More Chinese menu shorthand

From surya:

I took this at the Grand Street Skewer Cart in Manhattan.

In particular the shorthand is interesting (for example kǎo mántou 考曼头 [lit., "examine long / extended / graceful / etc. head"] instead of kǎo mántou 烤馒头 ["baked steamed bun"] for CRISPY STEAM BUN). Is the dropping of the radicals a systematic practice for quick handwriting? Maybe only if the pronunciation is the same?

surya's surmise is fundmentally correct.  Compare the shorthand here with that of our many examples in previous posts on Chinese restaurant shorthand.

All of which goes to show, as John DeFrancis demonstrated in Visible Speech and elsewhere, that the Chinese writing system is in large part phonetic, and, as I have pointed on many occasions, that the radicals / semantophores are basically superfluous.

Selected readings

• "Chinese restaurant shorthand" (9/22/16)
• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 2 " (11/30/16)
• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 3 " (2/25/17)
• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 4" (4/21/17)
• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 5" (5/15/19)
• "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 6" (6/17/19)
• "Hong Kong-specific characters and shorthand" (3/15/15), with links to relevant websites for restaurant shorthand characters
• "General Tso's chikin" (6/11/13), especially in the comments
• "Writing: from complex symbols to abstract squiggles" (6/11/19)