Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4350 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 49 of 266 26 December 2013 at 12:42pm | IP Logged |
I'm learning traditional because of (some) knowledge of Kanji too. But I don't learn them
separately. Basically, whenever I learn a word which uses a character that is new to me, I try
and memorize it (with silly Heisig-style stories).
If I understand correctly, learning simplified shouldn't be as difficult once you know traditional,
as the opposite case. There are 352 characters of which the simplified form cannot be used as
a radical; 132 characters (only the Chinese Wikipedia had that number, odd) and 14 radicals of
which the simplified form can be used as a radical; and 1754 characters which have
been simplified according to it's radicals (presumably based on the aforementioned 132
characters and 14 radicals, however I remember hearing somewhere, that sometimes the
simplification of phonetic-semantic characters could be based on changing the phonetic part to
an easier to (hand)write pronunciation equivalent). Doesn't sound nearly as hard as going
through RtK I without any previous knowledge of Asian scripts though.
Also, not all of the traditional Chinese characters are the same in Japanese, you can read
about the 新字体.
Edited by Ezy Ryder on 26 December 2013 at 12:54pm
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Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin
| Message 50 of 266 26 December 2013 at 1:46pm | IP Logged |
Ezy Ryder wrote:
Doesn't sound nearly as hard as going
through RtK I without any previous knowledge of Asian scripts though. |
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oh, I agree. And the long hours I spent studying RtK is paying off now (so far).
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Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 4017 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 51 of 266 26 December 2013 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
I learned simplified, and all the books I read in Chinese use simplified characters. I think I need to become comfortable with reading traditional, though, so I'll probably start reading more stuff from Taiwan in 2014.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 52 of 266 26 December 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
I learn simplified, and I don't really care about traditional or kanji for the moment.
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yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin
| Message 53 of 266 26 December 2013 at 11:36pm | IP Logged |
I'm "learning" (no pure learning but more like reflecting on each new character I come across) simplified but am getting some traditional input and output but chatting with
Taiwanese people at the same time. It helps that all of that is electronic of course :p
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nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4664 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French
| Message 54 of 266 27 December 2013 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
I will be using the DeFrancis Chinese Readers that teach traditional Chinese characters. I have heard that it doesn't
really matter whether you learn simplified or traditional characters first, unless of course you are planning to travel
and study in mainland China (in which case, learn simplified) or Taiwan (learn traditional). If not, then I've read that
it shouldn't be too difficult to learn simplified after studying traditional (and vice versa). It's probably easier to learn
how to write simplified characters though, but I don't have any ambitions for learning to write Chinese at the
moment. I'm choosing to study traditional because I like what I've read about the DeFrancis method and the books
only teach traditional.
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js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin
| Message 55 of 266 27 December 2013 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
nj24 wrote:
I will be using the DeFrancis Chinese Readers that teach traditional Chinese characters. I have heard
that it doesn't
really matter whether you learn simplified or traditional characters first, unless of course you are planning to travel
and study in mainland China (in which case, learn simplified) or Taiwan (learn traditional). If not, then I've read that
it shouldn't be too difficult to learn simplified after studying traditional (and vice versa). It's probably easier to learn
how to write simplified characters though, but I don't have any ambitions for learning to write Chinese at the
moment. I'm choosing to study traditional because I like what I've read about the DeFrancis method and the books
only teach traditional. |
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I imagine it's much easier to learn simplified after learning traditional than the other way around. I am learning
simplified because i'd like to go to the mainland, but I kind of wish I had started with traditional and then added the
simplified to that, because i'd also like to learn Japanese in the future and I have some friends in Taiwan!
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Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin
| Message 56 of 266 29 December 2013 at 6:43am | IP Logged |
I'm learning simplified only, and started with Matthews' method, which seems to me way much better than Heisig's. However, now I'm just using some of the basic concepts from that method and studying more and more "Cracking the Chinese Puzzles", besides Méthode 90, my main textbook.
Of course, I'm SRSing these characters with Anki (mostly through the iPhone app). The last two weeks have been languagewise almost useless for me, but it'll improve, I hope.
My log is this one, which will be renamed as soon as we decide about our team name.
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