this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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I've been enjoying studying Mandarin. The tones are a bit weird but the grammar seems surprisingly simple, everything can be written pretty universally in pinyin, and Hanzi characters are great for condensing information.
True, I will ask this: Why does it have 2 variants? Traditional? Modern?
Because languages change over time and every once in a while someone comes along who insists they can "fix" the language by making a bunch of changes. They are probably right and the changes, if widely adopted, will probably make the language more sensible. However, since one of the common features of a living language is that it changes over time due to usage, oddities will start creeping back in. And the whole thing will need to start all over again.