Do you prefer simplfied or traditional Chinese characters?

Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:40 am GMT
Personally, I don't like the simplified characters. It would be better if they were never made. Now that there are two sets of characters, it's a lot harder for foreigners to become competent in Chinese because we have to learn both kinds since some places still use the traditional characters. Plus, the simplified characters look ugly compared to the traditional characters most of the time. The mixture of block style and cursive style seen in the simplified characters is simply distasteful in my opinion.
JIAJIA   Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:43 am GMT
I prefer Traditional characters.

我偏愛正體漢字。
ZSDCX   Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:57 am GMT
i love simplified characters.
SOS   Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:16 am GMT
i like simplified style ...
Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:19 am GMT
I prefer traditional characters because anything traditional reminds me of traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, which I adore.
Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:33 am GMT
Is that you, Franco?
J.C.   Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:42 am GMT
Sorry if I'm deviating from the subject but learning characters used in Japanese allows one to read both simplified and traditional Chinese characters due to being somewhere in the middle. They might be closer to SC or TC depending on the character,

TC - JP- SC
漢- 漢- 汉
學- 学- 学
會- 会- 会
體- 体- 体
國-国-国
態-態-态
廣- 廣-广

再見!再见!
JIAJIA   Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:51 am GMT
In fact, the similarity between TC and JP (Kanji) is comparably more than that between SC and JP (Kanji). Only a very few SCs are very similar to JP (Kanji) which were changed into Japanese-made characters by Japanese people. So, TC would be of great help to learn Japanese Kanjis, and the same the other way around.
Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:55 am GMT
The simplified ones are much more aesthetically pleasing. They look more like art than the traditional ones which just look like a dense random mesh of scribbles. The simplified ones are much more abstractly sparse, austerely beautiful than that other mumble jumble hodgepodge.
Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:56 am GMT
For example,

“図”書館(Japanese-made KANJI)

“圖”書館(Chinese Traditional KANJI)

“图”书馆(Chinese Simplified KANJI)
Guest   Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:59 am GMT
Maybe the simplified ones are easier to read on a computer screen, but in print I find traditional characters more aesthetically pleasing. Computer screen resolution just has to be improved.
JIAJIA   Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:11 am GMT
For example,

“図”書館(Japanese-made KANJI)

“圖”書館(Chinese Traditional KANJI)

“图”书馆(Chinese Simplified KANJI)


That was posted by me. I always forgot to sign.

In fact, the structure of TC is more reasonable in terms of the method of creating characters...
Guest   Tue Aug 05, 2008 3:20 am GMT
I prefer Cantonese characters.
JIAJIA   Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:23 am GMT
Some characters already exist in standard Chinese, but are simply reborrowed into Cantonese with new meanings. Most of these tend to be archaic or rarely used characters. An example is the character 子, which means "child". The Cantonese word for child is represented by 仔(jai), which has the original meaning of "young animal".

Cantonese characters are not used outside of Hongkong and Macau, even in Guangdong province, they're rarely used because people generally tend to write Mandarin characters.
Guest   Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:40 pm GMT
That's why printed manuals in China and Hong Kong differ substantially, especially those imported from Japan, like digital cameras.