Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Sino-Plutonic Papers, 27 (August 3 1, 199 1)
In this initial stage of language reform, attention seems to
have been centered on the reduction of the number of strokes, It
is hoped that the problems brought up in this paper will lead to
more serious discussion about the characters not as separate
individual entities, but as members of an internally consistent
system.
NOTES :
*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
Conference on Linguistic ~odernization and Language-Planning in
~hinese-Speaking Communities, in Honolulu, Hawaii, September 7-13,
1983. I am grateful for the comments that I received at the
Conference, though I didn't necessarily incorporate all of them in
this version. I would also like to thank the editor of this volume '
for his valuable editorial comments.
1. Confer Chen (1977).
2. For controversies over simplified characters as an
educational tool, see Cheng (1977 and 1978); Tzeng, Garro and Hung
(1977); Tzeng, Hung and Garro (1978); and Leong (1977).
3. The author has since been visiting PRC and reading
newspapers and books printed in simplified characters. He perhaps
would not be as qualified to make such judgments today as he was in
1983 when this paper was first written.
4. According to Guangmina Ribao, May 10, 1973, the total
number of simplified characters in the General List is 2,238. But
my count has one more.
5. For a classification of the 268 runusualr characters, see
~ppendix.
6. There are other similar cases, such
$ ; [ail $?& ; [kai]&; [wei]&& ; and [hua]
. But as they do not involve commonly
th'e first one in each of the multi-member sets, we will not discuss
them.
Chen, Virginia Wei-chien (1977). 'Simplified Characters in the
People's Republic of China, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan,' JCLTA
12:1.63-77.
Cheng, Chin-chuan (1977). 'In Defense of Teaching Simplified
Characters,'JCL 5.314-341.
Cheng, Chin-chuan ( 1978) . ' Simplified vs . Complex Characters :
Socio-Political consideration^,^ JCL 6.272-286.