4 ms·

‘Ghost kanji’ lurk in the Japanese lexicon

85 points by camtarn 8y ago

hardmaru 8y ago
There was also a nice discussion about Ghost Kanji a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637375 A spectre is haunting unicode: https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html
- vilhelm_s 8y ago
  Yeah, also that article seems a lot less sensational. The Japan Times article says > The fact is, most ghost characters have yet to be fully understood. One such example is 彁 while the blogpost says > In the end only one character had neither a clear source nor any historical precedent: 彁. According to the table in Wikipedia[1], of the 28 characters which were originally considered ghosts, 16 were found to be legitimately used to write place names, 8 occurred in earlier dictionaries, 3 (including 妛) were similar to (and probably a mis-read form of) some dictionary entry, and 彁 is of unclear origin. [1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97#%E5%85%B8%E6%8B%A0%E3%81%8C%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%8E%E3%81%AA%E3%82%82%E3%81%AE https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5...
lifthrasiir 8y ago
In another example of ghost characters, someone couldn't spell Baht correctly [1]. And typos are frequent as ever [2]. Unicode is full of such mistakes, now stabilized thanks to the Stability Policy [3]. Thankfully having some character mistakenly encoded and/or named in Unicode seems to hurt virtually no one. [1] https://blogs.adobe.com/CCJKType/2016/03/bahts-is-parts.html https://blogs.adobe.com/CCJKType/2016/03/bahts-is-parts.html [2] https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ [3] https://unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html https://unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html
- sho 8y ago
  Amusingly, even the Thais often don't spell baht "correctly". I'm there right now and see prices specified any number of ways: 100 บาท (in the local language) 100 B 100 ฿ 100 BAHT 100 BATH (disturbingly common) None of it matters of course as the meaning is totally evident from the context, but it's interesting coming from countries where symbols like $ or ¥ are totally dominant. ฿ is probably the least common of all of them (yes, less common than "bath") and it's kind of easy to see why - there's only one conceivable meaning a capital B could have coming after a number in Thailand, so why even bother learning the keystrokes to bring up the unicode?
  - caf 8y ago
    Very much like c in place of ¢ for cents which is very common in some places. I've even seen e instead of €.
rococode 8y ago
Hovered over the words with my dictionary extension to find that they're also referred to as "jabberwocky words" which I personally think is a more apt name. Interestingly, the dictionary also gives them readings. I wonder how they come up with them? https://i.imgur.com/14N8yo1.png https://i.imgur.com/14N8yo1.png
- lifthrasiir 8y ago
  The reading カ derives from the phono-semantic analysis (the same reading as 哥). The origin of the reading セイ is much unclear, the first known attestation comes from IBM's conversion table [1]. [1] http://www.asahi.com/special/kotoba/archive2015/moji/2011081800015.html http://www.asahi.com/special/kotoba/archive2015/moji/2011081...
- Grue3 8y ago
  The readings look like they come from http://nihongo.monash.edu/kanjidic2/index.html http://nihongo.monash.edu/kanjidic2/index.html so it's better to ask on their mailing list. My webapp also uses kanjidic and therefore has the same description for this character: https://ichi.moe/cl/kanji/?q=%E5%BD%81 https://ichi.moe/cl/kanji/?q=%E5%BD%81
harimau777 8y ago
I'm a little surprised that these haven't gained any sort of meaning over the years. For example, the Japanese version of Prince could change his name to 彁 and people would have to refer to him as "The artist formerly known as 王子"
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  While there is no meaning associated with that character, it does have a recorded reading. https://jisho.org/search/彁 https://jisho.org/search/彁 It is read "ka" or "sei".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
paradoxparalax 8y ago
Nice! let me try to guessduct where this ghost character 彁 came from... it was in the 70's ,maybe something to do with the soda pop named coca-cola, was written in some old sign in a vertical way? : ) if you take a look at their logo , maybe the ghost of someone who died of thirst , was the thirsty ghost and wrote something like : : 口可 (mouth thirsty?) twice in the wall with a brush...Its interesting to read the story about how the chinese name of coca-cola was choosen. Other theory is that it was a karaoke singing ghost who died of boredom after the beer finished...may have something to do with "brother" or "turtle" haha, who knows...anyway very interesting read this post on japantimes is.
km3k 8y ago
So the unicode standard doesn't have a way to deprecate/remove characters?

85 points by camtarn 8y ago

There was also a nice discussion about Ghost Kanji a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637375 A spectre is haunting unicode: https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html

vilhelm_s 8y ago
Yeah, also that article seems a lot less sensational. The Japan Times article says > The fact is, most ghost characters have yet to be fully understood. One such example is 彁 while the blogpost says > In the end only one character had neither a clear source nor any historical precedent: 彁. According to the table in Wikipedia[1], of the 28 characters which were originally considered ghosts, 16 were found to be legitimately used to write place names, 8 occurred in earlier dictionaries, 3 (including 妛) were similar to (and probably a mis-read form of) some dictionary entry, and 彁 is of unclear origin. [1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97#%E5%85%B8%E6%8B%A0%E3%81%8C%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%8E%E3%81%AA%E3%82%82%E3%81%AE https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5...

lifthrasiir 8y ago

In another example of ghost characters, someone couldn't spell Baht correctly [1]. And typos are frequent as ever [2]. Unicode is full of such mistakes, now stabilized thanks to the Stability Policy [3]. Thankfully having some character mistakenly encoded and/or named in Unicode seems to hurt virtually no one. [1] https://blogs.adobe.com/CCJKType/2016/03/bahts-is-parts.html https://blogs.adobe.com/CCJKType/2016/03/bahts-is-parts.html [2] https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ [3] https://unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html https://unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html

sho 8y ago
Amusingly, even the Thais often don't spell baht "correctly". I'm there right now and see prices specified any number of ways: 100 บาท (in the local language) 100 B 100 ฿ 100 BAHT 100 BATH (disturbingly common) None of it matters of course as the meaning is totally evident from the context, but it's interesting coming from countries where symbols like $ or ¥ are totally dominant. ฿ is probably the least common of all of them (yes, less common than "bath") and it's kind of easy to see why - there's only one conceivable meaning a capital B could have coming after a number in Thailand, so why even bother learning the keystrokes to bring up the unicode?
- caf 8y ago
  Very much like c in place of ¢ for cents which is very common in some places. I've even seen e instead of €.

rococode 8y ago

Hovered over the words with my dictionary extension to find that they're also referred to as "jabberwocky words" which I personally think is a more apt name. Interestingly, the dictionary also gives them readings. I wonder how they come up with them? https://i.imgur.com/14N8yo1.png https://i.imgur.com/14N8yo1.png

lifthrasiir 8y ago
The reading カ derives from the phono-semantic analysis (the same reading as 哥). The origin of the reading セイ is much unclear, the first known attestation comes from IBM's conversion table [1]. [1] http://www.asahi.com/special/kotoba/archive2015/moji/2011081800015.html http://www.asahi.com/special/kotoba/archive2015/moji/2011081...
Grue3 8y ago
The readings look like they come from http://nihongo.monash.edu/kanjidic2/index.html http://nihongo.monash.edu/kanjidic2/index.html so it's better to ask on their mailing list. My webapp also uses kanjidic and therefore has the same description for this character: https://ichi.moe/cl/kanji/?q=%E5%BD%81 https://ichi.moe/cl/kanji/?q=%E5%BD%81

harimau777 8y ago

I'm a little surprised that these haven't gained any sort of meaning over the years. For example, the Japanese version of Prince could change his name to 彁 and people would have to refer to him as "The artist formerly known as 王子"

wodenokoto 8y ago
While there is no meaning associated with that character, it does have a recorded reading. https://jisho.org/search/彁 https://jisho.org/search/彁 It is read "ka" or "sei".

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

paradoxparalax 8y ago

Nice! let me try to guessduct where this ghost character 彁 came from... it was in the 70's ,maybe something to do with the soda pop named coca-cola, was written in some old sign in a vertical way? : ) if you take a look at their logo , maybe the ghost of someone who died of thirst , was the thirsty ghost and wrote something like : : 口可 (mouth thirsty?) twice in the wall with a brush...Its interesting to read the story about how the chinese name of coca-cola was choosen. Other theory is that it was a karaoke singing ghost who died of boredom after the beer finished...may have something to do with "brother" or "turtle" haha, who knows...anyway very interesting read this post on japantimes is.

km3k 8y ago

So the unicode standard doesn't have a way to deprecate/remove characters?