more of my whining about hanzi

[Bouks]

I can't say that I've gotten far into my "first 400" characters yet, but I can recognize about 25 of them now even if the way I think of them is a little goofy (I think the characters for "piaoliang", for example, look like two dressing tables loaded with makeup and accessories )

I am stuck on the issue of simplified vs. traditional question. It seemed overwhelming to me to try to memorize both for each word, so I have only been looking at the simplified ones. Is this a good approach, or should I be forcing myself to recognize the traditional ones at the same time?

This came to my attention when I tried the writing test exercises...I guess I don't know how to control my input yet, because I can only type the simplified, and I am getting things wrong because the tests seem to require us to use the traditional characters.

Any help would be appreciated... 谢谢

[shanshanchua]

Simplified characters are used in China, Malaysia, Singapore; whereas traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau..

Personally I would say learn the simplified first. You are more likely to encounter materials from China, and also, there's no need to make your learning more complicated, is it?

[maxiewawa]

I'm not sure what to recommend, but here's my story.

I learnt only the simplified characters, and after getting the hang of them, you find that the complex ones kinda fall into place. When you're reading something, and you're familiar with the grammar etc, you find that you get used to filling in the blanks.

It's almost as if you were reading Inglish, with certain words missplelt. Your still abel to understand what's going on, even with thoze differences.

[samihu]

I'm just beginning in my Chinese studies, and this is the approach I am taking with the Hanzi. (Although I should note that I already am somewhat familiar with some of them due to my Japanese studies).

I am studying the Simplified characters. They are in my textbook, so I am learning to read them in the dialogues and write them in the exercises. But I am also familiarizing myself with the Traditional characters. Taking note particularly of the words I am learning. At this point I think it is plenty to just be able to start recognizing them.

Actually, in general, with so much being done on the computer, we don't need to actually write too much anyway.

[bokane]

This is hardly 'whining' -- or if it is, then I'd say most of us would be whiners!

I'd say that it really doesn't make a tremendous amount of difference which you learn: after a certain point, as maxiewawa said, the other characters just kind of fall into place. I've got kind of a weird history myself: I started learning with full-form characters, then switched to simplified characters after about a year, then switched back to full-form characters after a couple of years when I started doing classical Chinese, then moved to China and switched back to simplified characters more or less full-time. The net result is that I can read full-form characters without any real difficulty (in some ways, I find them more comfortable to read), but when it comes to handwriting, I'm all simplified, all the time. I think the same is true for most Chinese people.

In any event, I'd say you should pick whatever works for you at the moment and stick with it. Sooner or later, the other character set will follow -- and since you're a fountain pen user, I'd bet it'll be sooner rather than later!

[david]

If you ever intend to do historical academic research you should probably focus on traditional characters. Otherwise I'd go with simplified unless you really want to go to Taiwan rather than the mainland.

--dave

[paglino9]

In my University, the argument of "One day you might want to read confucius" was all the school could give me as to why they were forcing us to learn traditional characters in first year Chinese. That and our teacher was Taiwanese. Needless to say, I was not convinced on the usefullness of Traditional Characters.

When I first started Chinese I was living in China, so the compounded pain of lack of verbal communication skills, and having to learn a different script broke down my sanity on several occasions.

Now after the birthing pangs of my Chinese life have died down, I find the traditional characters really fascinating, and beautiful. Sometimes you can find Hong Kong, or other foreign movies on CCTV that have traditional subtitles. Also, if you have the chance to travel around China a bit, most of the old tourist attractions, mountains, temples, etc.. still have traditional characters. I have also heard the argument that the use of Traditional Characters on signs for shops and restaurants are now in vogue here in the mainland, possibly to show sophistication or learnedness, and of course to class the joint up. But there is only so much you can do to class up your 5 by 5 foot 烟酒店

Here is an interesting post on the subject by The Atlantic contributor James Fallows. He gives a good summary.

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/arc ... anguag.php

And let us not forget the biggest ? on the traditional vs simplified characters debate- Taiwanese kids may be at a higher learning level than Mainlanders because they have to learn traditional. The rivalry never ends