Dear CAIS families,
Last May at the State of the School address, I remarked that
a discussion about the transition from traditional to simplified Chinese
characters at CAIS was long overdue.
Over the summer I was rummaging around the attic of an old house of mine
in Madison, Wisconsin, and I came across a paper on the topic of Chinese script
reform that I wrote as a first year graduate student at the University of
Wisconsin in 1990 (the same year my son Joe was born—he’s now a college
senior).
Re-reading the paper, I was struck by a number of things; one
of them was the inaccessibility of academic writing, or at least my academic
writing. The assumed audience for this
paper was Chinese linguists who were knowledgeable about and interested in orthography. But for the average reader, this paper is
like a non-narcotic tranquilizer—I really hope that over the past 21 years, my
writing has become a little more relevant and accessible. A more gratifying thought that I had as I re-read
the paper was that the topic, abstruse as it was at the time, has now become
relevant to a much larger group of readers who, while not Chinese
orthographers, are certainly not average:
CAIS parents. Where else could I
go and be part of a community of adults who not only are interested in the
traditional vs simplified character discussion, but actually have skin in the
game?
So I am kicking off that long overdue, open discussion about
the transition from traditional to simplified characters by putting a PDF copy of
the 1990 paper here. It explains the
principles and rules employed by the mainland Chinese linguist who simplified
the Chinese script in 1956. The paper is
very wonky—don’t say I didn’t warn
you. But for those of you who care to
wade through it, I think you’ll find that the move from traditional, full form
characters to simplified characters was not, as it has been mischaracterized, a
disrespectful break from cultural tradition.
Rather, it was a well-thought-out transition that respected the history
of the language and the integrity of the script.
Best,
Jeff
Click here to read the paper.
