Despite what any beginning Mandarin student will tell you, there’s a severe limitation on the number of available characters, and it’s an historically recent occurrence. Though it’s only been a short time in the history of the language since any real systemic effort towards standardisation has occurred (秦始皇 mythology aside) I believe it to have had a significant impact and a potentially greater impact in the future.

There was once great variety in the written language even during the later stages of modern simplification. Up until recently the only real limitation was the ability to carve a block for printing. Even today some regional characters exist (e.g. 俺 ǎn), though they’re not used in any formal settings, although in at least a couple cases the simplification process took advantage of these regional variations or pronunciations1. Continue…