I've got a question about traditional characters, but I'm not exactly sure how to word it...

Let's say I knew 3,000 of the most common simplified characters. How many traditional characters would I have to study to have that same level of vocab in Hong Kong or Taiwan? There are some characters that are written the same in both traditional and simplified. I'm wondering how many are different. Does that make sense?

I know it's a complicated answer because some simplified characters are used to represent more than one traditional character. But if someone could give me a rough estimate, that would be helpful.

I have heard that roughly 2000 of the most common (or most complex) characters have been changed from traditional characters to simplified. While there are a lot more that were actually simplified, that might be a good estimate of how many traditional characters you would have to learn to study the same amount of vocab in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Often times the simplification has taken place in radical components reducing the number of strokes needed to write the same radical. Other times the character has been completely hacked apart to make it, well... simple to write. 讓 (ràng), for example has become 让, going from 24 strokes to 5.

I personally think that some of the simplification tactics used have been very inconsistent. A lot of times the original mean of the character has been lost in the process.

There really are not that many characters that are simplified. Within the few that are simplified, much of them follow some basic rules that make it easy to convert each way.

The exact number could be found by counting them all on this page:

http://zh.wikisource.org/zh/%E7%AE%80%E5%8C%96%E5%AD%97%E6%80%BB%E8%A1%A8

If you learn the 132 basic components/radicals that are changed, the rest should be easy, ie:


食 → 饣 therefore 飯 → 饭; 飽 → 饱; 飼 → 饲; 餃 → 饺