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The depth and breadth of the diaspora around Chinese characters makes it extremely difficult to get these things right. Even this article presenting highly spe

The depth and breadth of the diaspora around Chinese characters makes it extremely difficult to get these things right. Even this article presenting highly specific domain knowledge tees off with a questionable example: `The Japanese cross the blade in 刃, the Koreans don’t` Well Japanese have both 刀 for katana, the well known sword, and 刃 for yaiba / "blade". But in fact 刀 is used for many kinds of blade, by itself as `katana` and as a component of words like 太刀, 印刀, 日本刀, &c. (see http://kanji.quus.net/jyukugo1498/ http://kanji.quus.net/jyukugo1498/) Is this really pointing to a distinct concept from 刀 in Korean, as the article suggests?

dastbe 9y ago
then is а really a distinct concept from a? regardless of whether 刀 and 刃 have similar meaning in korean and japanese (in chinese the former refers to the knife/sword itself whereas the latter refers the edge of the knife), the unification of them across multiple languages makes it difficult to handle variations, nuance, and (most importantly for a forward thinking standard) divergence over time. that korean, japanese, and chinese have similar characters for historical reasons doesn't mean they are bound to be the same character forever in their respective languages. that another commenter below me can't easily transmit to me the character for "smelly" in japanese because whatever font i use is preferring the chinese character for it is a signal that the standard is broken.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Those characters are not unified. What the article is actually saying is that when Koreans write 刃 they place the short stroke in a difference place than the Japanese do (and users of traditional Chinese place it in still another).
  - dastbe 9y ago
    rereading my words i realize i was ambiguous; i didnt mean to say that 刀 and 刃 were unified (how would i have written them?) but that unifying those characters across multiple languages is ignoring that they have nuanced meaning based on what language they're in. then add in your point that the written forms themselve are diverging over time.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      To the extent they're exactly the same I don't think it matters. We don't need a separate English and Spanish j because they're pronounced differently. But 刃 in particular isn't the same across languages. The GP seemed to be confused, interpreting the article to mean that Koreans used 刀 instead of 刃 when what the article actually meant is that there are variants of the latter character.
emodendroket 9y ago
You've misunderstood. https://i.imgur.com/pTkbX7g.png https://i.imgur.com/pTkbX7g.png (for a bigger list see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_language-dependent_glyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_la...)
- corey_moncure 9y ago
  If that's what the author is referring to, there are less ambiguous ways to express it. Even so: in my experience in Japan I've seen e.g. 認 hand-written both ways, and specifically remember becoming curious about this variant. My conclusion after consulting with native speakers and university professors I knew there was that they are essentially and functionally equivalent. That is, against the author's point, Japanese speakers do not note a difference at all.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    So on one side we have reference materials and on the other we have your anecdote. Even if we accepted its validity, this is just one example of many.
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    FWIW many of the unified characters under Han unification are considered "wrong" specifically in Japan (in other CJK countries folks seem to be more lax). From what I understand the feeling is as if you started writing `s` as `ſ` in English. I'm not very sure of this but it seems like the Japanese characters mostly stayed the same after branching off of Hanzi usage at various points many centuries ago (more than a millenium ago, actually), whereas in China these characters evolved.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      To the extent this is true I'd say it's because Korean people only occasionally use Chinese characters and the default is almost always to display Chinese variants, and not because Japanese people are uniquely particular.
tanilama 9y ago
刀 simply means knife/sword, or knife in general, while 刃 means the sharpest part of the knife. In fact, 刀刃 is its own word in Chinese, in this case meaning the blade of a knife.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Never seen it before, but in Japanese that's apparently "tohjin," meaning the blade of a sword. http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%88%80%E5%88%83 http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%88%80%E5%88%83
  - rangibaby 9y ago
    or just any blade as "ha": https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/刃物 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/刃物
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I meant specifically the word with both characters.

dastbe 9y ago

then is а really a distinct concept from a? regardless of whether 刀 and 刃 have similar meaning in korean and japanese (in chinese the former refers to the knife/sword itself whereas the latter refers the edge of the knife), the unification of them across multiple languages makes it difficult to handle variations, nuance, and (most importantly for a forward thinking standard) divergence over time. that korean, japanese, and chinese have similar characters for historical reasons doesn't mean they are bound to be the same character forever in their respective languages. that another commenter below me can't easily transmit to me the character for "smelly" in japanese because whatever font i use is preferring the chinese character for it is a signal that the standard is broken.

emodendroket 9y ago
Those characters are not unified. What the article is actually saying is that when Koreans write 刃 they place the short stroke in a difference place than the Japanese do (and users of traditional Chinese place it in still another).
- dastbe 9y ago
  rereading my words i realize i was ambiguous; i didnt mean to say that 刀 and 刃 were unified (how would i have written them?) but that unifying those characters across multiple languages is ignoring that they have nuanced meaning based on what language they're in. then add in your point that the written forms themselve are diverging over time.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    To the extent they're exactly the same I don't think it matters. We don't need a separate English and Spanish j because they're pronounced differently. But 刃 in particular isn't the same across languages. The GP seemed to be confused, interpreting the article to mean that Koreans used 刀 instead of 刃 when what the article actually meant is that there are variants of the latter character.

emodendroket 9y ago

You've misunderstood. https://i.imgur.com/pTkbX7g.png https://i.imgur.com/pTkbX7g.png (for a bigger list see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_language-dependent_glyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_la...)

corey_moncure 9y ago
If that's what the author is referring to, there are less ambiguous ways to express it. Even so: in my experience in Japan I've seen e.g. 認 hand-written both ways, and specifically remember becoming curious about this variant. My conclusion after consulting with native speakers and university professors I knew there was that they are essentially and functionally equivalent. That is, against the author's point, Japanese speakers do not note a difference at all.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  So on one side we have reference materials and on the other we have your anecdote. Even if we accepted its validity, this is just one example of many.
- Manishearth 9y ago
  FWIW many of the unified characters under Han unification are considered "wrong" specifically in Japan (in other CJK countries folks seem to be more lax). From what I understand the feeling is as if you started writing `s` as `ſ` in English. I'm not very sure of this but it seems like the Japanese characters mostly stayed the same after branching off of Hanzi usage at various points many centuries ago (more than a millenium ago, actually), whereas in China these characters evolved.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    To the extent this is true I'd say it's because Korean people only occasionally use Chinese characters and the default is almost always to display Chinese variants, and not because Japanese people are uniquely particular.

tanilama 9y ago

刀 simply means knife/sword, or knife in general, while 刃 means the sharpest part of the knife. In fact, 刀刃 is its own word in Chinese, in this case meaning the blade of a knife.

emodendroket 9y ago
Never seen it before, but in Japanese that's apparently "tohjin," meaning the blade of a sword. http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%88%80%E5%88%83 http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%88%80%E5%88%83
- rangibaby 9y ago
  or just any blade as "ha": https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/刃物 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/刃物
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I meant specifically the word with both characters.