Learning to write traditional after learning to read simplified

[Qiaoen]

Hello All,

 

i check the forum but didnt see a post that tackled my exact question. 

 

Basically I've learned to read about 4000-5000 words in their simplified form. I'm feeling more and more comfortable in reading books and news articles everyday. 

 

However, I've never learned to write or to produce the characters by memory. Like others, I used my smartphone to communicate with friends by typing in pinyin and selecting the corresponding  characters / words. 

 

Though this has worked well for me, I've always had the thought that I would go back and learn to write them by hand someday. Recently, I've learned that I'll be moving to Taiwan soon which means that I will eventually need to learn traditional characters as well. I'll will probably be in Taiwan for a long time and don't have any immediate plans to move to mainland. 

 

So my question: instead of learning to write the simplified that I can already read, should I skip simplified and just learn to write traditional characters ?  Or would it be better to solidify my recognition of simplified characters by learning to write them and then go on to learn to write traditional afterwards. 

 

Obviously this is a personal decision. Just interested in everyone's thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

[imron]

I would just start learning to read and write Traditional, based on the principle of spending time on the things you want to learn and not spending time on things that you're not going to need.

[Flickserve]

Just learn some of the radicals and start off writing traditional.

 

Then compare with the simplified form in a dictionary.

 

After a while, you will be writing and recognising both.

 

edit. If you have an iphone, you can switch to traditional characters with pinyin input. I haven't yet worked out how do it with android with no ads.

[ZhangKaiRong]

On Android, simply download and install Google Pinyin, and switch the character set to Traditional Chinese at the Input Settings tab.

[Flickserve]

真好，謝謝！