Traditional Chinese characters

Traditional Chinese characters (traditional Chinese: 正體字/ 繁體 字 ; simplified

Chinese: 正体字/繁体字; Pinyin: Zhèngtǐzì/Fántǐzì) are Chinese characters in any
Traditional Chinese
character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions
performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the standardized
character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong and Macau, and in the Kangxi Dictionary.
The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the
emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less
stable since the 5th century (during theSouthern and Northern Dynasties).

The retronym "traditional Chinese" is used to contrast traditional characters with

Simplified Chinese characters, a standardized character set introduced by the
government of the People's Republic of Chinaon Mainland China in the 1950s.

Type Logographic
Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Macau; as well as in Overseas Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia. In Languages Chinese
contrast, Simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore and Time period Since 5th century AD
Malaysia in official publications. However, several countries – such as Australia, the
Parent Oracle Bone Script
US and Canada – are increasing their number of printed materials in Simplified systems
Chinese, to better accommodate citizens from mainland China. Seal Script

The debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running Clerical Script
issue among Chinese communities. Currently, a large number of overseas Chinese
Traditional
online newspapers allow users to switch between both character sets.
Chinese

Child Simplified Chinese

systems
Contents Kanji

Modern usage in Chinese-speaking areas

Hanja
China Nôm
Hong Kong & Macau
Zhuyin
Taiwan
Philippines Khitan script
United States Sawndip
Chinese names Direction Varies
Printed text ISO 15924 Hant, 502
Computer encoding
Web pages
Usage in other languages
See also
References

Modern usage in Chinese-speaking areas

China
Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of China, there is no prohibition
against the use of traditional characters. Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China
primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos
or graphics to evoke yesteryear. Nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is
dominated by simplified characters.

The character
繁 (Pinyin: fán)
Hong Kong & Macau
meaning
In Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In "complex,
recent years, simplified Chinese characters in Hong Kong and Macau has appeared to accommodate complicated
Mainland Chinese tourists and immigrants.[1] This has led to concerns by many residents to protect their (Chinese
characters)."
local heritage.[2][3]

Taiwan
Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the
government of Taiwan. Simplified characters are understood to a certain extent by any educated Taiwanese, and learning to read them
takes little effort. Some stroke simplifications that have been incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in
handwriting.[4][5] For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, the semi-simplified name 台灣 is also acceptable to
write in official documents.

Philippines
In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most
conservative regarding simplification. While major public universities are teaching
simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional
characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and
United Daily News still use traditional characters. On the other hand, the Philippine
Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong
Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are also found in some bookstores.
Job announcement in a Filipino
Chinese daily newspaper written in
In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in
Traditional Chinese characters.
Philippines is the same as the one used in T
aiwan. This is because the DVDs belongs
to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in rTaditional Characters.

United States
Overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United
States occurred during the latter half of the 19th century, before the standardization of simplified characters. Therefore, United States
raditional Chinese.[6]
public notices and signage in Chinese are generally in T

Chinese names
Traditional Chinese characters (Standard characters) are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world. The
government of Taiwan officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional
Chinese: 正體字; simplified Chinese: 正体字; pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄓㄥˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).[7] However, the same term is
used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplifiedand traditional characters fromvariant and idiomatic characters.[8]

In contrast, users of traditional characters outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities,
and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: 繁體字; simplified Chinese: 繁
体字; pinyin: fántǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). An informal name sometimes used by users of simplified characters is "old
characters" (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).

Users of traditional characters also sometimes refer them as "Full Chinese characters" (traditional Chinese: 全 體 字 ; simplified
Chinese: 全体字; pinyin: quántǐ zì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.

Some traditional character users argue that traditional characters are the original form of the Chinese characters and cannot be called
"complex". Similarly, simplified characters cannot be "standard" because they are not used in all Chinese-speaking regions.
Conversely, supporters of simplified Chinese characters object to the description of traditional characters as "standard," since they
view the new simplified characters as the contemporary standard used by the vast majority of Chinese speakers. They also point out
[9]
that traditional characters are not truly traditional as many Chinese characters have been made more elaborate over time.

Some people refer to traditional characters as simply "proper characters" (Chinese: 正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) and modernized characters
as "simplified-stroke characters" (simplified Chinese: 简 笔 字 ; traditional Chinese: 簡 筆 字 ; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) or "reduced-stroke
characters" (simplified Chinese: 减 笔 字 ; traditional Chinese: 減 筆 字 ; pinyin: jiǎnbǐzì) (simplified- and reduced- are actually
homophones in Mandarin Chinese, both pronounced jiǎn).

The use of such words as "complex", "standard" and "proper" in the context of such a visceral subject as written language arouses
strong emotional reactions, especially since there are also political ramifications in this case. Debate on traditional and simplified
Chinese characters explores the differences of opinion that exist on ht is matter within Chinese-speaking regions.

Printed text
When printing text, people in China, Malaysia and Singapore mainly use the simplified system, developed by the People's Republic
of China government in the 1950s. In writing, most people use informal, sometimes personal simplifications. In most cases, an
alternative character (異體字) will be used in place of one with more strokes, such as 体 for 體. In the old days, there were two main
uses of alternative characters. First, alternative characters were used to avoid using the characters of the formal name of an important
person in less formal contexts as a way of showing respect to the said person by preserving the characters of the person's name. This
act is called "offense-avoidance" ( 避 諱 ) in Chinese. Secondly, alternative characters were used when the same characters were
repeated in context to show that the repetition was intentional rather than an editorial mistake筆誤).
(

Computer encoding
In the past, Traditional Chinese was most often rendered using the Big5 character encoding scheme, a scheme that favors Traditional
Chinese. Unicode, however, has become increasingly popular as a rendering method. Unicode gives equal weight to both simplified
and traditional Chinese characters. There are various IMEs (Input Method Editors) available to input Chinese characters. There are
still many Unicode characters that cannot be written using most IMEs; one example would be the character used in the Shanghainese
dialect instead of 嗎, which is U+20C8E (伐 with a 口 radical).

Web pages
The World Wide Web Consortium recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant as a language attribute value and Content-
raditional Chinese.[10]
Language value to specify web-page content in T

Usage in other languages

Traditional Chinese characters are also known as Hanja in Korean (almost completely replaced by Hangul for general use by the late
20th century, but nonetheless unchanged from Chinese except for some Korean-made Hanja). In Japanese, Kyūjitai is a term that
describes now-obsolete unsimplified forms of simplified Shinjitai Jōyō kanji; as with Korean, these unsimplified characters are
mostly congruent with the traditional characters in Chinese, save for a few minor regional graphical differences. Furthermore,
characters that are not included in the Jōyō list are generally recommended to be printed in their original unsimplified forms, save for
a few exceptions.
See also
Simplified Chinese characters
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
Chữ Nôm
Hanja
Kaishu
Kanji
Kyūjitai (旧字体 or 舊字體 - Japanese traditional characters)
Multiple association of converting Simplified Chinese to rTaditional Chinese

References
1. 李翰文 BBC國際媒體觀察部. 分析：中國與香港之間的「繁簡矛盾」- BBC News 中文 (http://www.bbc.com/zhongwe
n/trad/hong_kong_review/2016/02/160224_monitoring_simp_trad)(in Chinese). Bbc.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
2. Post Magazine. "Hong Kong actor's criticism of simplified Chinese character use stirs up passions online | South
China Morning Post" (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1284691/hong-kong-actors-criticism-simplified-c
haracter-use-stirs-passions?page=all). Scmp.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
3. "Hong Kong TV station criticized for using simplified Chinese - China News"
(http://english.sina.com/china/2016/022
9/894388.html). SINA English. 2016-03-01. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
4. Yat-Shing Cheung. "Language variation, culture, and society." In Kingsley Bolton. Sociolinguistics Today:
International Perspectives.p. 211 (https://books.google.com/books?id=fA YOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA211)
5. Success with Asian Names: A Practical Guide for Business and Everyday Life
(https://books.google.com/books?id=-
FRIYcHARa0C&lpg=PA67&dq=Guangdong%20traditional%20characters&hl=ja&pg=P A67#v=onepage&q=Guangdo
ng%20traditional%20characters&f=false)
6. See, for instance, https://www.irs.gov/irm/part22/irm_22-031-001.html (Internal Revenue Manual22.31.1.6.3 - "The
standard language for translation is Traditional Chinese."
7. 查詢結果 (http://law.moj.gov.tw/Law/LawSearchResult.aspx?p=A&t=A1A2E1F1&k1= 正體字). Laws and Regulations
Database of The Republic of China. Ministry of Justice (Republic of China). 2014-09-26. Retrieved 2014-10-07.
8. Academy of Social Sciences, (1978),Modern Chinese Dictionary, The Commercial Press: Beijing.
9. Norman, Jerry (1988) Chinese, Cambridge University Press, p81.
10. "Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content"
(http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-ht
ml-tech-lang/#ri20040429.113217290). W3.org. Retrieved 2009-05-27.

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