UQ - traditional or bastardized? 正體字還是殘字 (1 Viewer)

[Malfoy-Sama]

may study chinese at UQ next yr

but am interested to know if they teach in correct chinese characters or the nasty communist simplified ones

if they do both, which is more popular there?

any advantages (not talking about the characters themselves) but marks wise or whatever of doing one over the other?

also is it the case that if they have both, everyone doing traditional is a native speaker and everyone doing simp if a whitey?

 

[samthebear]

UQ = university of Queensland?

 

[Malfoy-Sama]

er.


yes indeed

 

[student6625]

They'll most likely teach you simplified characters since it's a lot more commonly used now. You won't be disadvantaged doing one over the other though. Also, there are probably a lot more students of Chinese background who use simplified characters than you think. Not everyone of them uses traditional.

P.S What have you got against simplified characters? They look a lot better to me since they're less archaic. Why would you want to make a language so complicated anyway? It only makes it more difficult to learn.

 

[Malfoy-Sama]

They'll most likely teach you simplified characters since it's a lot more commonly used now. You won't be disadvantaged doing one over the other though. Also, there are probably a lot more students of Chinese background who use simplified characters than you think. Not everyone of them uses traditional.

P.S What have you got against simplified characters? They look a lot better to me since they're less archaic. Why would you want to make a language so complicated anyway? It only makes it more difficult to learn.

coz they dont make sense, look pretty hideous, no history (ie made by communists 50 yrs ago), the changes made are inconsistent, and apart from that, all scholars of chinese language see them as a complete joke and absolutely refuse to use them in their work. even beijing uni in mainland china, if you go to their forums, all the students of chinese there will even only post in trad

and that aside, in cchinese communities in australia, america, etc. the use of simplified is really something that people look down their noses at as for simple minded peasant types. that is why you never see it on any signage, etc. coz even the mainlanders, when they come, learn trad.

and also gotta think about the future, there was a summit of china, taiwan, korea and japan in 2007 and they all decided that over a period of time they will all standardise their characters so theyre the same (back to the traditional forms), so simplified will die out, as in the first place it was only intended to be a transition phase for switching entirely to pinyin anyway.

and plus, after spending a lot of time in shanghai, the young generation of chinese all are starting to use traditional on their blogs, IM, handwriting etc because it is like the new "cool" thing to do for the educated younger people. (coz of all the taiwan influence in popular culture)

 

[student6625]

Okay... Just out of interest, are you white, Chinese or from another Asian country? I don't think simplified will ever die out and all the stuff you mentioned are negligible compared to how influential simplified characters have become in China. If Korea, Japan and Taiwan want to standardise all the characters then they'll have to switch their own characters to simplified, not the other way around. China should not have to compromise. It's their own language after all. If other countries don't like it, then they don't have to learn the language.

 

[Malfoy-Sama]

Okay... Just out of interest, are you white, Chinese or from another Asian country? I don't think simplified will ever die out and all the stuff you mentioned are negligible compared to how influential simplified characters have become in China. If Korea, Japan and Taiwan want to standardise all the characters then they'll have to switch their own characters to simplified, not the other way around. China should not have to compromise. It's their own language after all. If other countries don't like it, then they don't have to learn the language.

australian.

yeah but the thing is though, traditional is so fashionable and gaining so much influence in china in recent years especially with younger people. they are all using traditional whenever they can.

so i dont know if it will even last in mainland china no matter how "influential" it is.

yes i realise we can opt out if we dont like it, thats why im asking. i can read and write using simplified just fine switching between is very easy but i just dont like the thought of using something that scholars of chinese language see as a joke and is also loosing ground in its home country...

i am aware that most unis do both and you choose one to use in tests, but unsure about UQ.

oh and no, the conclusion from the 2007 characters forum which included taiwan korea japan AND MAINLAND CHINA was to preseve traditional and ultimately aim to adopt it as their standard forms.

and plus, in australia (at least brisbane where i live) and even moreso the USA, chinese communities are totally dominated by ppl from TW and HK anyway, with mainlanders mostly going to chinese schools where they will learn traditional....

 

[emiliieee]

screw you simplified chinese.

 

[student6625]

australian.

Wow, you must be really good then. Where did you learn Chinese? High school I presume?

 

[Malfoy-Sama]

Wow, you must be really good then. Where did you learn Chinese? High school I presume?

mm no mostly from watching taiwan tv lol ==


anyway i guess nobody knows answer to my question D=

 

[mathyics]

They will most likely be teaching simplified Chinese:angry:

If you are learning Chinese for your future career than I suggest you learn simplified Chinese. It is much more popular and useful than traditional.

Traditional is only used in HK and Taiwan. (Although I like traditional chinese better)

ps: im chinese

 

[student6625]

It kind of depends on where you want to further your career. If you want to work in Hong Kong, Taiwan or other western countries, then you should probably choose traditional. But if you want to work in mainland China, then I insist you do simplified and there's absolutely no need for you to worry, it's been officially confirmed by the Chinese government that they WILL NOT reintroduce traditional Chinese into the mainland despite what some critics might argue otherwise. Doing so would be such an expensive and socially disruptive overhaul, so it wouldn't be worth the effort anyway. Plus, Mao Zedong did a great thing for China by simplifying Chinese characters as it led to higher rates of literacy amongst the population. By reintroducing traditional characters, it would mark a retrogressive change within China that would take years or even decades to get over.

Anyway, Malfoy-Sama, I'm still amazed by your ability to read and write both traditional and simplified Chinese (since you're not even Chinese). Plus the fact that you learned Chinese mostly from watching Taiwanese television. Apart from the simplified characters, don't tell me you think the mainland Mandarin accent is "nasty" and "communist" as well?

 

[Malfoy-Sama]

It kind of depends on where you want to further your career. If you want to work in Hong Kong, Taiwan or other western countries, then you should probably choose traditional. But if you want to work in mainland China, then I insist you do simplified and there's absolutely no need for you to worry, it's been officially confirmed by the Chinese government that they WILL NOT reintroduce traditional Chinese into the mainland despite what some critics might argue otherwise. Doing so would be such an expensive and socially disruptive overhaul, so it wouldn't be worth the effort anyway. Plus, Mao Zedong did a great thing for China by simplifying Chinese characters as it led to higher rates of literacy amongst the population. By reintroducing traditional characters, it would mark a retrogressive change within China that would take years or even decades to get over.

Anyway, Malfoy-Sama, I'm still amazed by your ability to read and write both traditional and simplified Chinese (since you're not even Chinese). Plus the fact that you learned Chinese mostly from watching Taiwanese television. Apart from the simplified characters, don't tell me you think the mainland Mandarin accent is "nasty" and "communist" as well?

lol. well i must say i dont at all like the "errr" sound they add to everything!!

hmm lets not praise mao ze dong aye.... one of the biggest mass murderers in history killed more people than either hitler or stalin... and also, the literacy in tw and hk is higher.. by alot.. and they use trad... so yeah... specuated that in fact the main reason for simplification is to censor democratic material thats anti communist from tw and hk, etc.

anyway enough of that.

i guess i will have to find out...

 

[shuning]

Rofl

 

[Entrant]

communist simplified is the only way to go.

 

[4025808]

i'd use both simp and trad xD
they're both good :L

 

[DavidWen]

first of all, the simplified Chinese characters set is NOT a communist invention; attempts made to simplidied Chinese characters date back to the ROC reign, and almost exactly the same character set was adopted as 一简字
Secondly, many of the characters are not invented after all. Some are from simplidies Kanja used in Japanese(e.g.国), while some are colloquial alternatives used in ancient times(e.g.叶). Among those invented by scholars, the simplification is very consistent; e.g . 汉、难、鸡 etc
Thirdly, simplified characters are standard characters used in Mainland, Singapore and Malaysia. I have not heard of a single case where people using simplified characters are looked down upon; neither have I seen people using full characters on the forum of Peking University.
It's true though full characters are commonly used in trademarks, on signs, and in calligraphy, but hardly anywhere else in life. Although any educated Mainlander is able to read text written in full characters, they are too hard to write. Have you noticed that some characters look like stains of ink when displayed on a screen using font size of 20 or under? They have TOO many strokes.

And, please do not go political. You are looking at China with prejudice at best. Mao Tze Dong was a power hungry person, you are right, he had become an Emperor by the time he died. But famine cannot count as mass murder, and even counting the people died from famine it doesn't make up half of the number of people Stalin or Hitler killed.
The literacy rate of Mainland China is 96%, while the literacy rate of HK SPR is 95%. Tell me again that 95% is greater than 96% by a lot. And has it occured to you that with the introduction of Simp. characters in Mainland the literacy rate basically skyrocketed? This was the motive and effect of simplifying the character set. Concerning your idea that its purpose was to shut out democratic material from HK and ROC, I'd like to point out that educated Mainland Chinese have always been able to read Simp. and Full characters, while uneducated Chinese back then could read neither. Even if they were thick enough to distribute paper based anti-communism material in the Mainland, introducing simplified characters is by far less effective than strengthening border control.
May I point out to you that everything you say must have a source of information other than your imagination?

 

[4025808]

wow revival of a very very old thread..

Anyway, for me, when I type, I will type traditional, but when I write, I use simplified. Traditional has too many strokes to write, while simplified is the best option here. Traditional is better when typed because at least it helps me preserve the culture of 2000 years ago.

 

[DavidWen]

BTW, the errr sound is a feature of certain dialects belonging to the Mandarin group. Mind you, a PHNOLOGY feature. The Americans will always pronounce the word "schedule" as "skejule", whether it's written in Latin alphabeta as "schedule", or Cyrillic alphabet as "скедул". Do you get it?
I can no longer stand this outburst of idiocy, ignorance and arrogrance.

 

[Bendent]

2000 ago chinese wasn't even traditional or simiplified it's aa bunch of hieroglyphics kind of words (which to me looks more mysterious)

my point being don't dwell on the traditional thing, language is always evolving, and simplified version is still the evolved version of written chinese language.

nevertheless traditional piss me off as it's to0 hard for me to read fml