Which Form Of Chinese Characters Is Most Useful To Learn? Which Is In Most Regular Use?
Posted on | February 9, 2010 | 5 Comments
I am attemptiing to learn Mandarian chinese ( I know its not oftern called that now but couldnt remember what it is called now sorry) but have got confused over what type of characters to learn.. I downloaded electronic flashcards and they have 4 setsTraditional (common),Tradtional (full), Simplified (common) and Simplified (full).Which should i learn?
Which is the most used in China in schools and on street signs menus and on tv shows etc. I dont want to do the simple ones if that is not in reality what is most frequently used.
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5 Responses to “Which Form Of Chinese Characters Is Most Useful To Learn? Which Is In Most Regular Use?”
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February 10th, 2010 @ 4:28 am
my advice is to learn traditional chinese (full).
simplified chinese is now the main stream of chinese used and taught in china and those countries trying to build good relationship with china.
traditional chinese is widely use in western countries (chinatown), taiwan and hong kong.
traditional chinese symbols got more strokes compared to that of simplified chinese, it’s more difficult to write, that’s the only difference in the learning stage. the reason why traditional chinese got more stroke is because chinese words were derived from objects. for example the word DOOR. the traditional word is 門 and the simplified one is 门. which one looks more like a door? which one is more meaningful? another example HORSE. traditional is 馬, simplified is 马, which one looks more like a horse? therefore traditional chinese is more meaningful than simplified.
i was taught simplfied chinese in school and i picked up traditional chinese on my own. i have no problem in reading and writing both. today, traditional chinese is like a manual car to me and simplified chinese an automatic car. driving manual car have better control, more fun can do more tricks, driving automatic car is a piece of cake.
February 10th, 2010 @ 7:44 am
Simplified (full) is the best. Traditional is only used in Taiwan and for Cantonese in HK. In HK it’s the same charicters but different pronounciation so it’s pointless if you’re interested in the mainland.
February 10th, 2010 @ 11:10 am
i think it is simplified(common),and it is widely used in China’s mainland.
you can send me some characters if you like,then i can tell you which is frequently used,cos i’m not sure between simplified(common) and (full).
February 10th, 2010 @ 12:54 pm
Simplified is the most often used one. Traditional is used mainly by Taiwan and Hong Kong, though it seems that it’s starting to get used more and more by mainland, too. Still, yet, simplified is what I’d go with for sure.
I assume that the (common) one just means the most commonly used characters, so I’d start out with simplified (common).
February 10th, 2010 @ 6:44 pm
All of the characters are difficult to learn.
Why not start with learning the simple pinyin and then progress as you become more adapt. Have fun.
Xia Xia.