Chinese Language

Diversity in linguistic development

Mainland China had severe literacy problems which the communist government has attempted to alleviate by making Chinese characters easier to write, popularising the simplified Mandarin script. This is now used throughout mainland China, as well as in Singapore and Malaysia, and increasingly in overseas Chinese communities.

- Taiwan’s population was forced to speak and write Mandarin under the rule of Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Party. Separated geographically, politically and socially from the communist mainland, the island continues to write using the older traditional or ‘long-form’ Mandarin characters. The Taiwanese have also developed a certain amount of home-grown vocabulary which differs significantly from the Mandarin used in mainland China – this difference is especially marked in modern terminology and jargon.

- Hong Kong under the British pioneered a written form of Cantonese, the dialect spoken in the territory and other parts of southern China. Based on the long-form characters still used in Taiwan, traditional Cantonese also includes characters which are unique to Cantonese. It is used in Hong Kong, Macao and by the Chinese communities overseas. Mandarin readers can find this variant odd and certain characters unintelligible.

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