When I said, “unsuccessful simplification,” what I mean is that the PRC could have easily chosen 口+厅 over 听, but they didn’t. Perhaps if you understand “simplification” in this case as the creation of the PRC standard, then we’d be on the same page. I think it’s quite clear that 口+厅 accomplishes the task of reducing stroke count without damaging sound or meaning representation, while 听 fails at that task. It’s true that it is a slight deformation of form, but it’s a huge deformation of sound (ting vs. jin).

Yes, it even says so in his very own Outlier Dictionary, so I’m not sure why that was included.

The most frequently used word for bottle is 瓶子, which does not have a “hand” component. I couldn’t find any other words that could be translated as “bottle” that contain one either. But yes, the phenomenon you speak of does exist. The most often cited example is the one in this article: that of 愛 with the missing heart.

>The simplification of 聽 tīng “to listen” is 听: 口 “mouth” + 斤 jīn.
> Why not use 口厅 instead? 口 “mouth” + 厅 tīng

But isn’t the origin of 听 precisely 口 “mouth” + 厅 tīng, with a deformation of 厅 (connection of the two parts; loss of hook at bottom) making it resemble 斤?

The simplification might be deemed “successful” in origin, followed by a slight corruption of form.

I have Chinese friends in Taiwan which are related to those field, and they give me a simple example comparing Traditional versus Simplified :

A bottle, in Traditional Chinese, use a pictogram that you see a hand , so you could put something in or remove the content.
In Simplified Chinese this hand was remove. It might be of no significance, but in Alchemy, the Chinese Philosopher or Alchemist use a lot of these hidden symbolist that are completely lost when some literate translate them in Western language.

Sorry I didn’t have access to my library with this Pandemic situation (Over 4500 books), I would have send you some other example. I do have a full loaded Pleco dictionaries in my iPad, but finding a simple word like Bottle, you have so many choices, it is hard to see through all this.

Very few people learn Chinese characters for a dialect and most of the ones that do already know standard Mandarin. I’m not saying those people don’t exist, but they account for a tiny number of people. Personally, I can read Cantonese (i.e., I know the Cantonese readings for standard characters and know the common dialectical characters), but it’s rare indeed to come across someone else that can read dialect.
If I were discussing the effectiveness in terms of readers from the state of 楚 during Warring States, then obviously, I wouldn’t have chosen Mandarin.

re: “The characters were all devised for use with Sinitic languages that were only distantly related to modern Mandarin”
Given that historical linguistics, specifically, Chinese paleography and Old Chinese phonology are my academic areas of specialty, I’m aware that characters weren’t invented for Mandarin, but I use that as an explanation for why there are sound components that don’t seem to make sense in Mandarin. However, when you’re trying to determine if modern simplifications are easier to learn or not, how do “Sinitic languages that were only distantly related to modern Mandarin” enter into the equation?

I agree that (for the most part) tones aren’t represented in the script, which is why they aren’t important when comparing the sound representation in traditional vs. simplified.

re: “one of the few examples of popular influence”
I’m not sure this is true exactly. A lot of forms that made it into the PRC standard are 俗體, which is exactly “popular influence.” I don’t know the percentages though. That would require more research.

台 vs. 臺 is simple sound loan. 臺 doesn’t have a sound component and the sound component in 台 is rather opaque (厶 is shorthand for 㠯 yǐ and is not related to 厶 sī), so it’s not a good candidate for the current discussion.

It would have been interesting to see a comparison with Japanese kanji, to provoke thoughts about alternative simplification methods, or to have the adoption of 台 in place of 臺 pointed out – one of the few examples of popular influence coming to bear on the script.