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Opinion | Traditional or simplified? Debate on Chinese characters should be decided by pragmatics, not politics
Paul Stapleton says it is understandable that Hongkongers want to preserve traditional Chinese characters but the writing on the wall is in favour of the simplified script
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Two news items last week had Hongkongers raising their eyebrows. First, next year, Harrow International School will no longer teach traditional Chinese characters in its lower school classrooms, and second, the International Baccalaureate is considering dropping middle school courses in traditional characters by 2020.
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This news arrives at a time when any threats to Cantonese are met with reactions that mix fear and hostility. The term “cultural genocide” has even been used to describe the threat to traditional characters.
Such a reaction is natural. One’s native tongue along with its writing system forms an intrinsic part of one’s identity. In the case of the written word, Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong have invested a large part of their childhood learning complex characters, and have understandably grown attached to them.
Ask the average local Cantonese speaker whether they prefer the traditional characters to the simplified ones and almost every one of them will state a preference for their own complex ones. Most will even claim that the traditional characters are more beautiful.
But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And this is an issue that goes well beyond emotional aesthetics.
Watch: Cafe in Beijing offers discounts for customers writing traditional Chinese characters
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