Simplified Chinese characters

Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in Mainland China as living as Singapore, as prescribed by a Table of General standard Chinese Characters. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard bit of character sets of the innovative Chinese total language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s as living as 1960s to encourage literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China, Malaysia in addition to Singapore, while traditional Chinese characters still remain in common use in Hong Kong, Macau in addition to Taiwan as alive as in South Korea and Japan to aextent.

Simplified Chinese characters may be covered to by their official move to above or colloquially jiǎntǐzì. In its broadest sense, the latter term target to all characters that clear undergone simplifications of consultation "structure" or "body", some of which have existed for millennia mainly in hand writing alongside traditional characters. On the other hand, the official name refers to the innovative systematically simplified character set, which as stated by then-Chairman Mao Zedong in 1952 includes non only structural simplification but also substantial reduction in the total number of standardized Chinese characters.

Simplified character forms were created by reducing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. Some characters were simplified by applyingrules, for example, by replacing any occurrences of a certain factor with a simplified report of the component. Variant characters with the same pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character, commonly the simplest amongst all variants in form. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies.

A second round of simplifications was promulgated in 1977, but was later retracted in 1986 for a quality of reasons, largely due to the confusion caused and the unpopularity of theround simplifications.

In August 2009, China began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 simplified and unchanged characters was officially implemented for use by the State Council of the People's Republic of China on June 5, 2013.

History

Although most simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the work moderated by the government of the People's Republic of China PRC in the 1950s and 1960s, the use of some of these forms predates the PRC's ordering in 1949. Caoshu, cursive written text, was the inspiration of some simplified characters, and for others, some are attested as early as the Qin dynasty 221–206 BC as either vulgar variants or original characters.

One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who presents in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years coming after or as a result of. the May Fourth Movement in 1919, numerous anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China as quickly as possible. Traditional culture and values such(a) as Confucianism were challenged and subsequently blamed for their problems. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and therefore shown that a undergo a change be initiated. It was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or totally abolished. Lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, "If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die" 漢字不滅，中國必亡. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time.

In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of the intelligentsia retains that character simplification would support boost literacy in China. In 1935, 324 simplified characters collected by Qian Xuantong were officially introduced as the table of number one batch of simplified characters, but they were suspended in 1936 due to fierce opposition within the party.

Within the PRC, further character simplification became associated with the ] In 1986, the authorities retracted theround completely. Later in the same year, the authorities promulgated alist of simplifications, which is identical to the 1964 list apart from for six vary including the restoration of three characters that had been simplified in the first round: 叠, 覆, 像; note that the form 疊 is used instead of 叠 in regions using Traditional Chinese. In 1965, the PRC published the Yinshua tongyong hanzi zixing biao 印刷通用汉字字形表 zh List of usually used characters for printing, which included the standardized printing forms of 6196 characters.

There had been simplification initiatives aimed at eradicating characters entirely and establishing the ] After the retraction of the second round of simplification, the PRC stated that it wished to keep Chinese orthography stable. Years later in 2009, the Chinese government released a major revision list which included 8,300 characters. No new simplifications were introduced. However, six characters before listed as "traditional" characters that have been simplified, as alive as 51 other "variant" characters, were restored to the standard list. In addition, orthographies e.g., stroke types for 44 characters were proposed to be modified slightly to fit traditional calligraphic rules. Also, the practice of unrestricted simplification of rare and archaic characters by analogy using simplified radicals or components is now discouraged. A State Linguistic communication Commission official cited "oversimplification" as the reason for restoring some characters. The language authority declared an openperiod until August 31, 2009 for feedback from the public. The proposed orthographic changes to 44 characters were not implemented due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion.

The officially promulgated explanation of the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters, announced in 2013, contained 45 newly recognized standard characters that were previously considered variant forms, as well as official approval of 226 characters that had been simplified by analogy and had seen wide use but were not explicitly precondition in preceding lists or documents.

Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification, eventually arriving at the same set of simplified characters as Mainland China.

The first round, consisting of 498 Simplified characters from 502 Traditional characters, was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969. The second round, consisting of 2287 Simplified characters, was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the Mainland China system; those were removed in theround in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted the six revisions made by Mainland China in 1986. However, unlike in mainland China where personal designation may only be registered using simplified characters, parents have the option of registering their children's denomination in traditional characters in Singapore.

Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also totally identical to the simplified characters used in Mainland China. Chinese-language schools use these.

Traditional characters are still often seen on shop signs, calligraphy, and some newspapers in both countries.

A small corporation called Dou Zi Sei T:導字社; S:导字社 or Dou Zi Wui T:導字會; S:导字会 attempted to introduce a special version of simplified characters using romanizations in the 1930s. Today, however, traditional characters remain dominant in Hong Kong.

After extended shinjitai are not approved, and instead standard practice is to use the traditional forms.

The number of characters in circulation was also reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during used to refer to every one of two or more people or things grade of school were established. The overall case was to standardize teaching and the use of kanji in modern literature and media.