I am starting learning the Chinese characters, and I heard that China are going to ban the Traditional Characters from the education somewhere, only use Simplified Chinese. So I wonder which is the most important to learn? Any suggestion?

If you want to deal with mainland china / PRC, learn simplified. ROC, traditional. Better yet, learn both, you will start noticing the patterns in simplification.

I've heard it said that if you learn simplified first, learning traditional characters is much, much harder. The Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan tend to use the traditional characters, but the PRC has already stopped using them.

I see I see..

So are you trying to tell me that I should learn the traditional first, and then the simplified?

I think this plan will be good idea because I can understand Hong Kong and Taiwan, and then I can understand People's Republic of China.

I wonder if the People's Republic of China's use of simplified Chinese characters could influence on Taiwan and Hong Kong? That is one of my concern about learning the traditional characters. I don't want to learn both, and then wasted whole of my time while memorizing the traditional characters while they don't use it, you know what I mean?

Well, if you were to think your time was wasted, think of the people who live there who also learned the same characters. However, they are called "simplified" for a reason - sometimes there's only small change, sometimes no change at all! It's not as if you would need to learn the whole set over again.

Ah I see.. Thank you for help me.

I have no idea about Hong Kong. If you concern about Taiwan, I suggest you to learn Traditional Chinese.

Learn the Traditional and simplified character/word at the same time. Learning both at the same time might be better for you than learning one, then another.

If you are a beginner, I suggest that you just learn the simplified charaters. They are much, much easier to learn than the traditional ones, which have many more strokes/components in each character.

However, if you're learning the written language not for practical usage but to learn about Chinese culture, then I recommend the traditional set, from which you can learn about the roots of the word.

traditional is only used in taiwan and hongkong but in 5 yrs time hongkong will use simplified.

simplified is used by china and countries like malaysia and singapore

i find tradisional is more ideal for onliners, though, thanks to taiwanese

I've been studying Chinese for five years, and the way i've gone about it is I tried to learn simplified and traditional at the same time, focusing more on traditional. If you start learning simplified and later decide you want to learn traditional it will probably be really difficult. The other way around is much easier, because it's all downhill from there, rather than uphill.

After you've studied it a while you could choose to focus more on one than the other. That way you keep your options open at least. Good luck!

>>10
Who said we'll be using simplified in 5 yrs? No way! traditional had been around for almost 1000 yrs and the simplified only has about 30 yrs history. If not being forced by the Government even mainland is using traditional.

Whichever one you pick (I recommend Traditional because I hate the barbaric simplified characters), take a look at the Heisig method.

second round simplified is the best kind of chinese

Translation from one to the other in a relatively accurate way appears to be possible anyway, so in the information age it shouldn't matter which you learn.

I am a Chinese (in China) who is fluent with both methods. I hope these suggestions will be of good use.

Simplified is faster to learn and easier to write, and it is also the one used by the economic superpower in Asia, and most probably on a global level in the near future. Pick this one for practicality.

Traditional is harder for someone whose first (or first few) language is alphabet-based. The number of additional strokes will put you down for the first few weeks or so. But these are useful for studies in Chinese- either as a hobby, or as someone who intends to live in an SAR, Taiwan, or any of the overseas Chinese communities.

Traditional was the one taught to me first, so learning simplified was a piece of cake. I was told that it was a steep uphill climb if it was simplified that I learned first.

Most Chinese youths from the mainland or otherwise (mostly excluding overseas migrants) are fluent with both methods due to the internet.

My opinion in this matter is, if you think you need Chinese for business purposes, learn simplified first. If not, learn traditional.