just browsing the forum and i see quite a bit of dispute between simplified and chinese characters. seems too often people think if you want to learn traditional chinese then you have to stick to traditional chinese, if you want to learn simplified then stick to simplified. this simply isn’t true in reality (with the exception of published written works). take a look at any junior or high school students notebook in taiwan and you’ll see traditional characters mixed with simplified characters and a few japanese katakana/hiragana thrown in. yes you’ll want to know what kind of character you’re learning but in the end learning a new character is still learning. and if it helps you communicate with other people so much the better.
NO way theres Japanese Katakana and simplified chinese in Taiwan’s schools’ textbooks. 
ummm… did you read the post. i said in students notes - like when the professor is giving a lecture and they write things down. published works - including textbooks- of course do not mix languages (unless it’s a foreign language teaching material).
The PRC’s simplification project took into account simplified shorthand characters that had already been used for generations in handwriting and in cursive calligraphy. Then they expanded on that theme, adding many more simplifications. The difference is that, in Taiwan, simplified characters are rarely seen in print, and only a subset of the mainland’s simplified character system is used in handwriting.
The result is that it is difficult for people used to traditional characters to read simplified characters in print, because many of those simplified characters are simply not used in Taiwan even in handwriting.
I think that, because this forum is Taiwan-related, it behooves us to use traditional characters since that is what we encounter and use in Taiwan.
forget it i just wanted to say it’s ok to learn both traditional and simplified not get into a china vs. taiwan debate
I think what Chris was saying is that what you see in notebooks here aren’t technically “Simplified Characters”, they’re just shorthand that was incorporated when the simplification was sorted out. Also I think he was trying to point out that the anti-Simplified attitude you may occasionally spot isn’t so much anti-Simplified as it is about respect for context; this board is Taiwan-focused, Taiwan uses Traditional, therefore it’s more respectful to use Traditional on this board. Not to mention that those who’ve only studied Chinese here will have only learned Traditional.
And I don’t think anyone here believes that “if you learn Traditional Chinese you should stick to it” or vice versa - most of us who studied Chinese overseas learned Simplified and switched to Traditional here. Personally, I learnt a bit of Traditional first, then formally studied Simplified at university in parallel with Traditional in my own time.
twothink02 - I completely agree. When I first studied Chinese, I learned both styles concurrently (though admittedly I was the only one in the class to make the effort). I’ve read literature written in both systems. There’s no reason to hamstring yourself by sticking to one or the other. My preference is for traditional, but I’m not going to shut my eyes if a string of simplified text comes along.
I also know what you mean about young folks using a bit of trad, simp, Japanese, English, and even bopomofu. I would expect to see some Korean make it’s way in in the coming years. It’s all part of the hip young culture. I for one think it’s very cool.
My 2 cents.
I don’t think people are arguing one over the other (at least I’m not) but when you are learning a new language, it does help if people stick to the norms of what they are learning. We are in Taiwan learning Chinese. Taiwan uses Traditional characters. Therefore, as a learner (if you choose to learn characters) you learn Traditional. Just like English teachers here do not write in cursive when teaching beginners.
I don’t think Junior or Senior high school students in Taiwan are “learners of Chinese as a second language” Therefore, they get to do lots of cool things with their own language, as they should!
The rest of us that are not native speakers (meaning me) are just trying to read the signs, learn to read a bit more and maybe come out of this experience with reasonable language skills. After that Simplified can be tackled.