What’s up with Simplified Chinese character of 爱 (ài- love) missing the 心 (xīn – heart) radical?
I’d much rather see a heart in love (心) as in the Traditional character for love (愛).
The history of character simplification is quite interesting. It started with the New Culture Movement (xīnwénhuàyùndòng – 新文化运动) in the beginning of the 20th century. Already at this time there were proponents of total eradication of Chinese characters suggesting the use of the western alphabet as had happened in Vietnam (with help from the French in the 17th century).
The Nationalist then introduced some 300+ simplified characters in the 1930’s. These was further expanded by the Communists in the 50’s and 60’s for the purpose of making it easier to learn how to read and write and thereby raising the literacy level (and a failed second-round simplified characters attempt in the 70’s also knows as èrjiǎn or 二简).
The Japanese also simplified some of their Kanji in the 40’s (for example 國 became 国) which may have also influences the simplification rounds in the 50’s and the 60’s.
I thought about a little more about the history of the character simplification might have meant to the development of the Chinese society. Yuehping Yen argues in Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society (2005) that the traditional characters actually hindered the masses from effectively learning to read and write Chinese and were therefore partly to blame for the economic development problems that China faced in that the power was limited to the educated few. Yen suggests that character simplification meant that more people could become literate and therefore contribute more to the economic development.
With that in mind, I suppose simplification made sense at the time. These days however, the educational system is functioning well and with the help of technological advances, an overall raised quality (sùzhì – 素质) of the population and the general need to reinforce the Chinese cultural values; perhaps it is time to consider a re-introduction of the traditional characters? This argument is based on my belief that the Chinese language AND culture is extremely tied to its characters. When simplifying characters then there is a risk of losing the identity of both language and culture. Just play with the thought of hanzi (汉字) being totally discarded and everyone was only using pinyin these days. What a disaster that would be.
When I first studied Chinese in Taiwan in the early 90’s, I was introduced to the traditional characters. The character for noodle (麵) had the the important radical of 麥 (relating the character to grain). Also, the 麵 character is used for bread (as in 麵包). To have 麵 blended into the character 面 (meaning face) totally makes it lose it’s original meaning.
Similarly, the simplified character 鬧 (nào – to quarrel or fuss) is simplified as 闹, where the new radical 门 (relating to door) has nothing to do with the traditional radical 鬥 related to fight.
And finally, the characters 游 (yóu – swim) and 遊 (yóu – travel) were merged into 游 when in both cases it is the radicals that give the words its meaning (氵for water and 廴 for walking long distances).
For a start, could we all start using the Traditional character (愛) instead of the Simplified (爱) one to make a point that love comes from the heart and that without a heart (心) there can’t be love (愛)?
Whether it is traditional or simplified Chinese, it is still recognized as 汉字today. As long as you don’t romanized it like the Vietnamese language, you don’t lose the culture. The Chinese word itself is already culture itself irrespective of traditional or simplified, period!
Today, I type (using pinyin) and write Chinese everyday. I was born in Singapore of Chinese ethnic origin (third generation). My parents are not educated (文盲）. I have an English education background. Because I always make the effort to read and write Chinese, I realize that I have not lost my Chinese culture because the books that I read influence my outlook. Although I write in simplified Chinese, I used to sing Karoeke that have words printed in traditional Chinese because the songs were originated from Taiwan. Over time, I read both simplified and traditional Chinese characters effortless and recognize them both as the same.
Thanks Albert for sharing your experience.
I started out studying Chinese in Taiwan and was therefore first exposed to the traditional characters. In the past 15 years I have lived and worked in Mainland China and therefore been exposed to the simplified characters.
I remember my teachers in Taiwan often pointing out radicals in the traditional characters that would help explain its meaning or origin and that helped me to better remember the character as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the Chinese culture. I believe has helped me a lot.
Do you have the same experience and if so, has it helped you in the same way as it has helped me? And do you think being exposed to traditional has helped you in similar ways?
Hi David, in fact I find simplified Chinese (简体字）easier to master, and also comparatively more practical. However, it is good if one knows traditional Chinese (繁体字). Let me give you an example that I often used especially when I do training in listening skills (Covey’s seek first to understand than to be understood). The simplified character for listen is 听. One cannot see much just from this character. However, in the traditional character is made up of 耳（大的）、王、十、目、一、心。
如果做个部分分析，我们很清楚就理解到在古代时候，听就是仔细听的意思。好比挣开耳朵在听大王在说话一样。当我们在听话的时候我们是用个“十目一心”的态度去听话。万一听得不好或听得不对就会被严重惩罚。
Well the above capture the essence of listening. In this case, the traditional form is much better than the simplified form of writing.
Having said this, I don’t think it will make it less culturally Chinese if we choose to use 简体字today. If someone among us is really interested to study deeper into the Chinese original character, he or she is at liberty to do so if it benefits the person.
简体字is Chinese and it is culturally Chinese, period. It looks like the Chinese character of old except that it is simpler to write compared to traditional Chinese. In fact, people of old already practised the use of simplified Chinese in everyday life. The main reason was that it is really a bit unproductive to write every stroke in every character (too many, but useful for calligraphy). As such, the simplified form was evolved over time from what was already market practice during the olden times.
Oi you guys don’t talk about Chinese like that just because you think that the new symbol is gay doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the same meaning. We are doing this so the Chinese characters are easier to learn for the next generation duh
Doesn’t Traditional Chinese also evolve from Ancient scripts and pictorial? Evolution is inevitable, changes are made usually for the future in mind. I personally feel Traditional Chinese should be preserved however being a Singaporean Chinese, I myself find it so much easier to learn Simplified Characters. If using Simplified Chinese’s aim is to get people to learn, I guess it’s working, at least for me.
Cheers.. ^_^
有心而无情，难成真爱！真爱者，视爱人如知己，是友情但高于友情，之所谓爱也。非爱无心而不是愛，乃愛藏于心而不露于形而显其升华。
繁体字有它文化的渊原，值得保留，且于书法中更具艺术特色。但日常应用是在繁也。何不两者佳学呢？我就是在字典里自学的繁体字。觉得它好看但更重要是自我文化提升。
No idea how I ever ended up on this website but it’s apparently in my favourite list :D.
Anyway I first studied some simplified Chinese then I studied 4 periods of 3 months at 師範大學 in 臺北. Having met many Taiwanese and mainland Chinese I still feel that as a language Chinese is very bad. Why you wonder … because it takes ages to master, even for those who have it as a mother tongue, and the knowing how to write is easily forgotten, even by natives who go live abroad. Also seeing a character one never learned you won’t know how it it pronounced, yes you can make some educated guess but given Chinese evolved over time your educated guess might be very off.
Also just see how few other languages Chinese and Taiwanese speak.
I’m a Belgian and it’s pretty standard to have learned 4 languages before turning 18. Yes Belgian is a bit unique that it has 3 native languages. Dutch (and any other language with al alphabet) can be pronounced even if you never saw the word. A child can read a book at the age of 6 and newspapers aren’t that different from language used in books. So I’m always amazed how this old language can still exist knowing it’s so inefficient. As a part of history, culture and art it sure can exist but as a living language :/. On the tv Mandarin Chinese always needs to be subtitled and I had some friends telling me that some Chinese only read the subtitles because the pronounciation in different parts of China can be quite different.
安佑生, 你好！
It was genuinely nice to see your comment.
Yes, it is an old language form that is not very precise or convenient to use and it takes years and years to master.
Glad to see that you studied at 師範大學 in 臺北 and gained the insight and knowledge of the more advanced and traditional version that is taught and spoken on Taiwan.
We Europeans are lucky to be exposed to several languages at an early age which makes it easier to also learn a language that is so vastly different from any European language.
As you can see, I don’t spend much time on this website anymore, but I am happy that people out there can find something useful here.
All the best,
David