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Simplified
vs. Traditional Chinese Characters
Writing Chinese - There
are two major variants of Chinese characters: traditional and
simplified.
The
traditional Chinese characters, also referred to as "Complicated
Chinese characters" or "Complex Chinese characters", were the accepted
format of written Chinese until about 50 years ago.
In
1956 and 1964, the People's Republic of China created and released to
the public the Simplified Chinese characters, in an attempt to improve
the literacy of the ordinary population.
Characters
were simplified in several ways, the main principles used in
simplification are:
- Changing one part of a
character
- Striking out one or two
parts of a character
- Substituting a 'simple'
character for a different one
- Reconstructing the whole
character
Simplified
characters are used in school systems and official publications in
mainland China and Singapore, but traditional characters are used in
special occasions and ceremonies.
Traditional
characters are still widely used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and also
in
other countries or Chinese communities in the Philippines, Malaysia,
Thailand, Vietnam, Canada, and the United States, etc.
Two
different encoding methods were developed to display Chinese characters
on computer. Computer documents or websites with simplified documents
and websites use "GB" encoding, while traditional characters use "Big
5" encoding.
Our
site features only Simplified Chinese characters.
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