Traditional or simplified
treglown
July 08, 2008, 10:12 AM posted in General DiscussionA question for you Jenny. I want to learn chinese but, I'm not sure whether to start with traditional chinese characters or with simplified. I personally perfer the look of tranditional characters.
Thanks.
ZhouRui
July 08, 2008, 12:26 PM<!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->
My professors (not TAs) made a strong argument for starting with traditional. You should be advised that reading both and writing one is ideal. I started with traditional and continue to study traditional here in Taiwan. I have found reading simplified to be relatively easy -- I can't write simplified at all though. I'm not sure what it is like the other way around -- that is, simplified first, then picking up reading ability in traditional later.
auntie68
July 08, 2008, 12:41 PMHi shalmaneser, and OP: For what it's worth, the impression I get is that people who've learned simplified first don't (generally) seem to have major problems learning to recognize traditional characters.
However, some of the core simplified characters are so pared-down that people who grew up with traditional characters seem to find it really difficult to recognize them.
In case you're curious, the educational system in my country, Singapore, is based on “write simplified, recognize traditional". The assumption is that even if all the teaching materials are in simplified characters, students can still aim to be able to recognize traditional characters. I think that's a very pragmatic and positive attitude. In my case, I don't have any particular problems reading comments posted here in traditional characters. Although I wouldn't be able to hand-write the characters with any degree of accuracy!
Totally agree with shalmaneser that the ideal goal is being able to recognize both, but only worrying about being able to write one. Good luck!
ZhouRui
July 08, 2008, 01:03 PMOne of the reasons why I think simplified-traditional juxtaposition is important is because the students need to work with both sets -- one for reading and one for writing guidance and reading. (I mentioned this topic in a previous post.)
changye
July 08, 2008, 01:59 PMHi treglown,
> I personally perfer the look of tranditional characters.
Judging from your comment, I think it is highly possible that you will get immersed in the etymology and history of Chinese characters in the future. So I recommend you learn simplified characters first, and later try to learn traditional ones by little by little.
Please be noted that not all the Chinese characters were simplified. Only about 2,200 characters were simplified, and already-simple or less-frequently used characters survived simplification in 1950s. Let me take today's advanced lesson intro as an example.
Simplified
什么？你去上海了？有没有坐磁悬浮？有什么感觉？它是什么样子的？有多快？神秘的中国，现代的上海，神奇的磁悬浮！为什么只有上海造了磁悬浮？这条仅有 30公里长的示范线会不会延长？中国的百姓是怎么看待磁悬浮的？一起来学习今天的高级中文，别忘了留下你的经历和思考哦！
Traditional
什麼？你去上海了？有沒有坐磁懸浮？有什麼感覺？它是什麼樣子的？有多快？神秘的中國，現代的上海，神奇的磁懸浮！為什麼隻有上海造了磁懸浮？這條僅有 30公裡長的示范線會不會延長？中國的百姓是怎麼看待磁懸浮的？一起來學習今天的高級中文，別忘了留下你的經歷和思考哦！
There are 113 characters in total in this intro, and (to my surprise) both intros, tradtional and simplified, have 82 characters (70%) in common! Learning only "simplified characters" doesn't automatically mean that you can't read Chinese written in traditional characters. Good luck!
hanyuxuesheng
July 08, 2008, 05:13 PMI recommend starting with traditional characters and learning simplified in "parallel". Traditional characters contain more mnemonic hints.
Only by this strategy, you are able to learn that..
trad. 面, 麵 = simpl. 面
trad. 體 = simpl. 体
trad. 蘭 = simpl. 兰
trad. 藝 = simpl. 艺
trad. 幹, 乾, 干 = simpl. 干
And the switch trad.->simpl. is much easier than vice versa.
mei3hou2wang2
July 08, 2008, 09:38 PMAs Changye pointed out, usually the majority of characters in a text are the same between simplified and traditional versions. However, the differences are in the most commonly used characters so you will encounter both right from the start. Luckily, among those that are different, the vast majority are one-to-one transformations that you can get used to easily (such as the radical in 说 which is 言in trad.
A few are annoyingly complicated such as 干 which has one simplified form for 3 traditional. 干吗 的干, 干净的干 and 干涉的干 (幹嗎，乾淨 and 干涉). this is annoying. Especially when for somereason the complex form is maintained in 擀皮(to roll dough)
But usually it is easy to "convert" from one to the other once you know the most common elements in both forms.
ZhouRui
July 09, 2008, 04:22 AMProblems with simplified characters?
燈 ⇒ 灯 but 鄧 ⇒ 邓 Lost xingsheng 形聲 components (phonetic/pronunciation link).
讓 ⇒ 让 but 嚷 ⇒ 嚷 Need to memorize an additional graph.
環 ⇒ 环 but 懷 ⇒ 怀 Simplification creates artificial associations.
言 ⇒ 言 but 語 ⇒ 语 and 警 ⇒ 警 Simplification isn't systematic. Additional memorization.
龍, 發 ⇒ 龙, 发 Difficult to tell these two very different morphemes (units of meaning) apart.
So, simplified characters may not be easier to learn in the long run. Traditional characters become easy after time - the initial difficulty is not representative, but a result of ignorance (that is, lack of experience). This is the arguement made by the professors I mentioned above.
bazza
July 08, 2008, 10:34 AMMost learning material is in simplified, so you're better off starting there, you're likely to pick up the traditional equivalents as you go along.