The traditional course is one of the two courses here at Aurora Chinese. In it you will learn thousands of traditional Chinese characters along with their components, sounds, and some helpful words.

.

Let’s go over what tradition characters are, as well as outline some important aspects of our traditional Chinese character course.

Traditional characters

Traditional Chinese characters have been around for thousands of years in their current form. They were the standard form of printed Chinese characters until the middle of the 20^th century when simplified characters began to be introduced.

.

While there are tens of thousands of traditional Chinese characters, only a couple of thousand are in regular modern use. The average literate Taiwanese will be familiar with around four to five thousand Chinese characters.

.

Our traditional course teachers over 3,000 of the most common traditional characters. When you complete the course, you will be able to recognize nearly every character you see on a given Chinese newspaper page!

.

>But first…what is Traditional Chinese?

While we commonly think “Chinese” is just one language, there are actually many different dialects spoken by Chinese people around the world. The main spoken language is Mandarin Chinese, or Putonghua 普通话. This is the language you should learn as a foreigner since it is the most-spoken language.

However, there are two different ways to write Mandarin Chinese…

1.Simplified Chinese: the written form of Mandarin used mostly in mainland China (the PRC).

2.Traditional Chinese: the written form of Mandarin used mostly in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Taiwanese pronunciation

The only region that has Mandarin Chinese as the primary language of communication and uses traditional characters is Taiwan. As such, we have based all of the pronunciation within our traditional course off of the pronunciation used in Taiwan.

.

The pronunciation differences between the two are not large, and the two varieties of Chinese are completely mutually intelligible. The relation between the two varieties is similar to the difference between American and British English.

Learn More

As you learn Traditional Chinese characters, don’t forget… there is no difference in the spoken language of Mandarin Chinese! You’re just learning to write in a different script. Grammar patterns are still the same.

.

If you are already an intermediate or advanced reader of Traditional characters, you can turn on a Hong Kongese or Taiwanese drama and put the subtitles to Traditional Chinese. You can also practice reading Taiwanese or Hong Kong news sites or blogs!