China & Taiwan 'first joint dictionary' BBC article

I found this article by Cindy Sui (BBC News Taipei) very interesting. Basically it's about how Mandarin Chinese is evolving separately in Taiwan and the mainland, over the last 60 years, and how different the two are becoming:

"When it comes to speaking, while both sides use Mandarin Chinese as the official dialect, they say even simple words like rice, hot water, and panda differently -

"mi fan," "bai kai shui," and "xiong mao" in China, versus

"bai fan," "re shui" and "mao xiong" in Taiwan.

These differences might seem slight, but some are not. In China, you refer to your spouse as your "ai ren", but that means your lover in Taiwan."

Also, of course, Taiwan and Hong Kong use Traditional characters and the Mainland uses Simplified characters: the article shows the examples below: 

Apparently "40 million non-Chinese nationals are learning simplified characters... 

and 30 million people use traditional characters daily" -Wow!

This bit amused me too:- "I don't really like to write Chinese characters; it's very tiring," said eight-year-old Lee Mi.

LOL I know what you mean kid, it takes me ages to write in Chinese too :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13467598