Hey all, I just started learning the 196 characters that were recently added to the Joyo Kanji, but I noticed that several of the characters were added in their traditional, unsimplified forms （eg the 食編 of 餌 and 餅 vs. the simplified 飲 or 飽）.
My understanding is that, as of now, the unsimplified forms are the -only- officially approved versions of the new characters; but my question is, now that they are a part of the Joyo set, should we expect a change in how these characters are written and displayed in the future?
Heisig certainly seems to think so: in his supplement he lists the simplified versions first and the traditional forms in brackets as a gloss, but where is he getting these simplified versions? While some simplifications are not much of a stretch (like 食編 or the double dotted variant of the road radical in 謎 or 辻）, I'm wondering how ”official” his simplifications of characters like 箋 and 僅 are (sorry I can't display the simplified versions, if anyone knows how, please post them up). What's his source for these simplifications?
Finally, if I'm learning to hand-write these characters, which version do you think it's best to learn?
imabi
Member
From: America
Registered: 2011-10-16
Posts: 604
Website
I know most of the Kanken levels uses simplified characters. The one that reaches high school level has those Kanji in simplified form. For those that have been recently added, simplified and unsimplified forms can be used.
They probably will be, but many have to be added to UNICODE.
I would learn both, simply because if you already know lots of Kanji there really isn't that big of a jump. In comparing simplified characters in China and Japan, Japan didn't do much at all...relatively of course. They're minor differences, and if you already know some of the general systematic differences, it shouldn't feel as if you are learning a new character. After all, there are many written variants of letters in the alphabet.
