Quote:
Originally Posted by Doutas
I think that the reason behind this can be the chinese writting reform that simplified a lot of characters. I know that Japanese undergo similar reform but as far as I know not so simplifying as the Chinese one. That may be the reason, why the Chinese used 加 and the Japanese 嘉, donť you think?
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not at all correct i believe. both 加 and 嘉 exist in Chinese and Japanese. they have different meanings.
The chinese dictionary i checked lists:
加 - add to, increase, augment
嘉 - excellent; joyful; auspicious
the Japanese one:
加 - add; addition; increase; join; include; (also Canada)
嘉 - applaud; praise; esteem
roughly the same meaning in both languages.
@ blimp, the simplification was done to increase the terrible literacy rate found in mainland china. it was believed with simplified characters the language would become easier for a greater number of people to learn to read and write. it has later been shown in more recent studies (from hong kong) that the simplified system has little benefit over the traditional system.