Seen in the Wild: Late Round Simplification


In Taiwan no less. On the chalkboard he’s written 歺庁 for 餐廳.

Really I should say “Late Round Simplification plus Shinjitai”. It’s worth mentioning that 庁 has widespread use in Japan, which may explain it’s use over 厅 in Taiwan. Normally we’d see 餐厅 in the mainland and 餐廳 in Taiwan (only in most cases for both). Admittedly, 歺庁 looks weird now that I’m seeing it next to 歺厅 but at the time it was written I didn’t even notice.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m really enjoying seeing all the permutations of hand-written characters that all pass for acceptable here.

4 responses to “Seen in the Wild: Late Round Simplification”

  1. Peter says:

    What’s the sentence he’s writing on the board? I want to know!

  2. Kellen says:

    What looks like 食 was actually 飯. His hand is moving to erase everything. I believe the sentence was 我在餐廳吃飯, or if not that, then something equally mundane. He was going over some of the word order variations that are permissible in Chinese. It’s a syntax class going over grammar theories which don’t hold up when applied to Sinitic languages.

  3. Qinchn says:

    Wish could upload photos to show ya… Funny coincidence, just ran into a handwritten 早歺 on an outdoor sign in 青岛. Local friend says is quite common around the mainland.

  4. 歺 is a variation of 餐 that was introduced in a second round of simplified Chinese characters. So no wonder it looks weird, since as we know the 2nd round was a failure (most of it at least).

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