Africanus wrote:
Which is spoken more, simplified or traditional? Will I be able to communicate if I know one and not the other?
The first thing I want to clarify is that simplified or traditional Chinese refers only to the written form. That is to say, a word which has its simplified and traditional forms has only one pronunciation. The whole China, except Taiwan and Hongkong, uses the simplified Chinese in press, books--actually the Microsoft operating system I use is in simplified Chinese.
China also has a lot of dialects which differ from each other greatly. But if you know Mandarin, which we call "pu tong hua", it is sufficient to communicate. For me, dialects of the southern part of the provience in which I live could be foreign languages. However, I can communicate with people form that part freely because we all know "pu tong hua". In most time we talk to each other from different parts of China in "pu tong hua".
To sum it up, the best choice of the Chinese variety for you to learn is simplified Mandarin.