11. Traditional and Simplified Chinese Characters

There are two sets of Chinese characters: traditional Chinese characters ( 繁體字 faan4⠢ tai2⠜ zi6⠤) and simplified Chinese characters ( 簡體字 gaan2⠜ tai2⠜ zi6⠤).

The set of traditional Chinese characters are basically the original characters. In the set of simplified Chinese characters, many of the original characters have been simplified in their strokes or structure, or have undergone other changes, such as being merged with other characters.

Traditional Chinese characters are commonly taught and used in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, whereas simplified Chinese characters are commonly taught and used in places like China, Singapore and Malaysia.

In this book, we use traditional Chinese characters. If you want to learn simplified Chinese characters, you can convert the characters in this book to simplified Chinese characters using the following tool.

Google Translate: Chinese (Traditional) to Chinese (Simplified)

You can use Google Translate to convert traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters.