Traditional Chinese Characters

[Larry Language Lover]

Have any of you learned traditional characters along side of simplified characters or learned both traditional and simplified together from the very beginning?

I am curious about traditional because I have two conversation partners from Taiwan and have found them to be so open and friendly.

[Tomsima]

Pretty sure any serious long term student of Chinese ends up with a knowledge of both simplified and traditional. Its a fairly straightforward process of learning an extra few hundred characters, the rest are then covered by set rules for simplification.

Search 'simplified or traditional' on the forums and you'll find the answer to pretty much any question you have on this topic already discussed in various threads.

[imron]

I have learnt both - well, at least for the purposes of reading (don't go asking me to handwrite traditional).

 

I learned simplified first and then picked up traditional by reading content in traditional.  The difference between the two sets is not that great and despite what people say, it doesn't matter which one you learn first, it's equally as easy to learn the other set once you already know one of them.

 

There are only about 200-300 common characters that are significantly different between the two sets that require learning beyond just context and similarities (and only about 400-500 significantly different characters in total).  200-300 characters is probably a lot if you only know 1,000 characters, but is basically nothing if you already know 3,000-4,000.

 

As someone who can read both this is how I feel about them:

 

After reading something of length in simplified, if you then read something in traditional it feels like everything is written in archaic English e.g. Ye Olde Shoppe

 

After reading something of length in traditional, if you then read something in simplified it feels like everything is written in txt speak e.g. thks, c u l8r.

 

I never used to get why people from HK and Taiwan would look down on simplified characters as being ugly, but imagine if a native English speaking country decided to simplify English and replaced everything with txt speak, and that's kind of how it feels.

 

Simplified characters have more white space however, which makes them easier to read at smaller font sizes (e.g. most websites with Chinese language material).

 

Reading Traditional on a computer can often feel cramped, firstly because everyone seems to use the same default font sizes as English language sites and traditional characters are quite dense, and secondly because things are written horizontally rather than vertically and people don't use as much line spacing for horizontally written chinese text.  This is in contrast to novels, which in Traditional typically use a larger font size and are written vertically, with a much larger line spacing than you'd find for horizontal text.

[DavyJonesLocker]

I want some day to learn traditional characters but I have a hard enough time with simplified only, just seems like taking on extra work load when I  can't manage to simply maintain what I already learnt (forgotten -> learnt -> forgotten. ...)

 

[imron]

Just do what I did.  Wait until you are more or less comfortable with reading simplified and have a dozen novels under your belt, and then read a novel that is written in traditional.  By the time you've finished reading it, you'll be mostly comfortable with reading traditional also.

[markhavemann]

I've just recently decided to learn to read traditional characters for all the simplified characters that I know. (I'm around HSK 6 level I suppose)

 

At first I wasn't sure how to go about it, then I decided to find out which HSK words have both a traditional and simplified variant. I found a list of HSK vocab with traditional and simplified on a website called "purple" something or other (purple culture?), removed words where simplified and traditional are the same, and then imported it into a new Anki deck (where the goal is ONLY to be able to recall the simplified character when the traditional comes up, although I have also left in pinyin and English definitions). 

 

I've found it suprisingly easy and fast to learn these if I already know the simplified character. I guess the next step is to do what Imron suggested and read a book, but I thought this is a good start to make things easier. 

 

Here is the list if you want to do it for yourself (only HSK 1 -5):

 

 Vocabulary List for New HSK ALL - HSK 1-5 where simp. and trad are different .txt

 

The fields are as follows: traditional, simplified, pinyin, HSK level (I imported this field as a tag) 

 

I imported all of these, suspended everything but HSK 1, then when those were done I un-suspended HSK 2, etc. It's surprisingly easy to do 30-50 words/characters a day. 

[imron]

38 minutes ago, markhavemann said:

then I decided to find out which HSK words have both a traditional and simplified variant

See also here.

 

I started out flashcarding the characters that were different between the sets but I found that a very dry way to learn and in the end just went with the reading approach, which was much more interesting and much more effective for me.

[Shelley]

This seems to be coming more popular, learning traditional alongside simplified.

Once you realise that the differences are not that huge and you put that bit extra effort in, it is very rewarding.

 

There is generally more information contained in traditional characters and sometimes there is a lightbulb moment (at least for me) that adds to my understanding and actually makes it easier to remember.

 

I have to admit I am only learning to read traditional characters not write them or at least not with the same effort as simplified. 

 

I think it is good to at least be familiar with traditional characters even if not studied thoroughly. If you can scan a page of characters and tell without much problem which one it is then you are already making some progress.

 

I asked this question a little while ago and one of the answers I had was along the lines of - Go on, its fun, you will enjoy it.

Its true, it is and I do. This was with the caveat that I am learning for pleasure and have no need for business or anything else. It might be different if you really need spend your time getting to a certain level in simplified and shouldn't be distracted.

[Tomsima]

For those learning to write: learning traditional first then adding in the extra simplified characters after writing the simplified was a very successful way I learnt the differences. Lets be honest, its easier to remember that 韋 can be simplified to 韦, but the character 衛 is written 卫, than going the other way. I feel like for reading it really doesn't matter whether you start with simplified or traditional, but for writing you'll be doing yourself a big favour starting with a good foundation of traditional then later adding in the somewhat arbitrary simplifications later.