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Thread: please advise what form of Chinese i should learn

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[quote=GRIZ326,287508]Peter, to the best of my knowledge there is only two written forms of the Chinese language: traditional and simplified. It is the form of speech that varies greatly throughout China.

This is a very good book:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Simplified-Character/dp/0804835098/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210398803&sr=8-1

However, I have many different books and flash cards and such. I found that actually trying to write the characters helps the meaning stick in my brain.

The Chinese language is a chicken or the egg sort of language because learning the characters is not especially useful if you want to speak. It is one reason the language is taught with pinyin in Chinese schools. If you can say correctly say pinyin words you can speak Chinese. From what I've learned, speaking from Chinese characters is similar to  the way we read outloud - we do not really read each word, we instantaneously recognize it and know how to say it. When you are a child you sound out the words because our written language implies sounds, however, the Chinese characters really don't provide much in the way of pronunciation unless you already know the language well.

Learning Chinese is like learning two languages: pinyin and characters. ...and to make it even more interesting, I think the Chinese language depends on groups of characters with long standing meanings. I believe they are referred to as idioms. Consider: "a chicken with its head cut off" to describe someone who is running around in frantically; or "knee high to a grasshopper" to describe a small child...except the ones that I've read are usually a little more profound than those trite examples. It is a fascinating language. I wish that I could give it more study time.

I think my explanation is reasonably accurate, but the real authorities will fix what I've got wrong. I'll look forward to getting a better understanding from the experts.  :-)[/quote]

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