Seniscent Scribbles

Historically (and anthropologically?), systems of writing were said to have been powerful mechanics of communications. With the advent of an intelligible orthography that extended beyond the iconic pictures, people were able to communicate effectively across great distances and times. It is for this reason alone that we are still able to enjoy the "magic" of Shakespeare, the wisdom of Confucius, and the poetry of Rilke. And yet, times do change, as do the pens that record them.

Most of Europe has naturally developed its "latin" alphabet (the one I'm using now), direct from the original latin script (which by now carries some significant differences). During WWII, Germany switched alphabets from a relatively indigenous one to a more latinate one. (For those curious, google Suetterlin or "Sütterlin".) More recently, Germany also experienced a spelling reform, aimed to improve general spelling and literacy. (How well it's worked is yet to be shown.) Even now, there exists a society calling for spelling reform in English, arguing that our traditional spellings are too antiquated and cause more confusion than necessary, especially for those whose mother tongues are phonetic (as Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, etc). Personally, I think we owe our historical spelling retention to our former French masters.

Apparently, there's currently a petition asking the UN to *not* ban Traditional Chinese(now TC) to be totally replaced by Simplified Chinese(SC) in 2008.
Petition link: here
For those who read Chinese: here and here

The main argument in support of TC basically relies on the idea that [1]information is lost when TC text is converted to SC, since SC is more phonetic, and therefore loses its semantic value. Well, that, and the whole [2]"but we've been using it for thousands of years! We can't quit now!"

As for argument [1], I'm inclined to agree - to a point. If we look at our humble English example of homophones, we'll see that "there", "their" and "they're" mean different things, and are spelt accordingly. But that hasn't stopped each and every generation from stumbling across this spelling division, nor has it critically changed the intelligibility of a sentence in such a way as to be misunderstood. The reason here is that these three are different parts of speech, and would thus be placed in different parts of the sentence. If I were to replace all three with a new spelling of "th%r", you would still understand. Observe:

"Th%r not looking for th%r dog over th%r"

(Technically, I cheated, since "they're" is clearly a contraction, and that would still be denoted somehow in any spelling reform. ...like "th%'r" or something.)
Anyway, my point is that despite the loss of direct semantic information from the word, the contextual information is strong enough to be understood. (Case in point: when spoken, the three homophones sound exactly the same, so why should a spelling that reflects speech be any different?)

Similarly, while SC does lose some of its embedded semantic information, the contextual information is strong enough to maintain coherency.

As for argument [2], I think the time argument is particularly weak. It's almost like saying, "well, the girl's lived for 80 years, so she can live another 80 years, right?"

There has been an argument that since the introduction of SC in China, older poetry has become increasingly difficult to understand -- not dissimilar to that of understanding Chaucer in its original form. Personally, I think more of it has to do with the depth of education in general, rather than any inherent flaw in SC.

However, while I personally do have a preference for TC, I don't agree that it should be for daily use. What I would propose, if I cared enough (which I guess would go a bit beyond just blogging about it), is to have SC used in daily routine: newspapers, billboards, magazines, etc. And perhaps restrict the use of TC to specific areas like civil and criminal law, historical poetry, and maaaaybe novels. Areas in which such precise wording would be necessary. In the case of novels, I'd think it'd be up to the choice of the author, enriching the forum of Chinese literature.

The only "danger" of encouraging SC is the obscurity of finer nuances in TC, which is happening anyway as the vernacular translations of characters obscure the archaic definitions of older logographs. But those older meanings are preserved in other texts that help interpret and even translate older texts from earlier eras.

To me, choosing between the two scripts is almost like choosing between printing and writing. Both have their styles and identities, and, I feel, both are useful in different ways. It's only a shame that the issue has to be clouded by political and geographical biases.