Skip to main content

Study Simplified and Traditional Chinese Characters

Simplified and traditional characters

What's the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese? 

Well the biggest difference is the appearance of the characters, for example:  爱, 不过, 担心, 说 these are all written in simplified Chinese, meanwhile the following are in traditional Chinese: 愛, 不過, 擔心, 說.
They all have the same meaning, only their appearance and amount of strokes changes. Another thing that changes is where they are used, simplified Chinese is mainly used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, meanwhile traditional Chinese it's used in Taiwan, Hong Kong (Cantonese) and Macau. 

Simplified Chinese was created in 1949 to improve China's literacy rate, the amount of characters that change between both systems is around 2,000, but it is still possible to learn both. 

My experience with both systems 

I first started to learn Traditional Chinese and I have been learning it for around 2 and half years, then six months ago I started to learn simplified, because I wanted to get my HSK certificate, and it's been quite a journey. 
At first, I was struggling because traditional Chinese uses more characters and when I was learning simplified, sometimes I didn't understand why this character was there, one day I realized that simplified reuses the same characters, by this I mean that two characters from traditional, use the same simplified character, in that moment everything started to make sense.

Tips for learning both 

My golden rule is to always prefer one over the other, whichever you choose that's going to be the one in which you are always making progress, learning new vocabulary, putting your subtitle in, etc. in my case I focus on traditional because it's the one I use in my classes. 
Then with the other one what you are going to do is substituting, for example: if you learned a lot of new vocabulary in traditional Chinese you are going to look for its equivalent in simplified, then you are going to write it down, if you have time It's always better to look for its stroke pattern. 

Another really important thing is to add your vocabulary into an Anki deck (a flashcard App), in one side you put the character in simplified Chinese and in the other use traditional and the more you review, the faster your brain will create a connection, and understand that their meaning is the same, and after sometime you will be able to read at the same level in both systems.

You also need to look for different ways to use each system, for example: I use traditional in my classes,  to read poems and subtitles, meanwhile I use simplified Chinese in the HSK books, in 小红书, and to read novels.

You should also try to focus on the components of the characters, for example in the words: 說/说 話/话 謊/谎 the one thing that changes is the part of the character: 言, so from this you can know that most character that have 言 will change, and this happens with a lot of different characters.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Manhuas, a game changer for improving your reading

How to use Manhuas to practice Chinese Improving your reading skills There are many ways to improve your Chinese skills, but when it comes to reading it's all about practice and constant immersion in the Chinese language, there are a lot of different resources that you can try like: books, articles, newspapers but the one I'm going to be focusing on this blog is practicing your reading through Manhuas (which are basically comics). Where can you find Manhuas? So there are a lot of different places where you can find them, for example if you want a physical copy you can find some on Amazon, but there's not a lot of variety, so the best options will be to read them online: there are some platforms that you can use for example: bilibili 漫画  or Webtoon , these two are both web platforms and Apps, so you can use them in the format that you prefer.  They are both free and quite easy to use, they quite similar, but the content in each one is quite different, another thing that is...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is going on with the 把 structure ?

The 把 structure The reason behind why you need he 把 structure The 把 structure is mostly used to add emphasis, the emphasis is added in the verb/result as it changes their usual position. This structure can be quite confusing, because in most western languages we don't have a structure that is remotely similar, so there is not a direct translation.  Even though this structure is quite hard, it's also really important, in my opinion it is fundamental. In addition, you will encounter this structure early on in your language journey. In my case I learned this structure in the GoChinese 400, and I'm also I'm pretty sure it's part of the HSK 3 coursework. What is the infamous 把 structure?  This structure is quite strict, from what I have learned up to now, the 把 structure never changes. It always follows its original pattern, which is : Subject+把+Object+Verb+ Result   The main uses of the 把 structure: 1)To emphasize that an action has finished Subject+把+Object+Verb+好了/忘了 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Small victories youll encounter in your Chinese Journey

Your language journey Everybody has its own path when it comes to language learning, they are all beautiful but completely different, but there are some victories that will happen in most people's language journey. It's important to care about these victories and appreciate it them because these will help you to stay motivated. My experience Up to this point I have been studying Chinese for more than 2 years and a half and I honestly love this language, but I have had my rough patch, mainly when I first started to learn Chinese. I remember that there was a moment I really wanted to quit and this happened on my third module, which was around my 4th month studying Chinese, I was feeling quite frustrated because I was not able to understand a lot of things and I felt like I was not as good as my classmates and to be honest I was not enjoying it; but one on these small victories helped me to stay motivated, and I'm so glad that I was able ...
Post a Comment
Read more