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HK and TW tlnetters don't kill me please! I had to make a catchy title, especially for my first blog post. =p
I've been learning chinese for quite some time now. At school we only learned simplified characters but now I'm learning the traditional form as well. I found it quite easy at first but it appears now that I forget the full form characters very easily compared to the simplified ones, and that reduces my overall learning speed by quite a lot.
So what do you think about traditional characters? Are they useful at all in mainland China? Are they slowly being replaced by simplified characters even in places like HK? Are they going to stay strong for decades or centuries? Are they a must learn for anyone wanting to really master chinese language? If I keep studying them will they become somehow more natural and I won't forget them so easily anymore?
For now I'm definitely leaning towards continuing to learn traditional characters. Reasons:
- I like'em
- I'm fucking serious about chinese. I'm not some expat fag being happy just knowing how to say ni hen piaoliang to some random girl. I'm probably going to spend one year or more learning chinese full time in China starting from 2010, and traditional characters still seem to be very important in chinese culture even today.
So what's your opinion about chinese traditional characters?
Edit: I forgot that traditional characters allow me to understand quite a lot of kanjis / hanjas (even if there are some differences sometimes they're mostly recognizable) and that's definitely something I do enjoy as well. 繁體字 fighting?
Edit2: I'm obviously learning simplified characters, the choice is between also learning traditional characters or not.
 
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Baa?21244 Posts
No lol. simplified is the way to go.
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Simplified is definitely the dominant written language in mainland China these days.
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not that important if you only plan on using chinese in mainland. if you want to read chinese anywhere else in the world, yeah traditional is pretty important.
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If you are "fucking serious" then yes. A LOT of the heart and soul of the written Chinese language is lost with Simplified. If anything, it'll be easy to figure out Simplified AFTER learning Traditional characters. And wrt your last paragraph, yes, understanding traditional characters well allows you to infer and understand meanings of otherwise unknown words etc.
There's no way Traditional will ever really disappear. Simplified is going to ruin your life if you end up in Taiwan or something where they use strictly Traditional and likely will never change.
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You guys are dead fucking wrong about simplified. All my chinese (China) friends can read traditional after learning simplified. My mom being Taiwanese and my Taiwanese friends have hell of a time reading simplified even though they know traditional.
I have studied simplified and I can eaisly read traditional with it.
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do schools even teach traditional chinese??? i spent lived in china til i was 10 and only learned simplified.
i don't see a lot of use in learning traditional. there are not that many places where u NEED to know traditional. but u def need to learn how to read simplified.
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On November 02 2009 07:33 PanoRaMa wrote:
If you are "fucking serious" then yes. A LOT of the heart and soul of the written Chinese language is lost with Simplified. If anything, it'll be easy to figure out Simplified AFTER learning Traditional characters. And wrt your last paragraph, yes, understanding traditional characters well allows you to infer and understand meanings of otherwise unknown words etc.
There's no way Traditional will ever really disappear. Simplified is going to ruin your life if you end up in Taiwan or something where they use strictly Traditional and likely will never change.
i disagree with the first statement. "heart and soul" is a pretty wishy-washy non-concrete concept, and "traditional" is still simplified/changed from the way chinese was written a few hundred years ago. you want to argue about heart and soul, go do calligraphy.
but for practical purposes, since simplified is derived from traditional, you should be able to learn traditional first and read/guess at almost all the simplified characters anyways. or at least, i don't know anyone who can read traditional but not simplified despite never formally learning simplified.
and i bet taiwan will change once the green party gets back in power and they start going on about how taiwanese needs its own written system to further distance ourselves from the mainland. 
@babyrhino:
you need traditional for anywhere other than mainland china. also, most overseas chinese communities are HK/taiwanese so...
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also i don't know about the chinese communities in other countries, but here in canada you still need to know traditional to effectively move around chinatown and read the majority of the newspapers
edit: what the guy above me said in his edit
edit2: i just have to say this, traditional looks way more badass!!! even people in china will write their names in traditional on like chinese facebook and whatnot to make their names look cooler.
and i'll also throw this in before ppl start bringing up the subtopic: computers have basically eliminated the writing speed gap between traditional and simplified characters. also another thing, if you want to better appreciate the chinese heritage better, you should definately go for traditional. ugh damnit i'm itching to type out moar just read the wikipedia thing like i said, because the entire debate that is going to take place here is already there.
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I always thought they put all that stuff in traditional was because all the people who were taught to read simplified can read traditional, but not the other way around.
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Coming from Hong Kong, I'd say that traditional characters are still widely use, I can see it used in HK/Taiwan in the foreseeable future(at least for a few decades). That said, from the communication point of view, I dont think traditional is really useful as most people in HK (not sure about Taiwan lol) can read some simplified characters as they are not too hard to figure it out.
The modern Simplified Chinese originated in the 1910s (officially recognised by the communist party at 1956). It is advocated by a lot of anti-imperialist, they challenge the traditions of China, including traditional Chinese characters/ Confucianism. Therefore it is a very practical language, because back then a lot of Chinese people couldnt read. (mainly targeted at peasants)
Personally I find simplified Chinese to be extremely ugly (lol i might be a lil bit biased here). Also from the cultural point of view, a lot is loss in the translation from Traditional to Simplified Chinese. Traditional Characters are created with a set of rules over the few thousand years (gradually of course). E.g. you can see how certain words arrive from a picture.
So in a nutshell, if you only want to communicate simplified is enough. But as you say that you are quite serious about Chinese culture then yes I think you should spend time in the hard way, learning traditional characters.
繁體字 fighting =P
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The issue of traditional and simplified is subjective IMO. But they are worth learning for further understanding I suppose.
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Baa?21244 Posts
You do realize that if you know simplified, you can read traditional, bit not viceversa.
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On November 02 2009 07:56 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
You do realize that if you know simplified, you can read traditional, bit not viceversa.
other way around dude...
for example how the hell are you supposed to guess than 开 is 開?
edit: well seeing how we're disagreeing based which one we learnt first, i guess it's possible that it doesn't really matter which you learn as long as you know both
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It's much easier to go from simplified -> traditional as opposed to traditional -> simplified.
If you learn simplified first, then you see the traditional version of that word, you go "oh i see, that makes sense." If you learn traditional then look at the simplified version, its like "wtf is that??"
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On November 02 2009 07:57 rauk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2009 07:56 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
You do realize that if you know simplified, you can read traditional, bit not viceversa. other way around dude...
yeah from my experience rauk is right, maybe at the most basic levels knowing simplified will help you know basic traditional, but alot of characters in traditional are lost/merged into one character in simplified, therefore in the long run traditional will help you read simplified more than simplified will help you read traditional
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On November 02 2009 07:57 rauk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2009 07:56 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
You do realize that if you know simplified, you can read traditional, bit not viceversa. other way around dude... for example how the hell are you supposed to guess than 开 is 開?
You do realize you said this to a Chinese person? And your example is just proving our point.
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and yes op, you are right about the kanji thing, i'm taking japanese right now and i'm schooling (lol) my simplified classmates cause i don't need to memorize shit when learning kanjis lawls
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Baa?21244 Posts
Yeah lol, I am fluent in simplified and can understand 99% of the traditional characters I see (occasionally there will be a really weird one, but usually you can figure that out from context too).
What I've found is that mainlanders in HK/TW have no problem understanding signs, whereas people who grew up with traditional have had more difficulties understanding simplified. They can still get around, they just have more trouble doing it.
Also, regarding overseas communities, that is simply not true from what I've seen, namely the Chinatowns in New York City and San Francisco. You can get by either either simplified or traditional, or both. You also have to realize that a few decades ago, you needed Cantonese and traditional, whereas now, the shift is happening as more mainlanders go overseas and China is becoming a major world power, so the Mandarin/simplified combination is supplanting the Cantonese/traditional combination in oversea communities.
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EPT
