The common Chinese characters in mainland China are "simplified characters", but many young people have never heard of "two simplified characters".
In fact, there have been two simplification reforms in the history of the mainland, but the "two simplified characters" only lasted for nine years before they were abolished.
Although the reform of the "two simplified characters" failed, it still had a far-reaching impact, and many characters are still used today, and even some surnames have changed as a result......
At that time, why did we carry out the "two simplified characters" and why did the vigorous "two simplified characters" reform fail?
To understand this question, we must go back to the context of the time......
Simplified background of Chinese characters
Chinese characters are the soul of Chinese culture, with a history of more than 6,000 years, and are the oldest written language used by human beings, and the only hieroglyphic script that has been passed down to this day.
Although Chinese characters are ancient, they are never static.
Nowadays, the Chinese characters we are familiar with are developed from oracle bone script, golden script, large seal, small seal, official script, regular script, line script, and cursive script, and the evolution trend of Chinese characters is "from complex to simple".
In the final analysis, Chinese characters are a kind of writing tool, which has both phonetic and ideographic functions, and practicality is the foundation of its inheritance.
Too cumbersome glyphs are not conducive to writing, and sometimes there will be conflicts between pronunciation and ideography, so the ancients would consciously adjust Chinese characters.
Simplified Chinese Comparison Table
In the long process of development, the easy-to-write "simplified characters" began to be widely circulated among the people.
After the 19th century, China was forced to open its doors and began to come into contact with Western civilization.
It was also at this time that the Chinese literati and scholars of the time realized that Chinese characters were too cumbersome compared to the Latin alphabet, and the scheme of simplifying Chinese characters was also put on the agenda.
In 1956, the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" was officially promulgated, and the mainland began to implement simplified Chinese characters, including 2,235 simplified characters.
The first simplification of Chinese characters was very successful.
First of all, compared with traditional Chinese characters, simplified Chinese characters have significantly fewer strokes and lower learning costs, which has made a great contribution to the eradication of illiteracy and the implementation of education for all in the mainland.
Secondly, "a simplified character" is not created out of thin air, but a "vulgar character" that has been widely used by the people since ancient times, has a broad mass base, and a simplified character retains the "charm" of Chinese characters.
Therefore, it is not so much a reform as an acceleration.
If you understand why "one simple word" succeeds, you will also know why "two simple words" fail.
The "two simple words" that ended in failure
In 1977, the Second Simplified Chinese Character Scheme was announced, but in 1986 it was abolished and ultimately failed.
The original intention of the second simplified characters was to further simplify Chinese characters, especially for Chinese characters with high frequency.
Including the use of homophones instead of words ("籍" is abbreviated as "笈");
morphophonetic characters ("wine" is abbreviated as "氿");
characteristic characters ("贰" is abbreviated as "弍");
Contour characters ("hall" abbreviated as "坣") and so on.
Judging from the number of strokes alone, Erjian characters are indeed more "convenient" to write.
But it is precisely because of this that the simplification scheme of the two simplified characters is too "simple and crude".
A simplified character has never been created out of thin air, but gradually evolved over a long period of time in ancient times, and every stroke has been exquisite, and the unique beauty of Chinese characters has been retained as a whole, and there is a direct inheritance relationship with traditional Chinese characters.
However, the second simplified characters are too much to reduce the strokes of Chinese characters, which makes these Chinese characters lose their basic aesthetics and charm, and also brings a series of problems.
Propaganda posters of the time
Many simplifications of the two simplified characters are too "sloppy", resulting in the similarity of some of the two simplified characters being too high, and the lack of folk use of the two simplified characters makes it more difficult to learn the two simplified characters.
There is also a huge disadvantage of the second abbreviation, that is, there are many homophones, which will cause ambiguity when used.
Mr. Zhou Youguang, a well-known linguist in mainland China and the "father of Hanyu Pinyin," has jointly signed more than 20 experts to raise objections to the "Second Simplified Draft."
Mr. Zhou Youguang
At the same time, the emergence of the second simplified character has certain historical limitations, and many people at that time believed that the "Latinization of Chinese characters" was the future development trend.
However, with the improvement of China's national strength, people can look at Chinese characters more objectively, and the information density of Chinese characters is much higher than that of Latin scripts, which has obvious advantages in the information age.
Therefore, under various factors, the vigorous reform of the two simplified characters failed.
However, the influence of the two simplified words is far-reaching, not all of them have been abolished, and many common words in our lives today are actually two simple words.
Second, the influence of simplified words
Although the reform of simplified characters is relatively radical as a whole, it also has merits.
Many older people also use two simplified words, the most common is "breakfast" is written as "morning", and "parking" is written as "car".
In fact, there are also some Erjian characters that have been very successful and have become the current standard Chinese characters.
For example, "orange" (orange), "stew" (燉), "consultation" (谘) and so on.
In addition, the most affected by the two simplified characters should be certain surnames.
"Xiao" is a common surname in modern life, but in fact, the surname "Xiao" in ancient times is very rare, and the pronunciation is four tones.
And "Xiao" is a very ancient surname, which can be traced back to the Yin Shang period at the earliest, and has a large number of people. However, after the implementation of the two simplified characters in the 70s, "Xiao" was changed to "Xiao", resulting in the "Xiao surname" was also merged into the "Xiao surname", and most of the "Xiao" surnames in the mainland are simplified from "Xiao".
For another example, "Dai" and "Dai" were originally two different surnames, but because "Dai" was simplified to "Dai" in the reform of the two simplified characters, a large number of "Dai" surnames were changed to "Dai", and this began to be confused.
There are also "Yan" and "Yan", which were originally two different ancient surnames, but many "Yan" surnames have been changed to "Yan", making the relationship between these two surnames extremely complicated.
There are also the surnames "Fu" and "Fu", "Dou" and "Dou", "Lan" and "Lan".
Although the second abbreviation was abolished early, many people's surnames have changed, and for various reasons, they have not been changed back.
The failure of the second simplified character has left a profound lesson for the future reform of Chinese characters.
Chinese characters are the direct carrier of Chinese culture, and every stroke contains the wisdom of the ancients for thousands of years.
At the same time, Chinese characters are constantly evolving, but the process is slow and rigorous, and simplifying them is counterproductive.
What do you think about this? Welcome to leave a message to discuss.
Reference Sources:
[1] People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Network, "Solve the Confusion of Surnames Caused by "Two Simple Characters" as soon as possible", 2021.08.02
[2] Shangguan News, "Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese Characters, I Know What Are the Two Simplified Characters?", 2020.09.01
[3] Guangming.com, "Simplicity and Distinctiveness: Two Major Driving Factors for the Evolution of Chinese Characters", 2023.02.26
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