User Comments - daixiong
daixiong
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 19, 2008 at 3:49 PMI started learning simplified characters at an Australian university, and was always a little depressed that most local Chinese used traditional characters, and I couldn't access local materials relevant to my life. When after two years study and a short summer school in Kunming, I received a scholarship to study in Taipei for a year, I was very excited, but had many difficulties, as the Taiwanese do not have good bridging courses for people with existing high vocab and grammar but no experience with traditional characters. I believe every student of Chinese should learn both systems, if they wish to read widely, but speaking as someone who learnt simplified first, traditional second, I think learning traditional first makes a lot more sense, as I think it's a lot easier for users of 繁體 to guess 简体 than the other way round. While I do personally find 繁體字 more attractive and easier to remember (despite having a more complicated structure, they have a logic and clues in sound and meaning that many 简体 lack), I do recognize that some 繁體 are a real pain to write. The thing is, people are writing by hand less and less, such that many of my Taiwanese friends forget how to write truly complex characters; they're that used to computer input. I use pinyin input for both systems myself.
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 19, 2008 at 3:29 PMYes that's one of my pet interests, the weird and wonderful characters that appear in the different chinese languages, and the non-standard ways of writing traditional characters that still appear in overseas communities. I've seen alternate forms of many characters in Chinese restaurants and shops in Australia and Taiwan.
Posted on: 简体字与繁体字
February 19, 2008 at 3:50 PMThat's another topic, one I'm sure has been covered but I can't remember if I contributed: I've tried to learn zhuyin, stroke order and cangjie but found them too complicated. A latin alphabet based system is just too easy for an English speaker I guess. I've heard people say those systems are actually better for character learning and retention, as zhuyin requires you to remember the tone (rather than pinyin where you can be lazy) and many of the other systems make you think about the structure (which can be good if there are issues of differing pronunciation between 台灣國語 and 普通话; or for speakers of other Chinese languages)