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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2424 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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they could until Mao messed it up with his stupid "simplified Chinese" that randomly removes strokes

It was not Mao’s effort, and you should not give him credit for it. Since the beginning of the New Culture Movement, scholars had already been considering the simplification of Chinese characters as a way to improve literacy. Some radicals even wanted to abolish Chinese characters altogether, similar to what Vietnam eventually did. The Nationalists also had their own versions of simplified characters before the Communists (RoC’s Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the US, Hu Shih, is one of the most prominent supporter of reforming the Chinese language), although these efforts met with strong opposition. Japanese too have simplified some Chinese characters (some even borrowed by the communists later). All of these movements eventually culminated in the Simplified Chinese.

Most simplified characters have roots in Caoshu or Xingshu. Because of their cursive nature, these scripts naturally reduce and merge strokes. Scholars who are tasked to simplify Chinese mostly do not make up new characters. There are a few abominations that are created entirely after the Communists took power and makes no sense, but overwhelmingly, simplified characters predate Mao, some of them by centuries, even millennia.

Also only ~20% of Chinese characters have been simplified, and a majority of them (I would guess 60% probably) are only mildly simplified and easily recognizable by traditional Chinese users.

Ah, interesting, thanks for the context! Yeah i've never formally studied that history, so I probably got a lot of details wrong. Probably when I heard that "Mao mangled it" I was thinking of what you said "a few abominations that are created entirely after the Communists took power and makes no sense," but it still works quite well as an international language/alphabet.

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