The Abolishment of Traditional Chinese by US Was Just A Rumor
Thursday, 19. July 2007, 01:48:34
08/30/2007
Correction:
UN actually didn't announce anything associated with "Abolishing" traditional Chinese at all. I took a second look at Jennifer Ping's online petition and read some Taiwanese bloggers' comments on internet; the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn't confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971. It was my bad; there is no need to sweat since UN only officially uses 6 languages including Arabic, Chinese(simplified), English, French, Russian and Spanish. People who use languages other than those 6 ones are not sweating at all. Why should we feel upset? I had been a little paranoid.
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Correction:
UN actually didn't announce anything associated with "Abolishing" traditional Chinese at all. I took a second look at Jennifer Ping's online petition and read some Taiwanese bloggers' comments on internet; the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn't confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971. It was my bad; there is no need to sweat since UN only officially uses 6 languages including Arabic, Chinese(simplified), English, French, Russian and Spanish. People who use languages other than those 6 ones are not sweating at all. Why should we feel upset? I had been a little paranoid.
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Traditional Chinese characters are beautiful and meaningful, as opposed to Simplified characters; we have the responsibility to continue using them as much as we can - for generations to come. We cannot simply abandon a form of written language because it is too hard for people to learn or there are fewer people using it. Please help us to keep Traditional Chinese characters as popular as Simplified ones and to not let them die over political power struggles. Your support will make great differences. Thank you.
Online petition - Say NO to United Nations' abolishment of Traditional Chinese in 2008
Related links:
When and why did China start Simplified Chinese?
HK activists join fight against UN use of simplified characters
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Some personal thoughts about the debate of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters:
After digesting my husband's comment on this issue: "It is not UN's business to preserve Chinese traditional written language; their job is to make information more accessible to the world.", I found it is very difficult to let people understand the importance of keeping Traditional Chinese continuously written in the future. There is no reference for people who don't know any pictograph written language to imagine how significant to maintain the way ancient Chinese wrote and read as much as we can but not to transform or simplify the way we write just for reducing illiteracy rate.
There is no doubt more than 1.3 billion people in the forth largest county China are using Simplified Chinese; adding up the populations who use Traditional Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries, there would not be more than 40 million people(I guess). It is perfectly understandable for UN and other countries to translate international issues or do business with Simplified Chinese to reach out more Chinese people. What I don't understand is why Traditional Chinese must be abolished with announcement in 2008 even though UN has never officially taken Traditional Chinese as the Chinese written language since 1971 right after Taiwan was kicked out from UN (lost the seat in United Nations) under China's pressure.
I have no problem to learn how to read and write Simplified Chinese(I take it as learning another language skill for becoming more international); what I do have problems with is the recognition of both written Chinese forms is shifting for political reasons but not from a historical stand point, which upsets me emotionally. As a Traditional Chinese enthusiast, I can only hope Traditional Chinese will be able to co-exist with Simplified Chinese as long as it will be possible even though the reality seems to be in favor of Simplified characters.
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WIDGETIZE
Illidan # 4. September 2007, 18:16
Though Emperor Qinshihuang was a tyrant in many aspects during his ruling, he was hardly criticized for his tyranny on the characters, for he united a nation in that iron-handed way.
I am not suggesting SC is better TC. But I strongly advocate unification of official characters. The situation is similar to Chinese dialects. There may be dialects and people who use them. But there must be a standard branch of language for the whole nation to share.
And the character issue within UN is truly political. So handling it politically is not a surprise. Even though TC isn't used in UN, it doesn't mean Chinese people in Taiwan, HK and overseas are prohibited to use TC any longer. Just like the whole nation use Madrine while people in Guangdong and HK can keep using Cantonese.
In a word I hope that when other nations making reference to Chinese, there is only one unified form; at the meantime, Chinese people may still keep using their own favorite forms within their own communities.
Joymeng # 21. September 2007, 00:12
Thank you very much for being very calm on this sensitive subject among your nation, Hong Kong and my country. I totally respect your perspective on using one common language to communicate among different ethnic groups or folks. However, who should be entitled to decide which vocal (or written)languages are only dialects and which one is supposed to be the dominating one; of course, the decision will always be made by whom owns the most political and economical power.
Being a citizen of a smaller country that has been destined to share the similar kind of culture and languages with a much larger nation, we somehow have to struggle with a lot of confusions. As long as Taiwan is a country, I hope people will keep Traditional Chinese characters as the official written language for centuries to come.