Question

What is the difference between Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional?

Answer 1

Answer:

When simplified chinese was devoleped, some traditional characters were merged,

so the new language has fewer commonly

used characters

Answer 2

Answer:

While the Latin alphabet has a core of 26 letters that can form an entire vocabulary, Chinese consists of tens of thousands of characters (or logograms) that are used to write single- and multiple-character words. Today, there are two different written forms of Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. Traditional Chinese preserves the orthodox characters that have been used for thousands of years. As its name suggests, Simplified Chinese consists of simplified versions of the traditional Chinese characters.

When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the literacy rate in China was around 20%. Believing the steep learning curve of Traditional Chinese characters to be a factor, the government launched a campaign to promote literacy and education by simplifying the writing system. Approximately 2,000 traditional characters were modified, primarily by reducing the number of strokes and/or merging the characters. Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, Simplified Chinese was adopted in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau continue to use the Traditional writing system.