Beauty of Traditional Chinese | Cultural Taiwan | Office of Global Mandarin Education

Ever since China started to use Simplified Chinese, the abrogation of Traditional and Simplified Chinese has been debated for a long time. The five reasons below describe the advantage of Traditional Chinese. It is concluded that learning Traditional Chinese is undoubtedly beneficial without drawback.

• Aesthetics of Chinese culture

  The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is expressed clearly in the square word calligraphy, which contains the feature of Chinese character. The structure of Simplified Chinese is too simplified. The imbalance of component has a serious impact on aesthetics of Chinese character. Therefore, only Traditional Chinese can bring the aesthetics of Chinese culture in Chinese calligraphy into full play.

• Easy to learn

  Traditional Chinese is the only orthodox Chinese character that has been passed down through thousands of years. The evolution and formation rule can be observed. It doesn’t matter if Chinese is the mother language for a person, he can follow logic and rules step-by-step when learning Traditional Chinese. However, Simplified Chinese is too simplified and concept-oriented. It is hard to learn Simplified Chinese due to numerous omissions in rules. It is not hard to learn Simplified Chinese if learning Traditional Chinese first because it is going from complex to simple. However, it is hard on the other way around. It takes lots of efforts and it would be inefficient due to limited knowledge.

• Foundation of the culture

  Each character of Traditional Chinese, as mentioned before, consists of cultural foundation and style. “Ai” (means love) in Traditional Chinese has “Hsin” (means heart) inside. However, “Ai” (means love) in Simplified Chinese has “Yo” (means friend) inside. The formation is quite different. It is expected that the culture and logic of a nationality can be observed in Traditional Chinese. If one only learns Simplified Chinese, he only learns the form of the character without understanding the national culture inside.

• Reading and comprehension

  Font formation throughout the ages may vary. For example, the formation of oracle bone script and seal script is different. However, it is undeniable that Traditional Chinese is the standard form of Chinese character throughout thousands of years. Learning Traditional Chinese is helpful in archeology, and reading and comprehension of Chinese character. Traditional Chinese shows the imagery of ancestors. Simplified Chinese lacks cultural heritage and aesthetics of Chinese character.

• Exchange in Chinese-speaking regions

  People in Hong Kong and Macau mostly use Traditional Chinese. Japan, a significant region for East Asian cultural sphere. Numerous Chinese characters are created based on Traditional Chinese. Learning Traditional Chinese is more beneficial to information exchange in the East Asian cultural sphere and the Chinese-speaking region outside China than learning Simplified Chinese.