In my experience, the answer is to learn both. It’s actually a lot easier than you would think. Every time you learn a character in one script, learn it in the other. Then write in Chinese everyday. I like writing letters, journal entries, daily to-do lists etc.. Between using spaced repetition software like anki & daily writing it’s actually fairly easy to read & write in both scripts in a fairly short amount of time(2 years ish) Also your ability to remember characters & visualize them improves SUBSTANTIALLY with practice. Once you have a few hundred characters, learning the next 7,000 or so is waaayyy easier. I also bought myself a 康熙字典 and read it for fun lol. That said, you don’t even have to learn that many characters if you don’t want to. I just like to

He smiles at the end of every sentence, so cute

Thank you for the informative video!😊😊😊

Thank you so much for sharing Hope you make more videos ❤

Good answers to questions that were on my mind for a while!

Thanks for the information👍🏻👍🏻

I highly recommend learning bopomofo first, then pinyin. From the non-native Chinese speaker perspective, you’ll be far less prone to pronounce the letters as you are used to them being pronounced. For example, “chi” and “qi” would be the same pronunciation in English, but are two subtly yet distinctly different sounds in Chinese, which is accurately captured by zhuyin. English speakers/speakers of languages that use Roman letters will always be at a disadvantage due to this bias. How often do you hear seasoned mandarin learners still pronouncing “qu” as “choo”? Zhuyin learners wouldn’t be tempted to pronounce it that way.

Thank you 😊

I grew up in mainland China. I learned simplified Chinese at school. But I can read most traditional Chinese without any problem.

I grew up learning simplied chinese, all it took for me to learn traditional chinese was reading a couple of wuxia novels in middle school.

I know I watched it already, but thank you for reassuring me about my internal "pinyin vs zhuyin" debate. I'm used to pinyin, to be honest. and i know it kinda sounds selfish, but making this switch would be too much for me.

I learn traditional Chinese for a while when I was a kid. Even though it was very short while, but that gives me the foundation and logic for when I learn simplified Chinese yeeears later when I am adult now. Every now and then I still look up to the traditional hanzi when studying new word. Sometimes, it gives me a clearer picture of the writing root idea as it is closer to pictograph, and therefore help me to memorize the hanzi drawing more easily.

很好的presentation，保持住

Thank you! İ actually am learning traditional, but since İ'm learning in a course with like a dozen other student, there have been some awkward moments where other students were wondering about the characters İ typed in. We all now have gotten used to the situation though. Btw, the teacher doesn't mind at all her students using different characters.

Im learning traditional since my girlfriend is from Taiwan. I use pinyin to traditonal keyboard though which makes it easier. Writing the characters by hand is out of the question though haha!

Interesting video and I wonder if Taiwanese people can understand Hong Kong traditional Chinese characters characters between the two are different common ones. This is easily seen on a chat room between a Taiwanese flight attendant and a Hong konger flight attendant on Cathay Pacific

Traditional First (better structured) Simple can create new characters. There is advantages to both as well.

I learned using Wade-Giles romanization. (I’m old)

I would add to your video: if you have a child and want them to learn traditional Chinese characters, you do NEED TO LEARN ZHUYIN, because virtually all children’s books and learning materials which use traditional characters have bopomofo subtitles, not pinyin. If you want to read Chinese stories to them or want to help them Learn traditional characters, then you will want to learn zhuyin too! This situation particularly applies to the many 混血兒 children in Taiwan and abroad.

Linus can you memorise the whole poem of qian zi wen in traditional Chinese? If you can how did you do it, please tell???

when we use mobile and PC to communicate, I found when writing, i forgot some Chinese character's figure and can not write them without refer to my PC or mobile phone, because your brain found you almost never writing them, so they are fading away from your memory.

Traditional characters are the best !

Y’all may not know this, but bopofomo was used on mainland China until 1956 and it still appears in some dictionaries to this day. I also dislike how u only put 繁 on Taiwan, because there are many temples and cultural areas in mainland china where it helps to know traditional

I know the example of 东 vs 東 (木 + 日) ... traditional is easier to interpret but harder to write.

I love you brother. Do you teach Chinese lessons!

Learn both. Traditional for it's elegance. Plus calligraphy and signage just looks weird in Simplified form. Simplified for it's ease of writing, esp when taking notes. And much of the Chinese world uses simplified too. Zhuyin's precision makes it easier to type than QWERTY Pinyin, but the '9 button inputs' for Pinyin is the fastest input type overall.

Will knowing traditional Chinese make it easier to learn simplified Chinese? because me and all other Taiwanese I know are able to read simplified chinese, but I just heard there are some people from china cannot understand traditional chinese I always thought that is just a instinct, because we never learn simplified chinese and it just looks similar so you can guess the words according to the context

I’m gonna be a devil’s advocate here: if you simplify existing characters, it makes it easier to form more complex characters down the line by combining different characters together while minimizing the number of strokes. So it leaves more room for future expansion.

You should learn oracle bone script 😂

As a westener, I learned Traditional because I prefer Taiwan and am never planning to go to China. That said I actually found it easier. Simplified is easier to write, I admit; it's faster. But traditional is easier to remember I think, it's less abstract once you realize Hanzi are mostly made up of components. Regarding the IME system, I would recommend both. Pinyin is faster and more convenient (especially since most of us are used to a QWERTY keyboard layout, you know where the letters are). That said, Zhuyin (BoPoMoFo) is a lot better if you want to learn the pronounciation. Standard Pinyin doesn't let you type (well, 地球拼音 does, but that's not standard). However Zhuyin lets you (and depending on the computer system, maybe even requires you to also enter the tone. Having the tone part of the spelling helps a lot in remembering the tone. Pinyin can be confusing too because of it's arbitrary rules (for example v is not always ü, only sometimes)

when i type in pinyin it comes out wrong a lot of the time :( bopomofo looks cool as well lol

I think you missed one important point, all ancient Chinese literatures and writings were written in traditional characters. It adds an additional level of difficulty to the learning process.

You should learn Traditional Chinese becoz it has a lot of advantages over Simplified Han. It increases brain functioning and helps communicate in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Despite its harder than simplified.

BOTH!

Silly question. But, as someone who knows Japanese, would be better/ easy for me to learn the traditional or simplified Chinese? And is there any good app for traditional Chinese learners?

I think if you don't want to learn Japanese later, then learn easier one.

To answer this question, it depends heavily on the level of application. If you learn TC, you're limiting yourself to a small pool.

traditional chinese is the superset, and simplified chinese is its subset so if you learn simplified chinese only you will miss part of the knowledge

aint there a bit of a grammar difference between tawianese mandarin and mainland mandarin ?

In this MODERN AGE, It needn't to learn TRADITIONAL CHARACTER STYLE of learning or writing CHINESE. You must learn PINYIN Or ZHUYIN. It's EASY ENOUGH.

When a Chinese guy and taiwanese guy try to make a conversation can they understand each other or not?

Learn Cantonese if you want to read classical literature because it is closer to middle Chinese unlike... Mandarin

非常好的講解，唯一的缺點就是不是中文

Very interesting lesson! In the opportunity, I wish that Jesus, the Name above all names (Phillipians 2), bless you, and may you feed from His Word and Salvation! 非常有趣的課！在這個機會中，我希望耶穌，這個高於一切名字的名字（腓立比書2），祝福你，願你從他的話語和救恩中餵養！

You' ll never learn too much. 🙂

it’s pretty easy to choose,just like why we learn English , because USA is the superpower and no 1 in the world. We prefer American English rather than British English. Same rule apply to learning Chinese.

Shinjitai is the best

There are lots of mistakes in this video. Most of the simplified Chinese Characters were not new. They existed as one Chinese character may have many different versions in ancient times. 80% of the simplified Chinese Characters were picked from those ancient variants, mostly from cursive script [草书], which is another version of the Traditional Chinese characters. e.g. "爱" can be traced back to Songndynasty• We can found "爱” in the artwork of Zhao Mengkui[赵孟奎], a well-known calligrapher of the Song Dynasty. Additionally, when people in Taiwan and Hong Kong need to write something really fast, they tend to scribble and turn a complicated character into a simpler version( I.e , 3 strokes into a line). So simplistic Chinese already existed and used by Taiwanese and Hong Kongner in the first place, not to mention most Taiwanese and Hong Kongners were migrants from Chinese mainland, therefore still need to communicate across different regions. If you know Chinese well enough, you will read both version interchangeably, if you just started to learn Chinese, learning traditional Chinese does not make it more memorable as traditional Chinese are combinations of smaller characters so you would need to start to learn Chinese characters regardless, which are just simplified Chinese.

Pinyin with traditional characters

学汉语已经够难了，所以多学一套注音/拼音/标音系统也没有增加太大的工作量

Please restore traditional chinese characters in mainland china.

ZHUYIN. It's EASY ENOUGH.

马来西亚也是用简化汉字吧？

Taiwanese gigachad

？？pinyin 也是bopomofo好吗？We call "b" bo,"p" po and so on.

Simple. Go with what 1.3 billion people are using

With enough exposure and practice, you can do both. Choose one and stick to it. If you dive into the world of hanzi, you'll find the Simplified a mess. However the typeface of so called Traditional characters used in Taiwan is also a mess. The REAL traditional hanzi is about to be discovered by yourself.

Incorrect translation 繁體字 = complicated characters Not traditional characters The word 繁 has got nothing to do with traditional

Are you a good person? Ever lied stolen or committed adultery. All humans have sin and we need a savior that's why God in his love sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and when we believe in him and turn away from sin we attain eternal life. Praying for China and Taiwan.

Dumb foolish writing system..., she said.

traditional will eventually phased out just like how ancient chinese characters in the past. choosing traditional and simplified is like u wanna buy old phone or new one. I'd rather choose new, not to mention tens of thousands of new characters being created every year all using simplified characters.

毫无疑问应该学简体中文，简体中文才是中华民族的正统语言

婉蜿还是学英语或日语吧，那是你们爹爹妈妈的语言，汉语跟婉蜿无关。汉语是中国人的语言。