Monday, May 8, 2006

San Francisco Chronicle - Traditional vs. Simplified Chinese

About a month ago, I was interviewed by Vanessa Hua of San Francisco Chronicle about my personal opinion regarding Traditional and Simplified formats of Chinese.

It was around same time I wrote about the Mandarin Chinese Craze on my other site.

Today the story was on the frontpage of San Francisco Chronicle.


story link or pdf

The article was well written and provided information from both sides of the arguement.

Although I was educated mostly with Simplified Chinese (簡體字 or 简体字) while growing up in People's Republic of China, I have always been an advocate for Traditional Chinese (繁體字 or 繁体字). I have also sometimes referred to Simplified Chinese as "the poorman's Chinese".

I especially like the additional information provided below the story in a section called "Character evolution".

On a related note, Erik Peterson of Mandarin Tools sent me a story reported by Danwei regarding some Chinese publications are misusing Chinese.