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), which means "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 began around 200 BCE during the Han dynasty. Today, most Chinese text in mainland China uses simpler characters, but traditional characters are still used for style, on older buildings, and in business.

In places like Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, traditional characters are the usual way to write. Singapore changed to simpler characters in 1969, but you can still see traditional ones in names and some books. In the Philippines, many Chinese schools and newspapers use traditional characters. In North America, Chinese communities often use them 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 once encoded on computers using the Big5 standard. Today, the Unicode standard is the most common way to encode Chinese text. It treats both simplified and traditional characters the same.

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 older forms called kyujitai. These were later made simpler to create shinjitai. The older forms look mostly the same as traditional Chinese characters, with just small style differences. Some characters not on the jōyō kanji list are still printed in their older forms, with a few exceptions. Japan also has special characters called kokuji, which were made in Japan and not taken 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 look mostly the same as traditional Chinese characters, with just small style differences. Like Japan, Korea also has its own unique characters called gukja.

Traditional Chinese characters are also used by some groups who are not Chinese. For example, the Maniq people in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write the Kensiu language.