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Traditional and Simplified Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6901 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 73 of 80 18 September 2009 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Based on my own experience and the simple fact that there are more strokes to memorise. Anyone who makes any kind of serious attempt to learn hanzi, especially writing them by hand, will notice that memorising the higher stroke-count characters generally takes a little longer and requires more effort than the ones with fewer strokes. A couple of posters have mentioned increasing the font size to read the characters more clearly. This is something I already do, even for simplified sometimes, and it helps, but it has some disadvantaged too: A smaller amount of text will fit on the same screen area. The graphical layout of the page sometimes suffers etc.
They do indeed.
Fiddling around and changing to a different font on every webpage you visit takes too long and just isn't an option. And it wouldn't help either. If the space on screen is too small for eight strokes it's still too small whatever the font. Edited by Hencke on 18 September 2009 at 12:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6857 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 74 of 80 18 September 2009 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well that's just personal opinion then, isn't it? I can write upwards of a thousand traditional hanzi off the top of my head and I've never thought it would be easier to learn to write simplified (although I can also write a decent number of simplified characters too). I actually find traditional characters slightly easier to remember because their compositions make more sense to me. The number of strokes really has little to do with it if you think more about learning which components are in the character and why rather than just memorizing a bunch of strokes.
You can set Firefox to automatically display Chinese in a specific font and size on every web page so you don't have to keep fiddling with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5615 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 75 of 80 18 September 2009 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This picture (font: 新细明体) is about a poetry that I wrote on 4 April 2009, it follows the style of ancient 楚辞 (chǔ cí), the original image is quite distinct, but unluckily it becomes blurred after uploading. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6901 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 76 of 80 18 September 2009 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It is slightly unbalanced and misleading though, to insist on labelling my input in this way, while conveniently forgetting to use the same labelling about your own personal opinion. There is nothing wrong with personal opinion. Mine is just as valid as yours. The views I am presenting here are actually based on fact and personal experience: It is a fact, not personal opinion that they have fewer strokes. Besides just the stroke-count, many of them are made up of fewer elements as well, also a fact. That it takes longer to learn higher stroke-count characters is my personal experience and somebody else's might be different but I would doubt it if they claimed it.
Congratulations for reaching that number. You are probably a little ahead of me in number of characters, but not by much :o), except that mine are simplified and I only know a few of the traditional ones well enough to write them out. Actually, I find quite enough of logical relations between the elements in simplified too, enough to think up nifty mnemonics to help with memorisation, even if it's sometimes a different, or simpler logic than in the corresponding traditional character.
Sure, but automatically overriding the settings used in all pages has some disadvantages of its own. It's the same with all the tricks we can do with the settings, they'll be a help in some cases and an annoyance in others. Edited by Hencke on 18 September 2009 at 5:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6857 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 77 of 80 18 September 2009 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I in no way implied that my opinion was fact either. My statement is clearly all my own opinion and experience (I never thought..., I find...), while your statement was stated as fact (it is this way). I have no problem with the idea that it may be easier for some people to learn simplified, but that does not make it fact.
Anyway, I really think it makes the most sense to become familiar with both sets. It isn't all that big of a jump from one to the other either way, especially if there's one set that you will only read. I can read simplified much better than I can write it. I can't imagine anybody knowing up front whether they will need to know both sets or not. Who can say with absolute certainty that you'll never end up in Taiwan? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5579 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 78 of 80 19 September 2009 at 2:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
My opinion is that it takes the same time to learn, but longer to write. But I use something like the Heisig method.
Agreed. I can't imagine a serious learner not eventually learning both. I like to learn them both up front, but I can see the argument for choosing only one in the beginning. I just wish they'd stop adding to the number of simplified characters I need to learn, but fat chance of that happening. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6901 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 79 of 80 19 September 2009 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
OK, valid point. I just couldn't suspect that it needed to be further qualified when I first wrote it. Of all the discussions in different forums about the pros and cons of simplified vs. traditional, I can't remember seeing it claimed that simplified are not easier to learn. Not even the biggest supporters of traditional have I usually seen claim this. If it were true that the learning effort required, in general for most people that is, is exactly the same for both of them, then it would make the whole introduction of simplified an exercise in futility, since the reason given was precisely to facilitate learning and promote literacy. Well, literacy did improve in China after the point in time when simplified were introduced, as far as I am aware this can be considered an established fact (?). The notion that simplified contributed zero to this development is rather surprising to me. Until someone presents hard facts from credible scientific studies on the subject this remains a case of one opinion against another then.
Aboslutely. Learning to read traditional is definitely part of my future plans too. At the moment it has low priority though. For the foreseeable future I prefer to continue covering more ground with simplified. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6857 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 80 of 80 19 September 2009 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm of the opinion that it was an exercise in futility. ;) Hence all the recent talk among mainland scholars of abolishing simplification and going back to traditional characters. Yes, literacy increased. However, compared to Taiwan, the illiteracy rate is still quite high. In fact, it's higher by an order of magnitude (1 out of 100 is illiterate in Taiwan, vs. nearly 1 out of 10 in China). So I'd be curious to know if it was simplification that was responsible, or simply improved education. I suspect that it has more to do with the quality of education.
Great! And I think once you start traditional it probably won't be a very difficult transition just to learn to read since you'll already have simplified down. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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