Preface
Studied but cannot comprehend!
We use simplified Chinese characters in the mainland, while traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
Obviously they are all Chinese, why do Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan use different writing methods? Is it really like some Chinese people say that they are more special?
You know, even two countries, Singapore and Malaysia, have been using simplified Chinese for a long time.
So why do Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan people still insist on using traditional Chinese characters, and how did this strange phenomenon appear?
Why do Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters?
In fact, since ancient times, Chinese characters have undergone many changes, especially in modern times, specifically when Western civilization entered our East Asia in the 19th century, many East Asian countries set off a "frenzy of learning from the West", including China.
Of course, there were some episodes along the way, when some Chinese people felt that if China wanted to learn from Western countries, it had to abolish obscure Chinese characters, which is also known as the "Chinese Character Abolition Movement".
At that time, some people of insight believed that Chinese characters were part of our excellent traditional culture and a treasure that had been handed down for thousands of years, so they should not be given up.
Although the "abolition of Chinese characters" was not stopped due to some reasons, the simplification of Chinese characters did not stop.
The reason for this, in my opinion, is because the thinking of the Chinese people has changed at that time, some people feel that our fonts are varied, ancient Chinese, classical Chinese, vernacular Chinese are mixed, which is very unconducive to learning, and there are still many illiterates in China at that time, and it is imperative to simplify Chinese characters, so the vigorous "Chinese character simplification movement" began.
The initial simplification of Chinese characters was during the Republic of China, but due to some factors, it was not successfully implemented, and the government of the Republic of China implemented it several times and finally terminated.
Later, it was not until the founding of the People's Republic of China that the simplification of Chinese characters went smoothly, in 1955, the relevant departments jointly issued the "Chinese Character Simplification Plan (Draft)", and in January 1956, the state officially adopted and announced the "Chinese Character Simplification Plan", and in February of the same year, the announcement abolished 1055 variant characters.
In 1964, the Chinese Character Reform Committee published the "General List of Simplified Characters", which included as many as 2,238 simplified characters in the general list, and 14 simplified marginals.
In fact, the main reason is that when we carried out the Chinese character simplification movement, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan had not yet officially returned, and the area involved in that movement at that time did not include Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and the same was true for the second simplification movement carried out later in 1977.
The historical reason is that on the one hand, there is also the habit of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan people using traditional Chinese characters.
Let's take a look at Hong Kong and Macao first, after their return to the motherland, the management personnel of the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions did not restrict the use of Chinese characters by the people, probably to respect the habits of Hong Kong and Macao people, just like the "one country, two systems" proposed by Comrade Deng at the beginning, so they continued to use traditional Chinese characters.
In the eyes of some old Hong Kong and Macau people, traditional Chinese characters are part of our Chinese culture, and they want to keep this element alive.
In addition, Hong Kong and Macao were relatively economically developed at that time, and the use of traditional Chinese characters was also a manifestation of cultural self-confidence.
As for Taiwan, I don't need to say much about the reasons, and everyone knows it.
Specifically, around 2008, Taiwan's education department fine-tuned the education curriculum for primary and secondary school students, and the relevant regulations changed "Chinese characters" to "Chinese characters" and "Chinese" to "Chinese".
Not only that, once upon a time, the Taiwan authorities did not allow schools to use simplified characters from the mainland in their teaching, and even those publications were mainly in traditional characters.
Baidu Encyclopedia
What's more exaggerated is that in 2006, the head of the Chinese department of a university in Taiwan said that if the exam uses some simplified characters that have existed since ancient times in order to save time, the grading teacher can accept it, but if students use mainland simplified characters, they will definitely deduct points.
To put it bluntly, the fact that Taiwan still uses traditional Chinese characters is due to historical reasons.
So, why do two countries, Singapore and Malaysia, use simplified Chinese?
Reasons for the use of simplified words in Malaysia and Singapore
One thing we need to note is that although Singapore and Malaysia use simplified characters, they are somewhat different from us, and although Singapore officially used simplified characters in the early years, the people still use traditional writing methods.
A sign of a shop in Singapore in the early years
Yes, you read that right, the simplified Chinese characters used in Singapore and Malaysia are collectively referred to as "Malaysia-Singapore Simplified", and their simplified characters differ from us in some of the terms and translations.
As for why these two countries use simplified Chinese characters?
First of all, Malaysia is a Southeast Asian country with a population of 33 million, of which 70% are Malays, about 20% are Chinese, and there are some Indians and other races, so to speak, they belong to a diverse country.
Speaking of which, although Malaysia uses simplified characters, in fact, they have not officially implemented simplified characters, and their official language is still Malay, and the use of simplified characters in Malaysia is mainly carried out by the Chinese spontaneously.
The earliest Malaysian Chinese have been there for hundreds of years, and their ancestral lands are often Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and other southeastern coastal areas.
And as they passed, Cantonese, Hainanese, Minqing, Hakka, Teochew and other dialects were also brought along.
You know, not everyone can understand the local dialects, which I believe many friends also have a deep understanding, the northern dialect is fine, but the southern dialect is somewhat "confusing", in the same way, the various dialects at that time also made the Malaysian Chinese very distressed.
Perhaps this is why they chose to use simplified characters that are easy to learn to facilitate communication.
In addition, Malaysians use simplified Chinese characters because of the existence of Chinese education.
When did Chinese education in Malaysia start?
Since the establishment of Penang Wufu College in 1819, it has a history of more than 200 years.
CNR, released on December 11, 2022
When it comes to Chinese education in Malaysia, it is not easy to survive.
In the early years, when the British colonized Malaysia, Chinese schools were in a difficult situation, and after the real independence, the government at that time committed to making Malay the only language of instruction, in other words, Chinese schools at that time had little status at all.
In 1961, Malaysia even mentioned that if Chinese schools did not use Malay as the main language of instruction, the government would cancel the funding.
As a result, some Chinese schools "succumbed" and began to use Malay as the main language of instruction, while others persisted and became independent secondary schools that were not recognized by the government.
It is worth mentioning that some Malay Chinese began to "get ready to move" after seeing the results of the Chinese character simplification movement in mainland China, and they also embarked on the road of simplifying Chinese characters after they established the "Simplification Committee for Chinese Characters" in 1972.
In 1981, the "General List of Simplified Chinese Characters" was published, and in this way, the Chinese in Malaysia now use simplified Chinese characters.
In contrast, Singapore, for reasons that use simplified Chinese characters, is different from Malaysia.
On the one hand, it is also a historical reason, in 1959, Singapore was established as a self-governing state, due to the large number of ethnic groups in the country and the complex situation, the law of the self-governing state law made Malay, Chinese, English and Tamil as the official languages of Singapore.
However, the good times were short-lived, due to factors such as frequent racial frictions, Singapore urgently needed to establish a common language that was acceptable to all ethnic groups.
At first, the Singapore side chose English, but later, considering that English was the mother tongue of the former colonizers, they were afraid of public resistance, so they finally chose to implement a bilingual policy, that is, "English + Mandarin".
This is understandable, after all, the Chinese make up more than 70% of the whole of Singapore, and the Mandarin language is very important to them.
At the same time, Singapore also started to implement another reform – the use of simplified Chinese characters, and yes, Singapore simplified Chinese characters much earlier than Malaysia, and basically started following us.
At that time, the reason why Singapore implemented the simplified Chinese character reform was very simple, if nothing else, because traditional Chinese characters are more difficult to write, and simplified Chinese characters can save them time in writing and learning Chinese characters, which many people understand, after all, the level of Singaporeans in writing Chinese characters is indeed "worrying".
On the other hand, before the simplification of Chinese characters, the use of Chinese in Singapore presented a mixed scene, and at that time, their simplified characters, traditional characters, variant characters, and even self-made simplified characters were parallel, which could change this "chaotic" situation, how could Singaporeans disagree?
In addition to the above two reasons, Singapore's use of simplified characters is to follow the mainstream of Chinese development, speaking of which, in recent years, our Chinese language has indeed been welcomed by some countries in the world, and it is not an exaggeration to use the sentence "The whole world is learning Chinese, and Confucius's words are becoming more and more international......
epilogue
In 2017, the Financial Times, after an investigation, came to this conclusion:
"The enthusiasm of wealthy families in the UK for Chinese language education has ushered in its 'heyday'."
Not only in the UK, but also in the US, there are hundreds of schools that offer Mandarin immersion education.
Moreover, according to official media, since 2016, South Africa, Mauritius, Zambia and other African countries have incorporated Chinese into their national education systems, and in 2018, the Chinese language teaching pilot was successfully launched in some primary schools in South Africa.
From the above, we can also see that the influence of the Chinese language in China is gradually increasing.
More and more foreigners like to speak Chinese, which also shows that China's strength is gradually growing, and I believe that the mainland will get better and better in the future.
If you have anything to say about this, you are welcome to express your opinions!
The sources in this article are from:
1. Baidu Encyclopedia - Malaysia-Singapore Simplified Chinese, Simplified History of Chinese Characters, Malaysia, Singapore
2. "Chinese language fever" swept the world to welcome the "heyday", Xinhuanet, October 28, 2017;
3. "Western Media: Chinese is Moving Towards a Global Language", Guangming.com-Reference News, released on April 29, 2022;
4. "How is Chinese and Simplified Chinese Characters Implemented in Singapore?", The Paper, March 13, 2015;
5. "How does Malaysia do the only complete overseas Chinese education system when a reporter from the main station looks at the world丨 overseas education system?" CCTV website, released on December 11, 2022;
6. "Chinese language fever continues to heat up in South Africa, Chinese language learning classes run by government agencies and non-governmental organizations are almost in short supply", released on July 24, 2018;
7. "Hong Kong Wen Wei Po: Taiwan's "Controversy over Complexity and Simplicity", Sina Culture-Wen Wei Po, June 27, 2006;
8. "[Video] Taiwan Authorities Want to Give Chinese "Correct Name" Causes Dissatisfaction", CCTV.com, released on February 15, 2008, but in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!