More inconsistencies in simplification pt.7

7. 詹


Obviously the Chinese government did not have a problem with this component. There are enough characters to prove it.



If they had changed all of the phonetic components 詹 to 旦 then I would have no problem, but no, they could not. You cannot change 儋 to 但 because it already exists.

A traditional learn can go from from 擔 to 担 much more easily than a simplified learner can go from 担 to 擔.

Changing character components has consequences. It changes the spoken language(with time), it changes the Chinese culture, it removes something that the people of China have been living with for millennia.

Just because the Chinese government simplified some characters and a good portion of Chinese speakers in the world use them does not mean that you have to. You can easily understand simplified characters if you learn traditional ones. You will understand why and how words came to be. You will have a better understanding of the Chinese language than most Chinese people do.

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.6

6. 瞿


Everything looks fine here, no problems that I can see. But wait...there is one simplification...



Why change a phonetic component that is already phonetic when all of the other characters that use it have not been changed?

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.5

5. 韱


It takes a few seconds to write, but I find 韱 very beautiful as a character. Apparently the Chinese government didn't have a problem with it either. Or...did they?



Ack! They did it again!! Why?!? Now we have 佥 in the first character used to replace 韱, but 佥 is the simplification of 僉. How did this happen? There are two characters in the traditional script, 簽 and 籤, that were both simplified to 签. Great...now 签 holds two different meanings.

The last two character have had their 韱s replaced by 千. Again, we need some consistency. Right now we have 3 different ways to write this phonetic component in the simplified.

韱佥千 in simplified.
韱 in traditional.

The simplified script seems to be getting less and less simple with further study.

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.4

4. 襄


襄 itself is pronounced xiāng. When used as a phonetic component characters are usually pronounced rang, xiang, niang, nang(in descending order of frequency)."Rang" is the most common pronunciation, usually in the 3rd or 2nd tone.



The first pair of characters, 孃 and 娘, are actually variants of each other. We will not count them, I have only added them because in simplified characters they are both 娘.

釀 and 讓 have completely different simplifications. One uses 良 and the other 上.

If all of the characters had used one of these simplifications I would have less of a problem with the simplification process. They have created more differences than similarities. A written language needs to be easy to remember, otherwise it will ultimately fail. The Chinese writing system is one of the world's oldest active, continuously used writing systems. Why change it now?

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.3

3. 韋


Here we have 韋 and 衛 in 4 characters that have not been simplified.



Here is where things become uneven. The normal simplification for 韋 is 韦. I would have no problem with that...if it were consistent. So most characters containing 韋 have had it simplified to 韦, makes sense. However, look at 衛. A new generic character has been created. 卫 is nothing more than a symbol. It gives no phonetic or semantic hint to help us read or understand it.

It is only has three strokes so it is much quicker to write and I don't find it hard at all to remember. However, it does not follow the same rules as the rest of the 韋 simplifications and as we saw in the first image, some of them were not even simplified! These are not super rare characters that I pulled out of some ancient book, they are characters that are used. I even have a friend who has 暐 in his name.

韋暐衛
韦暐卫 Which do you find easier?

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.2

This is part 2 of my "More inconsistencies in simplification" post. Again, I did not show all characters that have been affected.

2. 蜀/屬


Here, all of the characters are identical except for the final two, whose radicals have been simplified. I have included a few characters with 屬 since the pronunciation of both components is the same. 屬 is actually made up of 尾 and 蜀. Let's move onto the next image.



So we have a simplification for 屬, which is 属, and one for 蜀, which is 虫.

属 is a generic character that was created to reduce stroke count. Due to this simplification, the semantic and phonetic components have been lost and we are now stuck with a completely new character that we must memorize without any aid.

虫(huǐ/chóng) is a character that already exist. By removing the 罒 and 勹(which was a pictograph of a larva), you are left with only 虫, which also means larva. The pronunciation is now different and no longer aids as a phonetic component.

So again we have an inconsistency in the simplification. Only a handful of the more common characters were simplified to reduce the number of strokes. The phonetic components in these 形聲 have been reduced to nothing more than symbols. Does it really simplify things? I do not believe so.

More inconsistencies in simplification pt.1

So I enjoyed doing the post on 巤 so much that I'm going to do another one with more examples. Seeing as this post turned out to be rather long, I am going to be breaking it up into seven parts. Each post will contain one of the seven phonetic components that I will be going over; they are 言蜀韋襄韱瞿詹.

I will be showing two sets of characters for each component. The first image will show characters whose traditional (on top) and simplified (on bottom) versions' component are exactly the same. The second image will consist of characters whose components have been changed in simplified or characters that have been completely changed. Click on the images to view the enlarged versions. Let's get started.

1. 言


All of these characters, save for the last two, are exactly the same in both scripts.(※1)(see bottom of post) The second to last character has had 龍 simplified to 龙 but has left 言 unaltered. The last character in this series is rather interesting; it has its radical simplified to 讠 yet it contains another 言 that has not been simplified. How confusing...

So wait, why have we only seen one simplification so far? I thought China simplified the 言 radical? Well, it was simplified, but not everywhere. Take a look at the next image.



So here you see some of the other changes that 言 goes through. Normally 言 is simplified to 讠. However, you can see here that many different changes are occurring.

Let's look at these 3 characters back to back: 狺獄嶽, with each character a component is added(※2). Consistency. The simplified versions: 狺狱岳, one unsimplified 言, one simplified one, and then a completely new character to reduce the number of strokes.

Next look at 諸儲櫧藷蠩. Again we have consistency. In simplified we have 诸储槠藷蠩(※3), the first 3 have simplified 讠s, and the last 2 do not. Why?

The 言 in the character 這 has been replaced with 文 for no reason other than the reduction of strokes.

Lastly, we can see in the second to last character that 言 has been part of a unique simplification based on the shape of the character.

All of this can be rather difficult to remember. When do I simplify? When don't I? The simplification process created many problems such as these. I have only included characters and examples that I was able to think of in the past few days. 言 may have 7 strokes, but it is easy to remember and even to write quickly.


Notes:
※1 The grass component 艸 and the top part of 雚 are written different in both scripts. Click here and here to see examples.

※2 獄 is a 會意(the place where dogs 犭犬 yell 言 at each other = jail).

※3 藷 is not really used anymore, 薯 has taken its place.