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I checked Amazon's "Bestsellers Rank" for both books on Amazon.com:

Remembering Traditional Hanzi (ISBN 978-0-8248-3324-4)
7 reviews, #30,436 in Books

Remembering Simplified Hanzi, ISBN 978-0-8248-3323-7
11 reviews, #263,421 in Books

According to these Traditional is the more popular of the two.

But then the "Bestsellers Rank" may not be directly indicative of sales, I don't know.

What gives? Anybody got sales numbers or other factual information such as which is taught more today in classes, etc? (I have no background at all on Chinese language learning).

I recall my mom's input:

"If you know Traditional, simple is easy to pick up, even on the fly."
"If you know simple, traditional is hard to pick up and requires studying."

it's easier to go trad -> simpl than simpl -> trad, although both need some time to adapt.

though if you did RtK before it's probably a safer bet to go traditional. You can kind of guess the simplified forms of traditional stuff (for example: 见 and 見 and all subsequent words with them in it, or 歡 and 欢), but some simplified versions are just wtf-ish.

My answer has no correlation to the bestselling list, so I guess idk. Simplified is used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, while traditional in Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan.

If one wants to master mandarin, should one go study simplified then traditional? I've done RTK1+3+ I know more than 2000+ kanji now via japanese. Anyone got any good advice on how to proceed?

This is not the right thread, but here goes: if you're going to learn both, learn traditional then simplified. Traditional then simplified is easier than the other way around, and there is no argument about this (because it's many-to-one vs. one-to-many with regards to obsoleted variant characters). If you are only interested in simplified (meaning: you don't care to read anything that was not published in PRC or Singapore, post-1960ish), then of course just learn simplified. But keep in mind that an argument could be made that a better understanding of the language, and therefore long-term success comes from knowing the traditional characters. The counter-argument would be that there are *a lot* less simplified characters (officially 1,000 less, but rare characters not on the official lists tend to be used more often outside of PRC/Singapore, so practically speaking the number should be higher), and therefore you'll be able to get through the characters and start actually learning the language sooner.

I think that fairly, and objectively summarizes both sides.

To the OP, I have no hard facts or numbers for you. But my guess is that because RTH is geared to self-study, you're more likely to pick up people interested in the traditional characters.

Everyone I know studies Traditional because of:
Taiwan and Hongkong
They are coming from Japanese/Korean background
They might be learning both
Traditional is more common in America with immigrants (my experience)
Mainland China is well...China >..>

mafried Wrote:This is not the right thread, but here goes: if you're going to learn both, learn traditional then simplified. Traditional then simplified is easier than the other way around, and there is no argument about this (because it's many-to-one vs. one-to-many with regards to obsoleted variant characters). If you are only interested in simplified (meaning: you don't care to read anything that was not written in PRC or Singapore, post-1960ish), then of course just learn simplified. But keep in mind that an argument could be made that a better understanding of the language, and therefore long-term success comes from knowing the traditional characters. The counter-argument would be that there are *a lot* less simplified characters (officially 1,000 less, but rare characters not on the official lists tend to be used more often outside of PRC/Singapore, so practically speaking the number should be higher), and therefore you'll be able to get through the characters and start actually learning the language sooner.

I think that fairly, and objectively summarizes both sides.

To the OP, I have no hard facts or numbers for you. But my guess is that because RTH is geared to self-study, you're more likely to pick up people interested in the traditional characters.

sounds about right, a lot of people say traditional then simplified. But since I already know all the common kanji for Japanese, I'd say I already know a handful of simplified+traditional characters. So this definitely tells me traditional is the way to go.

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I'm just wondering if I could get Reviewing the (Traditional) Hanzi out the door first, and add Simplified later.

Going traditional wouldn't hurt, really. I'd advocate it. You'll still be able to read simplified with guesses. Not that easy when you go simplified; but considering RTK's finished I guess either way is probably fine. Traditional has some different radicals with kanji though (経済 and 經濟) which is why I'd go trad.

Every British Born Chinese person I know in the UK (and I know quite a few) have 2 things in common:

1) Their parents are from Hong Kong, never mainland China.
2) Despite speaking fluent Cantonese and going to Chinese school as kids, they are all functionally illiterate.

I'd say this market for RtH is significantly bigger than English speakers trying to learn Chinese. Just a hunch..

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@aphasiac: thanks, that is very inspiring! Do you think they are comfortable with English and browsing English websites?

aphasiac Wrote:I'd say this market for RtH is significantly bigger than English speakers trying to learn Chinese. Just a hunch..

But maybe there already are similar websites in chinese? I don't know, but their population is 1.3 billion, so just to be sure...

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There are of course tons of Chinese learning websites. I think aphasiac commented on a segment of learners using Remembering the Hanzi.

There are practically no users of Japanese descent on RevTK, but perhaps there would be a non-negligible number of users of Chinese descent for RevTH.

I wonder how people of Chinese descent would be interested in using Remembering the Hanzi though. Wouldn't they stick to "traditional" methods, as the Japanese would be inclined to do?

I mean, RTH/RSH must be as unconventional for Chinese as RTK is for Japanese, right?

ファブリス Wrote:I'm just wondering if I could get Reviewing the (Traditional) Hanzi out the door first, and add Simplified later.

Are you talking about the upcoming Reviewing the Hanzi website? If so it would be great to have either one :-) I personally chose to switch to simplified after completing RTK.

ファブリス Wrote:@aphasiac: thanks, that is very inspiring! Do you think they are comfortable with English and browsing English websites?

All the BBCs I know count English as their first language, despite speaking fluent Cantonese with their parents / family.

One old BBC work colleague actually started doing RtH (Traditional) at the same time as I started RtK, and he used this site to get his stories (but then Anki to review). So definitely a market there.

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HerrPetersen Wrote:Are you talking about the upcoming Reviewing the Hanzi website?

Yeah I've started working on it. I think I have all the data I need for RTH Volume 1. I'll try to get a simple "port" with Traditional out of the door asap, and figure out the rest later.

That sounds pretty cool... didn't you say, you still needed until +- September to get things going?

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Well I spent about a month editing a draft of a business plan and messing about with spreadsheets and I feel I'm running in circles now.

I looked at the data, and I figured out how to "port" the site keeping 99% of the code shared between RevTK and RevTH.

I also abandoned the idea of refactoring RevTK and RevTH to a newer framework. Instead I will keep development 100% focused on stories for RevTK/RevTH, and develop new ideas into a separate site. That way I can write the new site with newer frameworks and APIs and maintain the current codebase for RevTK/RevTH.

So I just need to port the site now. I'm working on it. I'm afraid it won't be very exciting as it is going to look identical to the current site. We'll see.

I'm excited, period. When I was studying RTK (which I never got close to finishing), this site was invaluable. Now with RTH, I would love to have something similar in any form.

ファブリス Wrote:Well I spent about a month editing a draft of a business plan and messing about with spreadsheets and I feel I'm running in circles now.

Well I think it wouldn't hurt to ask people on forums for ideas and advice. If you plan on creating a Business plan, you should create both something that you like, and that other people(clients) have a need for. And I think forums can be one way of finding out what other people want/need.

All kinds of good ideas come from communication !
(great things like computers and the internet probably weren't invented by one person)

ファブリス Wrote:So I just need to port the site now. I'm working on it. I'm afraid it won't be very exciting as it is going to look identical to the current site. We'll see.

I can't help you with any business plans (business what?) but don't worry about the aspect, it's lean and clean, two of the hardest qualities to find online these days. So I don't think anyone is going to complain.
Plus, we'll all feel we're learning the same thing, so the community feeling will be huge, which is important.
Plus you can think of it as the Fabrice touch, really, no reason you shouldn't be proud of your own work.

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Thanks for the kind words.

jettyke Wrote:(...) it wouldn't hurt to ask people on forums for ideas and advice

You're right about answering the needs of users. I thought about creating a survey, but even with a survey you have to ask specific questions. I don't think I can ask good questions until I actually know what I want to do after RevTK/RevTH.

I don't actually need the business plan right now. The business plan is written for other people, in French. It's an interesting exercise but it doesn't have much to do with brainstorming specific site features. The business plan can simply state that I'll have a subscription with additional features, and what matters is how much it will be priced and why I believe the price would make sense (who is the client, what is the market segment, what are the competitors, etc). It explains for example if my revenue model is 20% subs and 80% advertising, or the other way around. All the features would be detailed in a separate document because the people reading the business plan won't even know what "kanji" means anyway. With a business plan I could claim for one government sponsored scheme that would support me in the first year of activity.

jettyke Wrote:All kinds of good ideas come from communication

True. Napoleon Hill would have called it the "master mind" group, ie. your associates. I don't think that one can come empty handed and ask the community, which is the potential client, for the core ideas for the business. There's the saying "an idea is worth nothing" or "everybody has ideas". You've got to build something. Then you can get feedback, add features and tweak the original idea to better answer user's needs. Even then, if you have a potentially useful idea from the start, it may not work. Maybe you came too late, or maybe too early (can't change people's habits). There's no golden rule out there. You might pick something that's already done, underdo the competition (ie. less features but easier to use) and actually succeed. It's really hard to say in advance, I think.

I learned Chinese using simplified characters for the first 5-6 months and picked up traditional through context... it's really irrelevant which one you learn first. On the other hand, writing simplified is much more useful, which is why I recommend people learn first to read and write simplified.

zer0range Wrote:I learned Chinese using simplified characters for the first 5-6 months and picked up traditional through context... it's really irrelevant which one you learn first.

Yeah, I don't know why people who prefer traditional keep repeating the "if you start with the traditional set you'll have a humongous advantage, but if you start with simplified you'll be crippled for life, unable to infer any traditional character and so on..." It's just not like that.

zer0range Wrote:On the other hand, writing simplified is much more useful, which is why I recommend people learn first to read and write simplified.

Especially in this age of 'portable devices with handwriting capabilities'. Well, I don't have one so I don't know what it's like, but if I had I think I would make an effort to handwrite the characters instead of typing in a virtual keyboard and letting the IME decide, if not just for the sake of cementing them in my memory. Or not — who knows. The thing is, the handwriting recognition must be very precise, otherwise it just gets in the way.