Looking for a database of kanji images

[tantric]

There should be, somewhere, a website where you can select a kanji and retrieve various images of that kanji, such as are used in signs, labels, whatever. Does this exist? Not exactly fonts for kanji, but of great use to graphic designers.

 

[mdchachi]

I've never run across such a thing. Are there equivalent sites for latin letters?

 

[tantric]

For Latin, there are fonts. I've never seen a kanji font - a collection of 3,000+ characters in a particular style. Surely that exists.

 

[nekojita]

Of course there are fonts which have kanji (example font website). There's just perhaps not a website where you put in any kanji you like and get back examples of what that looks like in a bunch of different fonts.

 

[tantric]

I'm looking for a website to build, mostly to show what I can do. This idea seems to have that potential - user submissions, checked by me at first, then by a image analysis program, a nice database, multiple languages, etc

Does it sound at all interesting?

 

[thomas]

Have you checked our font collection? There are several .ttf sets that consist of kanji.

Japanese Fonts | Japan Forum

 

[Majestic]

Here is a website that will show you different fonts of Japanese text for any word/message you input.
ƒtƒHƒ“ƒgE‘‘̂̃pƒbƒP[ƒW”Ì”„‚ƃ_ƒEƒ“ƒ[ƒh”Ì”„bFont GarageFƒtƒHƒ“ƒgƒKƒŒ[ƒW
Not very user friendly for non-Japanese speaking people, unfortunately.

 

[mdchachi]

For Latin, there are fonts. I've never seen a kanji font - a collection of 3,000+ characters in a particular style. Surely that exists.

I thought you were specifically asking for something other than fonts. Of course there are fonts for Japanese, same as for latin letters. (Not nearly as many of course.)

 

[Mike Cash]

For Latin, there are fonts. I've never seen a kanji font - a collection of 3,000+ characters in a particular style. Surely that exists.

You either didn't search or searched in English....

Do a google image search on 漢字 フォント and see just how gigantic a wheel you are proposing to reinvent.

 

[nice gaijin]

There are many great professional foundries in Japan, such as FONTWORKS | フォントワークス

It sounds like the OP is proposing something more along the lines of found typography, but specifically for Japanese?

Type Hunting
Found Typography
FOUNDFONT™

 

[Mike Cash]

There are many great professional foundries in Japan, such as FONTWORKS | フォントワークス

It sounds like the OP is proposing something more along the lines of found typography, but specifically for Japanese?

Type Hunting
Found Typography
FOUNDFONT™

My first thought was that he must be getting ready to open a tattoo parlor.

 

[tantric]

Background - in Chinese cooking, there are the five flavors.sour, sweet, bitter, hot and salty. I wish to paint the characters for these flavors in my kitchen. I started with 辛 and I want to paint it in red, with flames and all that jazz. I tried to find a of images of characters, to no avail. What I wanted to find was this:

(stuff I copied from ramen packages). Yes, copyright problems - skip that for the moment. Would it not be nice to be able to go to a site, select your kanji/hanzi and be shown a gallery of thumbnails?

 

[Mike Cash]

Don't say I never gave you anything.....

http://font.designers-garage.jp

Does exactly what you want, if you can read Japanese well enough to use it.

 

[tantric]

粋でしょうね!

nice website

 

[nice gaijin]

粋でしょうね!

nice website

I don't think you wrote what you meant to write...

 

[mdchachi]

I think he wrote what he meant: http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=粋&ref=sa
Admittedly I don't think I've heard it used this way.

 

[tantric]

I meant to say: pretty cool, huh? That site displays all characteristics of いき. I haven't actually used Japanese in 20 years, but I do love the aesthetics. I recently got in a throw down fight on a bonsai forum about what kind of pots show wabi-sabi - mail order Zen(TM) pot or an old terra cotta pot, originally from Home Depot. Hint - you can't buy zen on e-bay ;-)

 

[Toritoribe]

The part nice gaijin-san pointed out is でしょう, not 粋. It must be 粋ですね.

 

[tantric]

I'm not arguing, it's been a while, but I thought そうでしょうね was a way of asking for confirmation? "Isn't it so?" 粋ですね is a question. 粋でしょうね - Don't you think its cool?

Another useful combination with a particle is でしょう + ね. Here it gives the impression that the speaker is sort of thinking out loud, or agreeing to something without necessarily having a strong feeling about it. Oftentimes I think of this in terms of the english expression "I bet".​

 

[Mike Cash]

I meant to say: pretty cool, huh? That site displays all characteristics of いき. I haven't actually used Japanese in 20 years, but I do love the aesthetics. I recently got in a throw down fight on a bonsai forum about what kind of pots show wabi-sabi - mail order Zen(TM) pot or an old terra cotta pot, originally from Home Depot. Hint - you can't buy zen on e-bay ;-)

In an argument about who has the more "zen" flower pot, don't both parties automatically lose?

 

[Toritoribe]

I'm not arguing, it's been a while, but I thought そうでしょうね was a way of asking for confirmation? "Isn't it so?" 粋ですね is a question. 粋でしょうね - Don't you think its cool?

Another useful combination with a particle is でしょう + ね. Here it gives the impression that the speaker is sort of thinking out loud, or agreeing to something without necessarily having a strong feeling about it. Oftentimes I think of this in terms of the english expression "I bet".​

でしょう is presumptive. You can't use it when you actually saw the site and felt it's cool. 粋ですね is not a question but an agreement "yeah, it's really cool". If you hear about a plan of the site from him and guess it would be cool, 粋でしょうね works fine.

Strictly speaking, 粋 refers to Mike-san's action or his personality in that context, not the site itself, by the way.

 

[tantric]

completely out of the blue, it turns out that bonsai enthusiasts are jack booted fascists in terms of enforcing styles. i started a topic "postmodern and non-traditional bonsai"

I was actually interested in growing a strangler fig bonsai - the fig that sprouts in the branches of another tree then envelopes it. It's been done.

 

[tantric]

でしょう is presumptive. You can't use it when you actually saw the site and felt it's cool. 粋ですね is not a question but an agreement "yeah, it's really cool". If you hear about a plan of the site from him and guess it would be cool, 粋でしょうね works fine.

Strictly speaking, 粋 refers to Mike-san's action or his personality in that context, not the site itself, by the way.

now, that was helpful. should i have used 通 ? i read

Iki and tsu are considered synonymous in some situations, but tsu exclusively refers to persons, while iki can also refer to situations/objects.​

or would it be modified to refer to the site - 粋-na or somesuch.
oh, and japanese does NOT have rules - policies, maybe. japanese people seem to need to believe it does, but all grammars are ultimately descriptive, not definitive. YMMV.

 

[Toritoribe]

oh, and japanese does NOT have rules - policies, maybe. japanese people seem to need to believe it does, but all grammars are ultimately descriptive, not definitive.

理解できないからって鼬の最後っ屁的な負け惜しみ？負け犬の遠吠え或いは古来有名な酸っぱい葡萄の例えの方が相応しいかな。じゃあなんで漢字のデザインなんか求めてるのって話ですけどね。
まあいずれにしてもあまり褒められた態度ではありませんね。スレッドを閉じることになるかもしれないと警告をしておきます。

 

[tantric]

Standard language ideology
As defined by Rosina Lippi-Green, Standard Language Ideology is "a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogeneous language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant institutions and which has as its model the written language, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class." According to Lippi-Green, part of this ideology is a belief that standard languages are internally consistent. Linguists generally agree, however, that variation is intrinsic to all spoken language, including standard varieties.

社会言語学,この芋