Chinese Character Reform
The Chinese Character Reform (Traditional Chinese, 漢字改革; Simplified Chinese, 汉字改革; pinyin, hànzì gǎigé) covers proposals and steps to address Chinese issues written, including simplified character forms (Chinese: 简体字), Chinese romanization (Chinese: 汉字拉丁化) and the use of standard characters (in Chinese: 规范汉字) that took place in the second half of the century XX before and during the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
According to Mao Zedong's words in 1951 Chinese writing "must be reformed, follow the direction towards phonetization common to all languages of the world". From this current would arise the systematic simplification of the Chinese characters and the elaboration of lists of standard characters eliminating the variants. Similar measures had been enacted in Japan, the shinjitai (新字体, shinjitai?). In places where the simplified characters were not implemented there was also some process of standardization that gave rise to the modern "traditional characters" (referred to in Chinese as: 繁体字, "complex characters" or sometimes 正体字 "correct characters"). The development of the hanyu pinyin romanization system
Historical background
During the first half of the XX century, many Chinese intellectuals, given the relative backwardness of China compared to the Western powers, defended the need to undertake profound reforms in Chinese society. One of the objectives of the reformist yearnings was precisely the language.
On the one hand, classical Chinese (文言?, wényánP) was a totally different language from the vernacular (白話, báihuà) that was spoken, and the idea, encouraged by intellectuals such as Hu Shih, that a new standard language based on the spoken language should be defined, was imposed. Parallel to this defense of a national language closer to everyday language, there were also intellectuals who adopted an even more radical position, defending that the writing system itself should be abolished or reformed. Some, like the writer Lu Xun, came to propose the adoption of the Latin alphabet for the Chinese language. For these intellectuals, the Chinese writing system, with its thousands of characters, was an obstacle to Chinese technological progress, since children in school had to invest many years of study to master the writing system, which it would have been a reason for delay in learning other disciplines.
Despite the impetus of the revolutionary ideas of the time, the possibility of romanizing the language never seemed to come true since, on the one hand, it would have made those who could already read and write illiterate, who would have had to learning a new system, and, on the other, the attachment of the Chinese to their writing system made it difficult to accept such a radical reform. This second reason is perhaps the most important, because in Vietnamese and Korean, the other two languages that were written (at that time) with Chinese characters, the use of the characters was abolished, almost entirely, throughout the century. XX century.
Faced with the radical path followed by the Vietnamese and Koreans, both China and Japan would end up imposing the more conservative idea of gradually modifying the writing system, replacing the normative forms of some very frequently used characters with simpler ones. This process has been called Chinese character simplification (漢字簡化／汉字简化, hànzì jiǎnhuà).
The first attempt to introduce simplified characters was made by the Kuomintang (KMT) government in 1935, which promulgated an official list of 324 modified characters. In that list were already some popular character forms that would be adopted again by the PRC years later (such as 个 by 個, or 还 for 還, for example). However, society generally rejected the adoption of these new characters and a year later the Government reversed course and withdrew the reform.
After World War II, Japan decided to officially adopt simplified forms for a considerable number of characters. However, the Japanese simplifications have been much more moderate than those that would eventually be carried out by the Communist Party of China.
The simplification of characters in the People's Republic
After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong in 1949, the new communist government, while continuing the KMT policy of promoting a national language based on the Pekingese dialect, resumed the plan to reform the script. In 1955, the Chinese Congress for Script Reform (中國文字改革委員會?, Zhōngguó Wénzì Gǎigè WèiyuánhuìP), from which a committee would emerge that a year later, in 1956, would publish the first list of characters reformed that established new normative forms for 515 characters and 54 character components. This list of characters was called the Chinese Character Simplification Plan (漢字簡化方案, hànzì jiǎnhuà fāng' àn). The simplified characters were criticized and rejected during the opening period of the Hundred Flowers, but in the 1960s, with the radicalization of revolutionary politics and the fervor of attacks on ancient culture, the use of the new ones would prevail. characters. Many more characters would be added to the 1956 list in 1964, with the publication of the General Table of Simplified Characters (簡化字總表, jiǎnhuà zì zǒng biǎo). This reform process was not yet considered complete. In fact, it is often said that there were those who saw the simplification as a provisional phase prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet with the hànyǔ pīnyīn system.
The simplification process continued, and in 1977 the Second Simplification Plan for Chinese Characters (Draft) (第二漢字簡化方案（草案） was published. , dì'èr hànzì jiǎnhuà fāng'àn [cǎo'àn]). This second part of the reform was not successful, and in 1986 the last revision of the system was made, in which the second plan was completely abolished, and some minimal changes were made to the 1964 list.
This latest revision from 1986 is the one currently in force in the People's Republic of China, except for Hong Kong and Macao.
Content of the reform
With the exception of Chinese, most of the world's languages use a phonetic script. In order to develop a romanized script, the Chinese reformers have studied the problems that it would entail including in terms of ligatures, participles and homophones based on the scheme of the Hanyu Pinyin System. The Chinese Language Modernization Society (中国语文现代化学会) has done a lot of work to achieve a second script for Chinese (一语双文). However, the opinions and actions of these people to romanize the Chinese script were not accepted by the Chinese government and people.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a series of reforms and fixes were made to the Chinese characters. These included:
| Subjects | Measures taken |
|---|---|
| Romanization of Chinese (in Chinese: ) | Hanyu Pinyin System (in Chinese: ☰) |
| Fill shapes (in Chinese): Instant) |
|
| Fix pronunciations (in Chinese): ▪) | Table of different pronunciation words in pŭtōnghuà (in Chinese: أعربية) |
| Fix meanings (in Chinese): rogation) | Publications of character dictionaries (in Chinese: ) and word dictionaries (in Chinese: ), such as Ciyuan, Cihai, Xinhua Dictionary, Modern Chinese Dictionary, Great Chinese Dictionary of Characters, Great Chinese Dictionary of Words, etc. |
| Quantitative analysis (in Chinese): oriented) | Word frequency statistics, list of common words, etc., for example the list of common words in modern Chinese (in Chinese: 日本語 ・) and the list of common words in modern Chinese (in Chinese: أعربية). |
| Simplification (in Chinese): Русский) |
|
| Variants (in Chinese): precipitous coherence) | First Character Variant Management Tables (in Chinese: oriented oriented oriented) |
Since the abolition of the second batch of simplified characters in 1986, the Chinese government has adopted a language policy of maintaining the status quo and seeking continuity and stability of language usage. Also in terms of word usage, some character variants have been restored.