# Mingling of Traditional and Simplified Characters



## viajero_canjeado

Hey everyone!

This is a question I've had in the back of my mind for a while, then in another thread it was mentioned that the character systems are and have always been open. It reminded me of a time I was on a plane, and the tv screen in the seat in front of me used mostly simplified characters but sometimes used the word 時 instead of 时。就是螢幕表示關於到達目的地資料的樣子：Time traveled, time to destination, current speed, headwind, outside temperature, altitude 等等。

It was a mainland airline, so in theory the screen should only have shown simplified characters, and so I was mystified at why there would be a 時。 I wonder, because of the ease of technology in regard to typing traditional vs. simplified (still just a few keystrokes no matter how complicated the character), to what extent traditional characters may experience a resurgence in everyday usage in the mainland. Are there other examples like this where a traditional character appears in a normal context in the mainland and not special ones that are more prone to using traditional characters like calligraphy or martial arts? I guess I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to at least bring back the traditional variants of words like 說 instead of 说，because even in simplified the word is 言。

By the way, as the title of the thread suggests, this is not merely a one-way street: people in Taiwan use simplified characters quite often (though sometimes the Japanese variants like for 關 or 藥), especially when hand-writing. But occasionally even on signs you'll see words like 双 instead of 雙。

請大家發表相關的意見！


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## softserve

I am afraid I don't have much to contribute here. All I can remember is, my high school teachers would warn us not to use simplified characters on our homework and at test, otherwise points will be deducted each time it is used. Sometimes, to much of my suprise, the simplifed characters I have been using for decades turn out to be wrong, or I should say, not the same as those used in Mainland. I realized this when I was in China, filling out a money deposit slip and the bank teller brought to my attention that the simplified character I put down is incorrect.


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## verastar

I live in Beijing and Northeast of China, I am afraid the traditional characters are rarely seen in daily life.
Maybe because I was taught simplified Chinese since I start learning, personally I do not think using back traditional chinese is a good idea. Although some traditional characters look more elegant and beautiful, it is just too time-consuming to write down.
However, I believe it is necessary to recognise traditional characters for all Chinese people, no matter if they are mainlanders, so that they can read ancient articles.


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## viajero_canjeado

verastar said:


> Although some traditional characters look more elegant and beautiful, it is just too time-consuming to write down.



Right, I see your point. But imagine a world (sort of like the one we live in) where we hardly ever have to write things down with pencil and paper, but can use cell phones, computers, or voice commands to write. Then if a government or group of people wishes to establish language policy in light of linguistic ease and effectiveness (which is not always the case), then the fact of being "time-consuming to write down" is only of secondary importance; a more central concern is that of recognizability, ie. how readily can a character be recognized and distinguished from other characters? With that in mind, it seems like, for simplicity's sake, keeping 言 the same in words where it's a radical is a defensible position, because one doesn't have to memorize a radical that's different when by itself or combined with another word, like 說/说。I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between simplified words that look really similar, like for example 叉 or 义，so it's natural for me to prefer the (to me) more easily distinguishable 義。There might be some aesthetic factors involved in my feeling this way: I can relate more easily to a character whose constituent parts also have meanings of their own, like 義 is composed of a 羊 and a 我，but 义 doesn't really mean anything to me.

I think there's a balance to be achieved between simplicity of form and recognizability: that is to say, if characters are restricted to having as few strokes as possible, there'll be so many that look alike it'll be hard to tell them apart. Pinyinization would be the severest form of simplification imaginable, but I reckon both Korean (well, maybe it's syllabarization for Korean, I dunno the technical term) and Vietnamese made it work. On the other hand, if there are too many intricate characters, it might be hard for the mind to process. It'd be interesting to conduct a study on the matter. All I know is it's just about as easy for my mind to process 鬱 (if the font is large enough) as 郁，and perhaps easier because I don't have to consider whether 鬱 is a surname or not.

When it comes to ease of typing, sometimes it's quicker for me to type traditional than simplified, like 双 takes me seven keystrokes whereas 雙 only takes four. I guess the question I'm wondering now is, could the use of characters in mainland China be influenced by factors such as scientific evidence, or is it a political issue that couldn't be swayed by mere linguistic concerns. Such a question rests on the supposition that perhaps the current simplified system is not the most ideal for the current state of society (taking into account technology), but that's only a hypothesis; there'd have to be more research to find out if that's the case or not.


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## SuperXW

I doubt if there is a "resurgence" of traditional characters in mainland China. But I can tell that the most TC influence we've gotten since young were from lyrics of pop songs and subtitles of Hong Kong movies.


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## Ghabi

The issue of recognizability is often brought forth in T. vs S. discussions/debates/crusades. Actually, cognitive studies have been conducted for these matters (see, for example, _Cognitive Neuroscience Studies of the Chinese Language_,  Hong Kong University Press, 2002).

I have no idea what the scientists have found, but just to play the devil's advocate, I want to point out that there are always look-alike characters, whether in the T. or  the S. system. You've pointed out 叉 vs 义, but there are also 又 and 乂 in T.; similarly, there's 羲 in T.  which resembles 義. As to the simplified radical found in 说, I want to point out that that's actually how it's written in the cursive script (see this page [
] taken from my cursive script book), and literate people in the old days were supposed to be able to recognize it.

Disclaimer: I grew up reading both T. and S. as well as old books containing archaic characters (not to mention local comics that contain "Cantonese characters"), and have no preference for a particular system!


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## softserve

Perhaps we can understand better why a nation choose _*A*_ rathan than _*B*_ and stick with it for no practical reasons by looking at the fundamental reasons why China's government decided to make a drastic change to an already-existing written system (TC) after the communist party took over China  But this, I'm afraid this conversation might get too ugly lol as it is a very sensitive issue I'd rather not to discuss with my fellow Mainlanders. One of the many reasons I once read in a book, the name of which I cannot recall, is to reduce illiteracy rate by simplifying the characters.


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## verastar

When you are a kid, memorizing how to recognize and to write "义" compared to "義" is really much much simpler... Although as an adult, it does not seem to matter that much.
Technology is improving and we do not need to write with a pen that often anymore, but still it is necessary to remember how to write, isn't it? So actually for school-aged kids, it does not matter if they are going to write with a pen in the future or not.
And it is true that one of the main reasons to use simplified Chinese is to reduce illiteracy rate, and it works.
As Ghabi pointed out, some of the simplified characters (I cannot say how many) actually are not just "invented" by some experts, they can be found in cursive script (or maybe others).
To be honest, some of the traditional characters have too many strokes. If the characters are too small (eg on a computer screen), I feel dizzy to read them...


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## viajero_canjeado

Thanks for all the comments! The question I was going for had more to do with the intermingling of the two systems than which one is better or easier - no need to rehash that discussion! From the comments above, it would appear there's not much intermixing of traditional with simplified on the mainland. I'm cool with that.. but still a little confused about the 時 I saw on that tv screen in the airplane.


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## Ghabi

viajero_canjeado said:


> The question I was going for had more to do with the intermingling of the two systems than which one is better or easier - no need to rehash that discussion!


Glad to see it nipped in the bud!


> ...but still a little confused about the 時 I saw on that tv screen in the airplane.


Non-linguistic explanation: jet lag! In my region people mix the two systems in handwriting quite freely (because who wants to write 機/體/龜 when you can write 机/体/龟?), but not in printing. In open examinations, one can choose either one to use (but not mixing the two), if I'm not mistaken.


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## SuperXW

viajero_canjeado said:


> but still a little confused about the 時 I saw on that tv screen in the airplane.


 Yeah, it's rather rare that TC and SC get intermixed in the mainland, when it happens it's usually considered an incorrect usage of Chinese, or a mistake made by computer software.
My experience is that some flights flying between mainland cities and Hong Kong (在香港與內地城市間往返的飛機，英語表達不知道對不對……), are showing TC and SC in turns on their monitors. But if they are mixed, it should be a mistake.


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## terredepomme

> I guess I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to at least bring back the traditional variants of words like 說 instead of 说，because even in simplified the word is 言。


I have been thinking about this too. If you just change 门->門, 讠->訁, 钅->釒, 车->車, 纟->糹 etc, you would reduce about half of simplified characters. And it wouldn't cause any confusion at all since any dumwit can see that it's the same thing.
I know that they have been always present as cursive writing. The Japanese write like that sometimes too. But personally I don't see the point of making it the print script. If you want to handwrite faster then you can just write it that way(I do that all the time); no reason to alter the standard. And I don't really think that it has anything to do with literacy rate because learning Hanzi is about learning the combinations of radicals rather than the number of strokes.
Now there is no reason to argue about whether to restore this or not because obviously, because Beijing is not going to read this thread and decide what to do. What could be done by us normal folks would be using the so-called "mixed" computer font, sort of like the one that viajero_canjeado has seen, which would only use traditional characters for these automatically-converted characters. And since it would be better-looking(at least I feel that way) at the same time comfortablly lisible for any mainlander, it could gain popularity among people.
Such a mixed font would be easy to make, since there are so many varients of Chinese input systems; one simply has to adjust the preferences for some TC characters. It would be better if we included words like 訁人 for 认, for example.
And not just computer fonts; one could make a "semi-traditional, semi-simplified" caligraphy in everyday context.
你們怎么看这種办法?


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## indigoduck

viajero_canjeado said:


> Thanks for all the comments! The question I was going for had more to do with the intermingling of the two systems than which one is better or easier - no need to rehash that discussion! From the comments above, it would appear there's not much intermixing of traditional with simplified on the mainland. I'm cool with that.. but still a little confused about the 時 I saw on that tv screen in the airplane.



The other possibility is you were seeing the japanese screen when you thought you were seeing the mainland version. I know japanese chinese characters definitely uses 時. 

The japanese government also simplified some of the traditional characters which although are simplified, they are sometimes different from the mainland's version - often simplified to a lesser extent.

For example:

TC=關係

Japanese=関係

SC=关系

Note the Airplane terminology used in this example.  I'm going to assume every plane manufacturer uses the same in-flight program.  These characters looks like chinese, but they are all expressed differently.   From my observation, the mainland version definitely uses simplified characters but their explanation is never *simplified* and uses many many more characters in comparison.

Traditional=
Japanese=飛行時間
Simplified=从出发地已飞行时间

Do you remember the example you saw on the plane where you saw the character 時?


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## OneStroke

In Hong Kong secondary schools, in theory we should pick one and stick to it, but many of my classmates use T and S interchangeably in order to save time.


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## Zincie

Personally, I like traditional characters much more for they looks more beautiful. But when comes to daily life usage, I , mostly, choose the simplified ones. Cause I've taught the simplified and is really time-saving. I don't think this can be a problem. I dare to say 99% Chinese who use simplified characters can read traditional characters (writing is another thing). And it is common that someone write their names(only names) with traditional ones to make their hand-writing more elegant.


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## solidtext

viajero_canjeado said:


> Hey everyone!
> 
> This is a question I've had in the back of my mind for a while, then in another thread it was mentioned that the character systems are and have always been open. It reminded me of a time I was on a plane, and the tv screen in the seat in front of me used mostly simplified characters but sometimes used the word 時 instead of 时。就是螢幕表示關於到達目的地資料的樣子：Time traveled, time to destination, current speed, headwind, outside temperature, altitude 等等。
> 
> It was a mainland airline, so in theory the screen should only have shown simplified characters, and so I was mystified at why there would be a 時。 I wonder, because of the ease of technology in regard to typing traditional vs. simplified (still just a few keystrokes no matter how complicated the character), to what extent traditional characters may experience a resurgence in everyday usage in the mainland. Are there other examples like this where a traditional character appears in a normal context in the mainland and not special ones that are more prone to using traditional characters like calligraphy or martial arts? I guess I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to at least bring back the traditional variants of words like 說 instead of 说，because even in simplified the word is 言。
> 
> By the way, as the title of the thread suggests, this is not merely a one-way street: people in Taiwan use simplified characters quite often (though sometimes the Japanese variants like for 關 or 藥), especially when hand-writing. But occasionally even on signs you'll see words like 双 instead of 雙。
> 
> 請大家發表相關的意見！



Seldom we see that - Traditional Chinese characters mixed in Simplified Chinese text, especially on a Mainland airline. 

One reason I can imagine out is that the original text was actually in English, and *it was translated into Traditional Chinese text* before being *further "converted" into Simplified*. Some Traditional Chinese characters remained unchanged during the 2nd step of CHT>CHS conversion...


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