Simply Chinese: Recipes from a Chinese Home Kitchen

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favourite language courses spanish french german korean japanese italian chinese russian asl arabic cantonese czech dutch english esperanto hebrew hungarian irish polish portuguese european portuguese swedish tagalog thai turkish vietnamese The 2013 Table of General Standard Chinese Characters contained 45 newly recognized standard characters that were previously considered variant forms, as well as official approval of 226 characters that had been simplified by analogy and had seen wide use but were not explicitly given in previous lists or documents.

I had to really dig deep in the memories and discover the history behind the recipes. I found it quite cathartic," adds Suzie, whose favourite recipes include seafood crispy noodles, Grandad's special steak and her mum's char siu, green bean and egg hash. FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons. Chia, Shih Yar 谢世涯. Xīnjiāpō yǔ zhōngguó tiáozhěng jiǎntǐzì de píng zhì 新加坡与中国调整简体字的评骘[ A Comparative Study of the Revision of Simplified Chinese Characters Proposed by Singapore and China]. Paper presented at The International Conference on Culture of Chinese Character. Convened by Beijing Normal University and Liaoning People Publishing House. Dandong, Liaoning, China. 9-11 Nov 1998 (in Chinese) – via huayuqiao.org. Based on 132 characters and 14 components listed in Chart 2 of the Complete List, the 1,753 derived characters found in Chart 3 can be created by systematically simplifying components using Chart 2 as a conversion table. While exercising such derivation, the following rules should be observed:

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Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters.

The Chinese government has never officially announced the completion of the simplification process after the bulk of characters were introduced by the 1960s. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, a second round of simplified characters was promulgated in 1977—largely composed of entirely new variants intended to artificially lower the stroke count, in contrast to the first round—but was massively unpopular and never saw consistent use. The second round of simplifications was ultimately retracted officially in 1986, well after they had largely ceased to be used due to their unpopularity and the confusion they caused. [5] Either way, it’ll broaden your knowledge and vocabulary, as most of these dictionaries contain additional words and phrases for each character. Read Children’s Books and Parallel Texts in Chinese In places where a particular set is not locally entrenched, such as Europe and the United States, instruction is now mostly simplified, as the economic importance of mainland China increases, and also because of the availability of textbooks printed in mainland China. Teachers of international students often recommend learning both systems. The Chinese language is the group of languages used by Chinese people in China and elsewhere. It forms part of a language family called the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

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The plan seems to have worked. When the simplified writing system began to be taught, China’s literacy rate was around 20%. It’s now estimated to be around 95%.

Before 1956, Chinese was written using only Traditional Characters. At that time, most Chinese people could not read or write at all. The government of the People's Republic of China thought that the Traditional characters were very hard to understand. They also thought that if they made the characters simpler, more people could learn how to read and write. Today, many people in China can read and write with the new Simplified Characters. But what’s the difference between traditional and simplified Chinese? Which is more common? Where in the world are the two used? For example, the character 水 ( shuǐ) – “water” changes to a form of radical: 氵and keeps its meaning. All that being said about traditional characters, the simplified writing system does have a lot of practical value.There are seven Chinese scripts, starting with the four scripts that evolved into today’s traditional Chinese writing: English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead of Chinese characters. A commonly cited example of the irregularity of simplification involves characters that share the "hand" component 又 , which is used in many simplified characters. While there is an observable pattern involving the replacement of 𦰩 with 又 as seen in 漢 → 汉, 難 → 难, 癱 → 瘫, 嘆 → 叹, 灘 → 滩, etc., when observing that 歎 → 叹, 歡 → 欢, 勸 → 劝, 灌 (not simplified) and 罐 (not simplified), an inconsistency arises. This is due to the fact that in the Complete List of Simplified Characters, 漢 → 汉 appears in Chart 1 while 難 → 难 is listed in Chart 2 and 癱 → 瘫 as a derived character in the non-exhaustive list in Chart 3. Therefore, 难 is defined as a 'simplified character component' according to the standard, while 又 is not. Based on 难, 癱 is simplified to 瘫, and 灘 to 滩. Since both 歡 → 欢 and 勸 → 劝 appear in Chart 1, they are not defined as derived characters. There are therefore no characters or components found in Chart 2 usable for derivation of 灌 and 罐. Further investigation reveals that these two characters do not appear in Chart 1 nor in "Series One Organization List of Variant Characters". Thus they remain unchanged from traditional forms in the Common Modern Characters list. Methodology [ edit ] Structural simplification of characters All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Charts 1 and 2 of the 1986 Complete List of Simplified Characters [ zh] (hereafter the Complete List). Chart 1 lists all 350 characters that are used by themselves, and can never serve as 'simplified character components'. Chart 2 lists 132 characters that are used by themselves as well as utilized as simplified character components to further derive other simplified characters. Chart 2 also lists 14 'components' or 'radicals' that cannot be used by themselves, but can be generalized for derivation of more complex characters. Derivation based on simplified character components Chart 3 lists 1,753 characters which are simplified based on the same simplification principles used for character components and radicals in Chart 2. This list is non-exhaustive, so if a character is not already found in Charts 1–3, but can be simplified in accordance with Chart 2, the character should be simplified. Elimination of variants of the same character Series One Organization List of Variant Characters [ zh] accounts for some of the orthography differences in mainland China versus in Hong Kong and Taiwan. These are not simplifications of character structures, but rather reduction in number of total standard characters. For each set of variant characters that share the identical pronunciation and meaning, one character (usually the simplest in form) is elevated to the standard character set, and the rest are obsoleted. After rounds of revisions, by 1993, some 1,027 variant characters have been declared obsolete by this list. Amongst the chosen variants, those that appear in the 1986 Complete List are also simplified in character structure accordingly. Adoption of new standardized character forms New standardized character forms originated from the 1965 Characters for Publishing list containing 6,196 characters. These tend to be vulgar variant forms for most of its characters. The 1988 List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese (hereafter Common Modern Characters) contains 7,000 characters, and replaces the 1965 list. Since the new forms take vulgar variants, many characters now appear slightly simpler compared to old forms, and as such are often mistaken as being structurally simplified. Structural simplification of characters [ edit ] Simplified Chinese is used by both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers living in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore. Most Cantonese speakers in China live in the 广东 / 廣東 (guǎng dōng) province. Because they’re part of Mainland China, they use the simplified writing system. There are many parents and learners who ask me about which Chinese writing system to go with. I always tell the stories of my own two children and my students. Both of my kids started learning Chinese with the traditional Chinese writing system. I read to them with books in traditional Chinese from the start. The books I had at the time were mostly in traditional Chinese. We practiced writing in the traditional form as well. However, I also have introduced simplified Chinese to them as they grow. For my students, I start with one system and I introduce the other system along the way. Adult learners, in general, can transfer their knowledge from one writing system to the other in a short period of time.Traditional Chinese characters are the foundation of Chinese writing. Educated people from China and Taiwan can read both writing systems. As a Chinese language learner, it is helpful to understand traditional Chinese, as it is the foundation of Chinese writing. Understanding the structure of basic Chinese characters will help a learner remember Chinese characters. Again, many of the basic Chinese characters are the same in both traditional and simplified forms. If there is a difference between the simplified form and the traditional form, it is easy to see when you put both writing forms together. Here is an example. Do you see the difference in the character, “mom – mā”? After World War II, Japan also simplified a number of kanji, with the new forms being called shinjitai. The number of characters in circulation was also reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. The overall effect was to standardize teaching and the use of kanji in modern literature and media. Compared to in China, Japanese reform was more limited, only simplifying a few hundred commonly-used characters individually, not with exhaustive systematic rules. Analogous systematic simplifications of non-listed characters ( extended shinjitai) are not approved—instead, standard practice is to use the traditional forms. Simplified Chinese characters are not officially used in governmental and civil publications in Taiwan. However, it is legal to import simplified character publications and distribute them. Certain simplified characters that have long existed in informal writing for centuries also have popular usage, while those characters simplified originally by the Taiwanese government are much less common in daily appearance. If your book contains audio, read and repeat out loud whenever you can. Chinese is a tonal language, and so catching the right pronunciation is crucial. These characters were simplified as left-side radicals but maintained the traditional form when used as other character components or standalone characters.