Traditional or simplified? Debate on Chinese characters should be decided by pragmatics, not politics
Paul Stapleton says it is understandable that Hongkongers want to preserve traditional Chinese characters but the writing on the wall is in favour of the simplified script
Ask the average local Cantonese speaker whether they prefer the traditional characters to the simplified ones and almost every one of them will state a preference for their own complex ones. Most will even claim that the traditional characters are more beautiful.
But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And this is an issue that goes well beyond emotional aesthetics.
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Many linguistic arguments have been set forth in favour of traditional characters. After all, some sacrifices had to be made when the simplified system, with its drastically reduced number of strokes was introduced. One example of this is the transparency of meaning that is conveyed.
Clearly, the more strokes a character has, the less possibility there is for ambiguity. A crude parallel for the English language would be to eliminate a certain number of the 26 letters in the alphabet. When there are fewer letters, there is more potential for ambiguity.
On the other hand, when there are so many strokes in traditional characters, it may be difficult to clearly decipher the meaning, especially in an era of smartphones with small fonts.
Thus, there are arguments on both sides.
However, there are also pedagogical arguments in favour of simplified characters. With a greatly reduced number of strokes, there is little question that they are easier to learn than traditional characters. Surely the traditional characters for “country” (國) and “learn” (學) are much harder to learn than their respective ones, 国 and 学, in simplified form.
In another parallel with English, because our spelling system is imperfect, it is said that it takes a couple of years longer for our children to read compared to their counterparts learning to read Italian, whose spoken language, unlike English, aligns almost perfectly with the alphabet.
This means, with all things being equal, about 98 per cent of all new Chinese publications worldwide are in simplified characters. And as the mainland continues to grow in influence, being able to read and write fluently using simplified characters simply makes sense.
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Thus, when it comes to language, change is not only the norm, it is also natural and necessary.
So although it is only the international schools that are presently moving towards teaching the simplified characters, it is our local schools that should be reading the writing on the wall.
Paul Stapleton is an associate professor at the Education University of Hong Kong