter A written on a piece of paper.  
someone else thinks it's not a good omen or something, and yells, 'burn the letter!'  
what does that person mean? 'burn the cursed letter A' or 'burn the entire paper letter'?
 i think personally that's 'semantically fuzzy' enough for me. 

or maybe we need a written text reform that requires 'letter' in 'the letter A' to be written as 'lettre' ?


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## terredepomme

> 'burn the cursed letter A' or 'burn the entire paper letter'?


I think you'd have to come up with a extremely hypothetical case like that to imagine a situation where the semantics of the two words would be confused. In most cases, the semantic distinction is clear. But my point is that for letters like 里 and 裏, it's much more common for the semantics to get fuzzy, and it seems to me that people are not aware of the distinction at all. When they see 万里长城 they don't seem to be aware that it means a "long fortress of ten thousand _li_s" but think that it means a long fortress of "ten thousand insides(places)."


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## Serafín33

vvujun said:


> You have to admit that many simplified characters had been accepted by Taiwan and Hongkong, even by Japan, for example *台*湾,大*学*.


It's the other way: 学 and 台 as standard characters is originally a Japanese thing, and its China's government that standardized them later in Simplified Chinese as well. Note however that many of the simplified characters were already in common use before they were standardized, see for example this blog's comment on the coexistence of 後 and 后 in a Ming dynasty printed book.


> I think all the simplified characters will be accepted someday. English is a simplified language too, isn't?


Simplified? We're still spelling things more or less as pronounced in Middle English!


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## bamboobanga

terredepomme said:


> I think you'd have to come up with a extremely hypothetical case like that to imagine a situation where the semantics of the two words would be confused. In most cases, the semantic distinction is clear. But my point is that for letters like 里 and 裏, it's much more common for the semantics to get fuzzy, and it seems to me that people are not aware of the distinction at all. When they see 万里长城 they don't seem to be aware that it means a "long fortress of ten thousand _li_s" but think that it means a long fortress of "ten thousand insides(places)."



you know, it could appear in a textbook with a footnote that says 里 in this case means _li_ the chinese mile.. and it's not really getting any fuzzier than, say, 雲長 means cloud long or cloud grows or cloud chief?..     the difference between 里 and 裏 will simply become a historic thing, probably like many french people don't know _coudre_'s first person singular imperfect subjunctive is _cousisse_.


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## indigoduck

terredepomme said:


> Do mainlanders have difficulties distinguishing the two original senses of a merged simplified character?
> For some characters, the difference would be obvious: Everyone would know that 云(雲) and 云(云) don't mean the same thing.
> But I noticed that some mainlanders don't realize that 干(幹), 干(乾) and 干(干) are distinct characters. Are there many characters like this that are "fuzzy" to you? For example, can you distinguish when 志 is 志(will) and when it is 誌?(Such as in 三國誌?)
> 
> Also, even when it comes to obvious characters like 雲 and 云, can you tell them apart where there is less context, such as in proper names? For example, do you know that in Guanyu's common name, Yunchang(云长), 云 is not 云(say) but actually 雲? For letters like 发 there should be less confusion because of tonal differences, but are there people who "mispronounce" this letter when it comes to proper names? (For example if my name had 發 in it but people pronounced it as 髮?)
> 
> Lastly, although completely reverting to traditional characters is not a feasible plan for now, what do you think about the idea of making a partial modification to the simplified chinese by making these merged characters distinguishable? (For example, keeping 髮 as 发 but changing the other 发 to 發, or 発) This would allow a smooth one-to-one transliteration between traditional-simplified, eradicate the semantic confusion, and overcome what is seen arguably the biggest defect of the simplified revision. There are many languages that continuously make orthographic revisions from time to time(such as German spelling reform in 1996), so I see this as a feasible task. What do you think?



Foreigners like ourselves put a lot of thought into the "why" whenever we learn something and especially the chinese language because we want to make sense of it even if it doesn't make any. That's not always the case in Asia in school unless they specialize in chinese linguistics (and considered a freak or someone who is really bored by mainstream chinese population).

Mostly, it is repeatedly read and write characters a million times until you know it in your sleep. Therefore for the purposes of literacy, the goal is to learn enough to be literate and the rest is as they say irrelevant.

Another subset of chinese character learners are for example the japanese who have the joyou kanji (frequently used kanji) that they need to know. The joyou kanji list has shrunk from what it used to be in the beginning. Similarly if you show them a character that is not in joyou kanji, they will tell you that it's not japanese kanji.

So do they have troubles? Possibly... I imagine that if one person encounters those troubles than on average, everyone one else in the population will as well. They know what they need to write and read newspapers, and wherever their literacy pursuits take them. Outside of that, it's up to the individual and how much exposure they have to other literary works from in and outside of China, from within their courses and from outside their hobbies.


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## terredepomme

> Foreigners like ourselves
> ... outside their hobbies.


Interesting, indigoduck, but how does that answer my question or is relevant to the topic?
As I've already said, for general discussion of simplified characters, please make another thread, or participate in an existing one, because there are hundreds of them.


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## SuperXW

terredepomme said:


> Please, let's* not *discuss here the general pros and cons of simplified characters. That is for another thread. My primary question was *whether the users of solely simplified characters can semantically distinguish the merged characters.
> *... but when I google these words, I can see quite a few mainlanders asking the difference of these two words(not even being aware of that the third exists as a distinct word) to traditional characters users. So while some people might be "wise" enough to distinguish these, some people seem to be not. Also it seems more or less undistinguishable when it comes to out-of-context usages, such as in proper names.
> 
> Are there any other "semantically fuzzy" characters?



I feel there is something unclear in your "starting point". Allow me to make it clear: IF the simplified version is taken for granted in the whole country, there will be NO NEED TO DISTINGUISH their old versions, except for someone who is curious, or doing a cultural study. The mainlanders you found online are mostly just curious. Although the Internet has gathered them, they are still a very small percentage.

For the most people, they can't "distinguish" the traditional characters not because they are not "wise" enough, but because the don't have to. Of coure everyone is able to tell 云clouds from 云say if any context is given, but they DON'T NEED TO KNOW 云CLOUDS WAS ONCE WRITTEN 雲.

Like others say, now when mainlanders see the character 云, their first reflection would be the clouds. Usually they don't even remember the other meaning 云say, because it's not used anymore. In all new publications, 雲長 is now 云长, no problem. 

If you say "it seems more or less undistinguishable when it comes to out-of-context usages, such as in proper names", I would say yes, but we don't usually get into such context-less situations, and when we do, traditional Chinese already causes many troubles. How would you know 雲長chang2 or 雲長zhang3? 劉禪chan2 or 劉禪shan4? Some characters are exclusively for names, which are hard to be recognized at the first place. Simplified Chinese just have made it a little bit more "fuzzy", but not too much. 


If you ask simplified Chinese users to write traditional characters, of course they will make mistakes. OF COURSE some semantic values ARE lost! But you MUST compare the advantages to the cons to accept this situation, I think. 

For example, although the difference between 里 and 裏 is lost, you won't get confused easily because everyone can tell 里 with a number means a distance. On the other hand, if we keep the traditional system...

1. This very common character takes pretty much time to write.
2. We have variants with the same meaning. 裏/裡. In Hong Kong, 里 has a variant 哩 to mean "mile". Very troubling when doing a search.
3. 裏 is very similar to 裹guo3.

I admit our lost. But I think it's worthy in some degree.


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## terredepomme

> OF COURSE some semantic values ARE lost! But you MUST compare the advantages to the cons to accept this situation, I think.
> ...
> On the other hand, if we keep the traditional system...
> 1. This very common character takes pretty much time to write.



Let me state again my point. I did not even say here that the mainlanders should keep the traditional system. What I said was that they could have come up with distinguishable simplifications so that the semantic values would not be lost while serving the cause of the simplification. So there are no real "cons" of merging characters because 發 could have been simplified as 発 which is darn simple as well, and 裏 could have been simplified to 裡.(which goes to reply to your 2nd and 3rd point) The only reason they merged characters was, in my opinion, simply to reduce the number of characters since the ultimate goal of the simplification process was originally the eradication of the Han characters themselves. Had they only sought to make writing and memorizing simpler, they would have come up with one-to-one simplifications instead of merging characters, hence only changing writing system and not touching the semantics.
My proposal is that 1)the mainlanders introduce partial traditional character education and allow full access to traditional character materials so that they can be aware of the semantic values lost through the simplification system, 2)and better yet, make minor modifications to the current simplified forms (ex: 里->裡) which would not be much of a social burden. While the second proposal would probably not happen, the first one can, and should. You said that "they don't need to;" well they do. Almost all countries make their students study for a certain amount the older versions of their language. Even in Korea where Hanzi has become obsolete, we had one hour of Hanja class per week minimum. And in the case of China the need is even bigger since the "older" version is actively being used in HK/TW/Macau which should and will use TC forever. So why China doesn't? Politics. How many hours does an American or British school student spend learning Shakespeare in unedited medieval English? If mainlander students were to spend a half of that effort in public schools then we would not be even here arguing over this matter.


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## xiaolijie

terredepomme said:
			
		

> What I don't understand is why they merged two distinct characters  instead of simply coming up with two simplifications, because it  certainly didn't make the learning process more simple.


The purpose of simplification is to enable as many people as possible to read and write (illiteracy used to be very high in China!), and so the goal of simplification is _not only to make the writing of certain characters less complicated, but also to reduce the number of characters one has to learn_ in order to function. Rolling several characters into one is therefore part of the simplification process. But as you say, terredepomme, "this doesn't make the learning process any simpler" but to be fair one should say it doesn't make the process simpler for some people but _for the majority of people_ it seems to work. China has got a much higher literacy rate now than in the past, and the simplification of the writing must have played a role in this.

A caution to all participants of the thread: _please take care not to get off topic or emotional on a topic like this. If you don't have anything *relevant to the topic* to say, you don't have to say it._ Enjoy!


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## SuperXW

Yeah...I like 発  裡... Semantically, we probably should have taken this... But the current dictionary is not worse enough for us to make a modification again. (You know we once have so-called 二簡字...) If you ask me whether we should launch some programme to revive traditional culture and values, then we must consider not only academic correctness, but also many other social stuffs.


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## terredepomme

> one should say it doesn't make the process simpler for some people but for the majority of people it seems to work.  China has got a much higher literacy rate now than in the past, and the simplification of the writing must have played a role in this.


Would you explain your basis for saying this? Are you saying that it would have worked less if one had to learn* two characters* for *two meanings* instead of a single character for two, which is highly counter-intuitive? Unless you give me some solid proof, based on my common sense it seems highly doubtful.
I'd say that face it: the merge of characters was simply the first step towards eliminating Han characters--a project(thank god) forever abandonned--not making the people less illiterate. (Well if you consider the elimination of Hanzi as curing illiteracy I guess one could say otherwise.) 

And literacy rate growing along with time and economic developpment... No wonder. I think the simplification helping boost literacy rate is more or less a myth, but I won't argue that here.


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## terredepomme

> If you ask me whether we should launch some programme to revive traditional culture and values, then we must consider not only academic correctness, but also many other social stuffs.


I understand. Like I've said, it's due to politics that traditional characters cannot be as culturally significant as it should be in mainland. But that shouldn't stop the mainlanders raising awareness of the importance of 識繁寫簡, and hence push the government to reintroduce them partially in school, etc. But to my surprise many of them, citing why SC is superior in every way, claim that TC must one day be completely replaced by SC everywhere and sink into oblivion.


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## SuperXW

terredepomme said:


> When they see 万里长城 they don't seem to be aware that it means a "long fortress of ten thousand _li_s" but think that it means a long fortress of "ten thousand insides(places)."


E...who are "they"? Everyone, I mean, everyone I've ever known knew it's "ten thousand lis"... No one took it as "ten thousand insides" (it doesn't even make sense)...

In our elementary schools, it IS very important for us to remember things like: 里 li3 1.介词，內部，里面。 2.量词，长度单位。走了几里路，万里长城，两万五千里长征……
发：多音字，有两个音。fa1 动词。 1.发出。2.发生，发起。34567... fa4 名词。 头发，毛发。


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## terredepomme

> E...who are "they"? Everyone, I mean, everyone I've ever known knew it's "ten thousand lis"... No one took it as "ten thousand insides" (it doesn't even make sense)...


In fact that was part of the question that I was asking, because I saw this picture. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=158366459105&set=o.2234067301&type=1&theater //// But it is relieving to know that the semantic difference is still perceived. Maybe the person who drew this thought that 裏 also stands for "mile."


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## SuperXW

Yeah. They always know the correct meanings, but they don't know there are different writtings in TC, or don't know how to distinguish the writtings. Those Pinyin inputting software have the function of "繁体字", but they often make mistakes too. (Try 杠杆 if you have QQ/搜狗/穀歌/微軟拼音. I believe it should be 槓桿.) It's getting better recently. Back to the time my software always gave me 之后, 准備, 里邊, 面條...


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## vvujun

terredepomme said:


> It's a big linguistic loss I'd say.



Yes, I agree with you. This is what it takes. But, it is easier to learn, to memorize and to use. That's the very purpose of the simplification.

And, actually, I *don't think* it would make things more complicated. At least I don't feel that.


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## vvujun

terredepomme said:


> I understand. Like I've said, it's due to politics that traditional characters cannot be as culturally significant as it should be in mainland. But that shouldn't stop the mainlanders raising awareness of the importance of 識繁寫簡, and hence push the government to reintroduce them partially in school, etc. But to my surprise many of them, citing why SC is superior in every way, claim that TC must one day be completely replaced by SC everywhere and sink into oblivion.



Hey terredepomme, that is the objective law of social development. Do you think English is more complex than Old English?

How do you know we didn't learn TC in school? Actually, I did learned some in school books. But we have no need to learn all of them in school, right? 
I must correct your mistake of subjectivism.


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## SuperXW

vvujun said:


> Hey terredepomme, that is the objective law of social development. Do you think English is more complex than Old English?
> 
> How do you know we didn't learn TC in school? Actually, I did learned some in school books. But we have no need to learn all of them in school, right?
> I must correct your mistake of subjectivism.


我之前也看到你說，從繁到簡是自然規律什麽的，我倒不這麼認為。語言文字，還有其他的文化及社會"軟件"，都未必是從繁到簡的。“簡約主義”，“實用主義”最多只是一種思潮流派，但并沒有被公認是social development大趨勢。倒是現代社會的“複雜性”“多元化”提得比較多。

我覺得中文從繁到簡，英語從繁到簡，都有各自的原因，而且其實並非絕對的。
舉例：中英很多新詞彙，古代根本沒有。
古代沒有打印機，毛筆寫字需要很多材料工具，很麻煩，又難以保存，所以用方塊象形字，以儘量少的空間表達儘量多的意思。
“劉備天下梟雄。”“刘备是天下的枭雄。” 古文可省略動詞和“的”，比現代文更短更簡練。
"道可道，非常道。"“道理若是可以讲出来，就并非普遍适用的道理。（亦有其他翻译。）”你說哪个更簡單，哪個更複雜？
中國推行簡化字的時候，處於一個極其特殊的年代，並非自然而然的。況且即使在特殊年代，二次簡化仍然失敗了。現在就更別提了，若再改簡改繁，馬上就會有好多人批評。
其他方面更不一定“從繁到簡”了，近代科技革命，學科細化，整個就是一個從簡到繁的過程。
繁體字也一樣，其內部包含了深厚的文化，雖然寫起來麻煩點，但你把它當做一種文化看，我並不認為它應該自然消亡的，何況還有好多人在用。

從歷史角度看，語言乃至所有文化的發展傳播，最主要是受經濟軍事實力影響。實力強的影響、吞併實力弱的。所以古代漢字影響整個東南亞，近代先有西語、葡語傳播，然後英語傳遍全世界。到底哪種語言好用，是繁是簡，都是次要的。香港騰飛的年代，繁體字和粵語影響力深遠，如今中國崛起，普通話和簡體字又開始反過來影響香港。個人認為，這才是social development。如果真是像你說的，簡單實用至上，有朝一日中文恐怕也會被英文取代？全世界語言都統一了？不一定吧！


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## vvujun

世界是变得越来越复杂了，但是这一切的初衷是为了让人们更简单地生活。汽车是比马车复杂，但能使你更容易地到达想去的地方。人们的通讯方式也是如此。
说到语言，确实很多语言都消失了。随着人们生活的范围越来越大，统一的语言是必需的。推广普通话，就是为了更容易地交流。确实有很多年轻人不会说本地话了，你不觉得这是一个趋势吗？
你说的军事文化的影响力，将决定语言的影响力。我完全同意，但是无论何种语言，不管是强势语言还是少数语种，都将朝着易学的方向发展。我们的古文显然没有白话文易学，所以很自然地被淘汰。


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## terredepomme

> Do you think English is more complex than Old English?


Do you think it's less complex? The morphology got a bit simpler, but the lexicon got more complex due to Anglo-Norman influx, and the complex orthography is still retained; in fact the attempts to simplify its orthography had been made for hundreds of years since 1440 but any kind of massive change has failed. They never came up with a batch of simplified spelling that completely changed how they write overnight. The change that English language has gone through was made very slowly through the ages, upon the general consent of those who speak it.
Why do you think that SC completely replacing TC is the objective development? Taiwan, HK, and Macau are using TC and they are doing perfectly fine with a higih literacy rate. Why can't you tolerate TC at least being preserved in these areas? Is it because this objective phenomenon goes against your subjective premise that SC is superior?


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## vvujun

OK, please answer me two simple questions.

1. Could you please tell me what do you think is the reason of the simplification of Chinese characters?
2. Which one is simpler between 织 and 織?


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## terredepomme

> 1. Could you please tell me what do you think is the reason of the simplification of Chinese characters?


To eradicate the Han characters. What they believed was 漢字不滅, 中國必亡. Their ultimate goal wasn't to improve Hanzi but to slowly destroy them.


> 2. Which one is simpler between 织 and 織?


织 is simpler to handwrite. As for learning, neither is significantly simpler to learn than another. Associating 糸+只 is not significantly simpler than associating 糸+音+戈.

And why are you asking this? Did I say that the mainland should restore TC? Did I ask for TC vs SC comparison debate? All I asked was to tolerate their coexistance and learn them through public education. In fact that is why people are still opposing TC education; they want to believe that SC is superior and they think that admitting TC in schools will go against their beliefs. They don't even want to admit the coexistance of TC. Why feel so insecure? If SC is so superior and more than a billion people are using it, then what harm does it do if some 30 million+ people use TC and you learn them in literature classes? It seems to me that what you wish is just that TC itself goes obsolete and be forgotten so people won't compare it to SC anymore, and you wouldn't feel insecure about it being "real" Chinese.


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## vvujun

terredepomme said:


> To eradicate the Han characters. What they believed was 漢字不滅, 中國必亡. Their ultimate goal wasn't to improve Hanzi but to slowly destroy them.


That's very interesting and weird. Could you please tell me why 漢字不滅, 中國必亡?



> 织 is simpler to handwrite. As for learning, neither is significantly simpler to learn than another. Associating 糸+只 is not significantly simpler than associating 糸+音+戈.


I have a Japanese friend whose surname is 織田. When I told him that 織 had been simplified to 织 in Mainland, he looked very happy and wrote it in his notebook. He told me he will change his name card.



> And why are you asking this? Did I say that the mainland should restore TC? Did I ask for TC vs SC comparison debate?



You just said :
Well that's quite a pity. ... It's a big linguistic loss I'd say.
I guess they were obsessed about reducing the number of characters, without thinking that it would actually make things more complicated.

I replied :
Yes, I agree with you. This is what it takes. But, it is easier to learn, to memorize and to use. That's the very purpose of the simplification.
And, actually, I *don't think* it would make things more complicated. At least I don't feel that.



> All I asked was to tolerate their coexistance and learn them through public education. In fact that is why people are still opposing TC education; they want to believe that SC is superior and they think that admitting TC in schools will go against their beliefs. They don't even want to admit the coexistance of TC. Why feel so insecure? If SC is so superior and more than a billion people are using it, then what harm does it do if some 30 million+ people use TC and you learn them in literature classes? It seems to me that what you wish is just that TC itself goes obsolete and be forgotten so people won't compare it to SC anymore, and you wouldn't feel insecure about it being "real" Chinese.



I don't feel insecure at all. I just made a prediction according to my understanding. TC is more complex than SC, but they are not very difficult for me, just there is no need to use them. And it is not very convenient to write. TC is very difficult for foreign learners to memorize.


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## Serafín33

vvujun said:


> That's very interesting and weird. Could you please tell me why 漢字不滅, 中國必亡?


There was this belief among some people in the days of the mainland Republic of China and then the early People's Republic that Chinese characters had to be phased out in favour of either the Latin alphabet or a more phonetic system. The zhuyin fuhao system and hanyu pinyin were originally conceived with a larger role, rather than the simple pronunciation guides they are today in the Republic of China (in Taiwan) and the People's Republic and the respectively. Among other things, (rather stupidly in my opinion) they blamed the writing system as one of the reasons why China had apparently "lagged behind" certain foreign countries (instead of lack of technological innovations, modernization of military power compared to the US, Japan, etc., bad strategies in international trade, etc., etc.).

In the end of course, they thought it was better just to reduce the number of strokes in Chinese characters. I would argue that characters weren't simplified _enough_ to achieve a terribly different result than if they had used traditional (it's not like Taiwan and Hong Kong don't have high levels of literacy anyway, "in spite" of using traditional characters as many mainlanders would say), and would argue that what really makes a writing system easy is how close it is to pronunciation, though.


> I have a Japanese friend whose surname is 織田. When I told him that 織 had been simplified to 织 in Mainland, he looked very happy and wrote it in his notebook. He told me he will change his name card.


That's great, but what does this have to do with learning it? I believe that both 织 and 織 are fine if you speak standard Mandarin, since the phonetic parts sound alike or the same as the character: 只 zhī, zhǐ, and 戠 shì (although more commonly found in 識 shì/zhì). 只 works even better than 戠 as a phonetic mnemonic in fact.


> I don't feel insecure at all. I just made a prediction according to my understanding. TC is more complex than SC, but they are not very difficult for me, just there is no need to use them.


But you don't need to use them because your society doesn't do it... Again, I'm not saying that you, as a mainlander, should change to using TC, but I'm saying you should recognize that people in Taiwan, HK and Macau do use TC and be in favour of leaving it up to them to decide what they want to use to write Chinese.


> And it is not very convenient to write.


But, just like users of Simplified Chinese, people don't write all strokes neatly differentiated in their handwriting. Have you never heard any non-Chinese complaining of how difficult Chinese handwriting is to read, whether a mainlander's or that of a user of TC?


> TC is very difficult for foreign learners to memorize.


And is SC any less difficult? And why should a country think of whether foreigners find its language's writing system easy or hard? It's all about their own population, not those few foreigners that attempt to learn it in comparison.

I would like to repeat the questions terredepomme posted in page 2:

"Why do you think that SC completely replacing TC is the objective  development? Taiwan, HK, and Macau are using TC and they are doing  perfectly fine with a high literacy rate. Why can't you tolerate TC at  least being preserved in these areas? Is it because this objective  phenomenon goes against your subjective premise that SC is superior?"


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## terredepomme

> You just said :
> Well that's quite a pity. ... It's a big linguistic loss I'd say.
> I guess they were obsessed about reducing the number of characters, without thinking that it would actually make things more complicated.



Once again I will make this clear: Criticizing or questioning some aspects of SC(in this case the merge of characters) does not necessarily equate with claiming TC restoration or arguing that one is superior over another. You need to refrain from seeing things in black and white.



> just there is no need to use them. And it is not very convenient to write.


No one asked you to use/write them. 認繁寫簡 means what it means: learn to read traditional, continue writing in simplified.



> I just made a prediction according to my understanding.


TC will forever be used in HK/TW/Macau and the only scenario where it would be abandonned would be if the mainlanders forced them to abandon it to make the SC the "one-and-only real Chinese" as many mainlanders claim it to be. And this mentality is quite dangerous considering the precarious political situations between PRC and the rest of sinosphere, making this scenario not implausable. It is because they see SC as superior, that the simplification was undoubtly a step towards modernity and development, and see tolerating/educating TC as accepting the fact that what they have done might not have been the smartest thing. It is not of a practical reason but a political one. And it goes without saying that one does not even have to denounce the simplification itself to study TC formally, as the English-speaking students who study Shakespeare do not necessarily argue the need to revert to Medieval English.
So, I won't necessarily argue that SC is inferior, but TC as well is certainly NOT inferior, and it will NOT naturally die off unless the mainlanders maintain the mentality that the superior SC must replace it everywhere. In fact the fact that it is still alive goes to prove its strength that has kept it alive for millenia; if TC was truly an inferior system, then it would have simply died off with time. But instead, it took a totalitarian, artificial method to try to wipe it out, and it is STILL alive. Even if you are the most ardent SC praiser, you must be thankful of this fortunate turn of events, since you can keep both: using SC while TC is not dead. So even as a mainlander, you must be aware of the importance of preserving TC, in Taiwan/HK and in the PRC classrooms, for it is not an inferior anachronysme that must be forgotten with time but quite the contrary.
I know that you are not necessary claiming to the extent that one must exterminate TC with artificial means; but the misconception that the TC-SC transition is the "right," "objective," and "necessary" historical development is quite dangerous as well, because it certainly wasn't.


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## xiaolijie

From the thread's title, I was hoping to see some suggestions  as to how to distinguish merged characters in simplified writing, but  what has been offered so far is all about the good or bad of one writing  system or another, and none has been an attempt to answer the question  posed, in all the three pages of the thread. Since the forum is not a  platform for discussing questions concerning language policy,  I'm afraid I have to close the thread now and  if anyone has questions concerning this decision, please PM me.

XLJ
Moderator


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