Which is better: traditional or simplified?

Question

I just started my first class of Mandarin Chinese on Monday, and I'm loving it! Wǒ shuō zhōng wén! :D

I'm concerned about one thing, though: I noticed that my professor uses traditional characters. I know the majority of Mandarin speakers use simplified, so I'm a bit confused. Should I keep studying the simplified versions on the side, just so I'm familiar with them, or is it okay if I only know traditional characters?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Actually, the characters are quite similiar to each other, most chinese would be able to understand both even if they did not learn it. Simplified or traditional are still used around the around. The majority of the Chinese in China or Singapore, certain parts of Malaysia uses simplified Chinese as it was proposed to.

The traditional Chinese is now widely used in dialect-based countries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, both using cantonese and Hokkien respectively. Or states in China which uses mainly of dialects, they use the traditional one.

I think schools and people in areas switched to simplified as there would be lesser strokes of handwriting as many people could make small, careless mistakes like this.

Simplified characters just basically look more simple then traditional, it nothing to worry about.

But if you don't think that they look similiar, like most chinese do, you may want to switch to simplified chinese based on your purpose of learning. Such as using it in dialect-based states or countries? Or in the main cities?

It depends, no matter which form you use. Native Chinese would still be abel to understand you.

Good luck

Answer 2

"I know the majority of Mandarin speakers use simplified"?

That's because 1.3 billion people in China learned the Simplified form of the Traditional script after it was proposed by Mao Zedong/Mao Tse-tung. Mao wrote in Traditional most of the time. Chinese people used Traditional way before 1949. Most of the simplified characters uses variants or vulgar or grass script characters that was used in China over time but never standardized. It's like acronyms and abbreviations, and alternate spellings [like u & "eye", picture of an eye instead of the word I] and pronunciations being used in English. If you wrote English as it is spoken, you would have a difficult way of getting the original words? Get what I'm  getting at? Nobody will tell you this, but let me tell you a secret: Most people in China are learning Traditional characters, because the simplified characters don't make sense. They are also learning English.

Answer 3

I agree with Wyo on this.

Learn Traditional first and then simplified will be much easier to learn, but since you're already side studying, just keep at it.

Some people like to mix it up.

They'll be able to read Simplified but write in Traditional or vice versa.

In Traditional itself, there are some simplified words that people tend to use more.

Answer 4

Learn the traditional, but you'll have to pick up simplified on the side.  There are some simplified characters that are not obvious, but most are once you know traditional forms.

Good luck!

Answer 5

To your question, both the traditional and simplified Chinese are correct ones and most(not all, although) of us Chinese people understand both. There are some similarities between traditional characters and simplified characters. You can pick up one another easily later on or learning them at the same is also a good way.