As for which is easier, I tend to disagree that simplified is easier in all situations. I started with simplified, and it probably was easier in the early days, when I was only thinking in terms of strokes rather than component parts. As time went on, my ability to break a character down into its component parts increased, and I gradually stopped thinking about written Chinese in terms of number of strokes. For instance, it is easier–at least for me–to think of the character (míng明) as two component parts rather than eight strokes. As time went on, this skill made it easier for me to recognize characters and to figure them out even without a dictionary. I think you don’t learn that as much if you only learn simplified. To a point, you do. Yes, there are radicals, and there still are components, but you also lose something of the logic of many of the characters. If you only learn simplified, there will be a point beyond which you won’t be able to go in your learning of Chinese. Maybe you don’t need or want to go beyond that point. That depends on your purpose. If you only care about doing business in China, and Taiwan isn’t part of that mission, then perhaps simplified is enough. But that is not everyone’s goal. If you want to learn Chinese on a deeper level, and gain insight into the complexity of the language, culture, and history, then I believe learning traditional in addition to simplified is necessary. There are people with such goals in mind, and Taiwan can reach out to them, while at the same time stressing the openness of Taiwanese society.

Battlepanda, a lot of western Chinese students teach English on the side, both here and in mainland China. In fact, I’d say most. Those that are in it for money, though, would obviously not go there, though. That may be part of why we see less serious students here.

Taiwan does certainly get a lot of ESL teachers because of the attractive terms Taiwanese jobs offer. ESL teachers are going to be a different population from Chinese learners, especially if they only intend to stay for a year or two. Frankly, how many qualifications should you require for teachers whose jobs involve work with students who are very young or whose not studying at a very high level anyhow?

We should be playing the same kind of angle. “Is traditional script harder to learn, you bet it is. That’s why 95% of wannabe chinese learners can’t hack it.” Let the insinuation hang in the air that the more elusive product is the more desirable one.

This is a good idea on a number of levels. Besides being good from a sales standpoint, it will also tend to attract the most ambitious and hardest working students. And those are the students Taiwan should want. Students who respond to this sort of image will be students who learn Chinese well, and they’ll make Taiwan’s Chinese programs look good.

Right now Taiwan has a very low-quality population of foreigners. For the most part, the intellectual and the sophisticated students go to Japan, the adventurous and the ambitious go to China, and the unskilled and debt-laden come to Taiwan. I suppose since Taiwan’s such a haven for long-term ESL teachers (no offense Mark), it’s unavoidable.

Darin, do you have any Japanese friends who want to learn Chinese? Which script would they rather learn?

I am not Darin, but up until last year I worked in a traditional Japanese company in the countryside that had just opened a factory in China. As a result, we all studied Chinese from a language teachter who visited our office twice a week. This teacher was from Beijing, by the way, so we learned simplified characters with a heavy Beijing “-er” accent.

As a native english speaker who had prior experience with Chinese learning, both traditional and simplified were okay for me. However, my coworkers really did not like the simplified characters. Many times the instructor would write something on the white board and when she looked at the class, there were many stupified faces. The instructor, who had lived in Japan for over 15 years and studied Chinese literature in college, would then write the traditional equivalent on the whiteboard. Even if the traditional Chinese character was different from the Japanese character, a good number of the students could immediately recognize it.

Actually, I think Taiwan can learn a lot about how to market itself as a language learning destination from Dr. Pepper advertising. Their approach right now (as you’ve described it…i haven’t really been paying that much attention) kind of reminds me of the “Be a pepper!” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dQDAStpSj-8) era ads of the seventies except even more unsubtle. Rather gauche and simplistic actually. It’s an equivalent of a Dr. Pepper ad that say “We’re just better than coke. So there. Don’t go drink any of that nasty coke or you’ll regret it.” They’ve never been dumb enough to say that. Instead, they’ve left out any mention of coke and just said how original their product is. Similarly, we should just emphasize that Taiwan is the only place where you can learn traditional script that has continuity with Chinese history and how cool it is without fighting battles we can’t win by insisting that it is somehow objectively better than another system that is currently in use by way more people.

Dr pepper ads have moved with the times, by the way. I don’t recommend that we adopt the jokiness of the latest ads, since language aquisition is a considerably bigger commitment than picking up a can of soda. But we should observe how they now project a kind of solitary fanaticism in their followers. Instead of saying “Drink Dr. Pepper so you’ll be cool like the rest of us,” the ads are saying “Because you drink Dr. Pepper, you’re special.”

We should be playing the same kind of angle. “Is traditional script harder to learn, you bet it is. That’s why 95% of wannabe chinese learners can’t hack it.” Let the insinuation hang in the air that the more elusive product is the more desirable one.