Traditional 繁體 (fántǐ) and Simplifed 简体 (jiǎntǐ) Chinese characters
As you may have noticed in the previous lesson, some of the characters have the comment “Simplified:” next to them, with a different, but somewhat similar character. This is because Chinese has two writing systems, namely 繁體 (fántǐ), literally “complicated form”, or Traditional, and 简体 (jiǎntǐ), literally “simplified form”, or simply Simplified. 
And yes, “體” (tǐ) and “体” (tǐ) are exactly the same word, but written in the two different forms. 
The two terms are pretty much self-explanatory 
Some background on written Chinese:
In the olden days, there was only the Traditional form.
An interesting thing about written Chinese is that despite the different variations or dialects, they many characters are written the same. Thus people from different regions could understand each other, through writing, may be able to pick out familiar words or phrases in other dialects despite the characters possibly being pronounced completely differently in each variation (all phonetics in this thread are for Mandarin, unless otherwise specified).
At some point, Simplified Chinese was developed in an attempt to improve literacy, [citation needed] basically simplifying the strokes of more complex characters, and sometimes merging two similar characters into one, so that fewer characters would have to be learned. Simplified, then, looks less intimidating, especially to new learners. As an effect, it generally becomes easier to write and to read, especially when typed with smaller fonts and in bold.
However, this simplification also comes with a downside, the main one is that the meaning of the word is sometimes lost.
Loss of meaning
For example, let’s take the Chinese word meaning “love”:
Traditional form: 愛 (ài)
Simplified form: 爱 (ài)
The traditional form contains the word 心 (xīn), which means “heart”. This is completely lost in the Simplified form. I have no idea why they designed it this way. Apparently 心 is more difficult to write when part of a more complex character?
The Epoch Times gives some more examples of loss of meaning.
Patterns
Anyway a good thing is that a lot of the simplifications are done in logical patterns. For example, the character 說 (shuō) meaning “to say” is simplified to 说. Whenever you see the root 言 (yán), or “word” / “speech”, in a traditional character, it will always be simplified in the same way (though interestingly enough, “言” itself is still retained as “言”). In the Simplified version, the 口 (kǒu) or “mouth” is gone. However if you’re familiar with this pattern, you would be able to associate it for other words.
Some examples:
Traditional form: 說話 (shuōhuà), meaning “to speak”
Simplified form: 说话 (shuōhuà), meaning “to speak”
Traditional form: 請 (qǐng), saying “please”
Simplified form: 请 (qǐng), saying “please”
Traditional form: 謝謝 (xièxie), meaning “thanks”
Simplified form: 谢谢 (xièxie), meaning “thanks”
Accessibility
Personally I prefer Traditional Chinese, because that was what I learned. My first reaction to Simplfied Chinese was disappointment, and somewhat disgust, feeling that it was not “real” Chinese. However, I recognize its growing use and plan to include the Simplified version for all lessons, so it won’t be necessary to learn both, and you can stick with the form you prefer or are already learning.
While I didn’t explicitly learn Simplified Chinese, many of the characters are the same, or similar enough to Traditional form to decipher easily. For those completely different characters, it’s easy enough to become familiar with them through exposure, especially if they are common words. (And if they’re not, then they won’t come up much ).
Simplified Chinese is generally more widely used nowadays in China and Singapore, while Traditional Chinese is still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia. Thus your learning source would be a big factor in which writing system is taught.
[Poll]So which form are you learning / which would you like to learn?[/Poll]
Additional resource (Which form to learn?):
https://www.vengaglobal.com/blog/simplified-traditional-chinese-mandarin-cantonese/
Change Log:
- Edited with dreamtimer.sourceforge.io/endecoder/
- Formatting; edited statements on Some background on written Chinese
- Changed last paragraph under Accessibility; Removed expired link under Additional resources