Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar

3 The Chinese writing system: an overview

Although transcription systems can be used to write Chinese, Chinese characters are the

basis of written communication in China. This chapter presents an overview of Chinese

characters.

3.1 Traditional and simplified characters

There are two standard systems of characters in current use: traditional characters and simplified

characters. Simplified characters are the official characters used in mainland China and Singapore.

Traditional characters are the official characters used in Taiwan and other parts of the Chinese-

speaking world.

Most characters in the traditional and simplified systems are identical. However, in the simplified

character system, many frequently used characters have been simplified from their traditional,

more complex form. Here are some examples.

Traditional Simplified Pronunciation Meaning

國 国 guó country

東 东 dōng east

車 车 chē car

買 买 mǎi buy

寫 写 xiě write

A simplified way of writing characters has existed for hundreds of years. Simplified characters

were used in informal documents and in some forms of calligraphy before they were adopted

by mainland China as the official form. Therefore, although the two forms now have some

political significance, you may encounter simplified characters in use in Taiwan and traditional

characters in use in mainland China.

3.2 The structure of Chinese characters: the radical and the phonetic

3.2.1 The radical

All Chinese characters contain a radical, a sequence of strokes that broadly categorize the

character in terms of meaning.

In the set of traditional characters, there are 214 radicals. In the set of simplified characters,

there are 189 radicals. Some radicals may occur as independent characters. Others only occur

as part of a character.