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# 1.5 Simplified and traditional forms of Chinese characters

In this section you will learn about traditional and simplified characters and work on some activities.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government introduced a range of ‘simplified characters’ ( 简体字 jiăn tĭ zì) in an effort to improve the literacy level in the population. About 2,000 characters have been simplified and the rest of the characters remain the same. It is useful to be aware of traditional forms (sometimes referred to as ‘complex characters’ ) ( 繁体字 făn tĭ zì ), as they are still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities.

In most cases, the simplification of the 2000 characters involved reducing the number of strokes, while also preserving either the overall shape of the character or of one part of the character. Table 3shows some examples of characters in both simplified and traditional form, and the number of strokes that these forms comprise.

## Table 3 Examples of traditional characters

|  | 简体字 jiăn tĭ zì | Strokes | 繁体字 făn tĭ zì | Strokes
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
xué | to learn | 学 | 8 | 學 | 16
yī | medical | 医 | 7 | 醫 | 18
mén | [plural suffix to make pronouns such as ‘we’] | 们 | 5 | 們 | 9
guó | country | 国 | 8 | 國 | 11

Now have a go at identifying simplified and traditional characters in Activity 4.

## Activity 4 Identifying simplified and traditional characters

Open Google Translate in a separate browser and select Chinese (Simplified) on the left side and Chinese (Traditional) on the right side. Then copy and paste the characters from the Simplified column in Table 4 into Google Translate to see how the same word looks in traditional Chinese.

## Table 4 Simplified and traditional characters

English | Pinyin | Simplified | Traditional
--- | --- | --- | ---
to love; love | ài | 爱 | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)
book | shū | 书 | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)
to meet | jiàn | 见 | (A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

Interactive feature not available in single page view.

### Answer

## Table 4 Simplified and traditional characters (completed)

English | Pinyin | Simplified | Traditional
--- | --- | --- | ---
to love; love | ài | 爱 | 愛
book | shū | 书 | 書
to meet | jiàn | 见 | 見

◄Contents►Next: 1.6 Word formation

OpenLearn - Beginners’ Chinese: a taster course
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