My mom grew up with learning Traditional (she grew up in Taiwan). She claims she can read Simplified Chinese easily without restudying it or anything because the simplified characters are sort of like the Traditional characters. My mom was the best in her class and went to the best Taiwanese college (meaning she worked hard in her studies and is very familiar with the Chinese language, but I don't know if that really has anything to do with it)
I got to Chinese school and learn traditional and I can't really recognize simplified that much. That's probably because I stink at Chinese in general
(speaking it, understanding it, reading it)
Adding more stuff:
As you may know, traditional and simplified characters are kind of similar. Some traditional character have a bunch of lines and dots and stuff and simplified Chinese kind of gets rid of some of the stuff. I a lot of easy traditional characters are the same as simplified ones.
What I'm trying to say is that a person who is very fluent in reading traditional Chinese should be able to read simplified Chinese too, because the basic outlines of both character is similar. Of course they'llread a lot slower than normal, but I think most fluent people can read simplified. So if you already know some traditional, switching to simplified shouldn't be that hard, and some of the characters are exactly the same too.
I think if you're a fluent simplified reader, it's really hard to read traditional and also change to traditional. So I think you should go with Simplified because you probably won't use Traditional, and transitioning shouldn't be that hard. (Plus simplified characters are easier!
lol)
