Full and Simplified Forms for Chinese Characters [Re: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia language]

Wed Jun 16 05:12:33 UTC 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: "Delirium" <delirium at hackish.org>

> Interlanguage links are already done with [[zh-tw:]] and [[zh-cn:]], so
> perhaps we could simply split zh.wikipedia.org into zh-cn.wikipedia.org
> and zh-tw.wikipedia.org, with zh.wikipedia.org being a disambiguating
> portal?  Of course, this is more up to Chinese-speakers than it is to
> myself; just a suggestion that would be consistent with our current
> usage.  Having separate interlanguage links going to one encyclopedia
> that is effectively written in a mixture of two writing systems that are
> often not mutually intelligible is more than a little bit odd.

!!!

A relatively small effort is asked to full-form characters users to get used
to simple forms, and the reverse. If you are a little bit used to it, the
very largest part of simplification is obvious and only few "not obvious"
simplified characters would need a check in a dictionnary. Those two
scripting habits are very far from "two mutually unintelligible languages".
In Mainland China, where I leave now, I do often see full form characters,
for instance in some good and relatively expensive restaurants or hotels. It
looks fancy... Most educated people do know enough of them to be quickly
confortable reading a book in full-forms. On the other hand, simple form
characters are often derivated from the common (and sometime very ancient)
usage in fast hand script and. I know that simple forms hurts the eyes of
some Taiwanese people, and I understand that (I'd be hurted in French
spelling be simplified). But I don't agree with "simple english" comparison.
One can easily write complex sentences using rare words in simple-form,
right ? The difference between zh-tw and zh-cn is much closer to the
difference between en-gb and en-us, and I didn't see any kind of "british
english" wikipedia on my screen.

I don't agree also with the idea of a "tw.wikipedia.org". Full forms are
used in many Chinatowns world wide and is not a specifically Taiwanese
language. In Paris for example there are some Chinese language newspapers
and most of them are in full forms, but the readers are mostly from
Guangdong or such other places in Southern China while only few are from
Taiwan.

What I agree with is that the present choice for chinese wikipedia is far
from perfect. I guess a kind of option that you can change in "your prefs"
would be better : you choose your prefered display and, if a page has the
two versions, you are sent on the one you prefer. I have no idea of the
feasability of such a thing.

Last word : I'm far from a defender of simplified forms, I often think full
forms carry more semantics and phonetics and often have more "qi" (energy)
and harmony, I'd prefer the writing-system reform to have been much softer,
if any.

(gbog)