I've made my way through the Skritter Chinese 101 list and have started the HSK 1 list. Both only in simplified characters. Is it better to learn both from the start? Or should I wait until I learn some more HSK levels?

Out of curiosity, what happens if I have a ton of words/characters added and I change the style to Simplified and Traditional? Will it slowly add the traditional characters as I go, or will I be flooded?

I quit studying Simplified a while ago, but I think if you *really* want to study both, you can't begin studying Traditional soon enough. I'm studying Traditional and have the feeling that I could go on with studying Simplified anytime, but I heard it's much harder the other way around.
Out of curiosity, why do you want to study both?

So it's harder to go Simplified to Traditional? :(

I want to learn Simplified because there appears to be more material out there for it. I'd like to travel to mainland China some day. I want to learn Traditional because I have some friends who only know it. They've leant me some books that I want to be able to eventually read. I'd also like to travel to Taiwan some day. As well I have hopes of learning more Japanese (I took some classes in high school). I heard that knowing Traditional characters is a big help.

Yes, or so I heard. Here's an example as to why:

There are many simplified characters with multiple meanings, like 面 (face, noodles) or 发 (send, hair). If you study Simplified first, you just study those characters and learn of their multiple meanings. Then, when you've started to study Traditional, you have to learn one character for each meaning (many of them new characters), e.g. 面 (face), 麵 (noodles), 發 (send), 髮 (hair).

If you go from Traditional to Simplified, you only have to map
面, 麵 → 面
發, 髮 → 发
So, there are less characters you have to learn anew, and it's less likely that you'll confuse one variant with another.

Maybe this doesn't look like a big problem, but there really are a buttload of this kind of characters, so they accumulate after a while. Or so I heard!

Unfortunately, going from Traditional to Simplified isn't without problems either. For example, it's hard for me to read a text, particularly hand-written ones, maintain a certain speed and still distinguish 活 from 话. I kinda got more used to it now, but I don't think learning how to hand-write Simplified will be of much use to me, so for now I stick to studying how to read them.

So, I imagine it's best to study both at the same time, but might be a pain when you have to study a lot of new words, e.g. for a test.
Japanese Kanji are certainly closer to Traditional Chinese than to Simplified!

if you have the goal to study both i would begin as early as possible.

but unless you want to become an etymologist or scientist in the realm of chinese language i cant see a reason why study traditional characters.

of course if your aim is to read old documents you need the traditional characters.

last week i met a language researcher from hongkong here in beijing who was sent here with here with her colleagues to take a putonghua course and study simplified characters...

I started studying both Traditional and Simplified from day 1. It is more work to learn both, but for me it has worked.

Intially learing how to write a simplified version was easier. After learning more characters (maybe after 1000) the simplified version is no more any easier to study.

One benefit for learning both simultaneously is that that I learn more information of each new hanzi. The simplified version works as a kind of mnemonic for traditional, and vice versa. Though quite often after seeing a new simplified character I already know how to write it in traditional, as many simplified characters have been constructed from traditional character using similar mechanims.

After learning lots of characters, now reading the text in traditional characters is little bit easier. When reading simplified text, there is always danger to mix diffent characters ( due the less strokes, some quite common simplified hanzi have really small difference ).

Even when using "both" option is Skritter, I have a feeling that Skritter requests writing simplified version more often than traditional one. So when using both I might still write more simplifed characters in Skritter. Of course it might be that I just have learned traditional ones better and quicker, so they will have longer due time.

Thank you for the replies! I think I'll try learning both at the same time. Going to pause the HSK list until I learn the 101 characters in traditional.

谢谢！

Sounds like you've decided - but I'm another vote for learning both at once. After an initial adjustment period it's come to feel very natural, and honestly is very efficient since it feels like the majority of characters simplify in predictable ways.

Why you want to learn traditional is up to you, there's no wrong reason. I do it because I'm in Taiwan from time to time, but even more importantly because I just enjoy it. Which is the reason I'm studying Chinese in the first place.

Only odd thing I've found is:
1. Skritter seems to make me learn simplified first. Really wish it were the other way around for all the reasons Schnabelhund pointed out.
2. Have recently decided to belatedly try Heisig RTH, and this is a little peculiar when you're learning both at once.

I found it very helpful to mentally decide that traditional is "primary" - not sure why this helps, since doesn't change anything I actually do to study. But it did help a lot.

really would like to know why you guys take the pain of learning all these traditional characters? why?

Being able to read traditional characters is handy for day-to-day life in places that use it (Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.), for reading newspapers and other materials from those locations, for reading calligraphy and some shop names, for reading lyrics in karaoke and subtitles in films and TV. It's also good for getting a better understanding of the logic behind some characters. Plus it's not that painful to pick up once you can read simplified, mostly it's a few simple rules and a set of slightly harder substitutions that need to be remembered.

ya, i also just heard from a friend that all of the calligraphy also in mainland china is done in traditional characters (i guess for aesthetic reasons).

thanks ximeng!

My two cents,

I think its totally worth it to learn both. In the beginning it might seem like a bit of work, but in fact its quite easy to learn both at the same time. The majority of characters can be switched back and forth with a few simple rules. The sooner you start learning both the better.

People always say there isn't a ton of traditional characters in mainland China, but you can find them. As mentioned by ximeng KTV and movies very frequently use traditional characters for their subtitles, shops often have traditional characters too in their names and occasionally menus. Mainland people can all read traditional characters, just they can't write them so well.

Overall I think there really are daily life benefits, and the extra effort isn't as much as you might originally think. I dare to say anyone who can use both of them has no regrets and would recommend you do the same.

Cheers