China wants changes to Song font
p2pnet news view P2P:- When China’s Communist leaders were wondering if they should order the ‘readjustment’ of 44 Chinese characters, they went online to find out how the move would be received.
It didn’t go down well, says the Shanghai Daily, going on:
“After eight years, the ministry unveiled a list of 8,300 standardized characters in common usage to solicit public opinion in hopes to regulate Chinese writing.
“Ministry officials and some experts said the revisions would only affect 44 characters printed in the Song typeface (right) in publications, meaning the revised characters would only be used by computers and printing machines.”
Explains the Wikipedia, “Ming typefaces, known as Song typefaces in mainland China, are a category of typefaces used to display Chinese characters, which are used in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages. They are currently the most used style of type in print for Chinese and Japanese.”
It’s only a, “slight change of one stroke for a character, but if a student asks me which character is correctly written, I won’t know how to reply,” the story has Wang Jiayu, a Chinese language teacher at a primary school in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, saying.
“There will be much confusion if different ways of writing the same character exists.”
Tang Yunlai, chairman of the Tianjin Municipal Calligraphers’ Association, “also said the revisions were unnecessary and objections also emerged over the cost,” says the Shanghai Daily, adding:
” ‘The revisions of the 44 characters would lead to amendments in books, dictionaries, signboards, company names, ID cards and more,’ said Professor Wang Laihua of the Tianjin Municipal Academy of Social Sciences. ‘That will cost lots of money and time’.”
The online question period is slated to end on August 31.
Shanghai Daily – Public says no to writing changes, August 24, 2009
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