Any Traditional Character Users out there?

安潔莉~ An1Jie2Li4
January 09, 2011, 03:25 AM posted in General Discussion

I just recently joined this site (still on my trial, but am going to subscribe for a long-term plan), and I've noticed just about everyone uses Simplified here.

Having lived for 5 years in Taiwan, I'm extremely loyal--and accustomed to--Traditional characters. I've been back in the States for almost 6 years now, and I'm sorry to say I've forgotten almost all my Chinese; that's the reason I'm back on here.

However, I do not want to learn Simplified, because then I won't be able to understand anything in Taiwan, which is where I'll be visiting in the future.

So do any of you use Traditional?? Please let me know!

Also, any thoughts on which is better? =P This is always a subject I love to discuss.

 

~ 安潔利

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lavallo
January 09, 2011, 04:13 AM

I originally started to learn simplified characters but since I live in the SF bay area, traditional are needed to read just about everything - all print material: newspapers, menu's, etc.  So I now simulataneously study both.  I have writing (not speaking) fluency in about 2000 characters (from Mr. James Heisig method - and I am using this to reach 6000 Hanzi fluency in about 18 -24 months from now), but I think and write simplified, so now study both and try to do some text messaging and typing of sentences in Traditional.  All in all, I plan on ultimately being able to switch back and forth between both systems with ease.  Simplified is trivial to learn if you already know tradtional - you should have no difficulties learning if you so choose.

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安潔莉~ An1Jie2Li4
January 09, 2011, 04:19 AM

Oh, okay, thank you so much! =)

Is it hard, going from Simplified to Traditional?

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joschka
February 24, 2011, 12:51 PM

It's relatively easy to go from traditional to simplified because there is only one simplified for any traditional. 

The reverse is harder because one simplified can be converted to more than one traditional. So a trival substitution is not possible. (Which means a simple computer program cannot do the job.)

It would take some sophisticated logic to analyze the context.