I do not know if that has already been discussed here, but certainly it would be easier to study both styles, if the question type indicates in some way, whether an answer in the traditional or in the simplified form is expected.

It doesn't confuse me to learn both at the same time (character style: both). But, sometimes it is kind of confusing, when I get a question to write a character, and do not know if Skritter expects now a simplified or a traditional answer. First I always have to write a wrong stroke to understand that the question refers to the other style.

Furthermore, when I switch the study settings between "simplified only" and "traditional only" several times a day, it still seems to mix up both types. I do not understand why I get for example both cards "门 mén" and "門 mén", even after I switch to "simplified only" or "traditional only". I think it is impossible to distinguish from the question which answer Skritter expects me to write.

I am using Skritter almost exclusively with my Android devices (phone or tablet), as I still do not have a Wacom tablet or something similar.

Is there a way to handle these problems?


P.S.: One suggestion: In the radicals card deck it is indicated whether variant 1, 2, 3, standing, etc. is expected. Why not just add here "traditional variant", "simplified variant" as a cue?

On iOS it shows simp or trad in a little font in the top left. If you choose simp only and trad only I don't think it should show both, sounds like a bug. I think it makes most sense to study the simp versus trad differences list rather than studying both tho, as you end up with a lot of simple differences between radicals on words you already know.

Who knows? - Perhaps this "simp or trad" feature is still not developed for Android |-:

Generally your idea sounds good to find a differences list. But for now it only feels like learning just one more variant of a radical.

In the last ten years I made the mistake to buy books whenever I traveled to Taiwan or China. There is are beautiful Taiwanese children's books, a great 3000 frequent characters dictionary by Far East, and other works published by Sinolingua or Beijing University press or others and comic books from Hong Kong in my collection. Finally I find some time and motivation to start learning. I think it is no problem if I can only write one variant in the beginning and read the other variant. And afterwards I could still learn the other writing style.

It is not an easy decision, but it almost seems that I /must/ start with the simplified for practical reasons (1. I just ordered a whole set of books and CDs from Sinolingua to start with, 2. there seems to be more material available for this style, 3. saving time). While I believe the traditional form provides deeper insights into the language and I would prefer that also for aesthetic reasons. :o)

I found these information here and consider to convert the first one or two pages into an Anki deck:

http://www.sayjack.com/chinese/traditional-to-simplified-chinese-conversion-table/

http://www.sayjack.com/chinese/simplified-to-traditional-chinese-conversion-table/

http://www.sayjack.com/chinese/chinese-characters-both-traditional-and-simplified/

Or do you have some better suggestion regarding "differences list" that I might miss otherwise?

Hi Shitou,

me, using the Android app on my smartphone and studying both styles here. Biased towards traditional since I live in Taiwan.

Which style is requested does show in my app version 0.98.2697, upper right corner of writing area, in a small font: TRAD / SIMP. Also, the mixup in testing the "wrong" style does not occur to me. However, TRAD / SIMP will only show if there are such variants of that character, and it will unfortunately show for all characters of a multi-character word even if only one of these characters has trad / simp variants, e.g. in 石頭 / 石头 it will (wrongly?) show for 石. Of course you will get "tested twice" for 石 as well.

Since you already own Far Eastern's 3000 char dictionary, you might like this vocab list:
Frequently Used Characters for which Traditional and Simplified Differ, Made by: mjv - the list is sorted by frequency of use (of the trad char), hence trains the most frequent first. Sadly it does not contain the example words given in the book. (Sorry, no I won't extend the list!)

Personally, I have found it easier to switch between styles instead of doing both at the same time (one less thing to consider during each test) but honestly I do not know how to switch between styles in the Android app, instead I go to the website to switch, and find it a bit tedious.

Finally, it has been discussed many times that studying trad first and then learn simp on top would be "more natural" coz the characters evolved this way, I wouldn't know how to find my way back from 归 to 歸 if I had studied simp first). Probably my Taiwan bias at work.

Best,
amhen