I found this post on the blog of a Chinese woman. It is very well written and I think you should all read it.
Xiaoning's Blog
Another good site I saw was Chinacopia. Here is what they had to say about the two scripts.
Chinacopia
I'll let the two sites speak for themselves.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Radish = Dream divination?
I recently had a conversation with a friend about this absurd simplification.
The word radish in Mandarin is 蘿蔔(luó bo). It is a disyllabic word like "butterfly" 蝴蝶 or "camel" 駱駝. Just like any of these words, its characters contain a semantic component, which gives us a hint as to its meaning, and a phonetic component. In this case we have 羅(luó) and 匐(fú). The pronunciation of 蔔 has changed over time and is no longer very phonetic with regards to its phonetic component. Nonetheless, this is the word "radish".
Now in the simplification process, 羅 was simplified to 罗, thus 蘿 became 萝. The character for "dream", 夢(梦 in simplified), looks very similar to this character. The only difference is the addition of a 冖.(※1)
卜(bǔ) is a character that already exists and means "to practise divination; to foretell; to predict". 蔔 was completely replaced by a character that already exists and means something completely different! Now because of this simplification, 卜 has two different sets of meanings. On top of that, 卜 is not a lot more phonetically accurate than 匐.
Anyways, a Taiwanese friend of mine told me that when she saw 萝卜 written while chatting with some Chinese people she completely misunderstood what the person had written.
Very subtle, huh?
So the next time you see 萝卜, it's not dream divination, it's radish!
Notes:
※1 A lot of fonts display 夢 with the grass radical 艹, however, this is incorrect. You can see here and here the 說文解字 versions(小篆) of both 草 and 夢. What is on top of 夢 is actually this grapheme, which is a pictograph of sheep horns. Here are the correct versions of them in the traditional script.
Hey! That's not radish!
The word radish in Mandarin is 蘿蔔(luó bo). It is a disyllabic word like "butterfly" 蝴蝶 or "camel" 駱駝. Just like any of these words, its characters contain a semantic component, which gives us a hint as to its meaning, and a phonetic component. In this case we have 羅(luó) and 匐(fú). The pronunciation of 蔔 has changed over time and is no longer very phonetic with regards to its phonetic component. Nonetheless, this is the word "radish".
Now in the simplification process, 羅 was simplified to 罗, thus 蘿 became 萝. The character for "dream", 夢(梦 in simplified), looks very similar to this character. The only difference is the addition of a 冖.(※1)
卜(bǔ) is a character that already exists and means "to practise divination; to foretell; to predict". 蔔 was completely replaced by a character that already exists and means something completely different! Now because of this simplification, 卜 has two different sets of meanings. On top of that, 卜 is not a lot more phonetically accurate than 匐.
Anyways, a Taiwanese friend of mine told me that when she saw 萝卜 written while chatting with some Chinese people she completely misunderstood what the person had written.
Very subtle, huh?
So the next time you see 萝卜, it's not dream divination, it's radish!
Notes:
※1 A lot of fonts display 夢 with the grass radical 艹, however, this is incorrect. You can see here and here the 說文解字 versions(小篆) of both 草 and 夢. What is on top of 夢 is actually this grapheme, which is a pictograph of sheep horns. Here are the correct versions of them in the traditional script.
Hey! That's not radish!
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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