Chinese traditional characters: worth learning? - Page 2

On November 02 2009 08:00 McFly wrote:


You do realize you said this to a Chinese person? And your example is just proving our point.

On November 02 2009 08:00 McFly wrote:


You do realize you said this to a Chinese person? And your example is just proving our point.

On November 02 2009 08:03 rauk wrote:


im taiwanese, so yeah.....? it shows that few would think that simplified character 开is the traditional 開, ie, that simplified to traditional is hard, so i fail to see how that proves your point (which was simplified -> traditional = 1a2a3aezpz).

On November 02 2009 08:05 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:


Uh, it makes perfect sense to me, since ou can see the 开 in the traditional.

On November 02 2009 08:03 rauk wrote:


im taiwanese, so yeah.....? it shows that few would think that simplified character 开is the traditional 開, ie, that simplified to traditional is hard, so i fail to see how that proves your point (which was simplified -> traditional = 1a2a3aezpz).

The high ratio achieved by Simplified characters are by force. Red guards ransacked homes, persecuting teachers and took part in other violent activities.[44] One example is the faculties at Nankai University who were beaten and publicly reviled. Some were murdered. Many faculty families were left homeless.[45] In 1966 universities were even shut down to allow students to participate in the Cultural revolution. Traditional literature were also halted.[46] In just one month between November 9 and December 7, 1966 Red guard member Tan Hou-lan (譚厚蘭) burned 2,700 traditional books.[47]

On November 02 2009 08:12 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Though I'm usually a proponent of Wikipedia, this particular one is awful. Take a look at one of the Pro-Traditional points:



What does that have to do with anything lol?

The high ratio achieved by Simplified characters are by force. Red guards persecuted teachers and took part in other violent activities in opposition to traditional characters.[44] One example is the faculties at Nankai University who were beaten, killed and publicly reviled. In 1966 universities were even shut down to allow students to participate in the Cultural revolution. Traditional literature were also halted.[46] Example: between November 9 and December 7, 1966 Red guard member Tan Hou-lan (譚厚蘭) burned 2,700 traditional books.[47]

This has to be one of the most stupid and pointless article on Wiki. The whole thing is filled with stuff like "he said", "she said", manufactured facts, brain-dead logic, politically motivated statements, while putting little effort into establishing facts. Does "...claim that the PRC government was politically motivated to simplify this character, to devalue..." sound NPOV to anyone, at all?

Then there's the whole section about literacy, while showing zero proof that writing system is even related to literacy rate at all (Niger and France have the same official language, so they should have the same literacy rate, right?) This whole section doesn't deserve to exist, whichever side you might "pro".

Next comes the "dry goods" vs "fuck goods" debacle, cited as evidence that merging multiple characters into one confuses people--so, it would have been OK if someone had translated the traditional "幹" (do, perform) into "fuck" on product packaging? It only shows how bad the translator is at English, but not how simplified characters are misleading. Being one of the working languages of UN, and used by more than a billion people daily, I'd wager simplified Chinese can make a distinction between "dry" and "fuck", thank you.

And there's the gem in section "Symbolism conflict". Under "Pro-simplified", bullet 1: "...traditional characters can often be identified as not belonging to China..."; bullet 2: "...simplified characters is far from belonging to mainland China only"; bullet 3: "It's no longer the case that everything in simplified Chinese is made in mainland China...". I can't tell which side of the debate these bullets are "pro-"ing, hell, they don't even agree with each other.

Similar problem in section "Ratio of current usage or pragmatism of the choice between the two systems" (way to make a section title, BTW), under "Pro-simplified", bullet 1: "traditional Chinese ... used by only some 50 million people"; bullet 2: "...used by just over 30 million people". What's more, the "50" and "30" are nicely italicized in case readers might miss the glaring inconsistency. Right after that, under "Pro-traditional", there's the story of Red Guards beating up or murdering people, burning books, etc. Ok, Red Guards bad, I get it. But does it prove the point "The high ratio achieved by Simplified characters are by force"? I don't see it. Relying on ambiguous terms like "Traditional literature" or "traditional books" doesn't do the trick, sorry.

There's a NPOV notice at the top of the page, but it'd be more fitting if it were a "The non-stupidity of this article is disputed" tag, because throughout the whole article, regardless of which side is being "pro-"ed, arguments are either bogus, or badly presented. It's not a neutrality issue, it's a competency issue. We'd be doing readers a service by deleting this article altogether, because it'd be one fewer way to waste readers' time.

The majority of the contents here are old. You can ask anyone on the street and they can get you way better contents except there is no references. If you can find a less-stupid article out there, let us know.

On November 02 2009 08:18 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
No, what it is is shifting the focus of the article (if it even had one to begin with) into a political debate about communism.

This guy in the discussion puts it very well:



And also

On November 02 2009 08:27 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Yes, we are. Read the second quote - asking someone on the street, or in our case, a random internet thread - seems to be yielding more coherent statements than this particular article. At least we are providing relevant details as opposed to attacks on a political system/self-contradictory "facts"/just plain retarded shit.

The majority of the contents here are old. You can ask anyone on the street and they can get you way better contents except there is no references. If you can find a less-stupid article out there, let us know.