# Politically correct name for Traditional Characters



## terredepomme

The Chinese name for Traditional Chinese Characters is 繁體字 and 正體字, namings which both have political connotations.
繁 implies that it is 繁雜, wheareas 正 implies that it is 正式.
What would be a more politically neutral name that both mainlanders and non-mainlanders can agree upon?
Is there already such a name? If not, what do you propose?


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## softserve

Hi there. By mainlanders and non-mainlanders, can you elaborate what specific groups of people you are referring to respectively? Here in Taiwan, we would only call our character system 繁體字 when we want to make it clear to the listener that the characters we write are different from that used in China.


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## terredepomme

> By mainlanders and non-mainlanders, can you elaborate what specific groups of people you are referring to respectively?


By non-mainlanders I mean the people of HK/TW/Macau and Overseas Chinese.



> Here in Taiwan, we would only call our character system 繁體字, rarely I heard 正體字 being used.


It's true that 繁體字 is common in everyday speech. But I remark that whenever someone says 繁體字 in TV, the subtitles often would "correct" him by transcribing 繁(正)體字. And people like government officials or school textbooks would always say 正體中文, so I assume this is considered the politically correct word in Taiwan.


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## softserve

terredepomme said:


> By non-mainlanders I mean the people of HK/TW/Macau and Overseas Chinese.
> 
> 
> It's true that 繁體字 is common in everyday speech. But I remark that whenever someone says 繁體字 in TV, the subtitles often would "correct" him by transcribing 繁(正)體字. And people like government officials or school textbooks would always say 正體中文, so I assume this is considered the politically correct word in Taiwan.


Yeah perhaps, I can't be sure. I rarely pay attention to the subtitles when i watched TV in Chinese. I can't say for others, but either term looks totally acceptable to me.


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## Liqun818

Yes, it is potical, but not so much. The complicated style is relative to the simplified.  The Zhengti means traditional style, other than the formal.


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## SuperXW

Wikipedia: 
"在台灣，也*有人發起運動將繁體字改稱為正體字*。"
Whether you accept the name or not...I think it's all about one's "political stand"...


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## xiaolijie

Terredepomme said:
			
		

> What would be a more politically neutral name that both mainlanders and non-mainlanders can agree upon?
> Is there already such a name? If not, what do you propose?


From the responses in the thread, 繁體字 seems to be a good choice there, unless you're trying to inject some political reading into it.


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## Tecibbar

terredepomme said:


> The Chinese name for Traditional Chinese Characters is 繁體字 and 正體字, namings which both have political connotations.
> 繁 implies that it is 繁雜, wheareas 正 implies that it is 正式.
> What would be a more politically neutral name that both mainlanders and non-mainlanders can agree upon?
> Is there already such a name? If not, what do you propose?


繁carries little political connotation, it's the opposited of simplified, while 正carries very strong political connotation, as 正统means rightful ruler. 古體字 (ancient)or 原體字(original) would be more appropriate.


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## SuperXW

Tecibbar said:


> 古體字 (ancient)or 原體字(original) would be more appropriate.


 I guess some people would argue that 古 is not appropriate either, since it's still "currently" used by Taiwanese and Hong Kongese.


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## xiaolijie

SuperXW said:


> I guess some people would argue that 古 is not appropriate either, since it's still "currently" used by Taiwanese and Hong Kongese.


And also how would one determine which characters deserve to be called 原體字 and being in their "original form" since when?


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## Youngfun

occasionaly I've heard 正写 in Zhejiang


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## terredepomme

> being in their "original form" since when?


Since the Han dynasty, where the "Han characters漢字" were standardized.


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## xiaolijie

Where did you learn this fact from? This must be one of the most amazing discoveries on the net: the writing is called Hanzi, so it's must have _originated_ in the Han dynasty; and the language being called Hanyu must be because the Chinese people _started_ speaking then  .


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## terredepomme

> the writing is called Hanzi, so it's must have originated in the Han dynasty;


I never said it ORIGINATED during the Han dynasty. I said it was STANDARDIZED in the Han dynasty.


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## xiaolijie

Well, standardization of the characters doesn't entitle them  to be called 原體 (quite the reverse!), and the characters have been "standardized" at various stages in history _both before and after the Han dysnasty_; and the most recent standardization has resulted in what is now called "简体字". Would you like 简体字 to be call 原體字 instead?


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## terredepomme

> Well, standardization of the characters doesn't entitle them to be called 原體 (quite the reverse!)


Well why not? They are Han(漢) Characters, standardized in their form during the Han(漢) dynasty, so they are the original Han(漢) Characters.



> and the characters have been "standardized" at various stages in history both before and after the Han dysnasty; and the most recent standardization has resulted in what is now called "简体字".


Such as?
Since it has been standardized during the Han period, it has gone through practically no changes, let alone new attempts of standardization. And it was the first standardization to my knowledge, since Han was the second--practically the first, after the short-lived Qin--pan-Sinitic dynasty that could carry out such project. Before that it was split by regions.
So it definitely deserves to be called "the original" Han characters.
But I'm not supporting this as the new politically correct name, because it will cause unnecessary debates like this one and will not be adopted by mainlanders.


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## xiaolijie

> But I'm not supporting this as the new politically correct name, because  it will cause unnecessary debates like this one and will not be adopted  by mainlanders.


You're correct, and you shouldn't have attempted in the first place.


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## terredepomme

> You're correct, and you shouldn't have attempted in the first place.


I have never attempted to do so. I just argued against your claim that it is an unjustified name, which it isn't.


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## Ghabi

I think there is a few things that deserve to be clarified:

1) the first standardization of Chinese characters, as far as philological and archeological evidences show,  occurred during the Qin Dynasty, when the Qin-State characters (i.e.  小篆) were adopted as the official script while the characters used in the  other six warring states 六國文字 were either eliminated from or  incorporated into the new system. Some of these 六國文字 are collected in  說文解字, and are labeled as 古文 (in other works you may also come across the  term 古文奇字, which means the same thing). We have come to know much more about 六國文字  due to the new archeological findings in recent decades.

2) Chinese  characters have never been a closed system. The characters kept  changing, with variants galore, as demonstrated in the Dunhuang  manuscripts 敦煌文書 and many other ancient texts. Actually during the Tang Dynasty, the government found  it necessary to publish the work 干祿字書, which was meant to serve as an  orthographical standard for the Imperial Examination 科舉.

3) The  boundary between "correct characters" 正字 and "folk characters" 俗字 is  always fluid. There's no "glass ceiling". A bastard character, despised  by every "smart guy" during a particular period of time in history, can  become every bit as _bona fide_ as those blue-blooded ones as time goes by. There is no lack of "smart guys" in our age, of course.


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