Do Chinese and Japanese use the same characters?
Yes, and no. Japan borrowed their writing system from China long ago. China has taken steps to simplify the strokes in their writing system so more people can read and write while Japanese uses characters that are closer to the original Chinese. Also, Japanese uses about 2,000 characters while Chinese uses many more.
Mark Jen on Wed, 24th Jun 2009 10:32 am
Also, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and some other places, full traditional Chinese is still used (some of the characters are really complicated too!)
I bet there’s a huge market for your books adapted to Chinese as well :)
admin on Wed, 24th Jun 2009 11:00 am
Mark, I’d like that. Chinese has a lot more characters and I think they use a lot of them for their sounds rather than their pictographic meaning. Thanks.