Writing - Simplified vs Traditional

Chinese characters can be classified into a few groups, depending on how they are derived from. This information is only important when you are going to sit for Chinese linguistic examination. Thus, it will not be discussed in this site to avoid overwhelming the learners.

However, it is useful to know one group of those classification, the "pictographs", in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes.

        Examples of pictographs

We can see that how the Chinese characters evolved through few thousand years. 

Currently there are 2 types of Chinese characters being used worldwide, which are the traditional and simplified characters. As its name suggests, simplified characters are designed to make it easier to learn and write. However, simplified version will loose its pictograph feature. 

Simplified Chinese characters are used mainly in China, Singapore & Malaysia while the traditional characters are used in Taiwan & Hong Kong. For western countries, it depends on where the Chinese there originate from.

Chinese language learners should be thankful that simplified Chinese characters exist, as it will save them a lot of effort while learning how to write them. 

Examples of simplified vs traditional Chinese characters:

龟 vs 龜

车 vs 車

云 vs 雲

丽 vs 麗

发 vs 發

机 vs 機

睡 vs 睡

北 vs 北

As the last 2 examples shown here, simplified and traditional version for some words can be the same.

All of the Chinese characters in this website will be written in simplified version.