Traditional characters are the original set of Chinese characters that have been used since long ago in China’s history. They are usually made up of many complicated strokes.

Around 1950, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began standardizing a simplified version of many of these complex characters.

This simplification began as the PRC’s attempt at decreasing nationwide illiteracy, but has unfortunately become a geographical divider, since different countries use different character systems. 

All you need to know right now is one major difference: simplified characters have fewer strokes.

For example, the common character 邊 (bin1) – “side” in Cantonese has 18 strokes in traditional form, while its simplified form (边) only has 5.

The good news is, 20% of traditional and simplified characters are written exactly the same way, so you’ll automatically be able to read some of both.

If you’re planning to travel or live in either Hong Kong or Taiwan, you’ll mostly see traditional characters, so you might want to start learning those.

However, if you plan to travel mostly in Mainland China—where simplified characters are standard — you should learn simplified characters.