Natterings From Nepantla

As you know, Bob, in 1957 China embarked on a sort of spelling reform, creating simplified versions of many Chinese characters. Taiwan, to differentiate itself, still uses the older forms in all their baroque glory. Japan, meanwhile, borrowed the Chinese writing system a while back and performed its own milder simplification. So there are three versions of Chinese writing out there, though at least the simplest characters are usually the same across all three.

In Japanese the character for "eye" is 目. You can kind of see how it evolved from a pictogram of two lids and the eyeball in between. The character for "to see" adds a couple lines to show that the eye is looking at you: 見.

One of the first Chinese phrases I learned in Duolingo was 再见, which is being translated as "goodbye". In later lessons I have realized it's more along the lines of "see you soon", as I encounter those two words separately. 见 turns out to mean "see", which means that it's the equivalent to 見... and now I can't see 见 without thinking of an eyeball getting stabbed.