1. HISTORY

The earliest form of Chinese writing was the Oracle Bone Script (jiaguwen 甲骨文) developed in the Shang Dynasty (18th–12th century BC). This evolved into many scripts, each growing in complexity and becoming more stylized. One of the biggest changes in Chinese writing occurred during the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC). When Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China, he also created a standard system of writing from the various systems used in the different states. This system would become the basis of the modern Chinese writing system.
The next big change occurred in the 1950s, when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) introduced simplified characters (jiăntĭzì 简体字) to replace the traditional characters. Generally, simplified characters have fewer strokes than their traditional equivalents. Not all characters were given a new simplified form, as they were already very “simple” and involve very few strokes. The Chinese government felt that this would help people read and learn Chinese easier. Outside of China, Singapore also adopted this script. However, both Taiwan and Hong Kong opted to keep using traditional characters.
 

1. SIMPLIFIED VS TRADITIONAL

As you may have observed, the simplified script is significantly different from its traditional equivalent: duì can be written as 对 (simplified) or 對 (traditional) in Mandarin. The former has five strokes, while the latter has 14.
At its core, Simplified Chinese is a simplification of the Traditional Chinese alphabet. This simplification is accomplished in two key ways:

1. Stroke Reduction

In order to make characters easier to read and write, Simplified Chinese features fewer brush strokes than its ornately designed counterpart. In the example above, the character, 叶 meaning ‘leaf’ has notably less embellishments than the Traditional version, 葉.
Some characters look exactly the same—especially in situations where the Traditional version was too simple to warrant changes. For example, the character 人 meaning ‘person’ retains just one form that looks identical between Traditional and Simplified Chinese texts.

2. Merged Characters

Stroke reduction is just one of the ways to simplify Traditional Chinese characters. Merged characters are also prevalent. Each character in Simplified Chinese maps to one or more Traditional Chinese characters. Through character merging, unnecessary components—including entire characters—are removed to form a new, simplified version. While they are written differently, corresponding characters in Traditional and Simplified Chinese are usually pronounced in the same, or a similar, manner.
As a foreign student, it is extremely important to understand the differences between languages even if they are minor deviations. Each of Traditional and Simplified Chinese has differentiations and has its own flavor and cultural implications. Chinese in each country can be so similar yet so different. Understanding these differences will help you select the suitable resources for the locale; and more importantly, convey the correct meaning to the target audience.
 
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