well, i suggest that it will be better if you learn simplified chinese. as is known, people of chinamainland use simpilified chinese more often. its much easier to learn and write --- thats why chinese people now use it broadly. people from Hongkong and Taiwan use traditional chinese, but now they have decided to learn simplified chinese, for some lectural and commercial reasons. they need to at least understand simplified chinese. so, if you learned simplified chinese first, almost all the people use chinese (both traditional and simplified) can understand you. but it may not apply to the condition that you use only traditional chinese most important, its really much easier to learn. HAVE FUN LEARNING CHINESE！ XOXO =]

hello melody, i am foreign medicine student in china. i am damn sure that you should learn simplified chinese. in modern china very very few people use traditional chinese. even my teacher of chinese language dosent know traditional chinese language completely. she knows just little traditional chinese characters. i suggest you to learn simplified for sure!

hello, between the two, of course Simplified is easier to learn. Have you watched any chinese movies in "Cantonese dialect" with chinese character subtitle?. you will notice that most of those movies uses "Traditional" chinese subtitles rather of "Simplified". If you have already mastered the 'simplified' chinese, it won't be so hard enough to learn the 'traditional' chinese. all you need to do is to learn and be aware of the 'radicals' and some of 'phonetic elements' as the main component of the word. :)

Actually, the people who live mainland of China are using simplified Chinese, for what means the majority of Chinese are using simplified Chinese. The people who live in Hong Kong, Macao and especially Taiwan are using the traditional Chinese. So my recommendation is that you can choose the simplified Chinese as your target. ^_^

if you learn simplified chinese first,you will learn the tradional chinese automatically.plus,learning traditonal one would be more tough than simplified one.