Thread:Staraptor Kwan/@comment-25034020-20170426032339/@comment-26426093-20170508131407

Well, there's always much more to learn when it comes to new languages: besides the standard version, there are also various dialects, accents and much more that makes up the core components of any language. It takes a lot of effort just to master one language (depending on your level of proficiency), not to mention how much longer it would take to learn the different types of dialects present in said language as well.

For example, Chinese is notoriously difficult to learn for many westerners and other races due to it containing about 80,000 characters (hanzi), which btw exceeds the amount used in both Japan and Korea, as you should know by now. Not to mention that there are two different versions of the language as well. There's simplified which is used in mainland China and South East Asia, while the traditional variant is used by Taiwan and Hong Kong (somewhat). The reason behind there being two versions of the same language is rather complicated to explain, so I'll just give the summarized version.

After the Chinese Civil war ended in 1949, the Kuomintang (which was the ruling party at that time) fled to Taiwan after being ousted by the Communist forces of Mao Zedong (I'm pretty sure you have heard of this guy). The party still considered themselves the "true", sovereign leaders of all of China despite said claim covering only a small island off the coast of the mainland, hence the reason why they still kept the traditional variant of the Chinese language as a means of maintaining their legimitate status as rulers of China.

In contrast, the Communist party which wanted to improve literacy rates decided to shift to a rather easy and simplistic form of writing (aka simplified chinese) so that the masses could learn to read and write properly. And's that's how two different variants of the same language came to be.