Monday, April 03, 2006
Which type of Chinese do you want to learn?
If you just start to learn Chinese, you may need to make a decision about what type of Chinese you want to learn. It is not difficult indeed for me to give you my recomendation but I believe you should know the full story.
On top of the myriad local Chinese dialects, there are two official versions of Chinese used by mainland China and Taiwan respectively. We call the version used in Taiwan the "Traditional Chinese" because it has a direct continuity with the thousands of years old Chinese. On the flip side, the version used in mainland China is called "Simplified Chinese". As it is called, you can imagine this version has undergone a process of simplification. Why such a prcess? In 1950's, the newly establish mainly China government adopted this simplification process because the leaders believed that the traditional Chinese was too complicated to learn and use, putting working class people and their children at a great disadvantage in education inequality since they can afford less time and resources on learning. So the deucation department started simplied structure of each Chinese characters so that many complicated characters take less strokes to write. So for simplified Chinese characrters, it is easier to remember and write. This language reform was fundamental and took about 2 decades to finalize.
So what are the exactly differences between mainland China's simplified Chinese and Taiwan's traditional Chinese? Mostly the difference lies in the characters. My guess is that 95% of Chinese characters are different between the 2 versions: one simplier and one more complicated. In addition to that, tradition Chinese and simplified Chinese developed 2 different phonetic system. It is not because they sound different, it is just that they use different symboles to mark the same sound. The mainland China developed a romanized phonetics system to mark the pronounciations while Taiwan uses another one that I do not know much about.
The interesting thing about two versions of Chinese is that once you know one version of it, it is very easy for you to recognize the other version. Therefore, because of business activity and technology, the use of both simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese have penetrated to their opposite side pretty much because of their own characteristics. For example, Simplified Chinese is more and more popular in Taiwan because it is earsier to write. So a lot peole use that in handwriting. At the same time, because traditional Chinese looks nicer and more elegant, they are often more and more used on the media, labels, and advertising in mailand China.
Although such a complication seems daunting to many beginners, I would encourage to start by stick to the simplified Chinese. The following is a list of reasons for my recommendation.
1. Simplified Chinese is literally simplified. So it is easier to learn.
2. Simplified Chinese uses romanized phonetic system and therefore much easier for English speakers to pick up.
3. Simplfied Chinese is official for 1.3 billion people in mainland Chinese. An easy choice for business and career consideration.
4. Once knowing Simplified Chinese, people will have little problem to understand and recognize traditional ones.
5. And last, our powerful Chinese learning site: www.zapchinese.com only covers simplified Chinese.
On top of the myriad local Chinese dialects, there are two official versions of Chinese used by mainland China and Taiwan respectively. We call the version used in Taiwan the "Traditional Chinese" because it has a direct continuity with the thousands of years old Chinese. On the flip side, the version used in mainland China is called "Simplified Chinese". As it is called, you can imagine this version has undergone a process of simplification. Why such a prcess? In 1950's, the newly establish mainly China government adopted this simplification process because the leaders believed that the traditional Chinese was too complicated to learn and use, putting working class people and their children at a great disadvantage in education inequality since they can afford less time and resources on learning. So the deucation department started simplied structure of each Chinese characters so that many complicated characters take less strokes to write. So for simplified Chinese characrters, it is easier to remember and write. This language reform was fundamental and took about 2 decades to finalize.
So what are the exactly differences between mainland China's simplified Chinese and Taiwan's traditional Chinese? Mostly the difference lies in the characters. My guess is that 95% of Chinese characters are different between the 2 versions: one simplier and one more complicated. In addition to that, tradition Chinese and simplified Chinese developed 2 different phonetic system. It is not because they sound different, it is just that they use different symboles to mark the same sound. The mainland China developed a romanized phonetics system to mark the pronounciations while Taiwan uses another one that I do not know much about.
The interesting thing about two versions of Chinese is that once you know one version of it, it is very easy for you to recognize the other version. Therefore, because of business activity and technology, the use of both simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese have penetrated to their opposite side pretty much because of their own characteristics. For example, Simplified Chinese is more and more popular in Taiwan because it is earsier to write. So a lot peole use that in handwriting. At the same time, because traditional Chinese looks nicer and more elegant, they are often more and more used on the media, labels, and advertising in mailand China.
Although such a complication seems daunting to many beginners, I would encourage to start by stick to the simplified Chinese. The following is a list of reasons for my recommendation.
1. Simplified Chinese is literally simplified. So it is easier to learn.
2. Simplified Chinese uses romanized phonetic system and therefore much easier for English speakers to pick up.
3. Simplfied Chinese is official for 1.3 billion people in mainland Chinese. An easy choice for business and career consideration.
4. Once knowing Simplified Chinese, people will have little problem to understand and recognize traditional ones.
5. And last, our powerful Chinese learning site: www.zapchinese.com only covers simplified Chinese.
