does anybody recognize these kanji/characters?

[Nijikun]

Hi there.
I've got a question concerning these characters:

Are ALL of them japanese Kanji?
If so, could somebody tell me what they mean and how they are read? (on- and/or kun-yomi)
Or are these characters used for chinese only?
Please help me. I don't know where else I could look.
Best wishes,
Niji

 

[pipokun]

Or are these characters used for chinese only?

Yes. It is not Japanese ones.

 

[nice gaijin]

why are they all rotated different ways?

 

[AJBryant]

Because it's yet another clueless tattoo clown.

 

[nice gaijin]

yeah that's pretty terrible. Nijikun, where did you find this?

 

[grapefruit]

These are kanji characters:
侭(jin)、戒(kai)、赦(sha)、悼(tou)

 

[jeisan]

in mandarin

侭 -- jǐn -- to the limit -- 侭 is a variant of 尽
戒 -- jiè -- forbid
赦 -- shè -- pardon
悼 -- dào -- mourn

but why are they all positioned in differently from each other...

 

[Glenn]

侭 -- jǐn -- to the limit -- 侭 is a variant of 尽

Are you sure? In Japanese at least 侭 is the simplification of 儘, and 尽 is the simplification of 盡.

 

[jeisan]

Are you sure? In Japanese at least 侭 is the simplification of 儘, and 尽 is the simplification of 盡.

in mandarin both 儘 (jǐn) and 盡 (jìn) are simplified to 尽 which is it would be determined by tone.

 

[Glenn]

That just reaffirms my hate of simplified Chinese. I mean it's two strokes for crying out loud!

 

[jeisan]

the worst are the ones that are simplified to the same number of strokes, but just look different. 着 -- 著 for example

but 儘 and 盡 have a fairly similar meaning

 

[Glenn]

In Japanese the difference is "in the state of.../as-is" and "exhaust/use completely," which are not similar, and which is why I said what I said about simplified Chinese.

 

[jeisan]

aye, i was just complaining about simplified characters having the same number of strokes as the traditional version, don't understand the point...

now that i've checked it out more, as adverbs they're "to the greatest extent" and "to the utmost/limit" versus the verb forms which are "give priority to/keep doing something" and "exhaust/use up/end/put to best use"

...oh i still have so much to learn.

 

[grapefruit]

I was talking with my wife, a native speaker of Mandarin, about the characters 複 and 復 and how these two characters were merged into 復 in Mandarin. In writing a paper in simplified characters, she had trouble choosing the second character of chong2fu4, whether 複 or 復. I, native speaker of Japanese, also had trouble remembering which one. It turned out that the word is written as 重複 not 重復. Both characters 複 and 復 have almost the same meaning. Particularly, in this combination, "multiple" or "repeat". We mistakenly thought it should be 復, since the word means "to repeat."

Curiously, two characters in writing developed despite the fact that Old Chinese had only one word in speech. In Old Chinese, the two characters were pronounced the same. 儘 and 盡 or 着 and 著 had different pronunciations in old Chinese. So, it is no mystery that ancient Chinese invented these characters (儘, 盡, 着, and 著) to codify the separate words in speech. But, when it comes to 複 and 復, ancient Chinese people seem to have invented these two characters out of one word to highlight the subtle differences in the meaning of the word.

What an ingenuity (or a nightmare to those who intends to learn the language)!