Simplified and Traditional Chinese Characters: Top List

If you want to learn Chinese, the traditional Chinese characters might be one of the biggest challenges that you have to overcome. What makes it even trickier, there are two major systems used in Chinese speaking countries: Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Although Simplified Chinese is a revision from Traditional Chinese, they may be quite different in some situations. Thanks to the internet, Native Chinese speakers might be able to recognize both systems, it is still hard for them to know how to accurately write the one they are not used to if they don’t learn it.

In this article, we are going to introduce some basic information about these two systems, how they are different from each other and also introduce some useful characters.

t is said that Traditional Chinese could be traced back to two thousand years ago. The very first concept of Chinese characters is to express the meaning by paintings or figures. Then six types of characters creating rules are developed that eventually frame the foundation of Chinese characters. Simplified Chinese is created more recently. At that time, since education was not popular, traditional Chinese was used mostly in between governors and businessmen. To help more people learn the characters, the rules of Simplified Chinese is published in 1964. In fact, not all traditional Chinese characters have simplified versions, of which only about 2,200 commonly used or complex characters are simplified.

Here are some examples of the differences:

1. Love: 愛 (Traditional) – 爱 (Simplified)

The most discussed example of traditional and simplified Chinese is Love. In the traditional Chinese character of love, there is a ‘心’ (Heart), to express that love comes from your heart. To make it easier to write, the simplified Chinese character of love took the heart away. Some argue that it lost its original meaning after being simplified.

2. Cloud: 雲 (Traditional) – 云 (Simplified)

This is another example of taking some meaningful parts away. The upper part of the word ‘cloud’ is ‘雨’, which means ‘rain’, while the lower part ‘云‘stands for its pronunciation. The combination gives the word the meaning that it is rain-related. The simplified character of the word takes the rain part away, preserving only the pronunciation of the character.

3. To see/meet: 見 (Traditional) – 见 (Simplified)

In this example, the upper part stands for ‘目’, which means eyes, and the lower part stands for ‘人’, which means people. The combination stands for ‘people seeing things with their eyes’. While the simplified character of ‘見’ only tried to simplify the writing process of the upper part ‘目’, it is also sometimes discussed that it lost its original meaning since the upper part doesn’t stand for ‘eyes’ anymore.

Traditional vs Simplified Characters: Where are They Used?

Due to political choices, traditional Chinese characters are now used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau and some Southeast Asian Chinese communities, while simplified Chinese characters are used in the rest of Chinese-speaking countries, for example, China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

100 Commonly Used Traditional Chinese Characters

Chinese Characters Are Just the First Step

With two systems of characters, it could be confusing which to learn or use.

If you are interested in how Chinese characters are historically formed, or you are interested in cultures in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, traditional Chinese characters might be a better choice for you. On the other hand, simplified Chinese is more commonly used in the world and is easier to learn. Thus, if you want a system that could be seen more often, or you want to go to Mainland China or Singapore, simplified Chinese is more suitable for you.

Choosing which system to learn might be troublesome and it is difficult to master both systems. There is no right or wrong about which one to learn. It depends on your goal and motivation for learning. So, let’s start learning with you passion for Chinese!