I was reading a Chinese book when I came across the word 麪粉.
I didn't know how to read the first character, so I performed a search on Google translate. According to Google translate, both 麵粉 miànfěn and 麪粉 miànfěn have the same pinyin, and both mean flour.
My impression from living in Hong Kong is that only the first word "麵" is encountered in everyday usage, e.g., wonton noodles is written as 雲吞麵.
Are there any real differences between 麵粉 and 麪粉?
「麪」is a variant type of「麵」（「麪」is a more standard form in the old ages, and both are simplified to「面」now）and the meaing between them is not quite different.
麵 and 麪 both means flour while 面 means face or side in traditional Chinese. 面 pronounced miàn while 丏 pronounced miǎn, the ancients created the pictophonetic characters 麵 and 麪 with two different phonetic indicator with the same syllables. 麵 and 麪 are interchangable in traditional Chinese, but later 麵 was treated as the formal form while 麪 as the variant form. Both are simplified to 麺 not 面 (combined with a 麦, meas wheat, the simplified form of 麥, and a 面) in mainland China, but in simplified Chinese 面 covers the meaning of 麺, that means 面 is a super set of 麺 (麵 and 麪) in simplified Chinese. Though 麺 is right when used for flour but hardly anybody used it. This is a strange case in Simplified Chinese. There is another similar example, 餘 means rest or remaining while 余 means me (used in classic Chinese) in traditional Chinese. 餘 was simplified to 馀, but also 余 covers the meaning of 馀, that mean 余 is a super set of 馀 (餘) in simplified Chinese. The same as above, 馀 is also right when used for remaining but hardly anybody used it.
