General Character Question

[JustJon]

Hi,

I'm doing some research into Chinese culture and have some questions:

It's commonly written on the Internet that simplified Chinese consists of 2235 characters, but to read a newspaper one would need to learn about 4000. Does this mean that people who use the simplified characters also need to learn some traditional characters in order to read? Or does the 4000 figure only apply to reading in traditional?

Does the term kaiti refer to all Chinese characters (Both traditional and simplified) or one or the other?

What are the Chinese terms for both the traditional and simplified versions of the language?

Thanks in advance,

Your help is much appreciated.

[skylee]

Does this mean that people who use the simplified characters also need to learn some traditional characters in order to read?

Yes, as only some of the characters have been simiplified.

simplified characters ~ 簡化字 (简化字 in simplified chinese)

traditional characters ~ 繁體字 (繁体字 in simplified chinese)

I don't know what kaiti is. Could it be "Kanji", which means chinese characters used in Japanese; or "Hanzi" which is an alternative term for chinese characters?

[JustJon]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses.

I think I mean Hanzi, a lot of the sites I've looked at refer to chinese characters as kaiti this one included:

http://chineseculture.about.com/library/symbol/blccbasics.htm

O.K so Hanzi is the correct term. Thanks.

[Quest]

kaiti 楷体 --- a writing style

[zhwj]

Kaiti 楷体 is a typestyle - it's a printed form with strokes that resemble regular handwriting 楷书 Kaishu.

The standard printed form is Songti 宋体, modeled after block-cut characters. Kaiti is a bit lighter, with horizontals that are slightly inclined. Another commonly used style is Fangsong 仿宋, Imitation Song, which contains characters written in imitation of the printed style - horizontals are inclined, but turning strokes are separated into parts.

I've attached an image with 7 of the most common typestyles (plus one bonus style I added for balance). How do I display that here? [Edit: (Oh, it does display; just not on preview)]

[JustJon]

Thanks for all the responses guys.

All very helpful.