Simplified or Traditional Chinese?
A Quick Lesson in Chinese Spoken Dialects
and Writing Systems
When most people refer to "Chinese", they are usually talking about what is also known as "Mandarin", the dialect spoken by about 70% of the entire Chinese-speaking population. However, the spoken form has various dialects, including Cantonese, which is widely spoken in Hong Kong, and others such as Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian.
Keep in mind though that these oral distinctions are irrelevant when discussing Simplified Chinese (SC) and Traditional Chinese (TC). SC and TC refer only to the written writing system and have nothing to do with the spoken dialects. As you might guess, TC is the writing system based on the traditional character system. SC was introduced by the People's Republic of China and is based on the Scheme of Simplifying Chinese Characters that was unveiled by the Chinese Communist Party's Committee for Chinese Language Reform in 1956. The purpose was to unify and simplify the language by reducing the number of strokes in Chinese characters - thus, the new system is called "Simplified Chinese".
For various reasons, SC was not adopted everywhere. Indeed, Mandarin speakers in Taiwan use TC while Mandarin speakers in Beijing write with SC. Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong used TC in the past but are rapidly converting to SC. Therefore, refer to the following table to determine whether you need Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese:
| Country | Written Form of Chinese Used |
|---|---|
| Mainland China | SC |
| Hong Kong | SC or TC |
| Taiwan | TC |
| Singapore | SC |
Footnote: You say you've seen Chinese characters in Korean and Japanese writing? Yup, and the reason they do that is simply to confuse foreigners…
- Japanese: The modern Japanese writing system makes extensive use of Chinese characters, representing words that originated from Chinese by using Traditional Chinese characters. Indeed, one cannot be considered fully literate in Japanese without knowledge of hundreds of these characters.
- Korean: Until development of the Korean phonetic writing system, Chinese characters were the only form of writing in Korea. Today, Traditional Chinese characters are used in some situations, but literacy with them is not absolutely necessary to get by in Korea.
[ top page ]
