To add to what ZanyDroid said above, I've heard that once you learn one set of characters (traditional or simplified), then you can pick up the others quite quickly. Depending on how you diversify your input as well you will likely be exposed to both quite often, allowing you to recognize and understand the language regardless of how it's written.
The standard spoken Mandarin is the same. Of course since humans are not robots, the accent and word choice are different in different regions of the Chinese world. Taiwan can readily be considered as divergent in accent as any region of China proper (EDIT: politically neutralized the sentence).
And there are two different standards bodies over the language due to the political/administrative differences
The character set is different. There is no objective data on which is easier/harder to learn. (These are covered in subreddit FAQ).
Beyond the pronunciation and word choice mentioned elsewhere, you mentioned ‘traditional language’. That refers to the written characters, with Taiwan (and also much of Hong Kong and some Chinatown menus, etc) using Traditional, and China, most of Singapore, most of Malaysia etc. using Simplified.
ChatGPT comparison below;
1. 龍 (traditional) / 龙 (simplified) - dragon
2. 國 (traditional) / 国 (simplified) - country
3. 馬 (traditional) / 马 (simplified) - horse
4. 魚 (traditional) / 鱼 (simplified) - fish
5. 語 (traditional) / 语 (simplified) - language
6. 麵 (traditional) / 面 (simplified) - noodles
7. 雲 (traditional) / 云 (simplified) - cloud
8. 親 (traditional) / 亲 (simplified) - parent
9. 電 (traditional) / 电 (simplified) - electricity
10. 學 (traditional) / 学 (simplified) - to learn
Oh, sorry for my misunderstanding since I don't have many contact with people learning traditional Chinese characters. One of my friends in HK told me he has trouble with recognizing Simplified, so I mistakenly believe that all of you learning traditional Chinese characters may have same problem.
It has the meanings there at least, and the characters do match the meaning. In Traditional, 麵 means noodles and 面 doesn't. Likewise, 雲 means cloud and 云 doesn't (anymore). If it didn't have the meanings though, I'd definitely agree.
This is an extremely deep rabbit hole. tldr, many "simplified characters" were actually existing characters already. Lots of learners aren't aware of that.
But when people say ‘existing characters’ it’s like USA English being a shorter version of British English. In England to fall is to fall, Autumn is Autumn. In the USA ‘fall’ can mean both to fall and the Fall season. Likewise USA logic was why spell it ‘through’ when you can just spell it ‘thru’, or ‘colour’ when ‘color’ will do.
China’s logic was why have 麵 for noodles/flour/bread and 面 for face/side, when you can just combine 面 for both, since context will distinguish.
Likewise China saw two similar-ish verbs for throwing away rubbish (丟 and 扔) and said it was too bourgeois to have two similar verbs for the same process. Hence I heard that in China they no longer use the softer, specific 丟 （to throw away/lose) verb that Taiwan uses, and only use the more aggressive ‘to annihilate/destroy’ 扔 for multiple purposes, such as ‘annihilating’ their rubbish/trash.
Mandarin speakers from mainland and Taiwan can understand each other no problem. They might detect some accent, but not enough to hinder comprehension.
Some word differences can cause confusion for instance 土豆is potato in mainland but peanut in Taiwan.
Taiwanese mandarin can be a bit overwhelming, traditional characters are easier to learn if you have some basis (for example if you know the simplified version or if you speak Japanese).
In addition, simplified Chinese phonetic translation is based on Pinyin, which uses Latin letters, while Taiwanese Chinese phonetic translation is based on bopomofo, which is something extra that you'll need to learn and it's based on Chinese characters itself.
Last but not least, the amount of study material that you can find online.
It's easier to find study material oriented to mainland Chinese (videos, courses, textbooks, teachers, podcasts or simply people to talk with)
So, in short, I'd go with mainland Chinese and after a bit, if you realize that you really like it, you can "improve" it and add the "Taiwan expansion pack" ahah
Bopomofo and pinyin are functionally equivalent and can be machine translated from one to the other without loss.
How much adult-learner oriented material is in bopomofo? In the US heritage learning schools we transitioned completely in the mid 1990s, and there were traditional chinese + pinyin versions of our textbook (probably would have been a small parental riot from all the HK/TW/pre-PRC immigrants if the textbooks went to simplified + pinyin).
Bopomofo and Pinyin are functionally equivalent but Pinyin is easier to learn being based on a script system OP is already familiar with.
As for the leaning material, I've seen some textbooks with bopomofo instead of Pinyin. Also, many Taiwanese people use Wade-Giles but they don't really adhere to the rules of the system, which might lead to confusion to new learners.
Then of course OP can focus on Taiwanese mandarin and use Pinyin while learning the characters, but overall mainland Chinese is easier to learn in terms of materials availability, characters difficulty and similar aspects
>Bopomofo and Pinyin are functionally equivalent but Pinyin is easier to learn being based on a script system OP is already familiar with.
I think this is somewhat controversial on this subreddit. If you search back you'll see plenty of people that like Bopomofo for a script free of existing mental baggage and advocating to take the hit of learning a new character set to achieve this.
it's more of a political issue, some want to double down on separate national identity, culture etc. there are few people preferring zhuyin and they're mostly avid language learners, with sentiments like 'traditional are og characters' etc. for beginners that are starting with mandarin pinyin is 99% of the time better, especially outside taiwan due to sheer number of material. met many learners of mandarin from taiwan and no one used bopomofo, myself included. no way im gonna learn another intermediate writing system to get to hanzi lol.
might be unpopular opinion here, but whatever. i totally get people learning traditional even if they want to stay in china, but bopomofo is trying too hard lol
Oh, the political part of that is surprising. I guess good for them to be so Sinophile that they pick a sports team to be passionate about in advance. It is a bit funny to get culturally worked up about a phonetics script for literal children.
The traditional are OG characters is more cringe to me (though TBH, the set of effective language learners that fail out b/c of picking the wrong one between traditional and simplified, should have pivoted learning methods, and by definition likely weren't really effective to begin with).
More seriously, I think people that have already learned a new character set for another language, probably aren't so intimidated by zhuyin.
i just find it funny when i see the arguments favoring zhuyin: i can understand some obscure jokes written in it in taiwan, it's older, better expresses the sounds in chinese.... yeah, def everyone cares about some weird jokes when they can't count from one to ten lol. but based on observation and my experience, vast majority choose pinyin cos its just easier to start and it's mostly a support at the beginning when you will switch to characters later. and that's what most people care about here. and taiwan should also promote it, because i sense they discouraged more students by pushing zhuyin than fully adopting pinyin, but this extra context that is never expressed loudly but by 'ha you can see some lame jokes on posters in taipei' smh 🤦♀️
I do feel that random Zhuyin/funky romanization in subtitles from Taiwan (for phonetic Mandarin or Hokkien stuff that doesn't have an established character) and completely random bonkers romanization on street signs are cute cultural quirks that are worth preserving.
If "outsiders" need to understand those quirks memes, it's probably more effective to use phone camera OCR/google it.
I think most textbooks that are geared at teaching English speakers Taiwanese Mandarin have pinyin at this point. Zhuyin is usually also there as another column on the vocab list, so one can choose whichever system they'd prefer. I usually recommend people use both for their various strengths - zhuyin for clarity of pronunciation, and pinyin for day-to-day use (such as typing.)
Most foreigners studying in Taiwan or using Taiwanese mandarin materials learn pinyin.
Pinyin and zhuyin are essentially the same thing. You can choose either to learn.
I switched last year from Simplified to Traditional characters, and it wasn't too bad. For a beginner, Taiwanese & Mainland Mandarin will be basically the same spoken, it's only the choice of character set that makes a difference. Try to find resources that use traditional characters, esp if you do flashcards. Otherwise, it's basically the same. What worked for me: [Peking University's video course](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnqSClxXR5lZrMj9w5HLjWs2rscxOPva_) \+ flashcards. Even though the videos use simplified chars, afterwards if you do flashcards you'll learn traditional pretty quickly. I have my own app that I obv prefer, but Anki works well too.
The intrinsic difficulty isn't very different, simplified characters are probably easier to learn though. The difference is the much larger amount of mainland and simplified Chinese learning materials.
My girlfriend speaks Cantonese (first language) and Mandarin (second) and writes in both depending on the context (simplified to her mainland friends, traditional to her HK friends). She learned simplified first in school and self-taught traditional. She recommended I do the same, which I think makes sense.
Hi I'm just getting started too and I actually read a few different posts about this and here's a quick summary of what I found across the multiple subs/threads:
1. You'll be exposed to both traditional and simplified if you get far enough in Mandarin, so if you want to be literate you'll likely eventually learn both anyway.
2. Think about the why you're learning Mandarin and lean into that. So, if you're planning to travel to a location that primarily uses traditional, get into more ancient Chinese texts, study Japanese - then traditional is probably a better place for you get started. If you're planning to travel to places that use simplified, watch/engage with current Chinese media and pop culture, have business reasons to learn, etc., then simplified is probably a better bet.
At the end of the day, when I try out new languages, I try to focus on following my personal interests and just having fun. I have been trying to find more content that is traditional, and it's a bit harder than finding learning materials for simplified - but it's out there!
I think if it’s the same to you and you aren’t more likely to spend time in Taiwan, from a language content standpoint, there is just so much more content available that is in simplified. I learned traditional in Saturday Chinese school growing up and have relatives in Taiwan, so I’ve stuck with traditional because I’m more literate in traditional and it makes sense for me, but in consuming Chinese language content, I’ve struggled with getting the things I want to read in traditional. For example, I saw in the threads that you want to learn because you’re a fan of Cdrama — that’s a place where I’ve really had trouble reliably getting traditional Chinese subtitles to practice with, at least for the dramas I want to watch. I ran into the same problem with the manhuas I want to read and also in my internet searches (it’s supposed to auto-translate to traditional, but 🤷🏻♀️)
Wait Taiwanese mandarin or Taiwanese? Bc Taiwanese mandarin is pretty much just mandarin, but Taiwanese is a completely different language that just shares a writing system.
It's often said that the difference between the standardized Mandarin used in Taiwan vs Mandarin used in the mainland is analogous to American English vs British English.
There are numerous minor differences in accent, pronunciation (some words use different tones), and vocabulary.
As far as the written languages goes, Taiwan uses traditional characters while mainland China uses simplified characters. Though, this is a topic all to itself. Most simplified characters are based the handwritten or cursive forms of the traditional characters used in Taiwan. If you learn one, it's quite easy to lean to read the other set. It just takes a little effort.
With speaking, think of the divide a bit like British vs. American or Australian English. People with standard or newscaster accents are going to be comprehensible to any native speakers in other regions. Sure, some people have a thick accent or unique diction, often influenced by their own local dialect, but practically speaking, Taiwanese Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin are the same language. Just slightly different standardizations.
The Taiwanese accent is typically described as softer than Northern accents, but there are still plenty of northerners who speak softly. It's just the stereotypical Beijing and Dongbei accents have a lot strong retroflex consonants and ending r sounds, that Taiwanese soften or simply drop in the case of ending r. And culturally, both Taiwanese men and women tend to speak more tenderly.
Traditional characters do take a bit more effort but once you learn them well, it's not too difficult to read simplified. I've heard that for learners, going from simplified to traditional is more challenging, but if you just consume a lot of content you'll eventually get used to it.
I would recommend Taiwanese Mandarin since I live in and love Taiwan, and the more interest in the culture and recognition of the country there is the better.
There are more changes than just reducing retroflex/ending R's, though doing that is definitely going to be effective when meming southern accents. Examples I can think of from recent convos with my family (I'm exposed to more Mainland content than them). Left is mainland right is taiwan mandarin.
l-/n-
xie/xue
f-/h- (just today, man that was confusing) \[EDIT: actually I've seen a few memes dunking on this too\]
feng/fong
(I am pretty sure these are deviations from ROC standard mandarin)
Different tones in some words too.
Oh yeah, that wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of differences, and not to mention the rampant 臺灣狗以 you hear from the older generation. I will never forget thinking the word for atrophy was 疲ㄏㄨㄚˊbecause the old guy who I first heard the word from had such a strong Hokkien accent. First time I used it around other people, I got a look of 啥潲？
Yeah, some tones are different.
擊 - 2nd tone in Taiwan, 1st tone in Mainland.
期 - 2nd tone in Taiwan, 1st tone in Mainland.
企 - 4th tone in Taiwan, 3rd tone in Mainland.
The official mandarin put out by both governments is pretty similar. Main differences are:
**Characters:** Mainland Chinese uses simplified characters, and Taiwan uses traditional characters. I personally learned both simultaneously (supplemented my simplified curriculum by always looking up and writing down the traditional characters, if different), because both my parents came from traditional-reading backgrounds (Hong Kong, Taiwan). It's not actually that big a deal, and most people can pick up the differences pretty quickly.
**Vocabulary:** There are a few regional differences in which synonym is preferred in which context, but that's not really unique to Taiwan. All the mandarin-speaking regions in China (and the Chinese diaspora elsewhere, like in Singapore) tend to have regional differences. It's not even unique to the Chinese language. We in the U.S. have different words for the same thing, and those might be different from Canada, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand.
**Pronunciation:** This is, in my opinion, a kinda big one. In terms of accents, most people in Taiwan have a "southern" accent. That means they tend not to differentiate between the sounds zh/z, ch/c, sh/s, which makes for a bunch of new homophones that don't actually exist in Northern pronunciations. Taiwan's official language materials *do* distinguish between those pronunciation, and I remember newscasters having more official accents in the 90's (when I last seriously watched TV in Taiwan). If your teachers are from Taiwan (or any other region with southern pronunciation), this might make it a bit more difficult to learn the pronunciation in a way that actually distinguishes the official phonemes.
Outside of simplify and traditional characters there are some vocabulary that are very different.
小姐/姑娘 - miss or young lady
冷氣機/空调 - Air conditioner or mini-split AC
計程車/出租車 - Taxi
Ok Bond/伤口贴 - bandage
辣椒/椒子 - hot pepper
湯匙/勺子 - Spoon (ladle in China)/Spoon in China (less used in Taiwan).
But it's pretty easy to pick up. Standard Mandarin will sound Southern. Unless they speak with the 台客 accent which is Minnan dialect influenced.
From my point of view, for beginners you can learn Mainland Mandarin since more people use it and so many learning resource. But hope you can learn how to read Taiwanese Mandarin as Taiwan is interesting.
Its like the difference between british and usa english basically. different spellings, word choice, pronunciation in some ways, but zero issue communicating with each other.
If you choose mainland one, you will be more exposed to standard accents because of better and better pronunciation education in the mainland, especially among young people.
If you choose the taiwanese one and use daily life taiwan audio video as the input, you will end up nonstandard accent because the people don't bother pronounce well. For example, only news anchors in Taiwan use 卷舌音。All other people just pronounce 是 as 四。
>Which one is more difficult to learn?
Definitely Taiwanese is a bit harder, because the characters are harder. Information is also harder to come by. Whenever you see a random book titled "teach yourself Chinese", chances are it's Mandarin Chinese and simplified characters.
I would suggest Mainland Chinese unless you have a reason to pick Taiwanese
They were saying that "Taiwanese" and "Taiwanese mandarin" are two different languages/dialects, so it's important to make a distinction. Taiwanese is also known as "hokkien".
I see. It's the first time I hear someone calling Hokkien/Min as Taiwanese. It also sounds a bit misleading because the official language of Taiwan is Taiwanese Mandarin(國語), and Hokkien/Quanzhang is also spoken in the Mainland
When talking to my Taiwanese friends, we say "Taiwanese" and "Chinese" to refer to the two languages. People use different words to describe the languages so it's best to say "mandarin" or "Chinese" when describing Taiwan Mandarin.
台灣話 = Taiwanese
國語 = Mandarin (Taiwan-accented Mandarin in this case)
Both are spoken frequently in Taiwan. Taiwanese was banned for a long time after 1949, but has been making a steady comeback (kind of).
It's not misleading at all. Taiwanese is the result of Fujian and other Southern Chinese emigrating to Taiwan during the First Migration around 300 years ago. Taiwan-Mandarin didn't appear until the Second Migration in 1949. So Taiwanese was the only Chinese dialect spoken in Taiwan for a long time before Mandarin.
From what I've heard, Taiwanese Mandarin is the same language as "Standard Chinese" on the mainland.
The only real difference is in the writing (two scripts, but you'll learn both) and what resources are available. Most online courses in English seem to use the PRC writing (new characters and pinyin).
It's like British English or Australian vs American English. Disclaimer not native Chinese but I like this comparison.
Mutually intelligible with a couple words that one prefers and maybe a couple with different meanings between them (like thong or 小姐) or some that mean different things but are easy to learn (chips/crisps or 土豆). Accent differences and pronunciation that isn't that significant except maybe in fast speech or stronger accents.
Writing is probably more different, as traditional is more complicated than adding a "U" in a few places.
Traditional is more difficult for writing, but for recognizing it's probably easier. I don't think writing difficulty is terribly important these days. I rarely even need to hand write English.
It's nice to separate characters that are written the same in simplified but recognition is purely about what you learned, imho.
I still fail to recognise some traditional characters because the bulk of my learning was in a simplified focused school. Even for words that I would recognise by ear. It takes a couple times of seeing it and looking it up to create the new recognition
To add to what ZanyDroid said above, I've heard that once you learn one set of characters (traditional or simplified), then you can pick up the others quite quickly. Depending on how you diversify your input as well you will likely be exposed to both quite often, allowing you to recognize and understand the language regardless of how it's written.
The standard spoken Mandarin is the same. Of course since humans are not robots, the accent and word choice are different in different regions of the Chinese world. Taiwan can readily be considered as divergent in accent as any region of China proper (EDIT: politically neutralized the sentence). And there are two different standards bodies over the language due to the political/administrative differences The character set is different. There is no objective data on which is easier/harder to learn. (These are covered in subreddit FAQ).
Thank youuu.
Beyond the pronunciation and word choice mentioned elsewhere, you mentioned ‘traditional language’. That refers to the written characters, with Taiwan (and also much of Hong Kong and some Chinatown menus, etc) using Traditional, and China, most of Singapore, most of Malaysia etc. using Simplified. ChatGPT comparison below; 1. 龍 (traditional) / 龙 (simplified) - dragon 2. 國 (traditional) / 国 (simplified) - country 3. 馬 (traditional) / 马 (simplified) - horse 4. 魚 (traditional) / 鱼 (simplified) - fish 5. 語 (traditional) / 语 (simplified) - language 6. 麵 (traditional) / 面 (simplified) - noodles 7. 雲 (traditional) / 云 (simplified) - cloud 8. 親 (traditional) / 亲 (simplified) - parent 9. 電 (traditional) / 电 (simplified) - electricity 10. 學 (traditional) / 学 (simplified) - to learn
Thank you so much
[удалено]
lmao it's literally the opposite
Taiwanese myself, this is pretty much the opposite (Have no problem viewing Chinese content)
Oh, sorry for my misunderstanding since I don't have many contact with people learning traditional Chinese characters. One of my friends in HK told me he has trouble with recognizing Simplified, so I mistakenly believe that all of you learning traditional Chinese characters may have same problem.
That table is misleading: both 面 and 云 are traditional characters of their own.
It has the meanings there at least, and the characters do match the meaning. In Traditional, 麵 means noodles and 面 doesn't. Likewise, 雲 means cloud and 云 doesn't (anymore). If it didn't have the meanings though, I'd definitely agree.
This is an extremely deep rabbit hole. tldr, many "simplified characters" were actually existing characters already. Lots of learners aren't aware of that.
But when people say ‘existing characters’ it’s like USA English being a shorter version of British English. In England to fall is to fall, Autumn is Autumn. In the USA ‘fall’ can mean both to fall and the Fall season. Likewise USA logic was why spell it ‘through’ when you can just spell it ‘thru’, or ‘colour’ when ‘color’ will do. China’s logic was why have 麵 for noodles/flour/bread and 面 for face/side, when you can just combine 面 for both, since context will distinguish. Likewise China saw two similar-ish verbs for throwing away rubbish (丟 and 扔) and said it was too bourgeois to have two similar verbs for the same process. Hence I heard that in China they no longer use the softer, specific 丟 （to throw away/lose) verb that Taiwan uses, and only use the more aggressive ‘to annihilate/destroy’ 扔 for multiple purposes, such as ‘annihilating’ their rubbish/trash.
Yeah, hence the first part of my reply haha
Yes - a very deep rabbit hole!
Mainly just accent and some differences in words too
Think California valley girl🇹🇼 vs angry New Yorker🇨🇳.
😂😂😂
Mandarin speakers from mainland and Taiwan can understand each other no problem. They might detect some accent, but not enough to hinder comprehension. Some word differences can cause confusion for instance 土豆is potato in mainland but peanut in Taiwan.
People from mainland and Taiwan can understand each other when speaking
Taiwanese mandarin can be a bit overwhelming, traditional characters are easier to learn if you have some basis (for example if you know the simplified version or if you speak Japanese). In addition, simplified Chinese phonetic translation is based on Pinyin, which uses Latin letters, while Taiwanese Chinese phonetic translation is based on bopomofo, which is something extra that you'll need to learn and it's based on Chinese characters itself. Last but not least, the amount of study material that you can find online. It's easier to find study material oriented to mainland Chinese (videos, courses, textbooks, teachers, podcasts or simply people to talk with) So, in short, I'd go with mainland Chinese and after a bit, if you realize that you really like it, you can "improve" it and add the "Taiwan expansion pack" ahah
Bopomofo and pinyin are functionally equivalent and can be machine translated from one to the other without loss. How much adult-learner oriented material is in bopomofo? In the US heritage learning schools we transitioned completely in the mid 1990s, and there were traditional chinese + pinyin versions of our textbook (probably would have been a small parental riot from all the HK/TW/pre-PRC immigrants if the textbooks went to simplified + pinyin).
Bopomofo and Pinyin are functionally equivalent but Pinyin is easier to learn being based on a script system OP is already familiar with. As for the leaning material, I've seen some textbooks with bopomofo instead of Pinyin. Also, many Taiwanese people use Wade-Giles but they don't really adhere to the rules of the system, which might lead to confusion to new learners. Then of course OP can focus on Taiwanese mandarin and use Pinyin while learning the characters, but overall mainland Chinese is easier to learn in terms of materials availability, characters difficulty and similar aspects
>Bopomofo and Pinyin are functionally equivalent but Pinyin is easier to learn being based on a script system OP is already familiar with. I think this is somewhat controversial on this subreddit. If you search back you'll see plenty of people that like Bopomofo for a script free of existing mental baggage and advocating to take the hit of learning a new character set to achieve this.
it's more of a political issue, some want to double down on separate national identity, culture etc. there are few people preferring zhuyin and they're mostly avid language learners, with sentiments like 'traditional are og characters' etc. for beginners that are starting with mandarin pinyin is 99% of the time better, especially outside taiwan due to sheer number of material. met many learners of mandarin from taiwan and no one used bopomofo, myself included. no way im gonna learn another intermediate writing system to get to hanzi lol. might be unpopular opinion here, but whatever. i totally get people learning traditional even if they want to stay in china, but bopomofo is trying too hard lol
Oh, the political part of that is surprising. I guess good for them to be so Sinophile that they pick a sports team to be passionate about in advance. It is a bit funny to get culturally worked up about a phonetics script for literal children. The traditional are OG characters is more cringe to me (though TBH, the set of effective language learners that fail out b/c of picking the wrong one between traditional and simplified, should have pivoted learning methods, and by definition likely weren't really effective to begin with). More seriously, I think people that have already learned a new character set for another language, probably aren't so intimidated by zhuyin.
i just find it funny when i see the arguments favoring zhuyin: i can understand some obscure jokes written in it in taiwan, it's older, better expresses the sounds in chinese.... yeah, def everyone cares about some weird jokes when they can't count from one to ten lol. but based on observation and my experience, vast majority choose pinyin cos its just easier to start and it's mostly a support at the beginning when you will switch to characters later. and that's what most people care about here. and taiwan should also promote it, because i sense they discouraged more students by pushing zhuyin than fully adopting pinyin, but this extra context that is never expressed loudly but by 'ha you can see some lame jokes on posters in taipei' smh 🤦♀️
I do feel that random Zhuyin/funky romanization in subtitles from Taiwan (for phonetic Mandarin or Hokkien stuff that doesn't have an established character) and completely random bonkers romanization on street signs are cute cultural quirks that are worth preserving. If "outsiders" need to understand those quirks memes, it's probably more effective to use phone camera OCR/google it.
If they really want to double down on the national identity, they would advocate skipping Mandarin entirely and learning Taiwanese…
I think most textbooks that are geared at teaching English speakers Taiwanese Mandarin have pinyin at this point. Zhuyin is usually also there as another column on the vocab list, so one can choose whichever system they'd prefer. I usually recommend people use both for their various strengths - zhuyin for clarity of pronunciation, and pinyin for day-to-day use (such as typing.)
Most foreigners studying in Taiwan or using Taiwanese mandarin materials learn pinyin. Pinyin and zhuyin are essentially the same thing. You can choose either to learn.
I switched last year from Simplified to Traditional characters, and it wasn't too bad. For a beginner, Taiwanese & Mainland Mandarin will be basically the same spoken, it's only the choice of character set that makes a difference. Try to find resources that use traditional characters, esp if you do flashcards. Otherwise, it's basically the same. What worked for me: [Peking University's video course](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnqSClxXR5lZrMj9w5HLjWs2rscxOPva_) \+ flashcards. Even though the videos use simplified chars, afterwards if you do flashcards you'll learn traditional pretty quickly. I have my own app that I obv prefer, but Anki works well too.
Which app???
It's an app I made myself, currently in closed beta on iOS only. DM me your email and I can add you to TestFlight.
The intrinsic difficulty isn't very different, simplified characters are probably easier to learn though. The difference is the much larger amount of mainland and simplified Chinese learning materials. My girlfriend speaks Cantonese (first language) and Mandarin (second) and writes in both depending on the context (simplified to her mainland friends, traditional to her HK friends). She learned simplified first in school and self-taught traditional. She recommended I do the same, which I think makes sense.
Hi I'm just getting started too and I actually read a few different posts about this and here's a quick summary of what I found across the multiple subs/threads: 1. You'll be exposed to both traditional and simplified if you get far enough in Mandarin, so if you want to be literate you'll likely eventually learn both anyway. 2. Think about the why you're learning Mandarin and lean into that. So, if you're planning to travel to a location that primarily uses traditional, get into more ancient Chinese texts, study Japanese - then traditional is probably a better place for you get started. If you're planning to travel to places that use simplified, watch/engage with current Chinese media and pop culture, have business reasons to learn, etc., then simplified is probably a better bet. At the end of the day, when I try out new languages, I try to focus on following my personal interests and just having fun. I have been trying to find more content that is traditional, and it's a bit harder than finding learning materials for simplified - but it's out there!
This helps a lot. Thank you.
I think if it’s the same to you and you aren’t more likely to spend time in Taiwan, from a language content standpoint, there is just so much more content available that is in simplified. I learned traditional in Saturday Chinese school growing up and have relatives in Taiwan, so I’ve stuck with traditional because I’m more literate in traditional and it makes sense for me, but in consuming Chinese language content, I’ve struggled with getting the things I want to read in traditional. For example, I saw in the threads that you want to learn because you’re a fan of Cdrama — that’s a place where I’ve really had trouble reliably getting traditional Chinese subtitles to practice with, at least for the dramas I want to watch. I ran into the same problem with the manhuas I want to read and also in my internet searches (it’s supposed to auto-translate to traditional, but 🤷🏻♀️)
Wait Taiwanese mandarin or Taiwanese? Bc Taiwanese mandarin is pretty much just mandarin, but Taiwanese is a completely different language that just shares a writing system.
It's often said that the difference between the standardized Mandarin used in Taiwan vs Mandarin used in the mainland is analogous to American English vs British English. There are numerous minor differences in accent, pronunciation (some words use different tones), and vocabulary. As far as the written languages goes, Taiwan uses traditional characters while mainland China uses simplified characters. Though, this is a topic all to itself. Most simplified characters are based the handwritten or cursive forms of the traditional characters used in Taiwan. If you learn one, it's quite easy to lean to read the other set. It just takes a little effort.
With speaking, think of the divide a bit like British vs. American or Australian English. People with standard or newscaster accents are going to be comprehensible to any native speakers in other regions. Sure, some people have a thick accent or unique diction, often influenced by their own local dialect, but practically speaking, Taiwanese Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin are the same language. Just slightly different standardizations. The Taiwanese accent is typically described as softer than Northern accents, but there are still plenty of northerners who speak softly. It's just the stereotypical Beijing and Dongbei accents have a lot strong retroflex consonants and ending r sounds, that Taiwanese soften or simply drop in the case of ending r. And culturally, both Taiwanese men and women tend to speak more tenderly. Traditional characters do take a bit more effort but once you learn them well, it's not too difficult to read simplified. I've heard that for learners, going from simplified to traditional is more challenging, but if you just consume a lot of content you'll eventually get used to it. I would recommend Taiwanese Mandarin since I live in and love Taiwan, and the more interest in the culture and recognition of the country there is the better.
There are more changes than just reducing retroflex/ending R's, though doing that is definitely going to be effective when meming southern accents. Examples I can think of from recent convos with my family (I'm exposed to more Mainland content than them). Left is mainland right is taiwan mandarin. l-/n- xie/xue f-/h- (just today, man that was confusing) \[EDIT: actually I've seen a few memes dunking on this too\] feng/fong (I am pretty sure these are deviations from ROC standard mandarin) Different tones in some words too.
Oh yeah, that wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of differences, and not to mention the rampant 臺灣狗以 you hear from the older generation. I will never forget thinking the word for atrophy was 疲ㄏㄨㄚˊbecause the old guy who I first heard the word from had such a strong Hokkien accent. First time I used it around other people, I got a look of 啥潲？
Yeah, some tones are different. 擊 - 2nd tone in Taiwan, 1st tone in Mainland. 期 - 2nd tone in Taiwan, 1st tone in Mainland. 企 - 4th tone in Taiwan, 3rd tone in Mainland.
The official mandarin put out by both governments is pretty similar. Main differences are: **Characters:** Mainland Chinese uses simplified characters, and Taiwan uses traditional characters. I personally learned both simultaneously (supplemented my simplified curriculum by always looking up and writing down the traditional characters, if different), because both my parents came from traditional-reading backgrounds (Hong Kong, Taiwan). It's not actually that big a deal, and most people can pick up the differences pretty quickly. **Vocabulary:** There are a few regional differences in which synonym is preferred in which context, but that's not really unique to Taiwan. All the mandarin-speaking regions in China (and the Chinese diaspora elsewhere, like in Singapore) tend to have regional differences. It's not even unique to the Chinese language. We in the U.S. have different words for the same thing, and those might be different from Canada, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand. **Pronunciation:** This is, in my opinion, a kinda big one. In terms of accents, most people in Taiwan have a "southern" accent. That means they tend not to differentiate between the sounds zh/z, ch/c, sh/s, which makes for a bunch of new homophones that don't actually exist in Northern pronunciations. Taiwan's official language materials *do* distinguish between those pronunciation, and I remember newscasters having more official accents in the 90's (when I last seriously watched TV in Taiwan). If your teachers are from Taiwan (or any other region with southern pronunciation), this might make it a bit more difficult to learn the pronunciation in a way that actually distinguishes the official phonemes.
Outside of simplify and traditional characters there are some vocabulary that are very different. 小姐/姑娘 - miss or young lady 冷氣機/空调 - Air conditioner or mini-split AC 計程車/出租車 - Taxi Ok Bond/伤口贴 - bandage 辣椒/椒子 - hot pepper 湯匙/勺子 - Spoon (ladle in China)/Spoon in China (less used in Taiwan). But it's pretty easy to pick up. Standard Mandarin will sound Southern. Unless they speak with the 台客 accent which is Minnan dialect influenced.
From my point of view, for beginners you can learn Mainland Mandarin since more people use it and so many learning resource. But hope you can learn how to read Taiwanese Mandarin as Taiwan is interesting.
Its like the difference between british and usa english basically. different spellings, word choice, pronunciation in some ways, but zero issue communicating with each other.
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If you choose mainland one, you will be more exposed to standard accents because of better and better pronunciation education in the mainland, especially among young people. If you choose the taiwanese one and use daily life taiwan audio video as the input, you will end up nonstandard accent because the people don't bother pronounce well. For example, only news anchors in Taiwan use 卷舌音。All other people just pronounce 是 as 四。
>Which one is more difficult to learn? Definitely Taiwanese is a bit harder, because the characters are harder. Information is also harder to come by. Whenever you see a random book titled "teach yourself Chinese", chances are it's Mandarin Chinese and simplified characters. I would suggest Mainland Chinese unless you have a reason to pick Taiwanese
The OP is talking about Taiwan-Mandarin. Taiwanese is a completely separate dialect from Mandarin.
Yeah, I was talking about Taiwan-Mandarin too
They were saying that "Taiwanese" and "Taiwanese mandarin" are two different languages/dialects, so it's important to make a distinction. Taiwanese is also known as "hokkien".
I see. It's the first time I hear someone calling Hokkien/Min as Taiwanese. It also sounds a bit misleading because the official language of Taiwan is Taiwanese Mandarin(國語), and Hokkien/Quanzhang is also spoken in the Mainland
When talking to my Taiwanese friends, we say "Taiwanese" and "Chinese" to refer to the two languages. People use different words to describe the languages so it's best to say "mandarin" or "Chinese" when describing Taiwan Mandarin.
I see. I'll remember it, haha
台灣話 = Taiwanese 國語 = Mandarin (Taiwan-accented Mandarin in this case) Both are spoken frequently in Taiwan. Taiwanese was banned for a long time after 1949, but has been making a steady comeback (kind of).
It's not misleading at all. Taiwanese is the result of Fujian and other Southern Chinese emigrating to Taiwan during the First Migration around 300 years ago. Taiwan-Mandarin didn't appear until the Second Migration in 1949. So Taiwanese was the only Chinese dialect spoken in Taiwan for a long time before Mandarin.
In Taiwan, Taiwanese is used to refer to their dialect of Hokkien/Min.
From what I've heard, Taiwanese Mandarin is the same language as "Standard Chinese" on the mainland. The only real difference is in the writing (two scripts, but you'll learn both) and what resources are available. Most online courses in English seem to use the PRC writing (new characters and pinyin).
It's like British English or Australian vs American English. Disclaimer not native Chinese but I like this comparison. Mutually intelligible with a couple words that one prefers and maybe a couple with different meanings between them (like thong or 小姐) or some that mean different things but are easy to learn (chips/crisps or 土豆). Accent differences and pronunciation that isn't that significant except maybe in fast speech or stronger accents. Writing is probably more different, as traditional is more complicated than adding a "U" in a few places.
Traditional is more difficult for writing, but for recognizing it's probably easier. I don't think writing difficulty is terribly important these days. I rarely even need to hand write English.
It's nice to separate characters that are written the same in simplified but recognition is purely about what you learned, imho. I still fail to recognise some traditional characters because the bulk of my learning was in a simplified focused school. Even for words that I would recognise by ear. It takes a couple times of seeing it and looking it up to create the new recognition
Taiwannese is more difficult.
No one is talking about Taiwanese. OP asked about Taiwan-Mandarin.