Friday, April 07, 2006

Taiwan Traditional Character Petition

Found this in a comment the other day:

hi, i read your blog from time to time (i'm in the U.S.) and thought you might be able to spread the word on this petition:

UN Petition

the UN wants to only use simplified chinese by 2008, instead of using both. the petition has more info, but please sign it and keep traditional characters alive!

IMHO the petition is unprofessional and contains English errors and offensive politically-charged statements (such as claiming that the other Chinese languages are "dialects"). They are languages. I personally will not sign any statement that claims the other Chinese languages are "dialects." Also, Mandarin has not always been the official language, and the spoken language has little to do with the character set anyway, since Mandarin can be read intelligibly with either traditional or simplified characters. Rewrite it, folks.

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