Break it down into steps and have a piece of paper and a pen ready – actually, many pieces of paper. Start with the Basics Bergman, Peter M. (1980). The Basic English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary: Using Simplified Characters (with an Appendix Containing the Original Complex Characters) Transliterated in Accordance with the New, Official Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. New York, N.Y.: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-09262-7. The traditional version of the character 言 (yán) wasn’t simplified. As a radical, it’s simplified to 讠 so characters with this radical would have fewer strokes. The main part of the character stayed the same.

Simplified Chinese is used by both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers living in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore. Most Cantonese speakers in China live in the 广东 / 廣東 (guǎng dōng) province. Because they’re part of Mainland China, they use the simplified writing system. This is why pinyin was invented and promoted around the same time. The simplified characters were developed and promoted in education systems in the 1950s with the goal of increasing literacy, especially among the older population. The need for simplified characters can be a hot button issue. Here’s a little bit of the cultural history to help you understand why. The Evolution of Chinese WritingConversion from simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese happens automatically when the input mode changes from traditional to simplified Chinese. If you live in or are traveling around an area that uses traditional characters, go traditional. The same is true for simplified. A character that is already explicitly listed as simplified character in the "Complete List of Simplified Characters" cannot be alternatively simplified based on derivation. For instance, 戰 and 誇 are simplified in Chart 1 to 战 and 夸 respectively, thus they cannot be simplified alternatively by derivation via 单 and 讠 in Chart 2 to 𢧐 and ⿰讠夸. 過 is simplified in Chart 2 to 过, thus it cannot be alternatively derived via 呙 in Chart 2 as 𬨨. She wowed the judges of BBC's Best Home Cook and now Suzie Lee, with the launch of her debut cookbook, is determined to show us all that Chinese cooking is easier than we think. She chats seafood noodles, spam sandwiches and accountancy with Jenny Lee...

A regular on Ireland AM's Friday cooking slot, Suzie has also been busy filming for a new RTE programme and contributing to an upcoming BBC show. This means a speaker from one region cannot understand a speaker from another region, unless they have also learnt that language. But what’s the difference between traditional and simplified Chinese? Which is more common? Where in the world are the two used?

Note: Chinese words in this article will be written as “simplified/traditional,” then accompanied by the pinyin and meaning. e.g. 中国 / 中國 (zhōng guó) — China. Characters that are the same in both forms will only appear once.

For Suzie Lee, food and Chinese home cooking has always been personal - in Chinese culture, food and family are intertwined. Suzie strives to capture and recreate those cooking traditions she shared with her late mother, her inspiration. Pressing Esc on the Chinese keyboard layout will toggle the mouse input between virtual QWERTY keyboard and virtual Chinese keyboard. The key will also turn on/off your keyboard input conversion. Pressing Esc on your keyboard has the same function. Instructions for using the Cangjie Input Before 1956, Chinese was written using only Traditional Characters. At that time, most Chinese people could not read or write at all. The government of the People's Republic of China thought that the Traditional characters were very hard to understand. They also thought that if they made the characters simpler, more people could learn how to read and write. Today, many people in China can read and write with the new Simplified Characters.

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Here are some samples of some words and sentences in Mandarin Chinese. Simplified Characters are on the left, and Traditional characters are on the right. The pronunciation is given in the pinyin system, which may not always be as simple as it looks for those who have not studied it. After Clerical Script, Chinese writing got more and more cursive-like. These are the three scripts used today, mostly in calligraphy: Characters in this category are components of traditional characters but function as their own characters in simplified Chinese (though not as radicals for other characters).