[naruwan]

I can read simplified chinese. But I have to admit, some of them are very ugly....

I have some personal choices for the ugliest simplified chiense characters. The worst must be

梦

马

丽

归

some of them just look so awkward. do you have a favorite?

[Yun]

Having grown up learning simplified characters, I don't find most of them aesthetically problematic - I suppose I don't really feel what I've missed. Indeed, I believe young Chinese Singaporeans would detest learning Chinese even more than they already tend to do, if they had to learn to write and remember the traditional characters.

I learned to read traditional characters on my own, from Hong Kong comics and Taiwanese history books. A few years back, I also took a class in university that covered the simplification process - the teacher was a Taiwanese and was quite anti-simplified. In that class, I learned about the irregularities of the simplification, and how some words lost their beauty from being oversimplified.

Here are some of the ones I felt were the most unneccesary and carelessly done:

厂 originally 廠

广 originally 廣

乐 originally 樂

国 originally 國

过 originally 過

边 originally 邊

All of them could have been simplified in a way that preserved more of the essence of the original. Instead they became empty shells that no longer had any relation to either the sound or the meaning of the word.

[Nienna]

Quote

Instead they became empty shells that no longer had any relation to either the sound or the meaning of the word.

Too true.

I grew up learning traditional characters but I learned to read simplified ones through several JinYong's books. They struck me as rather vulgar and...unchinese (oh how sophisticated of me ). But I guess languages should evolve to be as simple as possible?

[qrasy]

naruwan, on Feb 12 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

I can read simplified chinese. But I have to admit, some of them are very ugly....
I have some personal choices for the ugliest simplified chiense characters. The worst must be
梦
马
丽
归
some of them just look so awkward. do you have a favorite?

Actually I don't really mind of those "uglyness", the real ugliness is regarding to new loangraph(假借) since it's "inner ugliness"
My "infavourite" ("in-" as in "infamous" ): 面(麵), for example in 面粉, which should actually mean "facial powder".

Yun, on Feb 13 2006, 12:28 AM, said:

Here are some of the ones I felt were the most unneccesary and carelessly done:
厂 originally 廠
广 originally 廣
乐 originally 樂
国 originally 國
过 originally 過
边 originally 邊
All of them could have been simplified in a way that preserved more of the essence of the original. Instead they became empty shells that no longer had any relation to either the sound or the meaning of the word.

国 and 边 is like Japanese (国 and 辺).
厂 and 广 are originally rare characters, but nevertheless it's still a new-made 假借.

This post has been edited by qrasy: 12 February 2006 - 12:52 PM

[urofpersia]

Actually I dont find them unattractive. On the other hand why I would want to write in traditional Chinese when I can do so with less strokes in simplifed chinese? I would be darned if I have to write the '卫' in traditional Chinese, just to add on to the examples given by Naruwan.

As for as elegance, I tend to favour elegance in usage and meaning behind the symbols, rather than the symbols themselves.

As to Yun's post I think the major issue is how certain traditional characters have been simplifed to a single simplified character, this makes translating from simplified back to traditional less than straight-forward, but admitted this is few and far in between.

I can however appreciate Calligraphy as an Artform and here certainly traditional Chinese is better. 龍rendered in Simplified Chinese just doesn't have the same impact.

I must say I like some of the simple elegance of simpified Chinese, I happen to think my name in Chinese looks better in simplified, more elegant. I can write it both simplified and traditional of course.

[ChiangAP]

naruwan, on Feb 12 2006, 03:25 PM, said:

I can read simplified chinese. But I have to admit, some of them are very ugly....

I have some personal choices for the ugliest simplified chiense characters. The worst must be

梦

马

丽

归

some of them just look so awkward. do you have a favorite?

You are lucky you can read both (all Taiwanese can!). I have great difficulties and must switch first from simplified to traditional if I want to understand something. All my dictionnaries are "traditional" and I already forgot how to write my own name! I am glad I learned in Taiwan.
The character I find really ugly is 马, but I also dislike 个, 风 and especially 数 which I find more complicated than the original.
On the other hand, I prefer台灣 to 臺灣.
In December I had to make a powerpoint presentation to academics in Guangzhou; I decided to use Chinese and traditional characters instead of English. Not only no one seemed to mind but another Mainland scientist (in his thirties) also used 90% traditional characters in his presentation!
I welcome Ma Ying Jeou's proposal of having an intelligent non-political approach (another one?) to this issue which concerns all men of good will.

[General_Zhaoyun]

urofpersia, on Feb 13 2006, 04:11 AM, said:

As for as elegance, I tend to favour elegance in usage and meaning behind the symbols, rather than the symbols themselves.

I'm educated in simplified writing, so I'm inclined to write simplified writing. Nevertheless, I also read lots of traditional writings from Taiwanese books.

In terms of writing, simplified writing is indeed easier to write due to less no. of strokes. But in terms of aesthetism/elegance, definitely traditional scripts are better. For instance in graphical design involving chinese character design, it's always much better to use traditional font types than say simplified scripts font. Just like in chinese calligraphy, no-one actually write in simplified scripts as they are not beautiful enough. (Notice I used traditional fonts in CHF Logo design).

Some simplified writings are actually derived from Cursive Scripts (known as Cao Shu 草书), just like some japanese writings are also derived from chinese cursive scripts.

For instance, the character " 为" is how you would write if you were to write in cursive form of 為. 为becomes the simplified writing of 為 .

There are however some simplification that I find appropriate:

>> 国
Simplified Character for Country. Notice the character's meaning can be derived by explaining "Jade 玉 enclosed by border 口". The Jade 玉 actually refers to Emperor's Jade Seal 玉玺, while 口 is a pictogram symbolising border or an enclosure. 国 means an enclosure with emperor's jade seal in the middle (symbolising imperial rule/power), thus forming a country.

>> 國
Traditional Character for Country. This is entirely a pictogram known as "Xiang Xing Wen 象形文". 口symbolises enclosure/border, while 或 was derived from oracle inscription looking more like rivers/streams...in short, it looks like a map with river and border making up a country.

Some Simplification that I find has lost its meaning

>> 愛
Traditional Character for Love. This is actually better than simplified character in explaining and deriving the meaning of love. Note that in this character, there are both "friend 友" and "心 heart" in this character, meaning that love is not just between friend, but also means you love using your heart 心.

>> 爱
Simplified Character for Love. Notice that now "love" is only limited to friend 友 (which is contained in the simplified character). The 心 (heart) in traditional character of love 愛 has been removed, which seems to imply you don't love using your heart anymore. The simplified character has simply lost its meaning of love.

Refer to our chinese board thread http://www.chinahist...?showtopic=8938 as well for more info

[TaiE]

I can recognize the traditional characters but can't write most of them. I was lucky for that one of my favorite book is <the journey to the west> published in the early 1950's which brought a lot of pleasure to my boyage. Sometimes I gets really shocked when I saw a report, that many young people nowadays can't recognize enough traditional characters then hard to approach the original ancient works, it is funny.

Better preserve the traditional characters in the museum or somekind of art, and set the simplified as standard, at the same time, require students to read more classic books as spare time readings written in the former one. It would be convinent and practical of no contradiction between them.

[naruwan]

personally, i don't see the great advantage interms of writting in simplified Chinese. Writting Chinese is a slow process either way. Type on the other hand is a different matter.

And stats shows, when it comes to typing , traditional chinese IME is faster than simplified Chinese IME.

Namely 嘸蝦米. There is a 中文輸入法擂台 which can be tested.

Personally, if I send the time to write something, I'd want it to look nice. If I am jogging down notes, all the characters will have just 1 stroke XD

It's that simple.

Otherwise, I can just type.

[qrasy]

naruwan, on Feb 13 2006, 05:56 PM, said:

personally, i don't see the great advantage interms of writting in simplified Chinese. Writting Chinese is a slow process either way.

The advantage could be seen in 籲,龜,黽,飛... (but anyway they're not too common)

Quote

Type on the other hand is a different matter.

And stats shows, when it comes to typing , traditional chinese IME is faster than simplified Chinese IME.

Why? Because of preference to Pinyin/Zhuyin typing?
There's some IME in Simplified Chinese which also takes shapes just like Cangjie, the Wubi Zixing (五笔字型).
Wubi Zixing maximum keystrokes are 4, while Cangjie is 5. The average of Wubi Zixing should be smaller.

This post has been edited by qrasy: 13 February 2006 - 09:24 AM

[urofpersia]

qrasy, on Feb 13 2006, 10:23 PM, said:

The advantage could be seen in 籲,龜,黽,飛... (but anyway they're not too common)

Why? Because of preference to Pinyin/Zhuyin typing?
There's some IME in Simplified Chinese which also takes shapes just like Cangjie, the Wubi Zixing (五笔字型).
Wubi Zixing maximum keystrokes are 4, while Cangjie is 5. The average of Wubi Zixing should be smaller.

The IME method doesnt make a difference because most of them allows you to select either simplified or traditional Chinese to be displayed.

So use which ever IME method you are comfortable with.

[xng]

As I explained in another thread. Most of the simplified chinese characters were done rather carelessly amd without much planning and thought. It was TOO simplified.

In my opinion, they should only have simplified those characters with a lot of strokes so that it looks similar to the original but with reduced stroke. Then a person who is educated in modern 'simplified' chinese can still read old chinese texts by shih huang di or whatever old texts written in the past 2000 years without translation. And those older people who were educated in traditional chinese would be able to guess the newer simplified characters because it looks similar.

邊 is a character with too many strokes and is a good candidate for simplification but
边 is TOO simplified and doesn't look at all close to the original.

Then eventually the two system will merge instead of the present two systems which is making chinese a lot tougher to learn than it already is.

This post has been edited by xng: 17 February 2006 - 01:28 PM

[xng]

qrasy, on Feb 12 2006, 11:50 AM, said:

国 and 边 is like Japanese (国 and 辺).

Why would the japanese use a knife on a journey to represent side ? 辺
Is there a meaning to it ?

[Nienna]

May be the edge of a knife has connotations of sides since the two sides of a knife are divided by an edge (or two edges)?

Or may be establishing a border 边 traditionally requires a swordsman on a journey/conquest? And having a border means having two sides too.

[xng]

Nienna, on Feb 17 2006, 02:06 PM, said:

May be the edge of a knife has connotations of sides since the two sides of a knife are divided by an edge (or two edges)?

Or may be establishing a border 边 traditionally requires a swordsman on a journey/conquest? And having a border means having two sides too.

I hope that there is some unification between traditional, japanese simplified and chinese simplified to reduce the number of characters . It is difficult enough to learn so many characters without the variants of each character.