Playtimes HK Magazine Summer 2017 | Page 64

TRADITIONAL CHINESE
SIMPLFIED CHINESE
But before we get to our Chinese lesson , we need a little bit of history here to explain why traditional and simplified characters exist and co-exist . The movement to simplify the characters began in the mid-1930s , gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s , and became official when the People ’ s Republic of China issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents , the first in 1956 and the second in 1964 . This was in a bid to increase the literacy rate in China ; of the 8,105 listed characters , 6,500 are designated as ‘ common ’. This was updated in 2013 with an additional 271characters to reflect new language usage .
Now a little bit of geography – which countries use which characters ?
TRADITIONAL VS SIMPLIFIED
English
Mandarin
Cantonese
Cantonese
Simplified
& spoken
Traditional
& Spoken
Traditional
& Written
No ; none 没有 méi yǒu 冇 mou5 沒有 mut6 jau5 Thanks 谢谢 xiè xie 唔該 m4 goi1 謝謝 ze6 ze6 Know or not
知不知道 zhī bù zhī dào
WHO USES WHAT
Traditional �Hong Kong �Taiwan
識唔識 sik1 m4 sik1
Simplified �China �Singapore �Malaysia
To get a better picture of the Hong Kong education landscape , I spoke to three teachers : Danny Kwan of Dramatic English in Mui Wo ( part of the Kind Hing Trinity Group ); Cathy Zhang , head of Chinese at Chinese International School ; and Jenny Chen , head of Chinese Department at Bradbury ( an ESF school ). I realised that I didn ’ t even know what Holly was learning , so I started by asking her Chinese teacher , Danny , about what form of characters they teach and why .
The school teaches Mandarin as a
知不知道 zi1 bat1 zi1 dou6
not 不是 bú shì 唔係 m4 hai6 不是 bat1 si6 second language subject , and Cantonese as a communicative language – both in traditional characters . Danny believes “ children learn best with authenticity , and authenticity comes with things [ they see as part of their ] daily routine . Since traditional Chinese is widely recognised in Hong Kong , we teach children the same characters , so they can apply what they learn to their daily lives .” This is something that Cathy agrees with : although they teach only Mandarin and traditional characters at the primary level , their secondary students accept both characters . Cathy says “ Learning traditional characters is the tradition in Hong Kong , therefore we choose traditional characters .”
When asked about the pros and cons of traditional and simplified character learning , Cathy thinks that “ In general , children find that traditional characters are easier to recognise as they provide more clues ( semantic meaning ) to decode the character . However , it takes a much longer time to memorise how to write it , as each character has so many strokes . One example is the Chinese character of turtle “ 龜 ”, it looks just like a turtle , but it is not easy to write it in the correct stroke order .”
When asked about switching between the two types of characters , I was
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