
Chinese Characters and Dictionaries - nickdrozd
https://nickdrozd.github.io/2020/04/09/chinese-answers.html
======
wodenokoto
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
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
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
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
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.

