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In which sequence should I learn Chinese. What are simplified characters and important traditional characters which should I learn first and why those are necessary to learn first?

Mou某
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RashkRizwan
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  • Wikipedia is your Good friend – 炸鱼薯条德里克 Oct 11 '18 at 14:48
  • A little context is needed here. What are you goals? To listen and speak fluently? To read fluently? All three? Where are you at already? Anyone could give you an opinionated response, but who would that be helpful for without any sort of direction? – Mou某 Oct 11 '18 at 14:51
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    Also guys @RashkRizwan is new here. Let's hold off on the down votes for the time being, if we can. – Mou某 Oct 11 '18 at 14:58
  • iam a beginer so thats why i ask all this and thanks for suggestio – RashkRizwan Oct 11 '18 at 15:21
  • @RashkRizwan Are you moving to a place where Chinese is the official language, or you're simply looking to learn a new language? – Alex Oct 11 '18 at 21:50

2 Answers2

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only if, you're interested in history, culture; or, you need to read materials dated before 1949; learn traditional chinese.

otherwise, learn simplified chinese first. particularly for anyone who learn "chinese" for bread-and-butter.

it's "easier" to read & write; for foreigners; compare to traditional chinese.

to be fair, well, there's a chinese proverb "物以罕為貴"; it's roughly "when a thing is scarce, it is precious".

have fun :)

水巷孑蠻
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I must say, the attitude towards learning Chinese is correct when you asked

Which should I learn first?

because you need to know both to be fully literate in Chinese. I'm also going to disagree with the other answer which suggests Traditional Chinese has a niche application and that Simplified Chinese is easier to read.

The most important factor is your environment!

  • If you're going to be moving to a Chinese-speaking area: Simplified Chinese has minimal usage in environments like Hong Kong and Macau and is practically not used at all in Taiwan and most established overseas Chinese communities. The areas that it is concentrated in are (1) Mainland China and (2) certain cities in Malaysia. Maybe you can add Singapore to that list, but their Chinese ability is mediocre at best, so English remains the most useful there.

  • If you're just studying as a foreign learner in your current location: Consider picking up the version which you would get most help from. If your friends or teachers surrounding you are mostly accustomed to Traditional Chinese, then you should go for Traditional Chinese. Ditto for Simplified.

  • If you're immersing yourself in Simplified Chinese materials, then pick Simplified Chinese. Ditto for Traditional Chinese, but the former is more likely - especially if you're planning to study in Mainland China or work as a translator.

It takes minimal effort to switch.

If you are fluent in one script, it takes very little time to switch to the other. Prioritise being fluent in one, rather than worrying about what you should choose first.

If somehow all other factors are equal, pick Traditional Chinese.

  • Simplified Chinese is not easier to learn than Traditional Chinese. See stats by IndexMundi*. Mainland China, the only fully Chinese region using Simplified Chinese, forms the lower bound of the literacy rate trends of the Chinese-using regions, indicating that script reform had minimal impact and economic development was the deciding factor by far.

  • Simplified Chinese instils a relatively poorer understanding of how the writing system and character components work. This is due to its overuse of writing abbreviations in its goal of cutting down strokes, meaning you'll be learning many components twice (an abbreviated version and a non-abbreviated version). Prepare for much more rote memorisation instead of exploiting reusable concepts if you choose Simplified Chinese.

  • In the wider cultural region of East Asia, Traditional Chinese is more useful. Historical China has influenced many countries in East Asia, including their vocabulary and writing systems. These influences were in the form of the Traditional Script, meaning you're killing multiple birds with one stone.

*Ultimately sourced from the CIA world factbook.

dROOOze
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  • If you're from Pakistan, as your profile suggests, and you're learning Chinese as a tool to do dealings with China, then I suggest you learn Simplified Chinese. – dROOOze Oct 12 '18 at 15:35
  • i like the word "niche", particularly. then, the points in "all other factors are equal" are strong. well done :) – 水巷孑蠻 Oct 13 '18 at 01:29
  • I'd say classical Chinese (wenyanwen) is much more useful for understanding other languages and cultures, but is an overkill for beginners. Traditional characters alone really doesn't add that much, as the only other language currently using Chinese characters, Japanese, has their own set of simplification. – user23013 Oct 13 '18 at 13:15
  • @user23013 aside from 文言 and 繁體 being neither comparable nor mutually exclusive, the whole idea is that starting from 繁體 means you get added benefit at no cost. "Japanese has also simplified" is not a position in favour of 簡體, considering that many of their simplifications are different and not mutually recognisable, and their script is still more similar to 繁體; see this. 簡體 is relatively more impractical and offers basically no advantages. – dROOOze Oct 13 '18 at 23:38
  • Are you a native speaker? I'm not saying 简体 has advantages. My point is that the advantages of 繁体, if any, would be too small in this perspective, and easily overshadowed by and confused with other techniques a native speaker could use, that it's difficult to believe personal feelings without objective researches. "All other factors being equal" would be a contrived situation, which doesn't prevent someone argue technically it has some differences by some logic, but prevents anything to be objectively verified. Not much point for me to invent some logic having similar problems to counter that. – user23013 Oct 14 '18 at 01:28
  • @user23013 a learner does not have the advantages a native speaker has, so this is really a moot point. You also seem to forget that no matter how small you think the advantage of 繁體 actually is, it comes at no cost. I have said all the appropriate things that needs to be considered when choosing a script, so if you have something else to add you should post an answer or a question. – dROOOze Oct 14 '18 at 01:35
  • Well, actually, I'm not here to start an argument. My original comment basically says "don't mistake the benefit of 文言 as the benefit of 繁体", which I feel very likely. And I'll take your response as no, you didn't, and leave everything else in this answer as a matter of opinion. – user23013 Oct 14 '18 at 01:38
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    @user23013 It is not an opinion, you can empirically verify how much cultural artifacts you can appreciate more, how much Korean Hanja, how much Vietnamese Chu Nom you can learn easier with 繁體 as a new learner with no background in Chinese. This has nothing to do with 文言 at all; at most they use vocabulary items, not grammar, from Classical Chinese which you still get from learning Modern Chinese. The only thing that is an opinion is your poorly reasoned statement that my answer is an opinion. 簡體 is an objectively worse choice if you’re not specifically dealing with Mainland China. – dROOOze Oct 14 '18 at 01:43
  • Sorry, 文言 was inaccurate. I was thinking about the meanings of characters like 走 聞 謝, which generally need learning resources much more than the shapes of the characters. And "opinion" refers to "pick traditional Chinese". It was an opinion because the points aren't sufficiently backed, not that it's wrong. To me, even the least challenged point as I'm aware of, depended on that I believe you are personally confident that the benefits are really from the traditional characters, not their meaning, which I had no way to objectively verify, and didn't expect much improvement. – user23013 Oct 14 '18 at 03:58
  • Also, by "not specifically mainland China", I suppose you meant "may potentially deal with everything including the history of smaller countries while specifically avoiding mainland China". I know that 简体 is worse if all situations that 简体 is slightly better and exactly these situations are excluded from consideration, including potentially dealing with China, and the environmental factors (in this answer, and others such as the internet). – user23013 Oct 14 '18 at 03:58
  • And it objectively is, with absolutely no cost (even not opportunity cost), just like how the speed of light in SI unit is an accurate number while the speed of sound is not. But for some reasons I tend to not assume others are thinking in this way. If you could agree that it's an opinion, I understand that there are always a small number of people in this exact situation, and you don't have to explain why it is likely, and just leave it to anyone seeing this answer. – user23013 Oct 14 '18 at 03:58
  • @user23013 really, you make Mainland Chinese sound as if they're illiterate in Traditional Chinese. "Not specifically mainland China" means that Traditional Chinese works quite well there as well, because of the spread of media from Taiwan and Hong Kong. There is no reason to go for Simplified Chinese unless you're completely stuck in the Mainland and have no interest with communicating outside of that bubble. Simplified Chinese is an impediment to communication outside of the Mainland, and even the Government Mouthpiece 人民日報 knows this. – dROOOze Oct 14 '18 at 04:21
  • @droooze Your arguments for "if all the other factors are equal, pick TC" may be true ONLY if you are a native Chinese. I am Brazilian and a Chinese teacher for over 10 years (and a student myself) and I can tell you that TC is WAY MORE DIFFICULT to any foreigner than SC. So, your 1st point is wrong. 2nd one: it's true that TC is etymologically closer to the origins of the characters, but, even so, many of them are just random, and students actually give a sh*t for that. They just want to learn the language. – Enrico Brasil Oct 16 '18 at 14:12
  • 3rd one: again, the student is willing to learn Chinese, which is already difficult enough. He doesn't care if Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Martian, Plutonian, etc. have anything to do with the ("former") language script. I'm so against TC and I think the government should consider simplifying it even more if they want the Chinese language to reach an international language status as English has nowadays. – Enrico Brasil Oct 16 '18 at 14:17
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    @EnricoBrasil If you think Simplified Chinese is easier than Traditional Chinese, then I’m sorry to say, you don’t understand character structure very well, and you are teaching or learning them the wrong way. They are not “random”, and if you think they are, that’s your own problematic understanding that contributes to the difficulty. Literacy rate statistics cannot be “wrong” either - the notion doesn’t make any sense. – dROOOze Oct 16 '18 at 20:23
  • @droooze You didn't understand my concept of "random" at all. What makes a 為 better than a 为? 為 came from the drawing of a hand guiding an elephant through labour, meaning "to do", which we can no longer see at all (neither the hand nor the elephant). The way it changed is just "random", the same way 为 is just a "random" simplification based on cursive handwritting. 为 at least is a lot easier to remember and to write with its 4 strokes instead of 9 strokes from 為. You're just probably Taiwanese and that's why you think TC is better, otherwise no reasonable thinking would support it. – Enrico Brasil Oct 17 '18 at 01:23
  • Literacy rate statistics measure NATIVE speakers literacy. That's not the case of the guy who asked the question at all. – Enrico Brasil Oct 17 '18 at 01:24
  • @EnricoBrasil Firstly, I'm from mainland China. Secondly, I'd never advocate using「為」, which is a Simplification;「爲」is a far better choice, because of the presence of the hand on top. Thirdly, you may cherry pick all the examples that you want, but you would easily know that they're relatively rare exceptions unless you actually don't know the writing system that well. No person "reasonable thinking" would support Simplified Chinese, unless they learned Chinese through some insane method like memorising characters stroke-by-stroke. – dROOOze Oct 17 '18 at 01:42