Rewriting the rules of language

As the old Chinese saying goes, one word is worth a thousand pieces of gold, but moves to update 44 characters in China's historic lexicon could cost the nation a whole lot more.

Scholars from home and abroad have reportedly worked for eight long years on revising the way some of the language's 8,300 standardized characters are written.

The proposal to tinker with 44 characters was made public by the Ministry of Education and State Language Commission on Aug 12.