Monday, April 12, 2010

The Chinese -Simplified- Characters for the word FRIENDSHIP

Colton sent a Chinese tattoo confirmation for his tattoo below:



Hi Colton,

This is a correctly written design of the word "friendship" in simplified Chinese characters (as opposed to traditional Chinese characters).

For a brief intro to the differences between SIMPLIFIED Chinese characters and TRADITIONAL Chinese characters:

    *  Simplified Chinese characters are used in China and Singapore. Traditional characters are used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and will also be seen on most Chinese menus and newspapers found overseas (US, UK, Australia, Canada, etc).

    * Character simplification was part of Mao Ze-Dong's pre-Cultural Revolution in 1960's China, which explains why Hong Kong and Taiwan continue using traditional characters. Because the simplified system is based on the traditional one, many characters are actually exactly the same in both systems.

Source: http://www.learnchineseez.com/learning-chinese-languages/

Therefore, depending on your audience, or if political ideals matter to you, the system of writing does make a difference.

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