Over the years, the discussions between jianti (simplified characters) and fanti (complex characters) has grown to exaggerated proportions with a few seeing it as some sort of political smack between Mainland China and Taiwan. [Hong Kong and Macau is into fanti also.] And let me tell you, this debate will never end.
In this writer’s opinion, both have their own merits and qualifications. Personally though, as much as my calligraphy stinks, I find fanti having more aesthetic value. And given that the Chinese characters are ideographs, fanti is able to represent the images and ideas clearly as compared to jianti where the strokes are minimized.
Of course, these days, learning the Chinese language is deemed as a practical approach. Besides the quintessential ‘ni haos’, students of the language are not expected to read ancient texts [unless you become a linguist]. This in turn gives light to learning jianti instead.
To date, the differences between the two are not as significant as what many thinks anyway. Raymond Zhou of China Daily shares, “By one count, of the 2,000 most common Chinese characters, 1,369 share the same forms; out of the 631 with different strokes, only 178 characters need special memorization as the rest are simplified at the root form and are applied systematically.”
Here are notable events pertaining to the battle between jianti and fanti:
WHAT: 8th International Seminar on Chinese Characters
WHEN: October 30 and 31, 2007
WHERE: Beijing
Scholars from mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan reached a consensus to standardize the font of commonly used words, mainly the traditional characters.
This was the first time the Chinese regime has officially endorsed the idea of ‘coexistence between simplified and traditional Chinese characters.’
WHAT: Annual Chinese Character Festival
WHEN: January 1, 2009
WHERE: Taipei
Nearly 13,000 people gathered to practice the art of calligraphy simultaneously at around 1:30 that afternoon. President Ma Ying-jeou was there, too, and wrote the Chinese characters for han and an–meaning “Chinese” and “peace” respectively–with ink and brush on two large square pieces of red paper.
Despite Taiwan’s shared cultural legacy with populous mainland China, the organizers are not worried about the record being broken any time soon. ‘It would be kind of challenging to break this record because, unlike mainland Chinese, we all use traditional Chinese characters in our daily life,’ says Lee Yong-ping, commissioner of the department.
The festival was aimed at promoting the use of fanti and the notion that learning the Chinese language is cool. In fact, a fashion show was staged with designer Goji Lin using traditional Chinese characters in the dresses for that cultural and sexiness appeal.
Ok, so a coexistence might still seem far-off. But the plot thickens.
Xinhua released an article stating “China to issue new list of simplified Chinese characters.” The Economist reminds though that “Reforming China’s script is not as easy as it looks.”
But for all his [Mao Zedong's] success in overturning traditional values and institutions, the founder of modern China came up short in his desire to convert written Chinese from its character-based system to an alphabet.
The issuance of a new list which is said to be out “very soon,” urged Pan Qinglin to propose “for a return within ten years to the greater expressiveness and ‘artistic quality’ of the traditional script” which some described as “asking women to revive the practice of foot-binding”.
His [Pan Qinglin's] proposal is based on three arguments: firstly, the Chinese characters that emerged from the simplification process in the 1950s are too crude and lack aesthetic beauty and scientific meaning. For example, the traditional Chinese character for “love” (‘愛’) expresses both love and heart, but the simplified form “爱” has omitted the part “心” which means heart. Therefore, we now see only “love” without “heart”.
Secondly, applying the original complex characters nowadays could be just as easy as using the simplified forms, since most people use computers to write.
Thirdly, reviving the original complex forms might also prove helpful to the unification of China as Taiwan has maintained the traditional characters, which are deemed official there. Taiwan even intends to apply to UNESCO for the recognition of traditional characters as Intangible Cultural Heritage, which might also create the impression that the mainland authorities have not done enough to protect them.
For all of that, this is giving me a headache. Jacob von Bisterfeld of Shanghai Daily echoes my sentiments to an extent.
Why not a compromise instead of this political smack? As I said, relearning the characters between Jianti and Fanti are not so difficult; because the difference are not that big. At least recognizing the forms and at the same time staying comfortable with the script you were taught with.
I am sure the Chinese officials have better use of their time than debating [and being defensive] about this all day long.
I learned jianti and I’m happy with that! That said, I also learned 文言 at university, so I can read most of the fanti, even though I keep on forgetting some.
The battle between fanti and jianti was also taken at my former university in France. Half of the teachers were from Taiwan, half from the mainland. I had learned jianti from high school, so I really wasn’t comfortable with reading fanti. And I found it unfair that some test were in fanti, some in jianti — surely, you can’t ask stupid 白鬼子 like us to learn both? :lol:
Not sure if Macao still uses traditional characters. From the photos I came across, the Venetian Casino uses simplified characters.
The single simplified character I hate most is 设. I often mistake 设有(equipped with) for 没有(don’t have).
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against simplification. But I just feel that the authorities need to be more careful.
I personally agree with many of the arguments for complex characters offering more clues to the meaning of the words. Given that I type Chinese far FAR more than I ever write it, the number of strokes matters far less to me than being able to quickly understand what a word is and means.
I for one wish for the return of fanti but I’m biased since that’s what we learned in my school hehe….
Anyway, it would be nice if all the Chinese communities in the world would just agree upon a single standardized system – whether fanti or jianti.
Is that as hard as wishing for world peace?
Ditto!
Though when I learned jianti, I started using it a lot just because I thought it looked cool. Haha.
简体， 繁体… Why not return to 甲骨文 to put an end to that argument? )) And what about the third way – latinisation that is? I’d rather the Chinese adopted the Roman alphabet.
Well, 甲骨文…I don’t think that’s even an option. There’s the pinyin system. But with Chinese, the same word can have different meanings; so it’s not really a good idea to adopt fully the Roman alphabet.
Jian Ti or Fan Ti ?
That doesn’t matter. Things are developing.
It does matter in a way, because the written word can affect the literacy output of the people. Anyway, thanks for your comment.
Not to take sides in this at all, but if literacy is the goal, pinyin would be a lot easier. Computers can easily translate back and forth into pinyin, and one could even assign numbers to indicate which character a sound referred to (e.g., xin1-1 could refer to “new”, while xin1-2 could refer to “heart”), thus ensuring no loss between transcriptions (though given that context is enough in oral communication, even some loss wouldn’t usually be a big deal).
Chinese unquestionably spent more time in school learning characters, and since pinyin is such a regular system, it would even be easier to learn than English spelling with all its irregularities. The fact that Chinese do not learn pinyin much after some exposure in grade school is no doubt due to a lack of use–but I still wonder whether it could be advantageous to teach pinyin alone in the countryside, using automatic tools for conversion. 26 letters would be a lot easier for busy farmer children to master than thousands of characters, and might serve as a bridge to greater literacy with the characters.
However, obviously for cultural reasons, any permanent move to pinyin would be essentially unthinkable. The PRC at one time did have the goal of actually moving to pinyin, but that was when it was thought computers would only be able to handle Roman letters.
On a personal note, I’ve found some of the simplified characters to be rather innovative. Even the word for love seems to evoke the concept of friendship now, which is hardly a bad thing. :) I’m not advocating one or the other, but just pointing out that ‘new’ doesn’t always mean less authentic (every character was new at one point), complex doesn’t always mean more aesthetically pleasing, and the traditional mnemonics were not always more direct, having themselves gone through various changes, including being subjected to mistaken etymological interpretations; on the other hand, some of the so-called simplifications, as already discussed, are hardly simplifying things.
Unlike pinyin, which is to my mind absolutely brilliant and systematic in how it managed to use each Roman letter and no more (‘v’ can work as the umlauted ‘u’), simplifying characters was essentially an impossible task, since truly simplifying would involve ensuring all phonetic components matched current spoken pronunciation, aligning components so that one could know where to find the phonetic in the character, and standardizing reusable components to always look the same–i.e., it would involve inventing a whole new script which was even less familiar to the current simplified or traditional scripts.
We really should be open to all kinds of ideas. :-)
Personally though, I would probably have a difficult time with pinyin alone. (In my case, I can read “better” in Chinese than hear.) But then–pinyin COUPLED WITH character learning from the start would definitely help in both English and Chinese literacy.
However, for those much “older”, basic knowledge in pinyin, jianti, and fanti would suffice. Like what I said earlier–
“At least recognizing the forms and at the same time staying comfortable with the script you were taught with.”
I prefer simplified (jianti), aside from simplicity it just looks better.
Hi korean_guy,
Talking about simplicity for learning’s sake, you’re right–jianti is better. It also looks cool!
Thanks for your comment.
I’m just going to ignore jianti characters in my education and that of my children. It’s not a part of my cultural history and I don’t need it in my current life so I will just purchase my Chinese books in Hong Kong and Taiwan. I would rather be able to recognize jianti and be proficient in fanti than vice versa. Jianti represents Modern China’s struggle post-war as an American Chinese who did not share that suffering I have no reason and no excuse to not know my traditional characters.
I’m from S’pore. We only have jianti here. It makes sense since PRC uses jianti, so why should we just follow HK & TW. I would encourage HK, TW and ROTW publishers & editors to make a concerted move to switch to jianti. More foreigners who wish to learn Chinese will then have a simpler choice. Obviously jianti is easier to learn than fanti, but many foreigners prefer the environment in TW & so spend time there and have to learn fanti there. Schools/unis in TW should switch over to jianti and target these foreign students
My other view is that there should be greater use of hanyu pinyin with jianti. So the same publishers and editors please take note and at least use hanyu pinyin (with tone strokes) – i.e. romanization – on the book titles, chapter headings and news headlines. This is the minimum. No need to put hanyu pinyin alongside the entire text of Chinese characters. If you just put hanyu pinyin on book titles, chapter headings and news headlines, this should be sufficient to draw people who cannot read Chinese characters to pick up the book at least and become curious about Chinese language and culture. This may reduce racism against Chinese people.
For those who only want to read just fanti, there are still plenty of fanti publications. But this is not in tune with the majority.
Right now, Chinese language is a closed shop. Few foreigners break it. This is not the case for European languages like English, Spanish, German and French which are very open languages compared to Chinese in the sense that one can pick up an English, Spanish, German or French newspaper – and if you already know one of the 4 languages, you often can get at least an initial sense of what the newspaper article is about. This is not so for the Chinese language. To make it at least a little accessible, some widespread use of hanyu pinyin (beyond just street signage) should be introduced by publishers and editors. Governments in PRC, TW, HK, Macao, S’pore, Malaysia, Brunei, Canada, USA, Australia and NZ can all take the lead and encourge more widespread use of hanyu pinyin (with tone strokes).
For critics of the phonetic accuacy of hanyu pinyi, I am ok if hanyu pinyi gets slightly modified to be more phonetically accurate for more European language speakers. Only that I hope that the modification will be consistently applied.
For those die-hard fanti readers, well, I think you cannot avoid jianti. It is not just PRC history. It is how many non-Chinese people study and read AND write the Chinese language. Why disregard them in the Internet age.