Diff between simplified and traditional

[stephfuccio]

Hi everyone, 

I have been learning simplified online for a few months, mostly radicals and some basic functional sentences to use around me in Shanghai. I am on vacation in Taiwan this week and although I am not going to consciously start learning traditional, I am curious about the differences. I voiced these ponderings here:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3syjdciViM

 

Appreciate your feedback either on that YT channel or here, in these forums. 

 

Thank you, 

Stephanie

[Shelley]

Her question about the radicals is basically the answer. Most of the simplification was to the radical BUT not only.

 

I am learning both at the same time, simplified as my main set and traditional passively as it were. I am not learning to write them but I do want to be able to recognise them and be able to read traditional.

 

I suggest you get a list of the radicals in both and just sit and compare them for a while, you will then start to understand the sort of thing that was done to simplify characters.

 

One of the first I learnt was 说 說  as you can see the radical is different but so are the 2 strokes on the top. It was considered easier to do each stroke from top to bottom and from left to right, and the very top stroke is lost. These are the types of changes made, the direction of some strokes were changed to make it flow better and some were left out.

 

I suggest that you just spend some time studying them and you will see the general pattern, although here are no hard and fast rules, there are trends and patterns.

[lips]

7 hours ago, Shelley said:

the very top stroke is lost

Which stroke is that？

兌 has been written as 兑 in running script (行书) and grass script (草书) for hundreds of years.  Many simplified Chinese characters came from running  script and common quick ways of writing some characters.

[Shelley]

In my example (from Pleco- dictionary PLC) the traditional character has one more stroke on the top of 兌  -  說 .

I will concede my traditional skills are not my best suit but I double checked and thought I got it right.

[lips]

Which stroke is missing?

[Shelley]

In your picture none, but in my post the traditional looks like it has an additional stroke, maybe its my IME. My Pleco corresponds with yours, not sure where I have gone wrong. Apologies to the OP for misleading info, thank goodness for the safety net of vigilant forum members picking up on my mistakes.

[Publius]

In some font types designed for printing, 八 used to look like this:

Therefore, 說 (http://www.zdic.net/z/24/zy/8AAA.htm)

[889]

When it comes to the fine points of writing some characters, you can't rely on printed forms. which sometimes have their own conventions. You need to use a book or other source showing the written forms.

[Publius]

But you need to be able to recognize them. Just the other day I answered a question on another forum. I located a pdf file showing the source text, but the poster didn't know how to type .

[hoshinoumi]

3 hours ago, Publius said:

In some font types designed for printing, 八 used to look like this:

Thanks for the useful info. I had noticed that before and I guessed it was to prevent people from mistaking it for another character, but which one?

[Shelley]

Thank you @Publius for clearing that up for me and it seems others. From this one example does anyone one know if I can rely on the PLC dictionary in Pleco to use the standard form?

 

 

[lips]

The "extra stroke" is wrong.  Whoever made up that font made a mistake.  Whether it was widely used doesn't matter.

[dwq]

It is a feature, not a bug.