Happy Lunar New Year and welcome to the year of the Fire Horse!
A question we’re often asked is whether Mandarin is the same as Simplified Chinese, and whether Cantonese is the same as Traditional Chinese. The short answer is ‘no’, the longer answer is, it’s complicated’. Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken languages, whereas Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are writing systems, which means that they aren’t directly comparable.
Unlike European languages, Chinese writing systems are logographic. In English, the word ‘horse’ represents not only the idea or concept of a horse but also indicates the pronunciation of its spoken form. (The same is true for Italian ‘cavallo’ and German ‘Pferd’.) Not so in a logographic writing system. The written symbol for ‘horse’ in Simplified Chinese, the official written language used in mainland China, is 马. This symbol represents the idea or concept of a horse; however it provides no information about how that word should be pronounced.
In theory, this means that the same written language can be used by any number of spoken languages. And indeed there are Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and Hong Kong who use the Traditional Chinese writing system.
The chart below is a useful way of understanding how spoken language and writing system combine in different places.
| Spoken Language | Writing System | Where? |
|---|---|---|
| Mandarin | Simplified Chinese | Mainland China, Singapore |
| Mandarin | Traditional Chinese | Hong Kong, Taiwan |
| Cantonese | Traditional Chinese | Hong Kong |
Wishing all who celebrate a Happy Lunar New Year!
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