10 Facts About Traditional Chinese

Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese.

Traditional Chinese characters remain in common use in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia; in addition, Hanja in Korean language remains virtually identical to traditional characters, which is still used to a certain extent in South Korea, despite differing standards used among these countries over some variant Chinese characters.

In contrast, simplified Traditional Chinese characters are used in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore in official publications.

Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities.

Retronym "Traditional Chinese" is used to contrast traditional characters with "simplified Chinese characters", a standardized character set introduced in the 1950s by the government of the People's Republic of China on Mainland China.

Related searches

In Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times.

In recent years simplified Traditional Chinese characters are used to accommodate Mainland Traditional Chinese tourists and immigrants.

Traditional Chinese characters are known by different names within the Chinese-speaking world.

However, Unicode, which gives equal weight to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, has become increasingly popular as a rendering method.

Traditional Chinese characters are used by non-Chinese ethnic groups, especially the Maniq people—of southern Yala Province of Thailand and northeastern Kedah state of Malaysia—for writing the Kensiu language.