Image Citation: Original art made by Kin Yang
從小到大，我爸爸媽媽只讓我和姐姐在家講中文。每個星期六都送我們去中文學校讀書。雖然小時侯的我很討厭學中文，爸爸媽媽一直叫我要堅持下去。現在的我覺得很奇怪，我怎麼最近才開始愛上了中文和我的文化背景呢？
我爸爸媽媽都是在台灣生的，所以我學中文是用注音和繁體字。我到了十二歲才發現有拼音和簡體字的中文寫法。我特別的好奇，中文字的兩個寫法，怎麼有時候看起來這麼不一樣呢？到了高中我才真真的了解簡體字和繁體字的不同。
我記得我上九年級中文課的第一個月很不習慣。我會想，為什麼有些字的部首在簡體字不見呢？比如像， “愛”在簡体字“爱”的心到哪了去了？再說為什麼“裡面”的裡在簡體字是里？里
不是公里的里嗎？過了一年的時間我還是不懂，有些字的部首簡化，字就不是變成了比較難想像嗎？
很多人說簡體字寫的又快又方便，對想學中文的人也比較簡單。可是在我看來，繁體字有它自己的特色。每一個字有它本身的部首，不是只是直線和點是一件美好的事情。我覺得在未來的世界失去了這個字體，會是一件很傷心的事情。
My parents only let my sister and I speak Chinese at home. Every Saturday they would send us to Chinese school. Although I hated learning Chinese when I was a kid, my parents always told me to keep going.
Now that I've gotten older, I feel a bit confused. How is it that I only recently started falling in love with Chinese and my cultural background?
My parents were born in Taiwan, so the Chinese I learned was phonetic (Zhuyin and traditional characters.) When I was twelve, I found a Chinese character with pinyin that was simplified. I wondered how two characters could look so different. In high school, I really began to understand the difference between simplified and traditional characters.
I remember my first month taking Chinese at school. I wondered why are some radicals missing in simplified characters? For example, "love" in the simplified form "love" doesn't have a heart! Where did it go? When writing the character "inside" in simplified form it means "miles" in traditional!
After a year I still do not understand Chinese characters are simplified. Doesn't that make it harder to picture the words in your mind?
Many people say simplified characters are easier to write and that people who want to learn Chinese have an easier time learning the language with this script.
But in my opinion, traditional Chinese characters have their own unique features. Each word has its own radical, not just represented by a straight line or dot. I think losing this type of Chinese writing style in the future would be a very sad thing.