Need to know both scripts!

(Here are some traditional characters I thought were pretty.)
(I'm sure you simplified learners are like, "Uhhh, that's ok. I'll stick with simplified thanks!" Haha)

Hi everyone. I have been rather busy this week and haven't had much time to put a lot into a new post. Therefore, I would like to talk to you all about something that has been bothering me quite a bit lately. I'll get right into it. (It begins as a rant but turns into a lesson of sorts)

There are two types of Mandarin learners: those learning simplified characters, and those learning traditional characters. Many choose to learn both scripts, but I am going to categorize those learners with the "traditional learners" and I will tell you why.

From my experience, whenever a traditional learner comes across anything written in simplified characters, he will look at it and say, "Oh, that is 'xxxx' in traditional.".

However, whenever I type anything in traditional to a simplified learner, all I get is, "Uhhh I can't read that." Not even difficult characters either. Most don't even try! I'll give you an example. I wrote this the other day to someone who is learning Mandarin, 「你學中文學了多久了？」Which means, "How long have you been learning Chinese?". There is only one character that differs from the simplified script, 學(学). Now first of all I think from the context one could figure it out, from the shape one can definitely figure it out, and if all else fails...one can look it up. However, the first thing that pops out of his mouth is, "I'm sorry, I can't read traditional characters.".

So why is it that someone learning traditional characters can more than 9 times out of 10 read something written in simplified characters yet it very difficult for simplified learners to do the same with traditional characters? Keep reading.

There are about 80,000+ different characters that have ever been in existence. Obviously most are no longer used, there is a list of 4,808 commonly used characters. University students know around 6,000+ characters. The simplification process changed 2235 characters. So only 2235 of the characters out there were simplified. That means that the rest stayed the same. And of those 2235 characters, a very great majority are characters that have only had their radical simplified. So when a simplified learner says, "I don't want to learn traditional characters, they are too hard to write. Simplified are easier!" This only applies to the 2235 characters that were simplified. The rest have not changed. So basically they are saying, "The 2235 characters that were simplified are easier, but the rest are too difficult to learn." I beg to differ.

TC:強 SC:强 Is this simpler? There is an extra stroke.

Ok, so I won't go into "simpler", but let's go into "simple". If your reason for not wanting to learn traditional characters is that "They are too difficult" or "Simplified are easier" then think again.

Let's take another look at those characters that I wrote at the top of the post. Here they are typed so that you may copy or look them up as you please.
矗戄攫蘸髓麒麟黴囊懿霾巍灌蘗蠢醺霸霹露魔黯嚷嚼壤攘蘑

So they look difficult, huh? Well they are and they aren't. They do however have a lot of strokes, between 20 and 24 each. Why am I showing these to you? Because they are the same in simplified as well. Simplified does not mean simple! There are a LOT more of these, but I just took a few to show you as examples. You may not use all of these words in your life, but a lot of them are rather common. I would say that I have learned about half of these characters from reading them in actual content.

So, now it is a new question... Do you want to learn Chinese characters? If your answer is yes, then I encourage you to learn as much as you can about BOTH scripts because they are BOTH used in all sinophone countries, even China. You may not see traditional on a daily basis in China, but it is there nonetheless. There is plenty of media on the Internet and on TV that is only written in traditional that you need to be able to recognize, and the same goes for simplified.

To sum up my thoughts and my rant: You need to have at least a general knowledge of both of the Chinese scripts. If Chinese people can read traditional characters along with the simplified they were taught in school, then so can you! If the reason you are not learning traditional characters is because they are too "hard", then you probably shouldn't be learning Mandarin at all. A very large number of characters are complicated and have a lot of strokes, this is not only true of traditional characters.

I'd like to end on this little note:
Simplified characters are FASTER to write, but HARDER to read.
Traditional characters are SLOWER to write, but EASIER to read.
Because of the simplifications, many characters now look very similar to one another and make reading harder.

New blog URL

The new title and URL are now up. I still need to improve the introduction and layout(badly!!), but at least the main things are out of the way and I can continue posting.

Inconsistencies in simplification

In this post I will be going over an example of some of the inconsistencies in the simplification process. The simplification process was not to be carried out in one bout, but in several smaller reforms. Several attempts had been made, but they were not accepted by the Chinese people; only one was successful. I will go into more details about this in a later post as promised. Basically, radicals were simplified, graphemes were simplified, entire parts were completely removed, phonetic replacements occured, etc. A second reform was attempted, but never accepted by the people and was quickly aborted. Thus, the simplified characters that the People's Republic of China uses today is the result of an incomplete reform with much over-simplification.
You can see some of the characters that would have been put into place through the second reform here.

So, here is one example that I will be focusing on for today. I will probably go over more in the future, we shall see. Let's get started^^

Let us begin with two characters:

巤(liè) and 昔(xí/xī/cuò). We won't worry about the last pronunciation for 昔 as it does not not really come into play here. Let's take a look at a few characters that have 巤 as their phonetic component.




臘(là)、獵(liè)、蠟(là)、鑞(là)、躐(liè)、擸(liè)、鬣(liè)

You'll notice that as a phonetic component, 巤 is almost always pronounced either liè or là. Now let's look at their simplified forms.





腊(là)、猎(liè)、蜡(là)、镴(là)、躐(liè)、擸(liè)、鬣(liè)

As you can see the first three characters have had their phonetic 巤 changed to 昔. The fourth character has only had its radical simplified but has left the phonetic component. The last three characters are the exact same in both scripts.
(Also note the slight differences in the character 巤. The simplified version has a 乂 inside the 口, whereas the traditional version has a 人 instead.)

Now we have some characters with a new phonetic component that is not phonetic at all, and some have not changed at all. This is just one of the inconsistencies that leads to confusion when using simplified characters. In their attempt to "simplify" characters by reducing strokes they have removed one of the main principles of 漢字. Having characters with no phonetic component(or an incorrect one) is not logical. There only exist a few hundred characters these days that are not phono-semantic, the rest follow this pattern.

Now, let us look at one more thing. Seeing that a few of the more commonly used characters that use 巤 as a phonetic component are simplified to 昔, one may think this to be true for all simplifications with 巤. If one were to see 躐, it would be logical to think that its simplification is 踖, however, this is incorrect. These are two different characters with different pronunciations:
躐(liè)(from 巤liè)
踖(jí)(from 昔xí)

While their meanings are similar, they remain two separate characters.

The written Chinese language has been constantly evolving and thus contains many inconsistencies whether in traditional characters or in simplified ones. On top of that, Mandarin is not the only spoken language to use 漢字. What may be phonetic in Mandarin, may not be in one of the other "dialects" of Chinese, and vice versa.

That being said, the simplification process did change some characters' phonetic element to be more accurate: e.g. 嚇→吓. Unfortunately, the number of characters whose phonetic component is now more accurate than it was in the traditional script is very low. Some approximate phonetic components have been used instead, but the emphasis is usually on fewer stroke, ultimately leaving the newly-formed characters without an appropriate phonetic component:
e.g. 聽→听[tīng](the phonetic tǐng turned into 斤jīn), 鄰→邻[lín](粦lín changed to 令lìng), 櫃→柜[guì](匱guì changed to 巨jù), 衛→卫[wèi](韋wéi is the phonetic component. Here the entire character has been changed into a newly-created character 卫, creating yet another inconsistency with other characters that use the phonetic 韋wéi), etc.

In conclusion, fewer strokes does not mean simpler. If you learn the phonetic components, characters become a breeze.

獨 vs. 独

I don't have much time, but I would like to at least make a new post. So here I am going to show you another simplification. This one deals with the removal of a phonetic component to reduce stroke count.


So here is 獨(dú), which means "alone, independent, single". It is a phono-semantic compound. On the left is犬(quǎn), a pictogram of a dog, here used as the radical. The idea is that dogs are lone animals. On the right is 蜀(shǔ, the name of an ancient state). While its pronunciation has changed a lot over time, it still has kept its rhyme. Most characters that have 蜀 as their phonetic value are pronounced "zhu"(usually 3rd tone^^), "du", "shu", or "chu". My next post will include more about pronunciation changes and similarities.

So, onto the simplified version.



So what happened? A part of the phonetic component was removed in order to reduce the number of strokes. This leaves us with 虫(chóng/huǐ, insect), which is not at all a phonetic or semantic component. We are now left with two pictograms and no pronunciation.

So what do you call a phono-semantic compound with no phonetic component?
...I don't know either...


說文解字

Shuowen says: 犬相得而鬬也。从犬蜀聲。羊爲羣，犬爲獨也。一曰北嚻山有獨𤞞獸，如虎，白身，豕鬣，尾如馬。

Translation to come.

醜 vs. 丑

So I suppose I'll go ahead and start with some characters since I'm putting the simplification post on hold for now.


So our first character is 醜(chǒu), which means "ugly, shameful, disgraceful". It is a phono-semantic compound (形聲). On the left side we have 酉(yǒu, the 10th earthly branch), which is our phonetic component. On the right, we have 鬼(guǐ), which means "ghost, sly, crafty".

So there you have it. a simple 漢字, right? Well, let's see what China did with it during the simplification process.

(簡體字)

So what's wrong with this character? It already existed in Chinese writing and is still a traditional character.

(正體字)

丑(chǒu) is the 漢字 for the second earthly branch, and it also means "clown". So while the pronunciation is the same, you now have a character whose meaning must be interpreted depending on the context. In "simplifying" this character, a.k.a. removing it completely from the language and "borrowing" another character with the same pronunciation (rebus/假借) to replace it, we now have a more complicated situation.

While the 12 heavenly stems and 10 earthly branches are not used too much these days, it still gives a bad name to the year of the ox which is represented by 丑. What an ugly year, huh? 囧


(Note the difference between the two 丑s written above. As a traditional character the 3rd stroke has kept its length. Here is 丑 in 小篆(small seal script):

說文解字

Shuowen says: 可惡也。从鬼酉聲。

A direct translation would be something like" "It's repulsive. From 鬼 with 酉 sound." A more comprehensive translation might be: "Its meaning is 'vile, hateful, repulsive'. Its semantic component is 鬼 and its phonetic component 酉."
(Give me feedback on the Shuowen definitions. Would you like them to be included in my posts? No need? Let me know what you think.)


For more information on the 12 heavenly stems and 10 earthly branches(干支), check out this site.

Unfortunate pause in blog creation

Unfortunately the Internet is no longer working in my room, so the blog is on hold until that gets fixed. In the meantime, I am reading the English translation of 文字學概要 by 裘錫圭 ("Chinese Writing" by Qiu Xigui). The book was recommended to me and it looks very promising. I believe it will help my understanding of the history of the Chinese writing system. For anyone who is interested I will post the book's information in this post once I can get on a computer (typing this from my iPhone.)

Also my post on the simplification process is also postponed until I finish reading this book. I would like to have the best knowledge while writing it, as it will take a while to write it well.

I hope to find a way very soon to again have Internet access in my room. Until then... leave me a comment on what you think of the site so far.

Happy studying!

The Chinese Scripts

Before getting into the simplification process, I would like to briefly go over the different scripts in Chinese and the evolution of 漢字.

From symbols on pottery to a written language, 漢字 have gone through many stages and many changes. I am not going to focus too much on this, as you can find more information on other websites (Wikipedia's page). Well, let's get into it then!

I'll only be going over the main 7 scripts, and they are...(in chronological order):

1. 甲骨文(jiǎ gǔ wén) - Oracle bone script
2. 金文(jīn wén) - Bronze script
3. 篆書(zhuàn shū) - Seal script (more specifically 小篆)
4. 隸書(lì shū) - Clerical script
5. 行書(xíng shū) - Semi-cursive script
6. 草書(cǎo shū) - Cursive script
7. 楷書(kǎi shū) - Regular script


1. 甲骨文 - Oracle bone script
This is the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing. It was used for divination purposes, usually written on turtle shells and bones.




2. 金文 - Bronze script
Plenty of things I could say about this, all of which you can find on Wikipedia explained far better. I'll keep it simple. These were cast or carved in bronze and other metals.




3. 篆書 - Seal script
篆書 became the formal script for all of China during the Qin dynasty. Today this script is mostly seen in seals, hence its English name. We will be focusing mostly on 小篆. I will be citing a lot of examples of 小篆 from the 說文解字 for etymological reasons.

(許慎─說文解字)

4. 隸書 - Clerical script
Developed during the Warring States period, this script was used in casual, informal writings. From this script evolved our next two scripts.

To download a 隸書 font: open this link, then click 下載字形.



5. 行書 - Semi-cursive script
This is the script you see most Chinese/Taiwanese people use when they write. It is derived from from 隸書 and not 楷書 as most people think. You can still see the general forms of the characters, but the strokes are more fluid and melded together.




6. 草書 - Cursive script
Another script evolved from 隸書 and not 楷書 as many think. 草書 is an abbreviation of 草率書(cǎo shuài shū) meaning "sloppy script". 草書 is not legible by most untrained eyes, including most Sinophones. Characters are written through the omission of graphemes, merging strokes, replacing partions with abbreviated forms, and modifying stroke styles. Learning the proper stroke order and special rules are necessary to be able to read these characters. There are not many true 草書家 left. Japanese hiragana(ひらがな) was created from 草書 character forms.

(張芝)

7. 楷書 - Regular script
I prefer to call it "Standard script" instead of "Regular script" as is often seen. This is the the newest and currently official script used in Chinese.

To download the official 楷書 font: open this link, then choose the appropriate version.

(墨海飛鷹)