Simplified characters as codified by thePeople's Republic of China are predominantly used inmainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is aretronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used inTaiwan,Hong Kong, andMacau, as well as in mostoverseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia.[5] As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanesekanji include many simplified characters known asshinjitai standardized after World War II,sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts. Koreanhanja, still used to a certain extent inSouth Korea, remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic.
There has historically been adebate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters.[6][7] Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue beingambiguities in simplified representations resulting from the merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets.[8]
Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as正體字;正体字;zhèngtǐzì; 'orthodox characters'.[9] This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from othervariants and idiomatic characters.[10] Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters繁體字;繁体字;fántǐzì; 'complex characters',老字;lǎozì; 'old characters', or全體字;全体字;quántǐzì; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters.
Some argue that since traditional characters are often the original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'.[11]
Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' (正字;zhèngzì or正寫;zhèngxiě) and to simplified characters as簡筆字;简笔字;jiǎnbǐzì; 'simplified-stroke characters' or減筆字;减笔字;jiǎnbǐzì; 'reduced-stroke characters', as the words forsimplified andreduced are homophonous inStandard Chinese, both pronounced asjiǎn.
TheGuangzhou Daily, an official Communist Party newspaper, uses traditional Chinese characters in its branding.
Although the majority of Chinese text in mainland China aresimplified characters, there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising.[12] Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes.[12]
In the People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to theTable of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters.[13] Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts.[14] There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of产 in mainland China is産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamesechữ Nôm).[15]
The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of thePeople's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and bothPeople's Daily andXinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, usingBig5 encoding.[16][17] Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers; the inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters.
This articleneeds attention from an expert in China. The specific problem is:The differences between traditional characters as used in Taiwan versus in Hong Kong.WikiProject China may be able to help recruit an expert.(September 2023)
InHong Kong andMacau, traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from the mainland.[18] The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage.[19][20]
Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan.[21][22][23][24] Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity.[25][26]
Traditional characters were recognized as the official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters.[27] Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers.[8]
TheChinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification.[citation needed] Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as theChinese Commercial News,World News, andUnited Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such asYazhou Zhoukan. ThePhilippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters.
Job announcement in a Filipino Chinese daily newspaper written in traditional Chinese characters
With most having immigrated to the United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters.[28]
In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using theBig5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However, the ubiquitousUnicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text.
There are variousinput method editors (IMEs) available for theinput of Chinese characters. Many characters, oftendialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being theShanghainese-language characterU+20C8E𠲎CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E—a composition of伐 with the⼝'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese嗎;吗.[citation needed]
Typefaces often use the initialismTC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well asSC forsimplified Chinese characters. In addition, theNoto family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for the traditional character set used in Taiwan (TC) and the set used in Hong Kong (HK).[29]
Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. TheWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of thelanguage tagzh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters.[30]
In theJapanese writing system,kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to createshinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with the traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in thejōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there arekokuji, which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China.
In theKorean writing system,hanja—replaced almost entirely byhangul inSouth Korea and totally replaced inNorth Korea—are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known asgukja.
^Pae, H. K. (2020). "Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Writing Systems: All East-Asian but Different Scripts".Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture. Literacy Studies (Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences, Linguistics, Psychology and Education). Vol. 21. Cham: Springer. pp. 71–105.doi:10.1007/978-3-030-55152-0_5.ISBN978-3-030-55151-3.S2CID234940515.
^Twine, Nanette (1991).Language and the Modern State: The Reform of Written Japanese. Taylor & Francis.ISBN978-0-415-00990-4.
^abLin Youshun (林友順) (2009).大馬華社遊走於簡繁之間 [The Malaysian Chinese Community Wanders Between Simplified and Traditional Characters] (in Chinese). Yazhou Zhoukan. Archived fromthe original on 23 May 2021. Retrieved30 March 2021.
^Cheung, Yat-Shing (1992). "Language Variation, Culture, and Society". In Bolton, Kingsley (ed.).Sociolinguistics Today: International Perspectives. Routledge. pp. 211.
^Chia Shih Yar (谢世涯).新加坡汉字规范的回顾与前瞻 [Review and Prospect of Standardization of Chinese Characters in Singapore]. Paper presented at The Fourth International Conference on Chinese Characters. Convened by The Society of Chinese Philology, Jiangsu Educational Publishing House and State Language Commission of PRC. Suzhou, China. 26–27 Nov 1997 (in Chinese) – via huayuqiao.org.
^For instance,"22.31.1.6.3".Internal Revenue Manual. Internal Revenue Service. 6 November 2012.The standard language for translation is Traditional Chinese
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