Should You Learn Traditional Chinese Characters Or the Simplified Ones? Pros and Cons

If you've been studying Chinese for a while and are considering moving on to learning to write Chinese characters, you've probably already realized that there is not one but two ways to write Chinese.

When China became a communist country, the new leadership faced a number of problems within the country. They had to modernize, to build international relationships, and to combat a tremendously high rate of illiteracy. Chinese peasants across the country lacked the ability to read and write. The Chinese government decided to simplify a number of characters in order to make learning to read and write in Chinese easier. The result is "simplified Chinese". Most of the characters are exactly the same, but a number of commonly used characters have been reduced and made simpler to facilitate literacy education in China.

The counterpoint to this is traditional Chinese, still widely used in Taiwan and in some other countries with Chinese populations. Traditional Chinese should not be confused with "classical Chinese", which a much older and more complex form that only scholars take the time to learn. Traditional Chinese is very similar to the simplified form, except that obviously some commonly used words are more difficult to write than in the simplified form.

If you've decided that you want to read and write in Chinese, you have to make a choice. You can either learn traditional Chinese, or the modern simplified form. There are a couple of things to consider before you make your final decision.

If you're traveling, your destination might make the decision for you. Travelers to Taiwan would be well advised to learn traditional Chinese because it is widely used there. If you plan to visit China, you can learn simplified Chinese and read it everywhere there.

If you have a serious scholarly interest in reading Chinese, it might be a better idea to make the extra effort to learn traditional Chinese. If you want to read any Chinese that was written before the People's Republic of China was formed, you'll need to learn traditional Chinese. If, for a masochistic or heroic reason you want to tackle classical Chinese, knowing the traditional characters will help you as well.

Finally, if you're still not sure which form you'd like to learn, consider this. If you learn traditional Chinese, it's fairly easy to switch over to the simplified form. The characters you're learning will always be easier to write than in the traditional form. If you learn simplified Chinese, it will take a significant amount of time and effort to learn traditional Chinese. You lay a better foundation when you learn traditional chinese first, but you do put slightly more time into it.

Consider your options, but don't worry to much about the writing system you start learning. Some commonly used characters are different, but many many characters are exactly the same in both forms. It's not like you need to start over from scratch should you need to switch later on.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

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Traditional Chinese Vs Simplified Chinese Writing - What is the Difference and Where Are They Used?

There are two different forms of written Chinese: Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. So are these two forms really that different? Why is there a difference? And where is each form used?

The history

Traditional Chinese script has evolved over many centuries. As characters became more complicated, people informally used shorthand forms to write certain characters. In 1958, mainland China's government sanctioned some of the existing shorthands and at the same time simplified other characters that did not have a shorthand yet. This marked the birth of simplified Chinese script. "Only" some 500 characters (out of thousands) were simplified; the rest of the characters are the same in traditional and simplified Chinese script.

Who uses what?

The People's Republic of China (mainland China) uses simplified script and this script was also adopted by Singapore. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan use traditional characters. Internationally, traditional script has long been more frequently used by overseas Chinese.

Language lessons outside of China used to teach almost only traditional script until the 1980′s. Until 1979, China was closed, so most Chinese teachers originated from Taiwan. With China's emergence, simplified Chinese has become much more common.

Why not just one writing method?

My guess is that this has a lot to do with heritage, pride and national identity. As simplified Chinese was introduced by the communist party of China, it would be unlikely that Taiwan would adopt this script. Taiwanese will point out that the traditional characters are 'ideographs' which are like stylized pictures and easier to remember. A mainland Chinese might counter that it's really easier not to have to remember so many strokes. Both have a valid point.

Is it possible read and write traditional Chinese characters if you learnt simplified, and vice versa?

I am personally learning Mandarin based on the simplified script, and must say that it is not all that difficult to get the gist of a traditional text if you can read simplified Chinese characters. You need to learn a number of extra characters, and that's about it. Most Chinese, be them in Hong Kong, China, or Taiwan, will be able to handle texts in the other script to some extent without formal teaching, though they will be more familiar with the script that they were taught in school and may not be able to write the other script. Since a lot of characters have remained the same between the two scripts, it becomes a matter of filling in the blanks.

While most simplified characters have a direct traditional equivalent, it is not exactly a one-to-one translation, i.e. there are exceptions, for example where several traditional characters are represented by one simplified character. So while there are computer programs that convert between traditional and simplified texts, they would need to be checked by a human afterwards.

A Dutchman currently living in Singapore, Guus has so far studied 7 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Latin and Mandarin). He is passionate about travel, culture, languages and learning.

He founded Yago Singapore, a company that brings together the best offerings of several Singapore language schools on one website.

Guus regularly shares his insights about language learning on his blog: http://blog.yago.sg

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Chinese Traditional Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine is the feature of our medical science and an initial component of Chinese culture. For a long time, Westerners have been skeptical about the efficiency of China's patent drugs made of medicinal herbs. Over the past few years, traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been subject to rigorous scientific scrutiny worldwide.

To prove and improve the efficiency of traditional Chinese medicine, China's mainland (the mainland of China) has poured huge amount of money into hard research on this field. While Hong Kong has been endeavoring to make itself the world leader in research on traditional Chinese medicine, Taiwan has put forward a plan to transform itself into a traditional Chinese medicine technology center. Research into traditional cures is also booming at university and institutions outside Asia. These efforts to unlock the secrets of traditional remedies could produce benefits for sufferers of diseases that have confounded both Western and Traditional Chinese medicines.

It has made great contribution to the development of the world medical science. Although there are still differences between Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine in theory, some world-known pharmaceutical companies, taking interest in it, have launched small research projects in China. A number of new medicines have already undergone trials across Asia. Now the "modernization" of Chinese It has gained a lot of focus. With the globalization and rapid development in technology and medical science, this Chinese traditional therapy has undergone profound improvement.

Chinese government has implemented a series of policies to enhance the improvement of it and to intensify the education and publicity of traditional medicine. Many medical colleges of many top universities have improved its education ability in this area. Every year, government will launch many seminars for the experts and doctors to make further communication about its development or settle some problems together. We can expect that the Chinese Traditional Medicine will make great progress. In future, it will become an international medical remedy system.

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