Why is there a difference between simplified and traditional Chinese characters?

The simplification of Chinese characters is not only in line with the law of historical development of Chinese characters, but also in line with the direction of modernization of Chinese characters, and more in line with the trend of today's use of Chinese characters. There are differences in glyphs, vocabulary, and existence time between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Because simplified characters are the logical result of the evolution of Chinese characters. Chinese characters have changed from oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions to seal script, and then to official script and regular script. The general trend is from complexity to simplicity.

1. Differences in glyphs. There are obvious differences in the glyphs of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.

2. Differences in vocabulary. For example, the commonly used "ball-point pen" in Simplified Chinese is called "ball-point pen" in Traditional Chinese.

3. There are differences in time. Simplified Chinese is mainly composed of inherited characters and simplified characters that the People’s Republic of China government began to implement after the 1950s. Traditional Chinese has a history of more than three thousand years, and until 1956 it was the standard Chinese character commonly used by Chinese people everywhere.

Extended information:

1. The principles for simplifying traditional Chinese characters into simplified Chinese characters are: "state without writing", "convention and steady progress", that is to say, try to adopt the long-term use of traditional Chinese characters among the people. The popular simplified Chinese characters are only collected, sorted and revised as necessary, and simplified in accordance with the principle of "convention and steady progress". It includes two aspects: First, simplifying the number of characters and abolishing variant characters with the same pronunciation and synonyms but different shapes.

2. There are six ways to simplify Chinese characters. The first is to replace radicals, the second is to delete part of it, the third is to replace homophones, the fourth is to completely transform, the fifth is to simplify analogies, and the sixth is to regularize cursive script.

3. Traditional Chinese is divided into two types: "Taiwan Traditional Chinese" and "Hong Kong and Macao Traditional Chinese". There are certain differences in the wording. Taiwanese traditional Chinese characters are the most complex and original traditional Chinese characters, while Hong Kong and Macao traditional Chinese characters are new characters that have undergone certain simplification and alienation. The commonly used Chinese characters in Japanese are a combination of Taiwanese traditional Chinese characters + Hong Kong and Macao traditional Chinese characters + simplified Chinese characters.

For example, the characters "学" and "国" are the same as those in Simplified Chinese instead of Traditional Chinese (this is actually because the simplified character scheme in mainland China refers to part of Japanese). The word "篇" is written as "篅", which is a variant of traditional Chinese. The character "图" is written as "図", and the character "单" is written as "単". This is a different simplification scheme from China.

4. There are currently more than 1.7 billion users of Chinese characters, including all of China (Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan (Japanese also uses some Chinese characters due to the influence of Chinese culture) , North Korea, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and other overseas Chinese regions.

Simplified Chinese is currently widely used in mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and other places, and traditional Chinese is used in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and overseas Chinese areas.

5. In 1955, the Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Character Reform Committee published the "First Batch Variant Character Collection List" and abolished 1,055 variant characters. The second is to reduce strokes. In 1964, the Chinese Character Reform Commission, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Education published the "General List of Simplified Characters". There were 2,238 simplified characters, and the traditional Chinese characters with an average of 16 to 19 pictures per character were simplified to an average of 8 to 11 pictures per character. abbreviated word.

Reference materials: Baidu Encyclopedia: Traditional Chinese characters

Reference materials: Baidu Encyclopedia: Simplified Chinese characters