My goal of improving my Chinese immediately begs the question: why learn Traditional? Most of the Chinese-speaking world already uses Simplified Chinese including my own family who could somewhat read traditional but could not write in it. (This includes the Zhuyin Article.) Hopefully, by practicing through researching (on the Chinese internet) and trying out various techniques, I could see some tangible improvements in my own Chinese, and perhaps provide interesting topics to you, the reader.

Whatever I find is completely interest driven with the “side-quest” of improving my Chinese skill in mind. Sure, reading middle school material might be a quick fix, but it’s probably too boring. Along with many in my situation, I am in a quite unique position: I find introductory material meant for non native speakers far too easy, yet content for Chinese students of my age to be too difficult. That’s why I want to endeavour to see how I could “fix” my Chinese. Of course, writing is a huge struggle as well. I heavily rely on the auto-suggester when I type in Chinese, and I’ve also found that I typically resort to guessing (which is somehow quite accurate) when it comes to reading Chinese characters.

However, this does not carry over to other aspects of the language. In most ordinary, day-to-day situations I could communicate equally as well in Chinese as I could in English, if not better. Nevertheless, I am a native speaker of Chinese. Furthermore, after (unexpectedly) spending last two years in the States, I am beginning to lose my Chinese skills, which were, admittedly, lacking to begin with. Although I grew up in Beijing, I attended various international schools since entering grade school. Today, I will try to endeavour into the world of traditional Chinese as part of a (likely) series of blog posts about improving my Chinese abilities.

Learn traditional chinese with zhuyin