A common source of confusion for students of the Chinese language lies in the difference between simplified and traditional characters.
Classes and books typically offer no reliable method for seeing a simplified character and systematically determining its traditional counterpart, nor vice versa where a simplified form exists. Instead, students must consult dictionaries and memorize character pairs one by one.
Now a resource called “FanJian”,
offered by the University of California – Berkeley,
is attempting to provide a better alternative. FanJian aims
to provide a systematic and organized method which students
who know only one form of a Chinese character can decipher
the other form without assistance.
