"Lew"
And wouldn't simplified characters make the etymological understanding
in Samarkand's post harder to attain? Simplified characters are
easier to write, but they often hide the full compound nature of
traditional characters.

"Danny"
I thought what you said, and put the question to my lecturer. We were
taught that the "The Scheme of Simplified Chinese Characters" was
implemented in 1956, but very little was said about the etymology of
these reformed characters.

It is a common misconception - as you have mentioned - that the
characters are easy to write but do not convey the full nature of
traditional characters. In reality, many of the simplified characters
were in existence hundreds and thousands of years ago, and some were
even the primitive forms, which the traditional character system
expanded upon. The 1956 Scheme mainly standardized some of these
written forms.

Take a common character that we are familiar with, the character for
"Cloud" in "Yunnan" - 云 (yun)

The primitive form of this character was etched on rocks and bones as 2
horizontal strokes to indicate the sky, and a pigtail below to indicate
the shape of a cloud. It is not difficult to see from 云 how closely
it resembles the primitive form.

This is in fact the written form in many of the chinese ancient texts
up to fairly recent times, when the form 雲 took over, indicating
cloud that carries the rain. This was done in part also to separate
云 from another meaning "to speak". Ironically, the 雲 which we take
as traditional form is actually the newcomer.

The 1956 Scheme returned the old form of 云.

So in learning, I do tend to think that simplified characters is an
extended part of the etymology of traditional characters.

Yo mann, me going back ta doin' ma Salt n' Pepper rendition...

Danny