Simplified vs. Traditional Characters

Minazhu, congrats on already knowing 2500! You're way ahead of the game. Since you already know that many characters, your situation is different than most. For people who want to learn both, I've heard that it's better to start off with traditional. I think you might want to start there as well, as you'll find many of the characters, that you already know, will be the same. Then when you switch back to simplified, you'll learn them much more quickly and easily. When it comes to characters, I'm still a baby...maybe some of our more experienced users can provide better advice...

waiting until you "master" the simplified characters could be a long wait. How do you define master? I would think you should do it now. Study both - there is of course a huge overlap.

I'm studying simplified and traditional together. I do pick up characters here and there in one version or the other. This site is simplified, but I get the traditional PDF in my personal feed ChinesePod podcast. I try not to overstress the difference while I'm just absorbing language. My rigorous character study I do with a flashcard program. Like a lot of computer flashcard programs, it automatically begins to show cards less frequently as you get them correct more often (and more often if as you don't). I only tell the program that I got a card "right" when I can correctly determine whether there is a difference and can recreate both versions correctly if there is. This works well for me. My spoken fluency continues to outstrip my writing ability, and I might pick up the characters a little quicker if I were only learning one set, but really most characters are unchanged. As I read books and web sites I can read them pretty interchangeably, and that's a good feeling. Learning them together I think is a little like growing up bilingual. When I see 個 and 个, they look the same to me (conceptually, not visually!). I don't think, "個? Oh, that's traditional for 个." It's a much more immediate understanding of both sets of characters, and I like that. The flashcard/dictionary program I use is PlecoDict, which runs on my PDA. Stuck in line or whatever I can pop out my PDA and do flashcards. I can't say enough good things about this program and the convenience of carrying it in my purse, but that's not on topic.

I recommend studying them together at the same time too. In the books my class uses, New Practical Chinese Reader, while using simplified for the dialog, it teaches both simplified and traditional in the character writing section, and in the glossary in the back it has both simplified and traditional, so I strive to learn both as I go along (I'm advanced level, so it helps give me something to do). Also, another good book I have used in a more advanced class, studying business (but pretty easy, and it is mostly for learning vocabulary more used for business), Open for Business 新世纪商用汉语 it has EVERYTHING, including the lesson (simplified, traditional, English) in an easy way to compare the simplified/traditional characters in both the text and the vocabulary list... highly recommended for advanced learners.

Well, I have a few reservations regarding learning both the simplified and traditional characters at once: I'm simply afraid that one day I will hit the point when I realize I can't distinguish (not necessarily in reading ;-), obviously; but when it comes to writing) between the two variants...On top of this anything but minor problem, I also study Arabic (I chose Arabic and Spanish in uni, so can't simply drop it), with yet another script, so I am not sure whether I can cram these mysterious "pictures" (:-P) into my head... "My spoken fluency continues to outstrip my writing ability," If only that was the case...I'm near speechless when it comes to actually conversing in a foreign language...darn US education system, beats any (linguistic) confidence out of you. "How do you define master?" For the time being, "master" means the ability to read 6000 (if I continue at my current pace, I will have reached that goal by autumn) and write at least half of 'em. A pretty humble goal. "It's a much more immediate understanding of both sets of characters, and I like that." Reminds me a bit of these Holy-C***-moments when I look at a not-too-familiar character without consciously trying to read/translate it, and my brain suddenly goes "reading-meaning-pinyin-compounds". Learning Chinese really makes me want to study neurology, hehe.

I use trad Chinese, so I type out the PDF files and the expansion. some of the simplification of the characters is straight forward. but some of it is not. Books such as 'What Character is that?' Ping-gam Po, is a 'dictionary' of 5000 characters, defined by Radical, it does show the simpified radicals and does give a little info on the changes. Also A book that both Light and I love 'Reading and Writing Chinese' William McNaughton and Li Ying has the characters in no real order, but it does show how to write them, The traditional version has the simplified characters as well. I suppose in a way I'm learning the two forms as I work through the lessons. I think that it may be easier if you studied the forms side by side. Best of luck.

minazhu, if you can learn 6000 by the fall then it doesnt matter. We should be asking you for advice.

Learning both together, a lot rests on how you think about it, that is, in what way you relate to the characters and relate them to each other. What works best for me is to regard the traditional character as "the real thing", and the simplified character as "the quick way of writing it." We do this sort of thing in English all the time. Most university students have adopted many abbreviations they use for taking notes, such as wrt for with-respect-to, or circ'd for circumnavigated, and everyone is familiar with wasn't, &, and so on. So it seems easy (for me anyway) to slip the two characters into that well known kind of relationship to learn them together. You might have some other way of doing it, but I think what's important is to learn them as variants of a single character, rather than thinking as if you're learning two different scripts.

Hi minazhu. Since your family background is so "Chinese" -- vide your parents, my (unreliable) perspective on this for you is: Setting out to study both writing systems may slow down your acquisition of written Chinese. It's merely a question of time and the additional organization that it will take. Guess the question to ask yourself is: Do I absolutely need to learn the corresponding traditional form of every simplified character I learn (and vice versa)? The answer may be "yay, no!". I grew up studying simplified in school, but under Singapore's 写简识繁 system, I was also encouraged to explore, and also learn to recognize, traditional characters. Minazhu, if your foundation in Chinese is solid enough (should be, given your parents' background - wow!), it's usually a cinch to read characters written in "the other" system. I am only studying "simplfied" now -- it's a matter of time --, but my little dictionary has the traditional form there, in brackets, just where it counts. When I look up a simplified character, I usually glance at the traditional form to see how they did it. After all, simplication was (by and large) a rational, systematic process. Beyond a base number of simplified characters which aren't readily recognizable to people who can only read traditional, it doesn't take long to get an intuitive kind of grip on the "simplification rules", and transpose accordingly. It's surprisingly natural. So in the time that you might spend -- say -- learning both forms for every characters you study, quite often "in anticipation of possible future need" (which may never happen), you could be reading good books and essays in traditional, as well as anything really worth reading in simplified. If you are a "heritage speaker" of Chines, it is unlikely that you will confuse the two. You may even find that some subject-matter which interests you tends to be published in traditional characters, whereas simplified would tend to dominate in some area of interest. To that extent, your knowledge of Chinese will be slightly lop-sided, but that isn't necessary a problem. Eg. true bilingualism doesn't require two complete, and matching, sets of vocabulary; true bilinguals often are stronger in one particular language for any given area of interest. Sorry for the long-winded spiel! Good luck!

Actually it is not really necessary to "study" both forms, because there are only around 500 characters whose traditional and simplified versions look totally different. The others more or less resemble each other and just reading texts in both simplified and traditional texts does the trick for me.