Simple(fied)?

My very first reading.

Bleeding pink and orange... each color symbolizing a simplified character that I couldn't understand. :p

Wowza, we have a ton of reading here!!! I printed out the readings for my Chinese History since 1949 class and it's probably 4 inches thick. I've been lucky in picking out good professors so far with interesting subjects, so I'm pretty optimistic about this semester. :D

I thought it'd be rough converting from Traditional Chinese to Simplified, but it hasn't been too hard. There are some conversions that actually make sense (phonetically or symbolically). For example:

認識 (ren4shi4, to understand) = 认识

The 言 radical on the left is always converted to that thing that looks like an "i", so that's a universal rule in Simplified Chinese. Then you have 認, which sounds like 人 (person), so they replace that whole 忍 section with 人. Then you have 識, which sounds like "zhi" or 只 (only), so ditto on that.

軍隊 (jun1dui4, army) = 军队

車 is always simplified into 车 in Simplified Chinese, so that's another universal rule for 軍/军. Then you have 隊, which means "group", so I process its conversion into the Simplified version of 队 as a bunch of people. At least that's how I make rules up in my head, but it works! :)

These words below look the same to me when I look at them individually. There's no real logic in their simplification. I don't really mind these being simplified though since my hand always cramped up each time I wrote them out at ICLP.

發, 實, 變 = 发, 实, 变 <-- ?!?!!! @_@ *confused face*

I think I'm adjusting to these bastardized (hahaha jk) characters relatively well since it's easy to guess in context, but I had to pick these words out through flashcards then it'd be total GG NO RE.

P.S. Comrade = 同志 in both Simplified in Traditional. It also means "homosexual", but I suspect there might be some KMT humor involved in that one, haha.