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I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁新聞” to find some japanese sources about thi

by erjiang 2mo ago

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁新聞” to find some japanese sources about this.

retrac 2mo ago
Ghost characters reveal something about the joint semantic and phonetic nature of most Chinese characters. I know 彁 isn't real: but it still insists on a pronunciation: ka in Japanese, (gē or gé Mandarin). And it hints at meaning: bowed weapon, sound, elder brother; but your guess is as good as mine!
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago
  > I know 彁 isn't real: but it still insists on a pronunciation: ka in Japanese, (gē or gé Mandarin). Huh? How do you pronounce 切? > And it hints at meaning: bowed weapon, sound, elder brother; but your guess is as good as mine! Why is "elder brother" a meaning hint if you've already assumed that 哥 is the phonophore?
  - matvore 2mo ago
    A component can contribute meaning as well as pronunciation. 沌 is pronounced like 屯 and they both have a kind of "gather" "clog" meaning
    - thaumasiotes 2mo ago
      That is not a method of character construction. It could happen, but you would never expect it. Also... there is no "gather" or "clog" sense of 沌? There's a "gather" sense of 屯...
      - matvore 2mo ago
        According to https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B2%8C-2789579#goog_rewarded https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B2%8C-2789579#goog_rewarded 沌 has a meaning "gather, water gathers" There are other meanings to it. I admit I had a hard time finding an example.
        thaumasiotes 2mo ago
        > I admit I had a hard time finding an example. Where did you get the original 'example' of 沌 / 屯 from? Most people prefer to use examples that they have some kind of personal knowledge of. > There are other meanings to it. [沌] Not as many as you might expect. It's (part of) a mythological term referring to the state of the universe before it took the form we can observe today. It has a couple of other metaphorical meanings coming from that, or from traditional sayings related to that. I see that wiktionary lists 沌がる as an alternate spelling of 塞がる "be blocked" [塞 - obstruct / block / plug], which looks like the closest thing we're likely to find to your earlier claim. Obvious problems using this to support your comment are: - There's still no "gathering" or "accumulating" sense. (Nor is there an "obstruct" sense of 屯.) - This is a meaning assigned long after the character came into existence, which means it cannot have informed the construction of the character.
        matvore 2mo ago
        I learned about 沌 quite a while ago when I studied the first few chapters of Genesis in Japanese (混沌 was used to describe the earth in Gen 1:2) and something jogged my memory when I was looking for examples. The dictionary link I posted had あつまる、水があつまる in the first definition. I don't know if that's a reliable dictionary. Maybe you think it's not? > - This is a meaning assigned long after the character came into existence, which means it > cannot have informed the construction of the character. I don't know anything about which meanings were used first and which were added later, but what you say sounds believable. > - There's still no "gathering" or "accumulating" sense. (Nor is there an "obstruct" sense of 屯.) Let me clarify. Even without the first sense for 沌 in the above dictionary (あつまる、水があつまる) some of the other definitions for 沌 had "gather" included in it conceptually, namely clog and joined together without distinction. This phenomenon we are talking about is called 会意兼形声文字 and this site seems to have a lot of accurate examples: https://okjiten.jp/20-kaiikenkeiseimoji.html#google_vignette https://okjiten.jp/20-kaiikenkeiseimoji.html#google_vignette I confirmed a few, and they seem correct. I thought 界 was the most easily understood example. 介 means being between two things and contributes the pronunciation. 界 means region, span, separate, division.
- pezezin 2mo ago
  It is true that most hanzi are phonosemantic compounds; however, Japanese-created kanji are mostly semantic compounds. You can still guess the meaning, but good luck trying to guess the pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuji
gs17 2mo ago
The article mentions "an example of 彁 mistakenly used in a digitized Taisho newspaper due to a faded printing of 彊", but to me that implies the symbol already existed before then.
- lidavidm 2mo ago
  Isn't that backwards? The nonexistent character is in the -digitized- version so presumably OCR or something got 彊 wrong, that's not saying that 彁 was used in the -print- version. Indeed, the source link is about exactly this: a crappy scan appears to have 彁 but a better copy reveals it was 彊.
  - joemi 2mo ago
    I think you're both saying the same thing: the digitization of the article wouldn't have been the source, since 彁 would have had to exist before the digitization happened in order for the OCR to misread 彊 as 彁.
    - usrnm 2mo ago
      Most kanji are a combination of several smaller parts called "radicals" in English. If you look at these two kanji through this lens, you will see that it's actually a very simple mistake, one existing radical is replaced by another existing radical. It is very easy to imagine software that was working exactly like that: interpreting kanji as a combination of radicals rather than individual unrelated symbols
      - hunter2_ 2mo ago
        This reminds me of the pregnant man emoji [0] but it turns out they decided to handle that in an unusual way [1] so not really. [0] https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/u7x3l9/comment/i5hqux0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/u7x3l9/comment/...

by erjiang 2mo ago

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁新聞” to find some japanese sources about this.

retrac 2mo ago

Ghost characters reveal something about the joint semantic and phonetic nature of most Chinese characters. I know 彁 isn't real: but it still insists on a pronunciation: ka in Japanese, (gē or gé Mandarin). And it hints at meaning: bowed weapon, sound, elder brother; but your guess is as good as mine!

thaumasiotes 2mo ago
> I know 彁 isn't real: but it still insists on a pronunciation: ka in Japanese, (gē or gé Mandarin). Huh? How do you pronounce 切? > And it hints at meaning: bowed weapon, sound, elder brother; but your guess is as good as mine! Why is "elder brother" a meaning hint if you've already assumed that 哥 is the phonophore?
- matvore 2mo ago
  A component can contribute meaning as well as pronunciation. 沌 is pronounced like 屯 and they both have a kind of "gather" "clog" meaning
  - thaumasiotes 2mo ago
    That is not a method of character construction. It could happen, but you would never expect it. Also... there is no "gather" or "clog" sense of 沌? There's a "gather" sense of 屯...
    - matvore 2mo ago
      According to https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B2%8C-2789579#goog_rewarded https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B2%8C-2789579#goog_rewarded 沌 has a meaning "gather, water gathers" There are other meanings to it. I admit I had a hard time finding an example.
      - thaumasiotes 2mo ago
        > I admit I had a hard time finding an example. Where did you get the original 'example' of 沌 / 屯 from? Most people prefer to use examples that they have some kind of personal knowledge of. > There are other meanings to it. [沌] Not as many as you might expect. It's (part of) a mythological term referring to the state of the universe before it took the form we can observe today. It has a couple of other metaphorical meanings coming from that, or from traditional sayings related to that. I see that wiktionary lists 沌がる as an alternate spelling of 塞がる "be blocked" [塞 - obstruct / block / plug], which looks like the closest thing we're likely to find to your earlier claim. Obvious problems using this to support your comment are: - There's still no "gathering" or "accumulating" sense. (Nor is there an "obstruct" sense of 屯.) - This is a meaning assigned long after the character came into existence, which means it cannot have informed the construction of the character.
        matvore 2mo ago
        I learned about 沌 quite a while ago when I studied the first few chapters of Genesis in Japanese (混沌 was used to describe the earth in Gen 1:2) and something jogged my memory when I was looking for examples. The dictionary link I posted had あつまる、水があつまる in the first definition. I don't know if that's a reliable dictionary. Maybe you think it's not? > - This is a meaning assigned long after the character came into existence, which means it > cannot have informed the construction of the character. I don't know anything about which meanings were used first and which were added later, but what you say sounds believable. > - There's still no "gathering" or "accumulating" sense. (Nor is there an "obstruct" sense of 屯.) Let me clarify. Even without the first sense for 沌 in the above dictionary (あつまる、水があつまる) some of the other definitions for 沌 had "gather" included in it conceptually, namely clog and joined together without distinction. This phenomenon we are talking about is called 会意兼形声文字 and this site seems to have a lot of accurate examples: https://okjiten.jp/20-kaiikenkeiseimoji.html#google_vignette https://okjiten.jp/20-kaiikenkeiseimoji.html#google_vignette I confirmed a few, and they seem correct. I thought 界 was the most easily understood example. 介 means being between two things and contributes the pronunciation. 界 means region, span, separate, division.
pezezin 2mo ago
It is true that most hanzi are phonosemantic compounds; however, Japanese-created kanji are mostly semantic compounds. You can still guess the meaning, but good luck trying to guess the pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuji

gs17 2mo ago

The article mentions "an example of 彁 mistakenly used in a digitized Taisho newspaper due to a faded printing of 彊", but to me that implies the symbol already existed before then.

lidavidm 2mo ago
Isn't that backwards? The nonexistent character is in the -digitized- version so presumably OCR or something got 彊 wrong, that's not saying that 彁 was used in the -print- version. Indeed, the source link is about exactly this: a crappy scan appears to have 彁 but a better copy reveals it was 彊.
- joemi 2mo ago
  I think you're both saying the same thing: the digitization of the article wouldn't have been the source, since 彁 would have had to exist before the digitization happened in order for the OCR to misread 彊 as 彁.
  - usrnm 2mo ago
    Most kanji are a combination of several smaller parts called "radicals" in English. If you look at these two kanji through this lens, you will see that it's actually a very simple mistake, one existing radical is replaced by another existing radical. It is very easy to imagine software that was working exactly like that: interpreting kanji as a combination of radicals rather than individual unrelated symbols
    - hunter2_ 2mo ago
      This reminds me of the pregnant man emoji [0] but it turns out they decided to handle that in an unusual way [1] so not really. [0] https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/u7x3l9/comment/i5hqux0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/u7x3l9/comment/...

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁 新聞” to find some japanese sources about thi

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁 新聞” to find some japanese sources about thi

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁新聞” to find some japanese sources about thi

I think there’s evidence found for the origin of “彁” as the result of a poor scan of a newspaper article. Look up “彁新聞” to find some japanese sources about thi