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6 Responses to “When studying Chinese, is it more effective to study simplified or traditional characters?”

1. Liuzhou Laowai says:

   December 27, 2010 at 3:09 pm

   Simplified is used more often because it is the official standard in mainland China. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao use traditional.
2. Bill W says:

   December 27, 2010 at 3:18 pm

   If you’re interested in the language to understand the history and culture, and maybe read the classics, study traditional characters. That way you can read books all the way back to the time of Confucius, though the grammar changes as you go back. The traditional characters are pretty much only used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas.

   Simplified characters are for people who are interested in modern mainland China, the rise of China and its political and economic effects. All mainland Chinese publications are in simplified characters, and there’s a lot more published there than anywhere else in the Chinese speaking world.

   If you know traditional characters, it doesn’t take much effort to understand simplified. Knowing just simplified, if you’re not a native speaker, means that you won’t be able to understand a lot of traditional characters. Only a few thousand characters were simplified, but they were either very common or very complicated, so it’s hard to guess the original form.
3. 愛している says:

   December 27, 2010 at 4:02 pm

   in mainland china, simplified is used. in taiwan, traditional.

   simplified [to me] is much easier to write, but traditional is much easier to guess the meaning if you know the word, because it keeps more of the original form so you can guess the meaning. simplified has taken away basically all meaning in the word, so its almost like just dead memorizing characters.
4. Elena S says:

   December 27, 2010 at 4:16 pm

   here you have options to study:

   1 Chinese (pinyin + Simplified characters — used in the Mainland)…
   2 Taiwanese (pinyin + Traditional characters — used in Taiwan)…
   3 Cantonese (Jyutping + Traditional characters — used in HK and near)…
5. gliese says:

   December 27, 2010 at 4:52 pm

   Chinese simplified is used in Chinese mainland,that means most Chinese people use simplified,so,I think it’s more effective to study simplified=)
   If you’re going to Hong Kong or Tai Wan,it’ll be nice to study traditional characters.
   Any troubles when studying Chinese
   I’m glad to help=)
6. Ray says:

   December 27, 2010 at 5:48 pm

   simplifed chinese is more effective but traditional is more interesting and it stands for the real chinese culture

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