你好！China has two systems of writing Mandarin: traditional and simplified. Like implied by their names, simplified is a shorthand way of writing traditional. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese government encouraged the use of simplified characters in order to increase literacy rates in the country. Today, mainland China uses simplified characters predominantly and Taiwan uses traditional.
Which one is better to learn?
Since mainland China has a larger influence on the rest of the world and since these are seemingly simpler and easier to learn, simplified Chinese has become the choice of many people. Yet, I would advocate that it be best to learn both since there is rarely a large difference between the two and such knowledge allows you a tremendous amount of flexibility.
To simplify these characters, certain radicals were changed, not the entire word (what are radicals?). So if you know those radicals, you should be able to decipher most words that have variations.
An example of such a variation is as follows (do you recognize the words?):
Simplified: 请, 谢谢
Traditional: 請, 謝謝
As you can see, the only difference is in the radical on the left. Can you still see some similarity between the two radicals, though? The radicals still mean the same thing (speech), despite their differing appearances.
Another great thing: not all Chinese words have a form for each system. So words like 我(wo3) and 你(ni3) are the same in both systems!
On this blog, I will use only simplified Chinese, since it is the most widely spoken and commonly used, especially if you plan to visit mainland China at some point.
I hope that was helpful. This can be a confusing topic so if you have any questions, just leave a comment below.
Keep up the great work! 再见！
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