Which variety of Chinese language to begin with...?

[KosmoLeo]

I am a lifelong English speaker in America with no experience reading, writing or speaking Chinese languages. My eventual goal is to be able to fluently read, write and converse freely in the broadest and most diverse variety of Chinese languages. I have just begun to get a grasp of the differences between the concepts of traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Pinyin, Mandarin and Cantonese. I realize at the outset this will take a lot of work and dedicated study and could even be looked on as a lifetime learning discipline, I am fine with that. My question, intended for real experienced experts in reading, writing, speaking and teaching Chinese language, is this.... Given my started goals in learning Chinese language, what would you guys recommend as the very best variety of Chinese language to begin learning to read, write and speak with here at the very outset. Any helpful advice to get me started off on the right foot would be very much appreciated, thanks.

[imron]

How are you going to be using your Chinese, and with whom?  This will greatly simplify what you should focus on.

 

In general:

 

Mainland China - Mandarin + Simplified

Taiwan - Mandarin + Traditional

Hong Kong - Cantonese + Traditional

 

If you are looking for the broadest variety, then it will generally be Mandarin + Simplified as used on mainland China, simply because that's the largest group, and has the most study material available.

[jefflau]

I would definitely go for Mandarin + Simplified. For a few simple reasons:

 

1. Most speakers (Mainland China)
2. Easiest to learn (More resources, simplified has more resources than traditional and by definition is simpler to learn)
3. Once you have that down traditional isn't too hard to learn - best to get a running start imo.

 

This is unless you're like me and are learning Mandarin in Taiwan. So I've switched to traditional for that reason alone, however I still use pinyin to input characters (not zhuyin, the taiwanese way of inputting characters) as it's easiest to learn and it's most useful. Lowest barrier to entry I feel is your best bet to start as it'll give you a good foundation to other things you want to learn such as other dialects and/or traditional. Going through the Cantonese route I feel would be harder and would just be slower for you since you're planning on learning more than one dialect anyway.

[anonymoose]

Mandarin, no question about it.

 

As for characters, it doesn't really matter. Once you are familiar with one set, the other is fairly easy to learn (and read, even if you don't specifically learn it).

[Demonic_Duck]

If you want to speak to overseas Chinese living in America, your best bet is probably Cantonese. However, Mandarin is much more widely spoken worldwide, and if you have hopes of going to China in the future, this is the one you'll want. As you don't seem to have a particularly specialised reason for learning, it's unlikely you'd want to start with anything other than these two.

 

I disagree with anonymoose that it doesn't matter whether you start with simplified or traditional. This depends on the language you've chosen, resources available and what you want to use it for. If you're starting with Cantonese, there's basically no other option than traditional. If you're starting with Mandarin, Simplified has more resources available, and is used on the mainland. Traditional is used in Taiwan.

[KosmoLeo]

Thanks very much to all of you for these informative replies and helpful insights. What I intend to use what I learn for is conversation, writing as I would very much like to begin learning Chinese calligraphy at some point, and reading Chinese books which are not published in English. And it does sound as though beginning with Mandarin and simplified would be the best, easiest way to go to learn to converse, read and write broadly and get a really good foundation for further learning.

[Meng Lelan]

If you're going to learn Chinese calligraphy you would best start with traditional characters (reading and writing). 

[Demonic_Duck]

If you're going to learn Chinese calligraphy you would best start with traditional characters (reading and writing).

 

Not necessarily, you could quite easily use simplified for most purposes and traditional in calligraphy class. I'd imagine the distribution of characters used would be very different anyway (would you need to use "啦" much in calligraphy class, for instance?)

[KosmoLeo]

Well, speaking without any experience, it seems like getting simplified first would indeed be likely to give me a good foundation for learning traditional, calligraphy, etc.

[Demonic_Duck]

Traditional is as good (or better) a foundation for learning simplified as simplified is for traditional. So really, you could go with either. I wasn't trying to influence your decision necessarily, just point out that there are other considerations and that calligraphy is a fairly minor one.

 

Any of the following may be relevant to your decision, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on your priorities:

• Simplified is overall more widely used for modern materials
• Simplified characters are a fairly recent invention (in use since 1956), so everything written before that used traditional (modern editions may be in simplified, but certainly if you're looking to get into Classical Chinese you'll find most materials even in mainland China use traditional)
• Simplified is predominantly used in mainland China and Singapore, whilst traditional is predominantly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and by overseas Chinese communities. Japanese Kanji are often the same as Traditional forms, but some are simplified (though the simplification is often different in form from the mainland China version)
• Simplified characters are based on traditional, rather than vice-versa
• Traditional characters tend to preserve their etymology much better (though phonetic loans and such are still common, so don't get the notion that traditional characters are completely "pure")
• Simplified characters are, as the name suggests, generally simpler, and thus tend to be easier to learn (however, some people make the case that, because their etymology tends to become obscured, this actually makes them more difficult. Personally, I'm sceptical about this)
• More learning materials are available in simplified than traditional
• If you take calligraphy classes, you will almost certainly be expected to use traditional (as I say, though, I think this is a fairly minor consideration)
• The bulk of characters are actually identical in both character sets, with a large chunk of the remainder having only relatively small differences

Of course, it's far from an irreversable decision, if you get so far with one character set and decide to switch it's not the end of the world. Personally, at the very start I went with traditional, mainly for aesthetic reasons, but I soon switched to simplified as I felt it was more practical for my situation. I'd suggest you pick whichever one you feel like and jump in with that.

[renzhe]

Unless you have really strong reasons to learn something else, you should first go with Mandarin. Not only is it the most widely spoken variety, and the standard one in the vast majority of the Chinese-speaking world, but also all official writing is based on Mandarin -- for most intents and purposes, it is the only standard way to write Chinese.

Simplified or traditional -- I agree that it doesn't really matter. It's an issue in the beginning, but most people are reasonably comfortable with both by the time they become advanced.

[roddy]

Kosmo, you haven't signed in for months, but I'm still going to ask how your Chinese study is coming along...