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

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[quote=SANYACHINA,231707]"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."

But if you are a NATIVE Russian speaker it is ENOUGH. We are talking about the locals, not the foreigners like you or me.

"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."

LOSING TIME. FOR EXAMPLE IF YOU ARE ABLE TO LEARN YOUR OWN LETTERS FOR 2 WEEKS , not for 20 years, you will have more time for the second foreign languages, geography, etc. It is so bad that MANY Chinese when read a book OFTEN do not understand some characters and EVEN can not get the meaning from the context...and just skip it...It is not good reading.

"It takes more time to learn to read Chinese, but still, the majority of Chinese learn to read."

They are learning but many of them do not learnt.

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

I still think that the quality depends of the quantity. Not everyone is smart enough to be able to remember so huge number of characters.

"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."

85 % and 90% is really not enough. By the way, when you have free time and you want to have some fun, ask some 18~22 years old Chinese to read and translate/explain EVERY character from "Renmin Ribao" /some column/ and have a good time :)

"Everybody thinks their language is difficult."

No. Some guys think it is so easy, because they are very ethnocentric people.

"My experience suggests that all languages are equally difficult, the difference is only in the particular nature of the difficulties."

"Difficult" here is subjective, because it is depends of who is studying the language. For example for an kyrgyzian the Kazakh will be easy, but for a Thai it will be not easy. BUT the writing system is OBJECTIVE. Because here we are talking mostly about numbers, quantities. For example it is easier to remember:

-      ^ * #, 
THAN
-     ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + ~ `. , ' " | \ > < / .[/quote]

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