subject: Learn Chinese Characters – Traditional Form or Simplified Form? [print this page] Learn Chinese Characters Traditional Form or Simplified Form?
After you mastered Chinese pronunciation pinyin and have studied Chinese conversation and Chinese grammar for a short while, you may move to the next step of learning Chinese reading and writing characters. There are two types of Chinese character forms: traditional form or called complex form and the simplified form. You need to choose which form you want to learn most. In my opinion, I suggest you to learn the simplified form. Here are the reasons:
1)More people are using simplified characters than traditional characters. Nowadays, only the people in HongKong and Taiwan province of China still use traditional form while a large population in the Chinese mainland is using the simplified form.
2)More Chinese publications are using the simplified form, so it is much easier for Chinese learners to get more Chinese related information by mastering simplified characters.
3)Simplified characters have less strokes than traditional characters while still keep the basic shape of original Chinese characters, so they did not lose their original meaning and much easier to master.
4)By mastering simplified characters, you can still read some traditional characters. Although you may not be able to write traditional characters, you may still be able to recognize the meaning of a certain amount of traditional characters because the two types of characters are both square shape, look similar, and have the same pronunciation and meaning.
Now you have some basic suggestions before your Chinese writing learning process, you may make a correct choice for yourself which way to start!
