Learning Simplified and Traditional

[jkhsu]

Does anyone have experience learning (from the beginning until fluent) both simplified and traditional characters? I'm planning to get to fluency in simplified first, then start looking at traditional. Anyone else have other thoughts on how best to learn both?

[Meng Lelan]

I started out learning Chinese with a professor from Taiwan so for me I learned traditionals first. A big surprise for me when I got to the mainland for the first time and found out I had to learn simplified. So all those years I have maintained both simplified and traditional.

My advice is learn the radicals in both simplified and traditional forms. When you do make the switch you will find that a lot of simplified characters just simply swap out the simplified radical for the traditional radical.

[Gleaves]

It is not hard to learn the other set once you've mastered one.

Check out these threads.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/14713-learning-hanzi-the-eternal-dilemma-of-simple-or-traditional/

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/25651-learning-traditional-characters-after-studying-simplified-for-4-years/

[jbradfor]

I learned simplified in the USA for my first two years, then learned traditional in Taiwan and my limited studies after that. I'm now learning both at the same time, by having both forms in my SRS-ing, and reading both simplified and traditional texts.

Personally, if your goal is to eventually learn both, I think learning both at the same time is easiest. As Meng Lelan says, learning both forms of the radicals, plus a bunch of other common non-radical substitutions (e.g. 堯 -> 尧 , 專 -> 专, 僉 -> 佥, 倉 -> 仓), will get you most of the way to knowing both. Plus, I have found a couple of cases in which, for whatever reason, I found learning either the simplified or the traditional form easier, and once I got one, it helped me get the other. Lastly, learning both gives you the widest range of reading material available.

If you really only want to learn one, on one hand there seems to be a lot more instructional material available now in simplified. OTOH, I believe most people think going traditional -> simplified is easier than simplified -> traditional, because a lot of the simplifications involve dropping parts.

[feihong]

I mostly learned simplified first, and then traditional later. My flashcard strategy with traditional is a little different though. I'll make a card where the front side is the traditional character, and my job is to correctly write the simplified form (which is the back of the card). I only make cards for characters that I have problems remembering, so characters like 語 (语) never get a card.

I will say that it makes sense to learn both at the same time if your reading material includes both. But even in that case I would say to pick one as your "main character set".

[carey]

simplified characters is widely used in chinese mainland. Traditional characters are be used in HK, taiwan. learn one perfect, you will know another soon.

[imron]

I believe most people think going traditional -> simplified is easier than simplified -> traditional

Haha, in my experience I've found most people tend to think whatever one they learnt first is the easiest, usually because that's what their first teacher told them. There are valid arguments for both sides, and personally I think it's all much of a muchness.

If you think you'll be using your Chinese more with people from the mainland then I would focus on simplified first. If you think you'll be using it more with people from Taiwan or HK, then you would be better off focusing on traditional.

[jkhsu]

Ok, thanks for the replies. I think I've confirmed that it's ok to get to fluency in one and then learn the other later. It's hard enough for me to get to fluency in simplified already so I will continue with that until I'm ready to learn the other.

[Hofmann]

I recommend learning Traditional first. I don't know which is more difficult, but Simplified Chinese is derived from Traditional Chinese. I think it ends up being better organized in your head to first see the (more or less) orthodox variants and then seeing how new characters were created based on them. This is more straightforward in the same way that stories are more straightforward when told in chronological order (as opposed to something like Star Wars, whose episodes 4, 5, and 6 came out before 1, 2, and 3).

And yes I can read both just fine.

[Gharial]

Most printed resources will at least show the equivalent traditional hanzi forms if teaching simplified, or simplified hanzi forms if teaching traditional, e.g. McNaughton's Reading & Writing Chinese, and may also even show each of their stroke orders, one alongside the other, e.g. the Character Text for the original Colloquial Chinese course (get the traditional version though if you want all the reading practice to be in traditional (the Pinyin version of the course will also be very handy, to help with learning especially the tones of the hanzi)), so in a sense which variety to learn is a bit of a moot point. And looking at it logically, it would make sense to try to learn the traditional and then "superimpose" the simplified over the top of them (and sooner rather than later).

There's some discussion and some links in the following post that may be helpful when generally moving/converting between the two varieties: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/32688-a-newbie-wants-to-know-how-to-differentiate-traditional-from-simplified-hanzi/page__view__findpost__p__247321

[imron]

I think it ends up being better organized in your head to first see the (more or less) orthodox variants and then seeing how new characters were created based on them

By the same token, do you think it's worth learning oracle bone script or seal script before learning the traditional variants?

[Hofmann]

No, and it's a different situation. Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese are both 楷書. Simplified Chinese are direct descendents of Traditional Chinese and are new characters within the same system. Oracle bone script and Traditional Chinese are very far apart. However, for instance, if someone took 隸書 and radically changed some characters and created new characters with the result still being 隸書, I would learn the former 隸書 first.

[rezaf]

If you want to learn writing the traditional script at some point then I would recommend to learn them first but if you just want to be able to read them then start with the simplified script, because it's not that hard to recognize the traditional characters after learning the simplified script.

[renzhe]

Ok, thanks for the replies. I think I've confirmed that it's ok to get to fluency in one and then learn the other later.

This is what I did and it worked fine, with very manageable effort.

I think (but can't prove) that this is the easiest way to do it. By the time you get good at reading one set of characters, your brain will be 1000x better at processing characters than when you start, so learning a few hundred additional variants is easy. When you're starting, each character is a complex, mysterious beast.

I also don't think that it matters much which set you start with. If you want mastery of Chinese characters, or want to study classical scripts or etymology, then it's better to start with traditional, but for everyday usage it shouldn't matter much. The one you will spend the majority of your time using should be the first IMHO. The big differences are only in about 500 characters both ways.

[jkhsu]

As an experiment, I went back to my beginner level textbooks and read the traditional sections. Here was my observation:

1. For the most part, if I read the text, I was able to "guess in context" what the traditional character meant.

2. For radicals that were simplified, I was able to pick up the traditional characters pretty easily and remember them such as "语" and "語"

3. For characters that had parts of characters in both forms, I was also able to guess (in context) and remember them pretty easily. For example the character "号" in simplifed is also part of "號" in traditional.

4. The harder ones to remember were characters that were vastly different such as "卫" in "卫生间". The traditional is "衛". However, what I've realized is if I am reading text, most of these characters are still used in context. In context, I recognize "卫生" pretty easily so seeing "衛" instead of "卫" when next to "生", I could guess the character "衛".

So based on this experiment, albeit non scientific, I've come to the conclusion that for reading, it is easier to learn one form first then learn the other. The reason is that you are able to recognize more characters in context. For example, if I saw "衛生", it would be easy for me to guess in context. However, if I saw "衛冕", I'd have to check the dictionary because I don't know the word "卫冕" in simplified.

Experiments aside, what I've decided to do is read the traditional sections of my textbooks anyway (most of my textbooks have both) when I learn the simplified sections. I probably won't stress over traditional characters as much if I forget them until I am fluent in simplified.

As what people have mentioned, you have to have a program that is tailored to your needs. I've tailored mine based on the following needs specific to me:

1. I do not plan to write (by hand) except for basic words to fill out forms and such and I will do that in simplified.

2. Most of my travels are and will continue to be to China (not HK or TW).

3. I live in the USA and Chinese menus, signs, many newspapers, etc. are in traditional, so I need to know how to read both.

[Hugh]

I started with both from the beginning (I'm nowhere near done yet, though). I found it was fine on the whole, with very little confusion. Just a few characters trip you up when there are, say, two characters that are similar in simplified and their traditional versions are also similar, so you get all four mixed up. Sometimes it's useful in exams as I can remember the traditional version and not the simplified, or vice versa, so you have more options.

[Pingfa]

Personally I would say it is easier to concentrate on traditional first, as fortunately traditional material often uses simplified variants, so you'll be exposed to plenty of simple forms anyway.

That being said, there's plenty of great material in both forms - why limit ourselves? If you find material you like, just use it - you want to learn both eventually anyhow, might as well be now.

[Takeshi]

I studied Traditional first in high school, then Traditional for one year of university. In the next year of university, the class was conducted in Simplified (Most of the other students simply switched to Simplified), but I got permission to do all my writing/assignments/tests in Traditional.

Of course, the fact that the class was conducted in Simplified couldn't change, but through that year I slowly got used to Simplified even though I didn't technically learn in myself. (Though I did take notes in a personally developed super-simplified-cursive system, so I suppose I wrote Simplified a little.)

Now I'm in mainland China, and I have little trouble reading Simplified or even writing Simplified for relatively basic stuff, and once I start classes here I'll obviously focus on Simplified. I expect my mind to still "think in Traditional" though, so I don't plan on forgetting Traditional.

As for which direction is easier, I think going from Simp -> Trad is easier if your goal is to read or recognize characters; most people in Mainland can read Trad fine, and they say Trad characters are easier to recognize and such.

But I think for writing, going from Trad -> Simp is easier. The simple reason is because you won't know how to write Traditional characters if you don't seriously practise writing them, but if you look at Simplified characters enough, you'll probably be able to write them one day even if you never formally practised to write them.

[Demonic_Duck]

I'm learning characters through a rather haphazard process, trying to learn both systems at once but always learning the traditional variants before simplified ones. As Hofmann said, it seems to make more sense "chronologically" if I do it that way. Not sure if that makes it any easier, it just seems to be more logical to me from an etymological point of view.