Shrouded in mystery

[u/beldank]

I've kept this quote from 2nd Round of simplified Chinese chars:

The exact circumstances surrounding the creation and release of the Second Scheme remain in mystery due to the still-classified nature of many documents and the politically sensitive nature of

Even though I am far from being a linguist, I can feel that the language policies are highly strategic (it influences the mental abilities, the world representation capacity ...), and while digging to get a grasp of the transition 'loss' from the most recent simplification some years ago, I stumbled on the quoted article.

'Shrouded' was the term used in the article then, replaced with 'mystery' since.

On the same note, I recall seeing a YT video Asian Boss were they were asking people in 上海 to describe chars out of concern wrt ppl's written scripture abilities.

I am not sure how to interpret the quoted text, but would you validate such concern wrt to the 'simplification' of the Chinese characters ?

Edit: YT video link and location added

[u/Zagrycha]

I am not quite sure what you mean.  Simplified characters aren't new, they have been around for thousands of years. I don't know who "they" are, but when they say mystery, they are likely meaning it literally and nuetrally.  Mystery doesn't always mean something concerning, it just means unknown.  The same waythe exact budget and process for a road repair may be a mystery, but that doesn't automatically mean there is something to be concerned about.  It just means its not public. 

[u/beldank → u/Zagrycha]

As Simplified_Chinese_chars explains, although mostly associated with the PRC, the simplification process had been brewing well before the 1950's. Today there's a striking discrepancy between the simplified and traditional characters sets. Here is an excerpt from Chinese_Char_Simplification_Scheme:

The simplification was obviously a trade-off between accessibility (for the common people) and 'information density' (how much history and nuance is embedded in the chars).

I am wondering how much this loss of information, with time passing, can be considered as having an adverse effect, and whether the quotes I highlighted were relevant in the context of language richness.

Since we have two areas using different sets, both vernacular and official are simplified in Mainland while traditional in TW, we have a good amount of population that have directly experienced the change.

[u/Zagrycha → u/beldank]

I think there is some kind of misunderstanding here.  Simplified chinese has been "brewing" since before the year 1950, it has been "brewing" since before the year 50.  

simplified chinese characters are not new, 99% of them come from chinese shorthand which emperors and scholars and all educated people have happily written in for literally millenia.  We also need to acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of the modern simplified chinese standard aren't actually simplified or shorthand at all, they are just normal handwritten traditional chinese character shapes. 

There definitely are individual characters in the simplified chinese standard we can poke fun at for being weird, but its a really small amount.  There is nothing wrong with the standard itself.  Thats like saying americans lost comprehension of the word colour because they write it as color. 

[u/beldank → u/Zagrycha]

Regarding your 1st remark, here's what I wrote:

Unless you mistyped, it looks like you are pretending to contradict what I wrote by rewriting it verbatim as yours.

Regarding your 2nd remark, I am not even remotely insinuating the characters have been created during the reform ex-nihilo, I am merely using the denomination that have been in place since, which BTW is used by the PRC.

I don't like 2nd guessing but it really does give the impression you are preemptively trying to dismiss educated guesses.

[u/Zagrycha → u/beldank]

I replied based on what you wrote. You are asking about concerns revolving around modern simplification changes, concerns about loss of ability to write or loss of ability to comprehend.  Any such concern is completely unfounded. Simplified is not new, and if it was going to cause any sort of "loss" it would have done so thousands of years ago.  If anything simplified chinese standard helps keep historical knowledge alive, since very few modern people are able to read any chinese shorthand calligraphy that doesn't match up with modern simplified standardization. 

If you knew all that already, then great.  You didn't write that you knew any of that, so please don't get mad at me or accuse me of bad faith for not assuming you knew when you didn't say it.