S4-E39 - Traditional VS. Simplified Chinese Characters – 繁體字或簡體字?

As you likely know, Chinese writing comes in two main forms:
traditional (fántǐzì) and simplified (jiǎntǐzì). Taiwan uses
traditional characters and China uses simplified characters.
Taiwan is a peace-loving democracy and China is an authoritarian
state; ergo – traditional characters are better!





But no, logic doesn’t care about politics and as John and Eryk
debate this sometimes-controversial topic, you may come to agree
with us that there are pluses and minuses for both systems. Eryk
likes writing his wife’s surname as 刘, not 劉… but John
has a point about beauty – did they really need to do
this 东 to “east”? Was the original, 東, really oh,
sooo hard?





Enjoy a friendly argument or two, and learn a bit of the history
of characters and the people who simplified them.


 


PS: if you want to know more about Hanyu Pinyin, listen to
our Bookish Asia podcast episode where John chats with
an author of a book on Zhou Youguang (周有光).