Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sokar
The language is not "butchered" as you say. I suppose we should all be writing in Latin instead of English. Language is always evolving, and Simplified is just a modern form of Chinese. It helps to spread literacy, as it is a lot easier to learn. Chinese isn't always like Traditional either, go back 1000 years and see how many characters you recognize. The thousands of years of Chinese character development has resulted in Simplified Chinese. As for not imagining the day where Simplified Chinese becomes standdard world wide, wait 30 years.
|
Hmm...I think the thousands of years of Chinese character development has resulted in traditional Chinese, and then the Chinese government developed the simplified based on the traditional. Of course some of them already existed before the simpification, but I think we should let them slowly become accepted as proper writing instead of making them official all of a sudden. That's how languages evolve right? A drastic change of a language will only cause confusion.
Quote:
|
As for not knowing how to read Traditional if you just know Simplified, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. The characters, while different, maintain the same shape, if you know Simplified Chinese you can easily read a sentence in Traditional. Only individual words are hard to identify, but you won't just see a random Traditional word in real life. I read novels in Traditional perfectly fine, but I only know Simplified.
|
Yes I'm talking about individual characters. Sorry if I didn't make it clear. I know simplified Chinese users can read traditional Chinese based on the shape of the characters and the context of the sentence. Same goes for traditional Chinese users as well.
I'm not saying that simplified Chinese is not a proper way of writing Chinese, and I do agree that it makes writing more efficient. But since I'm a traditionalist, I prefer traditional writing more. Besides, traditional Chinese just looks better, especially in Chinese calligraphy.