First some background:

So many moons ago, before I began Japanese, I had originally planned to learn Chinese. I didn't have very good resources ("The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the first 100 Chinese Characters" - HAH.), but I was pretty motivated, and kept going until I switched schools and left the Chinese friends who had kept me interested behind. Last year, since I've always wanted to learn an East Asian language, I picked up Japanese, and got through 1800 characters in RTK. Then I totally burned out and haven't done a review since. This happens often with me; I get really interested in a certain thing, obsess over it for a few months, and then give it up. But honestly, for several reasons, I've decided that Japanese wasn't really the best idea for me in the first place, and it'd be best if I left it alone.

The problem:

Now I'm considering switching back to Mandarin. I really love how Chinese sounds; tonal languages fascinate me. One of my big concerns though, were the tones. Would it ever be possible for someone who's not a native speaker to get to a point that they don't have to think about tones for every word they say? I talked to someone who had studied the language intensively for a few years, and got the answer that after while, the right tones just come out. Which made me think: since I already know 1800 Chinese characters (and most/some of their meanings), why don't I switch back, now that my biggest concern is assuaged?
But before, when I was learning Chinese, I went with Simplified because I figured, hey, it's easier. Now that I know so many Kanji, I was going through some of my books to see if I knew all the characters, when something seemed weird. Some of the characters I knew were traditional, like 楽, but others were simplified, like 学. So from this point, should I start learning Simplified or Traditional characters with RTH? The Chinese friends I still keep in touch with all know Traditional characters (except for one, and she goes to China frequently); would it be a waste for me to start with Simplified, since so many characters are different? (For example 谢 vs. 謝)

The more direct problem:

Sorry for the huge post. I guess my main problem is whether to go with Traditional or Simplified after doing most of RTK. Which will be more of a benefit? Do children in China learn simplified or traditional in school?

(Also, are there any good resources besides RTH that anyone might be able to recommend?)

Thanks, and sorry for this huge post.

Hey Symphony, I speak decent Mandarin, here's my two cents.

Tones: As your friend said, eventually the right tones will just come out (personally I don't even "believe" in tones anymore, but that's a different topic). You can accelerate this, in my opinion, through everyday audio immersion and SRS*.

Simplified/Traditional: You're going to want to read both, but which to learn to write, that is the big question.

What are you trying to do with your Chinese?

As someone who started with simplified (my daily classes are all in simplified, and 5/6 of my teachers are from mainland), it's been a pain for me to have all of my comic books and pleasure reading in traditional. However, after a few months of constantly looking up unknown traditional (nciku.com's character recognition is really impressive), my traditional is more or less at the same level as my simplified.

Children in mainland China, aside from Hong Kong, learn simplified as far as I know.

In short, traditional/simplified really doesn't matter... but if I wasn't in school, I would learn traditional as most entertaining reading material is traditional. (Although my one Taiwanese teacher even writes one or two words in simplified because it's that much faster.)

To those of you who want to learn both tradicional and simplified characters, use Remembering the Kanji, and then learn the simplified radicals, the rest is equal, I think (or at least the ones I already know).

As zer0range says, don't worry about the tones. Of course you should work on getting them right at the beginning - take your time pronouncing, try to copy a native pronounciation of it. Once you've said a word/phrase enough times for it to stick in your head, it will just become habit.

As for traditional and simplified characters, unless you have a desire to learn them I wouldn't focus too much on traditional. More or less everyone in the mainland uses simplified, I think only Hong Kong and possibly Taiwan use traditional. Your work on RtK will at least give you a head start with getting into Mandarin. There are some words that use the same kanji in Japanese as in Mandarin, some have small differences: e.g. Today - Japanese 今日　Mandarin 今天.

I'm learning both Mandarin and Japanese at the same time at the moment (although admittedly my Mandarin is definitely back-seat), I think they compliment each other nicely in terms of learning writing systems and reading.

In answer to your main question (I seem to have rambled a little here): children in China will learn using simplified (so long as they're on the mainland so probably like 95% of China's population). My girlfriend is from China and sometimes if I send her a word from Japanese she won't recognise it straight away if it's some old traditional characters.

Sorry for the lengthy reply, hope it's at least a little helpful.

An impression I've gotten from many people's posts on this board is that SRS works two ways. The the benefit of arranging all those flashcards for you is obvious. The other side of the coin is that it acts as a deterrent when you don't keep up with it because the cards just keep piling up and piling up in a tall, scary stack. First you should ask yourself whether this won't just happen again if you switched to Mandarin. (I'd also point out that it's unlikely you've actually forgotten all 1800 of them, but that's another story.)

I wouldn't really call studying RTK "learning Japanese" but assuming that you have been studying the language in addition to memorizing kanji, all I'd have to say (coming from someone who has studied two foreign languages seriously and a few others casually) is that if you don't use it, you lose it. Do you really want to throw away the progress you made with Japanese? It's not that hard to maintain it while simultaneously studying another foreign language, and not too much of a stretch (if you have the time) to study them both simultaneously. It helps if you've gotten a firm grounding in one of them first, though.

In the case of Chinese and Japanese, knowing the writing system for one will be beneficial, not detrimental, to learning the writing system of the other. The two languages are rather distantly related, but do share certain aspects of grammar and vocabulary, which, again, will only reinforce what you know in the other.

Unless you're good at deceiving yourself with vague dreams (some people are), what you should probably ask yourself is why you want to learn a foreign language to begin with. Attaining fluency in any foreign language is a huge undertaking and with an East Asian language so unrelated to English, it's even huger. If it's a shallow reason like you want to be able to travel in the country, you won't make too much progress because tourist-language doesn't require much vocabulary, and after you've had your fill of tourism, there will be no reason to keep up with practice. An age-old success story is to get a girlfriend/boyfriend who speaks the target language, and use that as a motivator. In any case, it will be your reason and desire that carries you past the 3 month burn-out period, and not any aspect of the language itself.

I think the most important thing in learning any foreign language is being phased by things that other people deem to be difficult. You've already familiarised yourself with 1800 characters, at which point you should be able to absorb all new ones easily - that's something that many people will tell you is impossible, yet you've managed it.

In the same way, as one of the other posters has said, there's not really any such thing as tones - just a correct way of saying words. There are tones [of voice] in English, which can completely change the meaning of a sentence, much as in Chinese, yet presumably you've mastered those nuances; how then are Chinese tones any different? In any case, the more you listen, the easier it gets (especially if you can lay hands on Pinyin transcriptions).

But it is true that you need to know why you want to learn the language; if you can focus on that, it'll give you the determination to thoroughly accomplish your goal. Good luck!

Anki has an awesome plugin called the pinyin toolkit which I took a brief look at cos a friend of mine is learning mandarin (though he's not interested in learning to read or write). It can do lots to aid you in learning to read and keeping you on the right track with correct pronounciation aswell as give you stats on how many hanzi you can read.

The thing with chinese is theres 6000 hanzi so the task seems like 3x as much compared to Japanese but what I noticed from my brief look in to mandarin is that each hanzi has 1 pronunciation and sometimes 2 but it's a very similiar sound or the same sound in a different tone. To me that really makes it just the same amount of work as Japanese because you really have the same amount of readings to learn in total.

Learning to write is another thing really... When I started learning Japanese I didn't think i'd ever learn to read or write but then I found Heisig and I thought I could learn to read and write and then I completed believing that I had to be able to write to learn to read. Really you don't have to be able to write at all in your target language to learn to read it and unless you have a serious need to do so (or want complete mastery) then i'd say skip that particular step and just learn to read right off the bat and you will save yourself a huge amount of time.

I'm definitely interested in learning Mandarin later on in life and my 2 cents on it is I would learn to read (made easier from the vast amount of Japanese kanji knowledge) but I would absolutely not bother with anything like RTH.

Thanks everyone so much for all your replies.

Wait, so is RTH not really recommended by a lot of people?
Also, what are the best resources for Chinese? (With japanese it's all KO, smart.fm core2000, 1kyuu or whatever) Is there anything that's recommended by everyone?
Personally, I'm extremely interested in learning to write Chinese. I'd feel like I was cheating if I didn't.

@jajaaan: Actually, all I had time for was RTK. I tried to listen to as much native material (not understanding but a few words), but apart from that I didn't study "real" Japanese hardly at all. That's why I'm thinking of switching back to Mandarin, since I won't really have wasted anything except for some characters I might not use.

I think if it turns out that RTH is a good use of my time, I'll go with simplified. It won't be like I don't know how to write traditional since I've done so much of RTK, and hopefully after a while I'll be able to have decent command of both.

Thanks again everyone, this is helping a lot.

RTH is quite a new book compared to RTK, so I doubt that you'll be able to find a lot of informed opinions about the book. mezbup seems to be dismissing the whole RTK/RTH concept while reaping its benefits, and he stated in his post that he has little experience with learning Mandarin so I wouldn't consider him an authority on RTH.

Nonetheless, he and the others make some good points. From what I've seen of the Chinese learning community, they really don't seem to make as much of a big deal about 漢字 as Japanese learners do. I think the Hanzi's tendency to have just one reading instead of 2 or 3 makes them easier to tackle the reading and writing all at once, and without an organized system like Heisig. Since you've already spent a lot of time with RTK, maybe that's enough to get going.

As for simplified or traditional, it seems from what I've heard from Chinese learners that it doesn't matter all that much which you choose. People who learn Chinese in classes learn whichever is offered in that class, and anyone who sticks with it long enough eventually ends up learning both. Since you have the option of starting with either, I'd suggest finding some learning materials that you think look promising, and use whichever system is predominant in those.

JimmySeal Wrote:mezbup seems to be dismissing the whole RTK/RTH concept while reaping its benefits, and he stated in his post that he has little experience with learning Mandarin so I wouldn't consider him an authority on RTH.

If you do want to learn to write it's an absolute must IMO, if writing isn't desired but reading is then it can be skipped entirely.

Wouldn't personally use it when tackling Mandarin but if I had to start Japanese all over again I still would use it. It all depends on your goals and personal satisfaction. Seeing as the OP is interested in learning to write then it's definitely the route to go

mezbup Wrote:If you do want to learn to write [RTK is] an absolute must IMO, if writing isn't desired but reading is then it can be skipped entirely.

I think I would agree with this. If you only want to read it's overkill. If you want to write then you not only want RTK but you need to follow it up with actual practice in writing words (kana-to-kanji writing drills or something, I dunno).

Weird thread.

mezbup Wrote:The thing with chinese is theres 6000 hanzi

Gosh... When you pull a number out of thin air you should make it look more convincing. Say "5849 hanzi" does sound much more impressive (and has the same lack of relevance to reality).

b0ng0 Wrote:unless you have a desire to learn them I wouldn't focus too much on traditional. More or less everyone in the mainland uses simplified, I think only Hong Kong and possibly Taiwan use traditional.

"Possibly Taiwan"? You really know your stuff, don't you? Enough to give advice to others, evidently. Anyway, what's your point? "Everyone in the mainland uses simplified" - so what? The OP told you that all his friends but one use traditional. How's mainland's preference relevant? Why do you presume to know what kind of material is going to interest him? Just above yours is a post where the author explains that all interesting (to him) material comes in traditional. The correct answer to S/T question is: "it depends on what you want to do with it".

CarolinaCG Wrote:those of you who want to learn both tradicional and simplified characters, use Remembering the Kanji, and then

That's not Heisig and Richardson's advice. They recommend Remembering Traditional Hanzi and then Remembering Simplified Hanzi if you want to be fluent in both.

pm215 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:If you do want to learn to write [RTK is] an absolute must IMO, if writing isn't desired but reading is then it can be skipped entirely.

I think I would agree with this.

Do not agree with this, it's not really correct. There are reasons why Heisig insists on doing "production"-style (from keyword to character) study, and it's not only to give you the ability to write. Writing is, obviously, an important part of being literate, but there's more to it. Even if you never write even a single character after you finish the RTH/RTS/RTK, it'll still do you good to study it using the suggested method (keyword->character). Due to the way our brains work, you'll have much better recall the characters and the ability to easily distinguish similar looking characters.

So... If you want only to read, having a harder time remembering characters and easily confuse them - then yes, skip the writing part. Otherwise - learn properly.

symphony Wrote:Wait, so is RTH not really recommended by a lot of people?

What? Where did you get this?

zonius Wrote:

CarolinaCG Wrote:those of you who want to learn both tradicional and simplified characters, use Remembering the Kanji, and then

That's not Heisig and Richardson's advice. They recommend Remembering Traditional Hanzi and then Remembering Simplified Hanzi if you want to be fluent in both.

Actually, I know both because I'm learning japanese (used RTK) and Chinese. And so far, the differences I found were in the radicals of the simplified characters. But I'm still a very begginer in chinese.

zonius Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:If you do want to learn to write [RTK is] an absolute must IMO, if writing isn't desired but reading is then it can be skipped entirely.

I think I would agree with this.

Do not agree with this, it's not really correct. There are reasons why Heisig insists on doing "production"-style (from keyword to character) study, and it's not only to give you the ability to write. Writing is, obviously, an important part of being literate, but there's more to it. Even if you never write even a single character after you finish the RTH/RTS/RTK, it'll still do you good to study it using the suggested method (keyword->character). Due to the way our brains work, you'll have much better recall the characters and the ability to easily distinguish similar looking characters.

Though it's slightly off topic to the OP's post...

A study of a couple of hundred radicals will give you a similar leg up in distinguishing similar elements and take you 1/10th of the time. Don't know how far you are with RTK but I finished it quite a while back now and thus for a good while now my main study focus has been learning to read. I can read 1442 kanji, 107 of which are outside of what i've studied in RTK. They are no more difficult to read or understand or distinguish from those I studied in RTK. I'm aiming on winding up being able to read about 3000 and will have no problems doing so without "studying" them in RTK. When I consider the time spent on RTK versus the time spent learning to read what I would have done if I could go back and start from the beginning would be to do something like KO2001 and have it take me slightly longer and then go and do RTK Lite and just pick the rest up as I go. I'd honestly be streets ahead.

CarolinaCG Wrote:

zonius Wrote:

CarolinaCG Wrote:those of you who want to learn both tradicional and simplified characters, use Remembering the Kanji, and then

That's not Heisig and Richardson's advice. They recommend Remembering Traditional Hanzi and then Remembering Simplified Hanzi if you want to be fluent in both.

Actually, I know both because I'm learning japanese (used RTK) and Chinese. And so far, the differences I found were in the radicals of the simplified characters. But I'm still a very begginer in chinese.

Still, why would you suggest doing Remembering the Kanji and then Remembering the Hanzi if the goal is to learn Chinese? That's like doing an immersion program in Spain because you want to learn Portuguese.

pm215 Wrote:I think I would agree with this. If you only want to read it's overkill. If you want to write then you not only want RTK but you need to follow it up with actual practice in writing words (kana-to-kanji writing drills or something, I dunno).

Maybe I'm just really untalented, or was going about it all wrong, but after studying Japanese on and off for about 6 years, I felt like I was treading water. I was forgetting kanji as fast as I could learn them, and wasn't accumulating any vocabulary because I couldn't read. I finally buckled down and worked my way through RTK, and within a year and a half, I was reading adult-level literature and had passed JLPT1. That's why I recommend RTK to everyone. It's got nothing to do with writing.

JimmySeal Wrote:Still, why would you suggest doing Remembering the Kanji and then Remembering the Hanzi if the goal is to learn Chinese? That's like doing an immersion program in Spain because you want to learn Portuguese.

I did not do RTH, just RTK.

CarolinaCG Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:Still, why would you suggest doing Remembering the Kanji and then Remembering the Hanzi if the goal is to learn Chinese? That's like doing an immersion program in Spain because you want to learn Portuguese.

I did not do RTH, just RTK.

Sorry, I misread your post. Here's what I should have said:

"Still, why would you suggest doing Remembering the Kanji and then tacking on some additional information if the goal is to learn Chinese? That's like doing an immersion program in Spain because you want to learn Portuguese."

JimmySeal Wrote:Sorry, I misread your post. Here's what I should have said:

"Still, why would you suggest doing Remembering the Kanji and then tacking on some additional information if the goal is to learn Chinese? That's like doing an immersion program in Spain because you want to learn Portuguese."

I should have explained my situation:

I bought RTK in past April because I was tired of forgetting kanji.
I finished 12th grade and I'm now in college (since September), taking a degree in east asian studies. Chinese major, Japanese minor.

I did RTK due to japanese, but it's helping me a lot (a lot!) with mandarin chinese.

zonius Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:If you do want to learn to write [RTK is] an absolute must IMO, if writing isn't desired but reading is then it can be skipped entirely.

I think I would agree with this.

Do not agree with this, it's not really correct. There are reasons why Heisig insists on doing "production"-style (from keyword to character) study, and it's not only to give you the ability to write. Writing is, obviously, an important part of being literate, but there's more to it.

Shrug. I merely base things on my experience, ie I could read perfectly well (other than vocabulary issues) before doing RTK. I did RTK hoping it would improve my ability to write, which it hasn't; I attribute this to my failure to follow it up with any practice in actually going from vocab words to written form. I don't think it's particularly improved my reading abilities (what has helped there is (a) picking up more vocab and (b) practicing reading.)

Quote:Even if you never write even a single character after you finish the RTH/RTS/RTK, it'll still do you good to study it using the suggested method (keyword->character). Due to the way our brains work, you'll have much better recall the characters and the ability to easily distinguish similar looking characters.

If you're reading, you don't need to 'recall the character', it's right there on the page in front of you :-). Also similar characters are much less of a problem when reading, because you have the context (ie the rest of the word and the sentence) to assist.

(I'm not actually trying to recommend "don't learn to write"; my point was mostly that "do RTK" is either too much or too little depending on your interest in writing.)

I would recommend you only use one (or both) of the Remembering the Hanzi books if you'd think it'd really help you and you don't mind putting off sentences for a while. Dissecting characters is probably already pretty easy for you, so I think you could just learn hanzi as you come across them/enter them in your deck. If being able to write is important to you, I would suggest including some production cards in your deck (bopomofo/pinyin or audio to hanzi). (My vote would be for audio to hanzi, 'cause I think it would be great for improving listening comprehension.)

Here are some relevant AJATT links:
* Details about pinyin to hanzi production cards
* How to do audio to hanzi cards

As for getting used to tones, I think that including audio on your cards would be really useful for that. Also, of course, listen to lots of Mandarin. (If you haven't seen it already, you might find this discussion about tones interesting.)

Learning resources: I've only looked at it briefly, but the Integrated Chinese textbook series seems good. It's available in both simplified and traditional character editions, too. There are also some lists on Smart.FM for Mandarin.

I think it's good and more fun to start using native material really early on, though, so here are some non-textbook suggestions:
* Mainland and Taiwanese shows and movies. Chinese movies seem to usually come with captions, at least in my experience.
* A search engine for finding Chinese subs: http://www.subom.com/
* Picture books. I've seen lots that are written in huge type so that the hanzi are really easy to read, and then also have the pinyin or bopomofo indicated for every character. So awesome!

Also, what about asking your Chinese friends for help? I find that people are usually really appreciative when they find out that someone is learning their language and are often glad to help answer questions.

Good luck!

Edit: Realized I'd forgotten something you'd already written.

pm215 Wrote:If you're reading, you don't need to 'recall the character', it's right there on the page in front of you :-).

Oh, but you do.
Learning when reading works through repetition. You need to recall that you've seen that same character two pages ago, which character did you see it with, to recall this character next time you see it, tell it apart from all the look-alikes etc.

Now, if you knew how to read perfectly, well, then it was different for you (probably, you already were on a higher level, where you did only need more reading, not RTK), but try to remember what it was like, looking at the page full of weird characters for the first time and not being able to hold them in your mind even for a second or tell them apart... And zero chance of remembering a compound word. (In the introduction to the books, Heisig had described this well enough, so no need to repeat it.)

And you're right, obviously, that this is not the only way. The student can always throw more time and effort at it and he will prevail. It' just a matter of efficiency.

shirokuro Wrote:(My vote would be for audio to hanzi, 'cause I think it would be great for improving listening comprehension.)

[...]

As for getting used to tones, I think that including audio on your cards would be really useful for that. Also, of course, listen to lots of Mandarin.

I can't second this enough. My listening comprehension has gone from sucky, to being able to understand most dialogue in TV and movie shows after switching to audio cards. And a nice side effect has been that I can write fast enough to transcribe most of the short audio clips (10-20 hanzi) that I hear in class, which is handy.

A good starting point are the ZhongWen presentations. The audio is easily spliced using audacity and the transcriptions are spot on. (I think in the course of doing all of ZhongWen Red, I encountered 2-3 minor tone errors, and that's it.)

Wow, this is getting a whole lot more response than I had expected.. thanks again!

So now I have a much better idea of what to do, but I'm still not totally sure.
Here's what I've gotten so far, in a horrible attempt at a list:

*Don't do RTH, since I've already done most of RTK
*Listen to native material - which I'm already doing (And listening to this stuff makes me remember why I began with Chinese in the first place - I absolutely love this language. I never really had much of a reason to study Japanese, I just figured I would never be able to master tones, so I might as well do something. But thanks, shirokuro, for posting the discussion on tones. Very interesting.)
*Use smart.fm lists and mine from native material? - Is this where I start? Shirokuro mentioned the Integrated Chinese book; are there any other options other than jumping into native material right away? (by the way, thanks for those AJATT links, Shirokuro)
Back when I studied Mandarin a few years ago, I mainly used podcasts for learning new vocabulary, and I would learn the Hanzi for whatever the new words I had just learned in the podcast. Perhaps I could do this while adding the sentences into Anki?
*Also, I think now I've changed my mind and will be going with traditional, since I've done so much of RTK (even though I'll have to learn both anyway).
-Also also, once I get to a decent level, I definitely plan on getting help from my friends. Maybe I'll just sit and read through some texts with them, and they can critique my pronunciation and such.
And zer0range, what ZhongWen presentations are you talking about? I couldn't find anything like that when I looked on Zhongwen.com.

So basically, now my main question is where to start.
Thanks so much to everyone.

http://www.zhongwenred.com/