Brief Introduction of Chinese Language (2)

Chinese characters writing systems

There are two camps of Chinese characters writing systems (Pronunciation the same) , namely the traditional (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau) & simplified (Mainland China). Whereas overseas Chinese communities like Singapore, adopts the simplified Chinese writing, Malaysia adopt mixture of both (Schools using simplified, newspaper some fully simplified, some traditional, and some mixture)

There is such diversity because during the 1950s, the ruler in mainland China (Communist Party) would like to improve the illiteracy rate in China, one of the reasons they found was because there were too many strokes in traditional Chinese Characters, by simplified the keystroke could be helpful in improving the literacy rate in Chinese community.

 For instance the word for horse : Ma3

You can see the traditional writing system indeed involves more keystroke of writing than the simplified one on the right, which said to slow down learning speed during initial school time.

But in modern day, most of the publications were done through digital printing . As such there is some debate calls in China itself to resume the traditional writing system as it carries more meaningful in the character and more artistic. Though it's not materialised yet.

Chinese Publication Format

As Chinese characters is a symbol of itself. The way books publication also different among the regions.

China adopts the same as Western, from left to right.

While Hong Kong & Taiwan mostly are from top to bottom, then from right to left.Eg below a screen shot of Taiwanese Published Book (Even though many press and magazines also starts to change , same left to right),

To give one more example is HuoBi (As we learnt the previous article, I continue use this as example)

In China-style publication would be Huo3 Bi4火币 (left to right)

For Taiwanese, And Hong Kong Publication would : (up down)

Side Note:

They name it as HuoBi also with the hidden meaning- currency that is very popular - "Fire Currency". And same time Huo1 Bi4 in Chinese means currency. So HuoBi Exchange stands some advantage in promoting its service and name to the Chinese audience, very easily get to remember their name!