Simplified Chinese versus Traditional Chinese

[2010BEBES]

If you are looking into teaching Chinese to your child would it be 'Simplified' or 'traditional'.?

[kitnga]

i have learn simplified and traditional chinese, but i perfer traditional chinese.

[NewWorld2011]

It depends. If you want to read books from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau is better learning traditional characters, although many people there use simplified characters too. If instead of that, you only want to read books from Mainland China or Singapore (or you are going to visit those countries) I would study simplified characters.

For several reasons I´m going to teach my son only simplified characters, although I must admit that traditional characters are better because they give us more clues about the meaning and the origin of the words.

And always is easier passing from traditional to simplified instead of viceversa

[hypatia]

The issue for non-speakers like myself is that we rely on what's available on the market. Most dvds and books I find are simplified.

[aangeles]

I grew up learning Traditional but I found it quite easy to learn the simplified characters when necessary. I'm not sure if it would have been as easy the other way around. Also, most of the Traditional characters have stories and meaning behind the origin of each character, which is part of the beauty of the Chinese language. I find that this is lost with the simplified characters. It also bothers me a little that there seems to be no logic to the way the characters were simplified - i.e. some of the most complicated characters with dozens of strokes were not simplified while most of the easily written characters were simplified even more. Those are some of the reasons I chose to teach my daughter the traditional characters. Plus, when I am teaching her to read Chinese, to her it is like looking at images anyway so I don't think it is any harder for her to remember the traditional characters over the simplified ones.

That being said, I agree with hypatia that here in the U.S., most of the available books and teaching tools are in simplified. I have gone to great lengths to procure materials that are printed in Traditional characters, sometimes ordering directly from Taiwan and Hong Kong and sometimes even printing out the traditional characters on sticker paper and sticking them onto the books that are in simplified. (I am using Doman-style chinese books to teach her to read so it is easy to do that since the words are on a different page from the picture.) I guess that just goes to show how strongly I feel about my daughter learning the traditional characters. 

Speaking of traditional vs simplified, the Wink to Learn Chinese DVDs are now available in both traditional and simplified. I just ordered mine and I'm glad I waited for them to come out with the traditional version. 

[2010BEBES]

For several reasons I´m going to teach my son only simplified characters, although I must admit that traditional characters are better because they give us more clues about the meaning and the origin of the words.

And always is easier passing from traditional to simplified instead of viceversa

saunier.
Can you expand a little on those reasons for choosing simplified characters? Is it mainly because material available?
Thanks a lot.

[NewWorld2011]

Exactly. The main reason is that. By now in Spain It´s easier to find more multimedia material in simplified characters (except now "Wink to Learn", as aangeles commented, and "baby learns chinese")

I think that for my boy is the same if i´m flashing him simplified or traditional characters, because for babies are only images although traditional ones are more complicated for adults. However I have studied a little bit chinese characters to be able to teach better to my son, and unfortunately I only know simplified ones because is less hard for me memorizing them (I only use my left brain  ). Besides all my books are with those kind of characters.

[WINK to LEARN]

Dear All,

You may find both Simplified and Traditional flashcard-based free video lessons via our website. For your convenience, please find the weblinks for the different Chinese formats:

Simplified Chinese (commonly used in China and South-east Asia):
http://winktolearn.com/educational-dvds/all-about-wink-to-learn-dvds/111?phpMyAdmin=HS3im8B8YhQFed7%2C5-lq6oGsJL2

Traditional Chinese (commonly used in Taiwan and HK):
http://winktolearn.com/educational-dvds/all-about-wink-to-learn-dvds/301

Meanwhile, if you need any further assistance, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. Have a blessed weekend!

[greenlemmons]

Do the characters have a specific correlation to the spoken chinese languages.  ie. are Simplified characters Cantonese and Traditional characters Mandarin?

[Kezia]

Hi Greenlemmons,

I think this Support article may help explain things for you: http://support.brillkids.com/entries/20426802-what-is-the-difference-of-the-simplified-chinese-curriculum-from-the-traditional-chinese-curriculum

I'd like to clarify that when talking about "Simplified" and "Traditional" Chinese, we are only referring to the written language (i.e., the characters). On the other hand "Cantonese" and "Mandarin" are referring to the spoken language (and there are many other spoken languages or dialects for Chinese).

You can use any spoken language to read text written in either Simplified or Traditional, but in general, people from certain countries would only use a specific combination of written and spoken Chinese. In Hong Kong, for example, Cantonese is used with the Traditional Chinese writing, while in mainland China, Mandarin is used with the Simplified writing.

In case anyone is wondering about how we did this in the Little Reader Chinese Curriculum, you have an option to get the curriculum in either Simplified or Traditional, but kindly note that all the pronunciations were recorded in Mandarin for both curricula.

[WINK to LEARN]

Do the characters have a specific correlation to the spoken chinese languages.  ie. are Simplified characters Cantonese and Traditional characters Mandarin?

Dear Greenlemmons,

This is how it goes for the various territories:

PRC/South East Asia: Simplified Chinese script with PRC pronunciation standard
HK: Traditional Chinese script with PRC pronunciation standard
Taiwan: Traditional Chinese script with Taiwanese pronunciation standard.

Currently, there are 2 different standards of Chinese pronunciations i.e. PRC and Taiwanese. There are around 3-5% differences. For example, the word snail is pronounced as "Wo1 Niu2" using PRC pronunciation standard. But for the Taiwanese, this is pronounced as "Gua1 Niu2". Exactly because these subtle differences, we had included all these 3 versions into our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs set. You may like to find out more via this weblink: http://www.winktolearn.com/About-Our-DVD-s/speak-a-read-dvds.html

Meanwhile if you need more information, please feel free to contact me. Always happy to share more.

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