nathanuk88 Posted November 23, 2004 at 05:09 PM Report Share Posted November 23, 2004 at 05:09 PM sometimes ive seen this character (國) in simplified chinese texts (or am i jsut gettin confused!! lol) does it mean anythign in simplified chinese or is it jsut used in cantonese!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jose Posted November 23, 2004 at 08:39 PM Report Share Posted November 23, 2004 at 08:39 PM As far as I know, the character 國 is always simplified as 国. The reason why you may have found it in electronic texts is because, with the generalisation of Unicode, the GB encoding standard has been enlarged to include traditional characters as well. This extended version of GB is referred to as GBK, and allows people who use the Microsoft Pinyin IME system, originally devised for simplified characters, to type traditional characters as well. Because of this, mainland people using Windows XP may occasionally sprinkle their simplified character texts with the odd traditional character, either by mistake or because they find the traditional character nicer, in names for example. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cutty Posted November 23, 2004 at 09:14 PM Report Share Posted November 23, 2004 at 09:14 PM 國 is always same as 国. Though in the mainland, it's supposed to use the simplified version everywhere, but sometimes people may feel the old one looks better, or just didn't notice, it's not rare to see some tranditional characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xuezhongwen Posted December 1, 2004 at 06:47 PM Report Share Posted December 1, 2004 at 06:47 PM Chinese characters only have simplified and traditional forms (sure there are more than one form of 'traditional', sometimes), they do not change with dialects (thanks to the First Emporer). I doubt you actually saw them in the simplified version of papers, though it's quite possible and easy to have both charsets on the internet, even on the same page. like 国 and 國. I guess the reason you are seeing more traditional characters even in mainland China, was a trend that businesses want to establish some kind of formal (or more formal) image, and using traditional characters can easily do just that, it's sort of unique (from others that follow the government's guidelines). Also, it had some roots in a lot of Taiwan/HK businesses using traditional characters, and they were sort of having 'foreign company' status, hence a little superstitious image of 'better quality'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xiao Yu Posted December 1, 2004 at 07:50 PM Report Share Posted December 1, 2004 at 07:50 PM Traditional characters also look better; the more strokes, the more artistic and personal flair a word can have. Though that may not matter in everyday novels, newspapers, websites, etc., it can be an issue where a good look is important Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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