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Thread: Which is better? Simplified Chinese Character or Traditional Chinese?

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[quote=CHRISWAUGHBJ,231594]Azerbaijan, Moldova, Macdonia and Mongolia.... hmm.... all formerly socialist countries whose governments, at least during some period in the past, put a lot of effort and resources into education. Cuba also has a very high literacy rate, and for the same reason. One could argue these examples prove my assertion that literacy rates have more to do with access to education than the writing system.

"WHY CHINESE CAN LEARN THE 33 RUSSIAN LETTERS FOR 1 WEEK AND CAN START READ RUSSIAN FOR 2 WEEKS, BUT RUSSIANS, ENGLISHMEN, MONGOLIANS CAN'T LEARN TO READ CHINESE EVEN FOR 2 MONTHS?"

There are many reasons for this. Chinese characters are only one of them. Anyway, having studied Russian (as I believe you have, too), I know as well as you do that learning all 33 letters does not make one literate. It's only one step in the process of becoming literate. I can "read" any Russian text in that I can sound out the words, but that does not mean I understand any of it- and it's been so long since I studied Russian I probably wouldn't understand. Besides, I already agreed that it is more difficult to learn Chinese characters, but I don't see how this extra difficulty presents a real barrier to literacy. It takes more time to learn to read Chinese, but still, the majority of Chinese learn to read.

"CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT WILL BE THE % IF THEY HAVE TO LEARN AT LEAST 1500 "pictures", not 26 letters?"

All other things (access to and quality of education, in particular) being equal, the statistics would probably be the same.

Anyway, I still believe roughly 85% of Chinese people can understand roughly 90% of Renmin Ribao, I have never seen anything to cause me to doubt this, and you have offered no evidence that this is not true.

"In the topic below EVEN HAN-CHINESE think that their language is difficult"

Everybody thinks their language is difficult. My experience suggests that all languages are equally difficult, the difference is only in the particular nature of the difficulties.[/quote]

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