從中共文字改革歷史看簡化字

The Problem of Simplified Chinese Characters: A Historical Review of the Developments of Simplified Chinese Characters by the Communist China

語言文字是文化的載體，透過文字記錄，文化得以傳承。然而，當前全球「中文熱」／「華語熱」的風潮下，華語文教師面臨的共同問題是：該教傳統漢字，還是中共政權推行了半世紀的簡化字？為什麼兩岸不能共同協商合作整理出乙套中文字體？\r有關繁簡字之爭的論述早已汗牛充棟，本文主要想以一個新的視角「請循其本」，藉汪學文於1967年發表的《中共文字改革與漢字前途》為基礎，嘗試回顧簡化字發展的歷史，指出：當年中共政權大力推行的簡化字其實是為了呼應國際共黨的「語文同化政策」，最後目的是為了「消滅漢字」，且盲目的以減省筆畫為目的，製造不合理的簡化字，治絲益棼，造成今日的問題。本文特別指陳的，就是中共政權當時為了簡省筆畫，隨意改變姓氏及地名，造成嚴重的傳統文化割裂，這錯誤必須更正。我們並不反對整理漢字，但整理漢字絕不等同於簡化漢字，所以，「識繁寫簡」、「識正寫簡」等建議並未觸及問題核心！五十年的錯誤政策，與五千年歷史文化傳承系統相較，要回頭絕非難事！今天中共政權已成為經濟大國，且以中華文化傳承者自居，是否該以全新的視野，重新審視簡化字對傳承中華文化造成的破壞及問題？我們建議以「漢字構形資料」為基礎，找出漢字演變的規律及其與語言之間的關係，兩岸共同合作規劃出乙套漢字字形，希望本文能帶給決策者全新的思考！

In recent years， there has been a worldwide fever to learn Chinese. However， a common problem encountered by Chinese language teachers is which version of the characters should they teach: the traditional characters from the past 2000 years or the simplified characters as used in mainland China for about half a century?There have been many debates on the usage of traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese. Based on Wang Xue-wen’s article “Reformation of Chinese Characters by Communist China and the Future of Chinese Characters” in 1967， we will give a historical review of the developments of simplified Chinese characters and point out that the language assimilation policy of International Communism has been the driving force behind the campaign to promote simplified Chinese， with the final agenda to perish Chinese characters completely. We show that simplified Chinese has arbitrarily changed many family and place names when reducing the number of character strokes， and caused serious gaps with the traditional culture.We believe that such mistakes should be remedied if the Chinese cultural heritage were to continue. While we do not object to collate Chinese characters， collating characters does not equal to simplification. Thus， the proposal “Understanding Traditional Chinese and Writing Simplified Chinese ” does not address the core issue of the problem. The mistakes in the past 50 years are still remediable if the period is compared with 5，000 years of Chinese history. We propose that Mainland China and Taiwan use the Chinese Structures Database established by Academia Sinica (Taipei) as a basis to study the general rules about the Chinese characters evolution and its connection with the Chinese language. They can work together to establish a set of Chinese patterns free of ambiguity and issues as currently exist in the simplified Chinese characters. By clarifying the issues and providing a possible solution， it is our hope that this paper can bring a new perspective to policy makers.