Traditional Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese April 6, 2008

Yesterday, I made a Sohu blog. I don’t know if that’s wrong, but I did it for fun. Why? I saw all these Only13 comments on the SJM blog (even on Han Geng’s entry…wtf?) so I just wanted to leave a little happy nonsense on their comment box to lighten things up.

In my last entry, when I meant that I expected Henry to be a “fellow traditional writer,” yes I meant fantizi/traditional Chinese writing. I’m a traditional Chinese writer and since Henry’s family is from Taiwan and Hong Kong? (his last name is Cantonese), I expected him to be in the same boat as me. But considering that he studied Chinese in Korea or China?, it probably makes sense that he would learn Simplified (it’s faster and not dying like fantizi is). Then again, Siwon writes in fantizi…which baffles me.

Going back to Sohu, it took me a good half hour filling out whatever I could read and then using the translator on dictionary.com to fill out the rest. I learned something from that though – you CAN learn Chinese from watching Chinese tv and listening to Chinese music, and Chinese school DOES help. So all you kids griping about Chinese school, stay in school. It gave me the more than enough basics to help me develop my Chinese independently.

I’m going to give a lecture about my take on education of the two different Chinese writing styles…so stop reading if you’re not interested…

I encourage education in fantizi because it really made my education whole. I went to a Chinese school organized by local Taiwanese-Americans and learned traditional writing. When you really get down to the roots of Chinese writing, you gain the knowledge to analyze Chinese characters and you find that guessing the meaning of a character is far simpler. I also learned two phonetic systems – pinyin (bpmf) and zhuyin (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) – and I find that helpful too. I obviously learned zhuyin unknowingly in my early years because I went to a Taiwanese school. It’s actually a little less confusing than pinyin, in my opinion, but if you’re a newbie at Chinese, pinyin’s the way to go…just don’t get “u” and “u/v” mixed up or any of the other similar ones.

And I’m not being biased against Simplified writing. I’m actually learning to read it on my own. How else am I going to read Han Geng’s cyworld? No, you’ll find that Miss Chiu likes to be well-informed and knowledgable before she gains an opinion.

I just find that Simplified has missing elements that help you understand the characters. Like the measure word 個 is simplified to an upward arrow 个, but really, the different pieces that make up 個 have meanings to help us understand its use. I’ve had tons of friends ask “what the heck is that arrow doing there?” It’s humorous, really. One of my favorite differences is the word “to hear” – traditional: 聽; simplified: 听. Yeah big diff. But usually when I see that 口 next to a word, I assume that it’s an onomatopoeia, not a verb. As for the traditional way to write it, I’m not going to break it all down for you but 耳/ear helps you get its meaning. Another favorite of mine is “to love” – traditional: 愛; simplified: 爱. A common saying for pro-Traditional people is “words with heart” because the traditional character for “love” has the word 心/heart in the center. The simplified version simply has 友/friend at the end. And obviously, you must love with your heart.

I hope I convinced some of you people to challenge yourselves with Traditional Chinese. If you learn one, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn the other (but of course, if you learn traditional first, simplified is easier to learn as opposed to the other way around). And I’m no linguist. Speaking as a student, I just feel that, although Traditional Chinese is difficult, it enhances your learning experience.