Simplified and Traditional Characters

One thing which I wish I had been told before I began wasting my life on Chinese, was that there are currently two different Chinese writing systems. I remember showing up for Chinese class on my first day of university, thinking that I could use the Japanese Kanji that I had crammed into my head, only to discover that I had to learn a completely different writing system.

Tradition characters are currently used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and simplified is used on the mainland, Malaysia, and Singapore. It all began with Mao and his communist party a few years after they had won against the Nationalists, and took control of mainland China. They now had millions of illiterate peasants to try and educate, so they decide the best ways to make learning characters easier would be to simplify them, and make them faster and easier to write. This was the birth of simplified characters.

I won't go into too much detail about simplified characters. True they are a lot easier and faster to write, but sometime they look a bit empty. Here is a quick example bellow. With the words "I like studying Chinese."

Taiwan of course became the hide out of the Nationalist party. Of course they hated the communists, so they're stuck with the old systems of Characters until now. Hong Kong was also a British colony until 1997, and was cut off from the mainland. It has not re-joined China, but they currently have a system which is something along the lines of one country, two systems.

Obviously if you wish to pursue some Chinese study you're going to have to choose between the two. Most overseas universities will teach in simplified, because China has become the destination of choice for most businessmen. Obviously if you're living in Taiwan simplified characters are pretty useless and traditional is the way to go. Also if you're like me and studied mainland Chinese, but then came to Taiwan, traditional characters are quite an effort for a while. Most universities will place you in classes based of a test in traditional Chinese, so most of my friends have been placed in lower classes because of their inability to read traditional.

I've asked a few die hard Taiwan fans whether or not they would consider learning simplified characters, and the answer has generally been "No, because its not real Chinese," or "I don't want to learn communist Chinese."

To be honest I really don't think that it hurts to know a little of both. If you really hope to use Chinese in your future career you will inevitable come into contact with the mainland. I've also heard things such as if you learn traditional you can automatically read simplified. I have to break it to you, but that is a lie. Of course there are character which aren't hard to recognise, but once most of them have had the strokes knocked out of them they can be unrecognisable. I was once helping a friend with her Chinese essay and I had to constantly ask "What's this character? What's this character?" It goes the other way around as well, with even mainland Chinese people having a difficult time trying to demystify traditional characters.