When you browse some international websites these days, you might notice that there are two language options for seemingly the same language: Chinese. Why are there two different ways of writing one language? How does it work?

To understand why it's possible to write the same word or "character" in two different ways, you first need to understand how Chinese characters are constructed. For a more detailed explanation of that, please refer to our past issues. Suffice it to say that they have evolved over millennia into a plethora of writing styles that differ from each other at least as much as the modern dichotomy of Simplified and Traditional. They are made possible because, unlike English, Chinese characters are made out of “strokes” rather than letters. These strokes may be altered or rearranged for simplicity or ease of writing to create new writing styles. However, that does not mean you can pass off a wrong word as a "new style" that is simply a mistake.

Now, regarding our two protagonists, Simplified and Traditional Chinese: the former is used by most Chinese speakers, while the latter is primarily used in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan Province. These areas did not undergo the reforms to the writing system that occurred on the mainland, thereby retaining the old system of writing.

The divergence between these two writing styles is apparent in many complicated words. For example, the word for China in Simplified Chinese is 中国, while in Traditional Chinese it is 中國.

The introduction of Simplified Chinese has been a boon for students in China. Coupled with pinyin, the new system lowered the barriers to learning how to write Chinese characters and sped up the national effort to eradicate so-called "word-blind", i.e. illiterate people.