13 ms·

Chinese Characters and Dictionaries

19 points by nickdrozd 7y ago

wodenokoto 7y ago
Super interesting. In question 12, you can get a little pedantic about the different versions of the character for national. The following 3 characters are all “National” - 囯 modern, simplified Chinese version - 国 modern, somewhat simplified Japanese version - 國 traditional, Chinese version As noted several times, different fonts can carry different looking versions of characters, but to make things even more complicated, same Unicode code points can refer to different versions of the same character! Let that sink in for a minute. Imagine if the codepoint for “a” could refer to both “a” and “A”! This makes it really difficult to discuss minute differences between characters without having to refer to pictures of them.
- taejo 7y ago
  The standard simplified Chinese version is 国, like in Japanese; 囯 is a non-standardized historical variant. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%AF https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%AF
  - wodenokoto 7y ago
    I jumped the gun a little there and just assumed the author was writing the simplified version of 国 which my Chinese dictionary seemed to confirm. My Chinese is very basic. But if 囯 is nonstandard, how did the author end up writing that one? I mean, it is easy to do when handwriting, but these kinds of mistakes are usually much more difficult on a computer
    - nickdrozd 7y ago
      That's a good question. I think the sinologist introduced that character originally, possibly as a typo or something. I must have copied it. To be honest, I didn't even notice the extra stroke in 国 vs 囯. (I do not speak any of the relevant languages at all.) From what I can tell though, the word "nonstandard" isn't very helpful in this context, because there are few universal standards, even when it comes to something as simple as counting strokes. A "nonstandard" character might actually be well-attested in some particular time and place, or in some particular dictionary tradition. I don't know if that applies to this case, but it might.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        Simplified Chinese is standardized in the sense that there's a standards document specifying which characters should be used. I'm pretty sure there's something similar for Japanese simplifications.

19 points by nickdrozd 7y ago

Super interesting. In question 12, you can get a little pedantic about the different versions of the character for national. The following 3 characters are all “National” - 囯 modern, simplified Chinese version - 国 modern, somewhat simplified Japanese version - 國 traditional, Chinese version As noted several times, different fonts can carry different looking versions of characters, but to make things even more complicated, same Unicode code points can refer to different versions of the same character! Let that sink in for a minute. Imagine if the codepoint for “a” could refer to both “a” and “A”! This makes it really difficult to discuss minute differences between characters without having to refer to pictures of them.

taejo 7y ago
The standard simplified Chinese version is 国, like in Japanese; 囯 is a non-standardized historical variant. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%AF https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%AF
- wodenokoto 7y ago
  I jumped the gun a little there and just assumed the author was writing the simplified version of 国 which my Chinese dictionary seemed to confirm. My Chinese is very basic. But if 囯 is nonstandard, how did the author end up writing that one? I mean, it is easy to do when handwriting, but these kinds of mistakes are usually much more difficult on a computer
  - nickdrozd 7y ago
    That's a good question. I think the sinologist introduced that character originally, possibly as a typo or something. I must have copied it. To be honest, I didn't even notice the extra stroke in 国 vs 囯. (I do not speak any of the relevant languages at all.) From what I can tell though, the word "nonstandard" isn't very helpful in this context, because there are few universal standards, even when it comes to something as simple as counting strokes. A "nonstandard" character might actually be well-attested in some particular time and place, or in some particular dictionary tradition. I don't know if that applies to this case, but it might.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      Simplified Chinese is standardized in the sense that there's a standards document specifying which characters should be used. I'm pretty sure there's something similar for Japanese simplifications.