Traditional Chinese characters

Traditional Chinese characters are a special way of writing Chinese languages. They have been used for many years and are still important today. In places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, people mainly use these traditional characters to write and read.

These characters were used widely until the middle of the 20th century. After that, some countries started using simpler versions of the characters. This made some people call the older, more complex ones "traditional" to tell them apart from the new, simpler ones.

Today, traditional characters are used in many Chinese communities around the world, except in places like mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, where simpler characters are used. Even in other languages like Japanese and Korean, similar characters are used, though they sometimes look a little different.

Terminology

Traditional characters have different names in the Chinese-speaking world. In Taiwan, they are called 正體字 (zhèngtǐzì), meaning "orthodox characters." Other names include 繁體字 (fántǐzì), meaning "complex characters," 老字 (lǎozì), meaning "old characters," and 全體字 (quántǐzì), meaning "full characters." These names help people tell traditional characters apart from simplified characters.

Some people think calling them "complex" isn’t fair because they are the original standard forms. Others feel it isn’t right to call them "standard" since many Chinese speakers use simplified characters instead. Traditional characters can also be called "proper characters" (正字 or 正寫), while simplified characters are sometimes called 簡筆字 (jiǎnbǐzì) or 減筆字 (jiǎnbǐzì), meaning "simplified-stroke characters" or "reduced-stroke characters."

Use by region

Further information: Written Chinese § Evolution

Traditional Chinese characters first appeared around 200 BCE during the Han dynasty and became stable by the 5th century. Today, most Chinese text in mainland China uses simplified characters, but traditional characters are still used for style, commerce, and on older buildings.

In places like Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, traditional characters are still the norm. Singapore switched to simplified characters in 1969, but traditional characters are still seen in names and some publications. In the Philippines, many Chinese schools and newspapers still use traditional characters. In North America, Chinese communities often use traditional characters on signs and notices.

Use on computers

Main article: Chinese character encoding

See also: Han unification

Main article: Chinese input methods

Further information: List of CJK fonts

Traditional Chinese characters were often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which preferred traditional forms. Today, the Unicode standard is the most popular way to encode Chinese text, treating both simplified and traditional characters equally.

There are many input method editors to help write Chinese characters on computers. Some characters, like certain dialectical variants, exist in Unicode but might not be easy to type with every input method. For example, a special Shanghainese character can be used instead of the standard Chinese word "ma."

Typefaces often use TC to show they use traditional Chinese characters and SC for simplified Chinese characters. The Noto typeface family includes special fonts for traditional characters used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Most Chinese webpages now use Unicode. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggests using the language tag zh-Hant for traditional characters. ISO 15924 uses Hant for traditional Chinese and Hntl for mixes of traditional Chinese and Latin letters, like in Taiwanese Hokkien.

Comparison with other scripts

In the Japanese writing system, there are traditional forms called kyujitai, which were later simplified to create shinjitai. These traditional forms are mostly the same as the traditional characters used in Chinese, with only small differences in style. Some characters not on the jōyō kanji list are usually printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. There are also special characters called kokuji, which were created in Japan and not borrowed from China.

In the Korean writing system, hanja were mostly replaced by hangul in South Korea and completely replaced in North Korea. These hanja characters are mostly the same as traditional Chinese characters, with minor style differences. Like in Japan, Korea also has its own unique characters known as gukja.

Traditional Chinese characters are also used by some non-Chinese groups. For example, the Maniq people in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write the Kensiu language.