Comments on: Obscure Characters

By: Pinyin news » Blog Archive » UN to drop traditional Chinese characters: report

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:30:10 +0000

[...] Keywords » Obscure Characters Says: March 27th, 2006 at 9:31 pm [...]

By: LittlePo

LittlePo — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:21:11 +0000

Right now all the documents are digital, and as charaters in simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese is a one to many mapping. It’s nicer to type in traditional charaters and convert them into simplified version if needed. I don’t know whether simplified Chinese is indeed easy to learn because I am from Taiwan and of course I learned traditional Chinese. And my American friends have two sides of opinion, some think traditional charaters make more sense and when you see a new charater, it’s easier to guess what it means. some just complain traditional characters take them too much time to write.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 04:40:33 +0000

My daughter changed her Chinese name from 季芊芊 to 白青禾. Fortune tellers probably make a good buck off this naming business. Of course they tell you that it is more than just the number of strokes in the character that is important. They look at the ‘pa tz’-eight factors (year, month, and time of birth). Also, each character represents one of the five elements. Somehow they try to convince you that they are balancing the characters in her name with the child’s ‘pa tz.’

By: Scott Sommers

Scott Sommers — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:03:41 +0000

I was wondering about this. My students almost all use Western style names in class, but when we invigilate official exams, the lists we use to check attendance sometimes has the strangest characters on them. It is not unusual for the school computer to be unable to print them and for the proctors to have to guess whether or not the student is the correct person.

By: The View from Taiwan

The View from Taiwan — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

[IMG] Kerimblogs on Chinese names: In Taiwan it is not uncommon for someone to change the character used to write their name as a means of averting a streak of bad luck. Although sometimes people will actually change the pronunciation of their names, more often they will simply find