1.8 Traditional Characters You Will Also Meet — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the traditional forms of five of the commonest characters in the language. Say where in the world, and in what kinds of text, you will meet traditional characters. Explain why one simplified character can stand for two or more traditional ones, and give three examples. Say why converting simplified into traditional is a matter of knowing the word rather than the character. Prerequisites : 1.7, where the four methods of simplification were taken apart. Go back to it if you need to: 1.7 Characters . The previous lesson looked at the reform from the simplified side. This one looks at what you will meet, because a learner who can read only one of the two scripts is shut out of a great deal. Traditional characters are the everyday writing of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, of many Chinese-speaking communities overseas, and of almost everything printed in Chinese before the middle of the twentieth century. On the mainland itself they survive on shop signs, in calligraphy, on brand names and in editions of older literature. Set against that, the idea of leaving them until later does not survive contact with reality, and this course puts both scripts in front of you from the first volume. Where you will meet them There is a measurement behind that decision, and it comes from the material this course is built out of. The sentence collection the examples are drawn from holds 55,691 Chinese sentences contributed by speakers all over the world. Of those, 25,176, which is 45.2 per cent, were written by their contributors in traditional characters, and the simplified forms you read in these lessons were produced by converting them. Nearly half of the sentences in that collection began life in the other script. Every quotation in this lesson prints the original in the reference at the foot of the page, so you can see the pair for yourself rather than taking the claim on trust. The practical consequence is small and worth stating plainly. You should learn to read both and to write one. Choose the script of the place whose Chinese you want, write that one by hand, and let the other one be something your eye recognises. The components are the same, the four devices of lesson 1.5 are the same, the sound families of lesson 1.6 are the same. What differs is a set of shapes, and mostly a set you can predict once you know the four methods. The characters The five you will meet first These five are among the most frequent characters in the language, so their traditional forms are the first ones worth knowing by sight. In the corpus this course measures, 这 is the tenth most frequent character of three thousand four hundred and forty-five, 们 the twelfth, 个 the thirteenth, 会 the twentieth and 说 the thirty-second. Read each pair aloud once, one syllable for the pair. Character (traditional) Meaning How it changed 这 zh zhè （ 這 ） this The movement component is the same in both; the 言 inside it has become 文 , a shape taken from handwriting. 们 zh men （ 們 ） the plural marker on pronouns and on some nouns for people The person component is the same; the door beside it is the one you learned in the last lesson. 个 zh gè （ 個 ） the general counting word Not cut out of 個 : 个 is an old separate way of writing the same word (also written 箇 ), and the reform made it the standard. 会 zh huì （ 會 ） can, to know how to; to meet; a meeting The lid survives; the crowded middle and base were replaced by the simpler 云 (see lesson 1.7). 说 zh shuō （ 說 ） to speak; to say The speech component on the left was shortened; the sound half beside it, which failed to predict the reading, is the same apart from the two strokes on top, and still fails. Two sentences from the corpus, each of which changes several characters at once. Look at the reference for each and count what moved. Chinese English 你们会说英语吗？ [1] Can you all speak English? 我们也喜欢这个。 [2] We also like this. One simplified character, two or more traditional ones Here is the fact that makes conversion interesting, and it is the one part of this subject where a learner can be caught out. The reform sometimes gave one short form to two characters that had been separate, and now and then to three or more. They stood for unrelated words; they were merged because one was a convenient abbreviation for another, or because they sounded the same or nearly so. Going from traditional to simplified is therefore nearly always safe, because several things become one and nothing is lost that you needed. Going the other way is a genuine decision, because one shape has to become one of two or more, and only the word tells you which. The clearest case is the character for hair. Simplified 发 stands for two traditional characters: 發 fā, to send out, to issue, to happen, and 髮 fà, the hair of the head. They are not related, they are not pronounced the same, and they were never the same character. In this course's sentence pool, 425 sentences containing simplified 发 have 發 in their traditional original and 62 have 髮 , so both are common enough to meet in a week of reading. Character (traditional forms) Meaning How you tell them apart 发 zh fā · fà （ 發 · 髮 ） fā: to send out, to issue, to happen; fà: hair of the head 發 is fā, to send out; 髮 is fà, hair. The reading differs, so knowing the word settles both the sound and the shape. 干 zh gān · gàn （ 乾 · 幹 ） gān: dry; gàn: to do, to work 乾 is gān, dry; 幹 is gàn, to do. A third word, gān as in 干涉 gānshè , to interfere, keeps the plain form in both scripts. 只 zh zhǐ · zhī （ 只 · 隻 ） zhǐ: only; zhī: the counting word for animals and for one of a pair 只 is zhǐ, only; 隻 is zhī, the counting word. Here one of the two traditional forms is the simplified shape itself. 面 zh miàn （ 面 · 麵 ） face, side, surface; flour, noodles 面 is face or side; 麵 is flour and noodles. The hardest of the five: the reading is identical, only the meaning separates them, and unlike the storm form of 台 below, the noodle form turns up in many words. 台 zh tái （ 臺 · 颱 ） a p