> Anecdotally for me, learning Chinese first with simplified characters was totally fine, and without formal study, I can read traditional characters fine 90% of the time and guess a remaining ~8% of characters I don't immediately recognize for a total ~98% comprehension, kind of like figuring out how to read medieval gothic font.
AIUI that's not a recommended approach; my friend is learning Chinese and his teacher was insistent that he should learn the traditional characters first because it's much easier to pick up the simplified characters from the traditional ones than the other way around.
It's definitely true that it's easier for readers of traditional to learn simplified than visa-versa. After all, the simplified script was created by people who were already using traditional and were attempting to make logical and consistent simplifications!
On the other hand, your friend might find some very common traditional characters brutal to learn as a beginner. 醫生 (doctor) often comes up within the first few lessons and 鬱悶 (depressed) within the first couple of semesters. In contrast, someone starting with simplified won't be so daunted learning the simplified equivalents 医生 and 郁闷. Later, as an advanced student, the traditional forms aren't so daunting as they would have been to start with.
It's still more work for someone who knows 医 to learn the rest of 醫 than it is for someone who knows 醫 to learn that they just need to write the first 8 strokes that make up its upper left corner to make the simplified version, of course.
It's an interesting point--I underestimated the difficulty of learning to handwrite characters. Knowing simplified I can read traditional pretty effortlessly and even communicate with a relative in HK typing in traditional, but cannot write it by hand from memory. I liken it to being able to read but not draw the Gothic "T" in the New York Times.
Still, I'd claim that regardless of the direction, learning the simplification map (and some patternless exceptions) is a small incremental task compared with the thousands of hours learning the broader language. What's a few hundred mapping rules + exceptions, after learning 3000+ characters? If someone asked me which character set to start with, barring real issues with availability of education material, I'd say to learn whatever you want if you're committed to it! Just be ready to spend a few hundred more hours at least due to the increased amount of information to memorize in traditional.
AIUI that's not a recommended approach; my friend is learning Chinese and his teacher was insistent that he should learn the traditional characters first because it's much easier to pick up the simplified characters from the traditional ones than the other way around.