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Chinese/Japanese character differences

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eeky

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I've noticed that a number of characters have slightly different forms in Chinese and in Japanese; a typical example is 海, where the Chinese form seems to have two separate ticks enclosed in the bottom right element, but the kanji has a solid vertical line. Another example is the left-hand element of the character 約 (for example), which has three roughly equal-length "ticks" at the bottom left in the Chinese version, while the kanji has a longer vertical central stroke with two shorter "ticks" on either side.

How do the Chinese forms seem to native Japanese? Do they "look foreign"?

(I'm asking about standard modern usage; I know these characters have a long history!)
 
Which set are you talking about? There are overlaps with kanji and simplified Chinese, and there are overlaps with kanji and traditional Chinese, and there are cases where each one has its own unique form. The traditional characters are pretty much the same as Japan's 旧字体, so Japanese people may feel like they have a sort of classical flair. At least that's what Japanese people have told me about Japanese written with 旧字体.

Simplified Chinese is a completely different animal in many cases, though. For example, 动东龙专传转运远购时归 would all look pretty strange to a Japanese person who hadn't gotten used to seeing them, I would imagine.
 
Glenn said:
Which set are you talking about?.
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Sorry, I don't know. It may be that I don't know enough about the subject to ask a coherent question. I've just noticed that when I try to use a Chinese draw-your-character website lookup feature to locate kanji, I sometimes get characters that are shown in a slightly different form to the one I believe is prevalent in Japanese script, though quite easily recognisable and having the same Unicode code. The examples that I mentioned are typical.

But yeah, I know that historically there have been lots of variants, and also that simplification programmes may have moved the Japanese and Chinese sets further out of sync...
 
I think in some cases it's just a font difference, so it isn't that big of a deal. But things can get sticky when you start talking about physically writing them, as there are different standards in stroke orders for some characters that share the same shape between areas of the 漢字圏 I'm coming to find out.
 
Yes, we will have a little strange feelings about Chinese kanjis and we can differentiate them.
I'm not sure but you feel the same way about native's English and other.
We have practiced how to write kanjis.
You know, they have their own writing orders and even when writing one line in a kanji, we know the line should be stopped, swept or hopped in the end of line.
Therefore, even subtle differences, we can easily find.

BTW, we mainly use MS明朝 or MSゴシック for Japanese fonts in PC.
I wonder how my writings are being displayed in your PC...
 
Actually, the shapes are different even between Japanese fonts.;-)
 
Speaking of that, I wondered if there were any 窶伉青鞘?倪?佚 fonts, and I found the following:


And there are some at the following site:
和文フォント大図鑑 [草書体]

I wonder if anyone actually uses them for actual communication, though. How common is it among Japanese people to be able to read 窶伉青鞘?倪?佚?
 
How common is it among Japanese people to be able to read 草書体?
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it is tille Ok
because Those characters are not connected.

BTW
ir is said Hiragana was made from 草書体
why was not such like hiragana made in China?
and antil meiji era, Japanese standard letters were in 草書体
and hiragana was also in sousyotai . moreover something like that



草書体was first, then 行書体oppositely
楷書がくずれて行書、草書になった、と思われるかもしれませんが、本当は逆で、草書、行書、楷書と書体は発展していきました。中国の書聖王義之の書はほとんどが草書、行書で書かれています。
http://www.kougei.or.jp/crafts/1107/special/mono2.html
 
Last edited:
caster51 said:
interesting thing is Hiragana was made from 窶伉青鞘?倪?佚
why was not such like hiragana made in China?
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I would imagine because it's a completely different language with a completely different set of circumstances, such as not having to annotate writings into a different language for people to understand what was written and not have many different ways to read each character. They invented the writing system for their own language; they didn't import one to fit it, so it makes sense that it would evolve differently. Korea had a similar situation to Japan before adopting hangul, from what I've read.
 
Toritoribe said:
Actually, the shapes are different even between Japanese fonts.;-)
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Right, so your fourth character (for example), with the three equal-sized "ticks" at bottom left, looks fine in Japanese script, does it?

At 約 - Wiktionary, for example, they show this version under "Han character", and under "kanji" they show the version more like the left-most character in your graphic, with the long central vertical stroke. I believe that it's actually exactly the same character, but the font is displaying it differently, depending on a language setting. So, whoever devised that font seemed to think that the "standard" Chinese and Japanese versions differed in that respect. Would you agree with that?
 
eeky said:
Right, so your fourth character (for example), with the three equal-sized "ticks" at bottom left, looks fine in Japanese script, does it?
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Not usual, but acceptable/understandable. The "three dot" version was used also in pre-WWⅡ Japan. Some older people may still use this form.
 
Toritoribe said:
Not usual, but acceptable/understandable. The "three dot" version was used also in pre-WWⅡ Japan. Some older people may still use this form.
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That's interesting. A progressive maturation and straigtening/narrowing out process from 糸.
 
What's interesting is that there are sometimes three and four characters (or 偏, really) that have the exact same shape in 草書. No wonder it's nearly impossible to read!
 
Glenn said:
What's interesting is that there are sometimes three and four characters (or 偏, really) that have the exact same shape in 草書. No wonder it's nearly impossible to read!
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It's very context-driven.

There are actually *classes* in how to read those things, so people can do research in old documents -- and if you don't "keep it up" you will quickly forget them. I can't read most old things <whimper> and it's a major annoyance. Unless someone has been kind enough to transcribe and publish the old docs and texts I need, I'm SOL much of the time.
 
Yeah, I'd need a 草書 to 行書 or 楷書 translation/conversion for me to have a shot. There's nothing like looking at a piece of calligraphy someone has, being asked what it says, and saying "I have no idea." Makes me want to launch into an explanation of the character styles every time (assuming it's Japanese. Sometimes I'm off the hook because it's Chinese).
 
I can only hope that the case is it's Chinese. Heck, even kanbun gives me a headache. I hate trying to figure out why something isn't making sense, and it turns out to be a title or art name or something.
 
I can't do kanbun. I never learned it, so I read it in Chinese as much as I can, and it makes more sense to me that way (which still isn't a whole lot). But then again the only time I've seen stuff like that has been in the 漢和辞典...
 
It's one of those things I really hate -- I have to have like four dictionaries open and some classical J. references.

When I took classical Chinese, it was similar to your kanbun thing -- I read the Chinese in a mental pidgin of Chinese, Japanese, and even English (for those simple hanzi concepts), depending on how I first learned the given character or grammar point in question. I couldn't read it out loud without embarrassing myself, but I could translate it.

Now, of course... totally out of practice, I've forgotten almost all the wenyan and even normal Mandarin that I studied. It's amazing (and annoying) what five or six years of not using a language will do to one's ability to use the language. <whimper>
 
In computer coding, most Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi actually share the same codes.

For example, in the Japanese version of Wikipedia (which is known for its intolerance of foreign language search), I can input 日本 (Japan) with a Chinese input system and then do searches. On the other hand, I can input Japanese Kanji to do Chinese searches. The point is, the Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi in question must be exactly the same.

Traditional Chinese Hanzi are usually exactly the same as Japanese Kanji. But simplied Hanzi are not.
 
What do you mean by the Japanese version of Wikipedia being "known for its intolerance of foreign language search"? This is the first I've heard of it.
 
Glenn said:
What do you mean by the Japanese version of Wikipedia being "known for its intolerance of foreign language search"? This is the first I've heard of it.
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Not just the Japanese version, Wikipedia search box is language specific and does not allow foreign language search, which is very different from Google or other major search engines.

In Wikipedia, when you are reading the English version, you can't type Chinese in the search box and expect that it will automatically direct you to the Chinese version with the entries you need. It simply won't do that.

I take advantage of this property and use it to test if a Chinese Hanzi phrase can be recognized as Japanese Kanzi phrase. I type Chinese in the Japanese search box and the search functions normally. So I can conclude that those Kanji and Hanzi phrases actually share the same codings in computer.
 
Oh, yeah, it is annoying that you have to change the language you want to search in on the main page each time, but you could also just change the language from the article itself (if you're already at one) and then search from there. I've heard Wikipedia's search engine leaves much to be desired, but I haven't had too many problems with it.
 
sakaeyellow said:
In Wikipedia, when you are reading the English version, you can't type Chinese in the search box and expect that it will automatically direct you to the Chinese version with the entries you need. It simply won't do that.
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No, but you can still search the English Wiki for those kanji -- useful, especially, when you are looking for a something (say, a bio of a historical Chinese character or a Japanese film) and if you input the original language text in the search form, it will show you pages that contain that element -- namely, the bio page, the page on the film, etc.

I do that all the time, especially in cases where I don't know off the top of my head how to read the name of the historical personage, or I don't know what the English title of the book/movie/play title is.
 
You search them on the English one and they come up? I typically use Weblio for that, because it's a one-stop shopping sort of solution, and it searches Japanese Wikipedia. I can't recall having searched a Japanese term and gotten results on the English version.
 
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