Yale University: New policy brings balance to Chinese language study

[Harold Schiffman]

Yale Daily News

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Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2007

New policy brings balance to Chinese language study
By Angel Ayala



The recent decision of the Chinese department to focus more on
traditional characters has caused many negative reactions among
students only exposed to simplified characters. However, most of these
reactions seem to stem out of great misunderstandings of the
traditional script. I would like to highlight the many advantages this
new policy would bring to Yale's Chinese courses, and the reasons for
which I strongly support it. The first point I would like to emphasize
is that traditional characters are not obsolete. The current Chinese
curriculum encourages the idea that simplified characters are the
script for modern Chinese and that traditional is the script of
ancient Chinese, something which should be left for scholars to study
and not "modern" students. This way of thinking does not do justice to
a large portion of the Chinese population. The Chinese in Hong Kong,
Macau, Taiwan and the United States who use the traditional script do
not deserve to be excluded in order to just meet the interests of the
mainland. For modern speakers, traditional Chinese is as valid as
simplified. If we limit our studies to simplified Chinese, we are
separating ourselves from this important part of the Chinese
community, and therefore not getting a complete picture of Chinese
language and culture.

The second point I want to discuss is the phobia of traditional
characters among students of Chinese, many of whom have been led to
believe that the fewer strokes characters have, the easier they are to
learn. As a student of both simplified and traditional Chinese, I can
confidently say this is far from the truth. In my experience, learning
traditional has in some cases been easier than simplified. While I do
not want to advocate one system over the other, I do think traditional
Chinese makes more sense and might help students to learn Chinese
characters more efficiently. I do understand that many students would
not be willing to learn how to write these "complex characters", but
learning to at least recognize them will already benefit learning the
entire Chinese language. Many students also seem to believe that
traditional is very different from simplified, but if they start to
study traditional, they will quickly realize there are many characters
that are completely the same. Those characters that are different
mostly vary in predictable ways. Thus, traditional and simplified
compliment each other, instead of creating many of the difficulties
some students and teachers fear.

The last point I would like to discuss is the political implications
of the traditional versus simplified debate. As much as I wish this
were not the case, many reactions to this issue are due to political
rather than linguistic reasoning. The Chinese people are currently
engaged in a number of political disputes, which I shall not discuss
here. These political issues should not play a part in how we view
traditional Chinese. If the East Asian Languages and Literatures
department focuses more on traditional characters, or at least
provides students with the option of which script they want to learn,
it will encourage a greater unity among the Chinese community. I urge
students and teachers who reject the traditional script for political
reasons to realize that they are creating more divisions in the
Chinese community by encouraging the exclusive use of the simplified
script. Take this new policy as an opportunity to encourage less
animosity among Chinese from different regions.

As much as certain people try to downplay the importance of
traditional characters, all students of Chinese will at some point
have to face the fact that they need to recognize them. All you have
to do to see this is to go to a nearby Chinatown and try to read a
Chinese newspaper — which will be in traditional script. Many also
think that the mainland is completely immune to traditional
characters; in reality, it shows up in many places there, too.
Therefore, if we encourage students to learn to recognize both scripts
from the beginning, we will be doing everyone a favor in the long run.
I encourage students and teachers not to view this new policy as a
punishment, but rather as an opportunity to have a deeper and more
realistic knowledge of the Chinese language.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22700
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