The languages of China - The Reform of Chinese Characters

It is true there are four “difficults” in Chinese characters, difficult to pronounce, difficult to write, difficult to remember and difficult to look up in the dictionary. As the Chinese language records culture and knowledge, it is not possible to get rid of it for another one. What can be done is to reform Chinese characters for easy pronunciation, easy writing, easy to remember, and easy to look up in the dictionary.

At present, the task of the reform is to promote and make popular Putonghua and Pingyin. Meanwhile effort must be made to simplify characters in terms of strokes and to reduce the number of basic vocabulary in common use (two different characters are now written with the same character). A large scale reform was continued after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In 1955, 1,053 variant characters were eliminated. In 1956, the Scheme of Simplified Chinese Characters, known later as the First Scheme, was promulgated by government. It was composed of 525 simplified characters and 54 simplified basic components of characters. The Second Scheme of Simplified Chinese Characters was promulgated in 1977 but was repealed in 1986 amid general disapproval.

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