Chinese language

Simplified Chinese

10/05/2010 Chinese language

Chinese has two main character sets: traditional and simplified. Most of the simplified Chinese characters used now are due to the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the simplification of Chinese characters has its origins long before the formation of the PRC in 1949. When Chinese is written in cursive text, there is almost always some simplification of characters. This has been true since as early as the Qin Dynasty (221 – 206 BC). The People’s Republic of China announced its first two lists of official simplified characters in 1956 and 1964. You can see from this newspaper that traditional characters were …