Chinese Traditional IDN Domains

Traditional Chinese Characters, or Traditional Chinese, are characters that do not contain any newly created characters or character substitutions pre-dating 1946. They are mostly commonly spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau and appear in the Kangxi Dictionary. The Kangxi Dictionary was first compiled in 1710 and first published in 1716. The dictionary contains more than 47,000 characters with more than 40% of them being graphic variants. The parent system is called Oracle Bone Script, Seal Script, Clerical Script as well as Traditional Chinese.

Traditional Chinese first appeared during the Han Dynasty and has not changed since the 5th century during the time of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In 1950 the People's Republic of China attempted to introduce the use of Traditional Chinese to its people. But the attempt failed and they continue to use the Simplified Chinese Characters.

The use of Traditional Chinese is growing, especially in the overseas Chinese communities of Australia, United States and Canada. It is reported that more than a billion people speak the language. However, the actual number is unknown.