Were some characters omitted during the character simplification process?

[Jan Finster]

I have not really looked into this, so maybe this is a super basic question:

Every now and then I see a character in simplified Chinese and wonder "could they not have simplified this?"

 

Examples:

暴露

警察

餐厅

(I am sure I have seen worse, but I cannot remember off the top of my head)

 

Was the process of simplification limited to only a certain range of characters?

 

[889]

Look for backthreads here on the final simplification that never took final effect.

 

[mungouk]

There's some discussion and links to sources on Wikipedia too:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_round_of_simplified_Chinese_characters

 

 

[anonymoose]

There was a simplification for 餐 which comprised of just the top left part. I have seen it used informally in China.

[889]

歺

 

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/歺

[PerpetualChange]

On 3/7/2022 at 7:11 AM, Jan Finster said:

"could they not have simplified this?"

 

Reducing stroke count for it's own sake was never the goal of simplification, as far as I'm aware. 

[mungouk]

Care to elaborate?

 

Surely simplification was almost entirely about reducing stroke count, and making the hanzi quicker and easier to write (as with common cursive forms), and to learn — with the intention of driving up literacy...?

 

 

 

 

[PerpetualChange]

Simplification of characters essentially did nothing to promote literacy as evidenced by high literacy rates in countries and regions maintaining traditional characters. 

China's literacy rate started skyrocketing when education became widely available. This occurred more or less in tandem with the first wave of simplification, and I'd theorize that by the time they got to the 2nd phase of simplification it had already become obvious that further simplification was not necessary to promote literacy (and many would argue, never necessary to begin with...). And now in the era of high definition monitors there's really no further argument to be made as far as I'm concerned. 

[Jan Finster]

On 3/10/2022 at 4:17 PM, PerpetualChange said:

And now in the era of high definition monitors there's really no further argument to be made as far as I'm concerned. 

Is that really true? I wonder how people can decipher complicated characters on their smartphone. Here is how my first post looks on my phone and these are only 6 characters. I can read nothing ?? (do not click on the image to enlarge it)

 

[realmayo]

On 3/10/2022 at 3:17 PM, PerpetualChange said:

Simplification of characters essentially did nothing to promote literacy as evidenced by high literacy rates in countries and regions maintaining traditional characters. 

China's literacy rate started skyrocketing when education became widely available. This occurred more or less in tandem with the first wave of simplification, and I'd theorize that by the time they got to the 2nd phase of simplification it had already become obvious that further simplification was not necessary to promote literacy (and many would argue, never necessary to begin with...).

 

Interesting, although it seems just as likely that the first wave was designed to make characters easier to learn, in order to improve literacy. People could then have argued that literacy was rising (whatever the real reason was) therefore why not make even more characters simpler.

 

I agree that there was maybe never any need for so much simplification.

 

On 3/10/2022 at 6:55 PM, Jan Finster said:

I can read nothing

 

I don't know the size of your phone but ... I don't find these hard to read written small, and I guess you won't either in the future.