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Recently I've been writing "should not" in Chinese a lot. But, I've been confused. What is the difference between "不该“ and "不应“? Are they both used?
For example, I know we can say
对不起，我不该说那么难听的话。
but we could also say
学习不应再是少数人的高级消遣
(Both examples from Iciba) My intuition says 不应 is more formal. Is that the only difference? Are there different usages?
Generally speaking, "不应" is used more frequently in formal writing, while "不该" is used in oral expression.
If it's hard for you to determine formal or non-formal, consider this, use 不该 for subjective, and use 不应 for objective case.
I agree that "不应" is more formal, and I also agree that it seems to be the biggest difference - at least in common use cases. I have a feeling that "不该" is more objective while "不应" is a little bit subjective, but didn't find any reference for this - probably it's just a side effect of being formal/informal.
For example, your first case is likely to happen in oral expression, and the second case is likely to happen in a public speaking or a written essay.
By the way, I think the combined word "应该" can be used to replace either "应" or "该", so there shouldn't be very big differences.
Aside from the formal/informal issue, I think another distinction is that 不该 is more suited for an event in the past that "should not have" happened. Using 不应 for this situation sounds awkward, if not wrong, to me. This may have something to do with the objectiveness/subjectiveness @bfrguci mentioned, since "should not have" is not an objective description of reality, but rather an opinion and judgement.
"不应" or "不该" is short for "不应该", so you should use "不应该" in formal writing.
For example:
你不应该那样做。
