<p>Yup, I've noticed that some Korean and Japanese characters are exactly the same as Chinese ones. However, what I meant to say was that there is no point in learning only Traditional, if you're going to focus on a Chinese, it'd be better to learn Simplified b/c it's easier to learn and more people use it, and you'll likely pick up Traditional as you use Simplified. However, in Taiwain where they only use Traditional, there's very little exposure to Simplified, which is a major downside. Traditional and Simplified are both good, but Simplified is more practical and easy to learn (less strokes).</p>
<p>PS: When I said I wanted to "forget some traditional", I didn't mean traditional was bad, I meant that I didn't want to be mixed up with Traditional and Simplified.</p>
<p>Hey, From what I see, traditional is a more genuine calligraphy of the Chinese. Simplified was basically formed because so many peasants never had a education. If you keep simplifying the characters, its gonna start looking like Japanese characters and you'll loose the Chinese identity</p>
<p>Well...Calligraphy is art. I agree that the loss of Traditional would be bad for the Chinese language, but in mainland Chinese society, you will learn Traditional just from reading/communicating, so it is more beneficial now to learn Simplified and gradually learn Traditional through interaction, than learn Traditional and take some classes and learn Simplified.</p>
<p>Well, I'm in china right now and almost everything is in simplified. Though if you learn traditional, you can figure out what the simplified ones are, relatively easily.</p>
<p>Haha, not all calligraphy is an art. Well at least from my point of view. I was at the UCLA book faire(sp? lol) a couple weeks ago and one of the booths was packed with people. I asked one of the guys in line and they said, it was to have your name done in calligraphy.</p>
<p>So, i waited for a bit and when i talked to the ladies up there, I was disappointed; they were calligraphers in english. So disappointed in fact that I had to be a jerk. "That looks so nice. I remember using that font for a research paper and that other one for a letter i had to write."</p>