Poetry Reading List

kao 靠 lit. lean on fig. rely on admonish/warn告gao on top "not"非fei below. It's both a combined idea character and a phono-semantic character. Someone reliable warns you not to do certain things.
　
狗血淋头gou3 xue4 lin2 tou2 pour out a torrent of abuse lit. dog blood shower head i.e. showering in dog's blood.

狗屁不通gou3 pi4 bu4 tong1 unedited or badly edited and thus incomprehensible lit. dog fart not experienced

狗屁膏药gou3 pi4 gao1 yao2 fake medicine i.e. a scam lit. dog leather high medicine

Poetry Reading List
Cavalry Crossing a Ford (Walt Whitman)
O Captain my Captain
Dulce et Decorum Est
Pershing at the Front
The Neuter Computer
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day (Shakespeare, Sonnet)
To his Coy Mistress
Kubla Khan (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
If (Rudyard Kipling)
Dover Beach (Archibald Macleash)
Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

降級jian4gji2　downgrade
严正抗议simp.　嚴正抗議trad. yan2zheng4kang4yi4
 solemnly protest, formally protest
代表処　representative office: a NON diplomatic mission usually found between countries which have no diplomatic relations, whether due to non-recognition or a state of hostilities. E.g. the Swiss embassy in Iran is the U.S. representative office in Iran.

主席zhu3xi2 chairman

How I (sort of...) learned traditional characters
First i noticed the determinants 偏旁　which are nearly the same 言／讠 , 金／钅，　门／門
Then i started to learn which characters in simplified suppressed elements like 开／開　
Now I am trying to notice the characters which are just completely "reformed" like 叶／葉　后／後
I'm also trying to figure out the "revolutionary" characters like: pre-revolutionary justice claims something like "I am benevolent" 義　but revolutionary justice is just a skull and bones 义
Or pre revolutionary love is heartfelt　愛 whereas post revolutionary love is friendship 爱

My most recent step is learning zhuyin 主音　which took me just two days because i already know lots of hanzi and the zhuyin are based on hanzi. Then I  installed a zhuyin font on my computer. Since i know what the characters sound like when i encounter Taiwanese texts with zhuyin i can still read them nearly as badly as I read mainland Chinese.

Other than reading poetry I'm still only semi literate. fml.

The problem with the simplifications is that they were intended not merely to make it easier to learn to read but also to write, so lots of times brush strokes were suppressed. Another revolutionary invention, pinyin alongside computers made the earlier difficulty in writing less relevant. I expect that both character sets will merge back into each other with characters becoming seen as alternative/variants, and this is partly because the traditional characters are still used among overseas Chinese. I literally have a newspaper which uses both traditional and simplified. I also think kanji and hanzi will move closer rather than further and that hanzi may become a universal symbol system.

 再见老朋友　＝ zai jian lao peng you =
Farewell, old friend (lit.: again see old friend (like me, another half of me) friend (hand in hand))　

most language textbooks are boring and suck because they tend to focus on grammar and correct speech rather than vocabulary and culture. the one advantage is that a text book has texts which are, in principle, grammatically correct and stylistically acceptable

企qi　lit. stand on tiptoes, fig. to plan ahead, to look forward toward colocated with penguin because that's a standing goose.企鹅qi2e2=penguin


讨厌　loathe tao2yan4
讨论　discuss tao2lun4
whenever you want to understand a character break it down into its components. this tao is a finger pinching a thumb 寸cun and that also means inch (寸＝pinch, an inch, the pulsepoint) next to a speaking tongue言/讠so it is the idea of measuring out words inch by inch. Hate someone and want to say exactly how and why? That's taoyan. Want to discuss something very carefully with well measured words? thats taolun.
 怀旧
念旧
留恋
怀念