The Chinese characters appear so strange after I've typed them on my computer and on one of my Chinese apps on my phone. For example, 十分 is different on the photo I've attached than what I am typing just now. I think it happened after I changed the language settings on my phone to Chinese and then back to English. It seems like my google account, which is connected to my phone and computer when I'm surfing, has noticed.
Any ideas for a solution to this problem?
You're looking at shapes according to the Kangxi dictionary form, a variant of Ming typeface. Both 「八」 and 「丷」 shapes will end up looking like
as part of other characters. It's better to try to get your font to display a regular script font (e.g. 標楷體) instead of a Ming typeface font when you're learning.
Print shapes that you see for 「关」 are normally consistent with the right hand side of 「朕」. 「关」 itself is a shape rather than a true character or character component; the shape is variously a handwriting corruption of the right hand side of 「𦩎」, a corruption of 「𦬫」, an abbreviation of the inner part of 「關」, among others. Because 「关」 is not really a character with a firm historical basis, it will be subject to various unrecognisable shape changes across regions and fonts - most regions simply don’t even use/recognise it as a character.
They are stylistic choices of the different fonts as well as standards selected by the authorities. Taiwanese fonts usually exhibit 八 and HK/CN usually use 丷 instead
This is the Wikipedia article describing the Taiwanese standardization.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-mo/%E5%9C%8B%E5%AD%97%E6%A8%99%E6%BA%96%E5%AD%97%E9%AB%94
This is the official document by Ministry of Education ROC, explaining the the standardization.
https://language.moe.gov.tw/001/Upload/files/SITE_CONTENT/M0001/BIAU/c12.htm
https://language.moe.gov.tw/001/Upload/files/SITE_CONTENT/M0001/BIAU/f70.htm?open
The entire document is summerized in this PDF, but it's quite broken in my viewer: http://163.20.160.14/~moodle/pluginfile.php/339/mod_resource/content/3/%E6%A8%99%E6%BA%96%E5%AD%97%E9%AB%94-%E6%B2%BF%E9%9D%A9.pdf
Hong Kong opted for 丷 as described in this document: http://input.foruto.com/ccc/gongbiu/dzijingbiu/doc/dzijingbiu_ji-pin.pdf of the 常用字字形表, explained in this Wikipedia article. This standardization is followed by the Hong Kong Education Bureau.
All other documents are listed under: http://input.foruto.com/ccc/gongbiu/dzijingbiu/index.htm
In this excerpt, the left is the standard, whereas the right is non-standard.
Regarding the conclusive answer, if your font shows 八 in 兌/关, it is most likely a font following the Taiwanese standard. The Taiwanese government assisted the development of the first Chinese translated Windows, so the Microsoft fonts PMingLiu/KaiTi are mostly following Taiwanese standards.
The image is from: https://www.zdic.net/hans/%E5%85%B3, a site that documents characters. From left to right [Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong] (They used to also document characters used in Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji). Also notice the dian (點) instead of na (捺) for the last stroke, used in the Taiwanese version
However, if a font isn't a Taiwanese font, it isn't limited to being a PRC font. In fact, Chinese characters are used in other East Asian countries/regions: Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, etc.
And being in a certain physical region does not equate to a local font is used. Take the public transit service in Hong Kong, MTR, for an example, their Ming (serif) fonts are well known to be Japanese fonts, as indicated by the use of a vertical stroke (Japanese) in 亠 instead of a dian (HK).
As for the horizontal stroke in 八, it is most likely a stylistic decision of the font as I couldn't find relevant information online.
Probably a font thing. You need to install the correct font based on what variation of Chinese you're learning. You can google how to do that. cf https://blog.skritter.com/2015/05/dealing-with-font-issues-when-learning-chinese/
In fact, a character may have different appearance in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, as well as in Japanese.
I guess the first screenshot is web browser on computer. You could go the language setting of your browser (such as Chrome), then add Simplified or Traditional Chinese into the language list, depending on what you learned at class. In this way, the browser will load the font you preferred.
As for the app on your phone, go to the settings>language, then add Simplified or Traditional Chinese into the language list. (Your interface language will still be in English)
I had this problem in Gmail, Facebook and Whatsapp. My language was set to Traditional Chinese. I solved the problem by setting it to Simplified Chinese.
