Nin hao. :) Wo zai xue zhong wen. :D...Dan shi wo zai...far from fluent, ha ha. Wo shi xue sheng, since January of this year when I first started to focus on Mandarin Chinese. I did a bit of research and even talked to some of my chinese friends (wo you peng you men zai Shenzhen, Taipei, he HK) and have concluded the same as your article - that learning the Traditional is important, and that making words more simplified is not the key to increase literacy, far from it. Making everything 'simplified' actually increases illiteracy as when they come across 'bigger words' (ie-traditional forms), they will not comprehend as well. This is the problem with Our English now - in college/university we are told to write everything so that a 6th grader can read it...not allowed to use too big a word, even though through context is how people grasp the meaning of new words even if the word is complex ('big' / traditional) - kids don't walk around with a dictionary in their hands everywhere they go ;-P. In English, by writing everything as a 6th grader we make them all....stay at 6th grade intelligence level, so that they cannot understand more complex ideas or concepts. My college English professor did not know what 'rock climbing' was! And English was her major!! (which was the reason for my shock - it is pretty simple concept: the activity of climbing rocks (mountain size rocks), :P) However, in Chinese, there is a bit more to it...your language is not 'pronunciation' dependent...and I think that is actually the problem with why literacy is so low...most people relate a word WITH its pronunciation and its meaning (of course, keep in mind I'm American, ha ha, it is how we 'make connections') . We can't say Wo ming bai, unless we know all three things. Pronunciation is easy for English, and most English words have 'base roots' like your 'radicals' and so to grasp the meaning when you know a base is possible...In chinese however, even if you learn to 'read' chinese, you won't grasp the 'traditional' meaning if both characters are represented by the same simplified character...not sure how to explain, ha ha. If I mean to say/convey the word 'Basset hound' but I write 'dog', they have a vague I idea about what I mean...This is the problem I see as a student of learning Chinese...learning simplified first will bring confusion or misunderstanding because one character can mean two different concepts (even though they are 'connected/related' in some way). For example, have you ever taken notes in class and sometimes you'll abbreviate a word?..and then years later you when you come across them again and can't figure out what you wrote because your shorthand abreviations(simiplified) could mean several different, but maybe similar, ideas? You have to wrack your brain (colloquialism in English that means think real hard to remember, try to bring to your mind the thoughts and memory you had at the time you wrote it) to figure out what it was you intended to say. This is the main reason why I want to learn Traditional first. I am looking for resources with which to asist me in my learning (reading/writing/speaking) and that I can offer on my site to others, I do plan on learning both eventuall, but right now my focus is traditional :D. However, in the U.S. (particular Indiana, as that is the state in which I live), we don't have many resources either way in regards to learning either traditional or simplified. Would you know a contact that can help? :)
Posted by Denaz Suits on Friday, 20 April 2007 at 8:09