What's the difference between "Traditional" and "Simplified" Chinese?

Question

What exactly is "simplified" ? And is there "traditional" and "simplified" in other Asian languages (Japanese, Korean etc.)?

Answer 1

Here is a comparison of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese:

Traditional Chinese: 讀書之樂樂無窮，瑤琴一曲來薰風
Simplified Chinese: 读书之乐乐无穷，瑶琴一曲来熏风
(adapted from the poem "四時讀書樂 / 四时读书乐 -- The Joy of Studying in the Four Seasons")

I also prefer Traditional Chinese (and I grew up learning it). In my opinion, it is not really as hard as many people think. It is just like learning to sing a new song. All you need to master it is keep practicing reading and writing them and, sometimes, try to find out the differences between two characters that look similar as much as possible.

The japanese also adapt some Chinese characters in their language (which they call "kanji"). However, a lot of them are different from that in modern Traditional Chinese. Some of them are invented by the Japanese who came to study in China in the Sui or Tang Dynasty and used only in Japanese, like the first character of 昼飯 (I think it is written this way).

Answer 2

The difference is only in the written form, the spoken form is still the same. In the 70's China decided to simply their writing so that it would be easier for kids to learn how to write the many thousands of characters. However, in countries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan the traditional characters are still used (which uses many more strokes and often looks very different from their simplified version). In Singapore they have adopted the Chinese way and use simplified characters.
For most people that grew up learning traditional characters is it much easier to learn how to write/read simplified ones.. but not so easy the other way around.
In a similar way that the English language has been lost with the SMS type of writing.. "RU coming over 4 dinner?" for example, I feel the same goes for Chinese simplified writing - the roots and original meanings of the words (from the early pictorial form thousands of years ago) has been lost in most cases.
hope this helps.

Answer 3

Traditional Chinese, is a form of Chinese character writing that dates back to 5000 B. C. which evolves and what is now called the Traditional Chinese, this is widely used in Hongkong, Taiwan, and some schools around Asia, which are still teaching the traditional chinese way of writing..
Simplified Chinese, is a form of Chinese character writing, which evolved in mainland China, at the time when the communist system takes over. One of the goal of the chinese communist party is to educate the chinese masses, where characters are simplified to make it easier for the masses to learn. it is widely used in China, and is also learned in Chinese schools through out Asia, like Singapore & Malaysia..
Personally, I preferred the Traditional Chinese Character over the simplified, for the new generations will have a hard time reading and understanding old chinese classics.. it's such a waste if all those chinese classics will be unappreciated by the younger generations..
though traditional chinese character is harder to learn, we have observe that simplified chinese character is too simplified that it lost it's original meaning, take for example, after in chinese ( hou) shares the same chinese character as Hou ( Queen) in simplified chinese.. i got confused once over the meaning between the two hou's, as I was educated in the Traditional Chinese education..

Answer 4

Simply put, the difference between Traditional and Simplified Chinese is the number of strokes used to write a character.
Traditional characters are still used even in Mainland China, but they are far more literary. They are common in HongKong and Taiwan.
Simplified is used in China, and are (for the average person) more practical.
It was set up to help improve the peoples literacy

Answer 5

Yes. Traditional language is a standardised and bordering on literary style. There is no difference between the written one and the spoken one. In the simplified one, the language is mix of the traditional or literary with the colloquial stuff, with a lot of input from other languages.

Answer 6

"Traditional" has many strokes. It's hard to learn. Then China has promoted "Simplified" that has fewer strokes than "Traditional" to improve the literacy rate.

In Japan, they use kanji that was borrowed from Chinese character. Japan also promoted new style kanji that is simpler than the original one.

In Korea, they used to use both kanji and hangul character that was invented by Koreans and is totally different from kanji. But nowadays they seldom use kanji. Actually most of the young generation don't know kanji.

Chinese character and kanji are similar to each other as you can guess from what I mentioned.

Answer 7

The basic difference is the number of strokes the newer hanzi (kanji) are simpler abbreviations of the older, traditional characters.

Answer 8

nothing different in speaking

just for written Chinese - Chinese characters

simplified Chinese is used in mainland China
traditional Chinese is used in HK Macau Taiwan

Answer 9

they're pretty much the same, when used together means really want. Xiang is a bit more of a 'think want'