3.1 Chinese

Two Chinese writing systems are used today--Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Their ideographs originated in China thousands of years ago.

Used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Traditional Chinese has approximately 50,000 characters. Many of the older and more complex characters are still used today. Figure 3-1 shows Traditional Chinese characters representing the word "China."

Figure 3-1 Traditional Chinese character representing the word "China"

Used in the People's Republic of China (PRC), Simplified Chinese is a subset of the characters in Traditional Chinese. In 1955, the PRC government started eliminating and simplifying some ideographs by reducing the number of strokes needed to render a character. The Simplified Chinese character set is now simpler and smaller. Figure shows Simplified Chinese characters representing the word "China."

Figure 3-2 Simplified Chinese character representing the word "China"