yudantaiteki Wrote:For some characters, sure, but 发， 习， 听, and quite a few others don't follow any rules.

And I know some native Chinese speakers from Taiwan who have quite a bit of trouble with texts using simplified characters.

All it takes is seeing those characters once or twice in a sentence to figure out what they mean. I barely know any chinese and I already feel like I've seen the three that you mentioned enough to be able to read them no problem (fa, shi, ting... I think). I know Taiwanese speakers who say the same thing (that they can't read simplified), but I think it is kind of like when Japanese people say they can't understand anything written in Chinese at all, when in fact all they have to do is interpret a bit between the kanji they don't know to get the gist of what they are reading. Some people's brains are just not open to learning.

Quote:Some Taiwanese can read simplified characters, but some can't. I know people in the second category. The same is true for mainlanders and traditional script. I'm not sure what the percentages are, but I am skeptical that many on the mainland learn traditional characters unless they study literature at a high level. I remember hearing about lots of Chinese not being able to read the poems of Du Fu in the garden in Chengdu. They looked rather formidable to me, even though I knew the Japanese varieties and had studied a lot of the traditional forms.

Some westerners can read cursive script, but some can't. I know people in the second category. The same is true for Germans and Gothic script. I'm not sure what the percentages are, but I am skeptical that many Europeans learn medieval scripts unless they study literature at a high level. I remember hearing about lots of English speakers not being able to read the works of Chaucer or Beowulf. They looked rather formidable to me, even though I knew the medieval script and and had studied a lot of classical literature.

I had a Chinese friend from the mainland who was a voracious reader and he could only read some 繁体字, he was usually able to pick up the rest from context though. According to him though, most mainlanders can't read 繁体字, which seems to make sense.

I believe they teach 簡体字 in schools in Hong Kong, so most people can probably read them. As for Taiwan, I don't think they teach them in schools, and here's what the wiki page has to say about it:
"台湾で行われた電話世論調査によると、45%が簡体字を完全に読めない、41%が少し読めると答え、完全に読めると答えたのは残りの14%にとどまった"
In a phone survey conducted in Taiwan, 45% couldn't read simplified characters at all, 41% only a bit, and 14% could read them perfectly well.

One of the Taiwanese persons in question just got into the OSU med school, so I don't think insulting his intelligence is very appropriate. Learning the simplified characters isn't all that hard, but there's no need to be so condescending.

I'm sure understanding Du Fu's classical Chinese is difficult even if you know the characters, but being able to read them in terms of sound and modern usage of the characters is something else.

Here's one Chinese-speaker's short anectdote about the experience of getting used to simplified characters

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?..._p__234436

Quote:What I did was read a long novel printed in simplified Chinese (雍正王朝) (because it was so much cheaper). I got bad headaches reading the first part. After that, simplfied characters made no difference at all.

So it sounds like it does require some effort to get adjusted, but not a tremendous amount.

Here's another interesting discussion about simplified/traditional from the same forum:
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?...haracters/

I agree. When I started working with my Chinese tutor who was educated in Beijing, she had trouble reading the traditional characters I tended to use (having studied Japanese first). She seems to be picking them up very rapidly.