Support Traditional Chinese!
UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) announced to abolish the use of Traditional Chinese and stick to the use Simplified Chinese from 2008.
Is it another "cultural castration" or "cultural revolution" against the foundation of Asian culture?
No matter what the initial intention is, it is going to cause a cultural disaster!
Traditional Chinese is one of the most important legacies of Chinese Culture, or of the world.
The issue is not, and should not be, political but cultural.
Simplified Chinese may have simplified written characters in order to facilitate acquisition of language and to reduce population of illiteracy, but it alo simplifies the history that has been nourished and developed in the language itself. The "simple" form makes the language more accessible perhaps, but it results in an irrecoverable separation of the language from its own history.
Simplified characters are signs that have been separated from their objects, their signifieds, because in simplified forms we can hardly see how these words were created, in other words, it is never clear to us how these words are shaped and conceptualized.
Traditional Chinese preserves shapes, sounds, sides, and, most important of all, traces of the process of civilization. Every character conveys visual and audial imageries, through which we are allowed to see how ancestors perceived and understood the world.
Language in all forms should be preserved not simply because it is a tool of communication but because it is an artistic representation of human life.
Please follow the link below to read a petition in support of Traditional Chinese,
http://www.gopetition.com/region/237/8314.html
I read the Taiwanese news and it says that abolishing the use of traditional Chinese of UNESCO is just a rumor.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the news, this rumor has been spread years, but the organization has not even bothered to explain or clarify. It has no meaning to abolish the traditional Chinese because the simple Chinese is the only Chinese accepted by UNESO in the past 50 years, and for the future I believe.
For the younger generation in China, they don't care about how the words are shaped and conceptualized.They never been told so they don't think about it. For the non Chinese speakers, this issue is even more irrelevant to them. Imaging that the same situation happens in a remote island, what will we act? I think most people will only say, oh! what a shame, and do nothing.
It really frustrats me that we might lose the beautiful and meaningful traditional Chinese one day. When the words go, the culture die. Maybe we will see the Traditional Chinese Department which study the words and the culture in the future. :P
Sorry for such a long comment, just feel powerless.
Dear Yushan, thanks for the comment! I tried to search any related reports from UN when I first saw the petition weeks ago but found none. At that time, if my memory does not fail me, there were both traditional and simplified chinese on UN homepage, but I can only find the simplified one today. (Maybe my memory is poor, as I should remember that Taiwan does not even have UN membership, and it is unlikely for them to maintain a webpage in traditional chinese.)
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, there are a lot more non-chinese speaking people signing up the petition than we think. I suppose people who knows a bit about the differences between the two systems do care about the issue and show their sympathy. That also means, we shouldn't feel powerless at any time, remember what our national flag even in Fiesta? Even a little effort makes difference.
Perhaps, it's a very good opportunity for us traditional chinese users to think more seriously about this invaluable asset, about its uses and its preservation.
The increasing demand of literacy in simplified chinese is irresistable, I understand, as China's getting an unprecedented importance in world economy. However, preservation of culture should be considered outside pragmatic reasons, I think.
When we start thinking about what a certain culture is like, it's gone already. We don't want to see that happening to our language.
I am getting more conscious than ever about my own writing in chinese nowadays, not a single simplified character is allowed in my diary or notes. : )