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.