Traditional Chinese in Hong Kong

Do you know that Hongkongers (and Taiwaneses and Macau people) use traditional Chinese characters (繁體字)?

If your response is “What?! Really?!”, then yes, I am making that clear to you.

Chinese characters are logograms, and each character is form under the combination of strokes and radicals. Though some radicals can be used as stand-alone characters themselves, like 日 (sun) and 火 (fire).

Traditional Chinese appeared as the creation of clerical script (隸書) during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), and has more or less remained unchanged since the 5^th century. In other words, we are using a writing system with a history of over a thousand years. That is why the native users / supporters of traditional Chinese always say that the character is the heritage of Chinese Culture and has witness the change and evolution of Chinese writings.

But then why would there be “simplified” Chinese? Actually, there have been voices about simplifying Chinese characters since early 20^th century, which is way before the ruling of PRC government started in 1949. Some people seemed to have come to the conclusion of “Chinese characters should be destroyed or China shall perish”. So simplifying it became a way to destroy (or at least revolutionize) Chinese and a great way to save China. Not to mention that reducing the strokes of the originally complex characters make learning Chinese easier and help raising the literacy rate! That kills two birds with one stone!

…Or so they claimed.

While simplified Chinese does require less effort to write, it is not really easier to be learnt.

Chinese characters, either traditional or simplified, are just bunch of meaningless symbols to those who can’t read them. Why would having 3 strokes less or so make the words easier to understand?

And lots of the radical use for simplified Chinese is pretty random, since that destroy the original connection between the meaning and the words, like removing the “heart” (心) from “love” (traditional: 愛 / simplified: 爱) and removing “rain” (雨) from “lightning” (traditional: 電 / simplified: 电). How could it help the learners if you take away the rationale behind the pattern?

Most importantly, and lots of scholars would agree that, writing is not just a tool for communication, but also the medium of culture. Simplifying the words without a good reason and standard is no different from making up your own words. That way, people are only destroying what have been passed down since the ancient times, instead of protecting it.

So if you plan to learn Chinese…

Well, to be honest, I won’t force you or tell you which one is more “correct”.

But destroying the historical and cultural legacy of millennia so that you can write faster?

That really doesn’t worth it.

Ask yourself, what do you want to learn?

Symbols? Or the embedded culture of the symbols?