Re: Nice comment, Adam! (was: beautiful scripts)

From: "John Cowan"

> As I understood it, the great bulk of the simplified characters actually
> are rooted in old cursive forms: the "simplifiers" did not so much design
> them as select them.
I'm no calligraphy master, but I think "great bulk" may be a bit
exaggerated. "ma3", "horse", and "yan2", "words", sure. But there are a
number of places where new phonetics were implemented. The character "yi4",
"different", uses "yi3", "already", as a phonetics and some extra strokes. I
can't imagine those taught in traditional being able to divine the meaning,
even with calligraphic training. Same for "bin1",  "guest", which, in
simplified, uses the word "soldier" as the phonetic under the familiar
"roof" radical. And then there's the word "rang4", "let, allow", where
simplified uses the simplified radical of "yan2" mentioned above plus
"shang4", "up". In Taiwan at least, the simplified calligraphic phonetic is
"liang2", "good". Etc., etc.

Kou