Some people say that the simplification of Chinese characters destroys traditional Chinese culture, do you think it is justified? Why?

This is not true! From the history of the change of Chinese characters, Chinese characters have always been evolving, especially from complexity to simplicity, which is the direction of development.

In the last century, during the period of script reform, the Committee for the Reform of Chinese Characters was set up by the state, where many masters of the Chinese language and experts in the field of cultural relics and calligraphy, such as Wang Li, were among its members.

It was found that many of the simplified characters were also based on traditional Chinese cursive script, such as the traditional Chinese character for "为", which is the same as today's simplified Chinese character in Sun Jiao Ting's calligraphy. The simplification of Chinese characters was led by the government, which invited Chinese character masters to ****together with innovations based on tradition, the aim was to make writing faster for applications.

What are Chinese characters, and their form and construction

Characters are written symbols that record and convey language, and Chinese characters are written symbols that record and convey the Chinese language, the script of the Han Chinese people. According to their construction and characteristics, Chinese characters can be divided into epigraphic characters, epigraphic characters, and components that have both epigraphic and ideographic characters.

And most of the epigraphic and both epigraphic and ideographic characters are based on pictograms. If we look at the construction characteristics of Chinese characters, they are still basically ideographic. The form of a Chinese character refers to the shape and style of the character; the construction of a Chinese character refers to the basic method of creating characters.

Mastering the form and structure of Chinese characters is the only way to deepen the understanding of the nature of Chinese characters and the development of Chinese characters.

First of all, Chinese characters are not static in history

The earliest prototype of Chinese characters was the oracle bone inscriptions, which were written in the Shang Dynasty 3,000 years ago and are the ancestors of Chinese characters. The characters on the oracle bones were hieroglyphs, totaling about 4,500, of which 1,700 were recognizable. Some of these characters are already very close to modern Chinese characters.

The oracle bone inscriptions continued to develop, and Jinwen, Big Seal Script, Small Seal Script, and Six Kingdoms Script appeared. These scripts had different patterns and were not standardized. It was only when Qin Shi Huang unified China and designated the Small Seal Script as the standard script that Chinese writing gained unity.

After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, the Official Script gradually became the mainstream, and since then the Regular Script was developed. By this time, the Chinese characters had completely shed the pictorial style of the past and became familiar to us.

As you can see, Chinese characters actually go through a process of continuous development and change. The ancients were able to build on their predecessors to create new glyphs, and we can certainly do the same today.

If someone restores traditional Chinese characters in the name of restoring tradition, why don't we just restore oracle bone inscriptions, which are more traditional than traditional Chinese characters? Why don't we just restore the oracle bone script? Doesn't restoring the oracle bone script make us look more traditional?

Is it only the traditional characters that you say are traditional, and all the characters before traditional characters are not traditional? So, to say that restoring traditional scripts is inherently impractical, there are several kinds of traditional scripts, which one is the most traditional is a question in itself.

Traditional culture is all-encompassing and profound, and traditional characters are merely a tool for recording cultural achievements

People who advocate the restoration of traditional characters do so under the **** same banner, that is, the restoration of traditional culture. Traditional Chinese characters are undoubtedly a form of traditional culture, but is traditional culture only about traditional characters?

China, as one of the four ancient civilizations, is the only one whose history has not been interrupted and has developed continuously to the present. Thousands of years have allowed us to accumulate a glorious, brilliant and profound traditional culture. There are the Hundred Schools of Thought, mathematics and medicine, and the Four Great Inventions.

There are traditional architecture, Chinese painting, opera, costumes, food and so on, the list is endless. Traditional Chinese characters are just a tool to record these cultural achievements. If it were not for the traditional characters, but for the simplified ones, these cultural achievements would still be the best of our traditional Chinese culture.

Culture does not change just because the words used to record it change. Analects written in small seal script is Analects, written in clerical script is Analects, written in traditional Chinese characters is Analects, and written in simplified Chinese characters is still Analects.

Even if it is written in a foreigner's script, such as Korean English, it is still Analects. Ideas are abstract and don't change just because words change.