28
votes
Accepted
Lowest pixel resolution needed to support Chinese?
8x8: Lowest necessary resolution for Chinese characters
As far as I know, the recognizable lowest resolution for Chinese characters, is about 8x8 pixels. The following paragraphs are rendered by the ...
- 6,033
19
votes
Accepted
Bottom component of 青 and 䏍
Brief Answers
Is it indeed the case that the lower component of 䏍 is different from the lower component of 青?
Yes in the etymology sense (the lower component of 䏍 is 肉, and the lower component of ...
- 6,033
12
votes
Is there an alphabetic system in the Chinese language?
The official way to write Chinese uses Chinese characters, which is not an alphabetical system.
There have been various phonetic systems developed to either write or transcribe Chinese. Some of these ...
- 21.7k
11
votes
How did three characters for _de_ emerge?
The premise of the question is a bit backwards. It's not that de evolved into three different characters, it's that three different words evolved to have the same pronunciation in modern Mandarin ...
- 4,026
11
votes
Is it viable to write Chinese in emoji?
Some people are already doing this for fun. Replacing (some of) the Chinese characters in a sentence with emojis. Sometimes it is used to curse, with a somewhat softened tone. Sometimes it is used to ...
- 3,823
9
votes
Accepted
Can I always write the 艹 (grass radical) with three lines only?
Two notes:
艹 is 4 strokes in Taiwan and Hong Kong only. It is less helpful to think of it as a "traditional"/"simplified" difference, as among other standards which use "traditional characters" (e.g. ...
- 21.7k
8
votes
Accepted
How are blanks indicated for placeholders in Chinese (like ???)
Generally putting XX is fine unless formal. People use that a lot orally. X is usually pronounced as 叉, but can vary based on region.
Formally and also very commonly for missing name is using 某.
王某 ...
- 797
8
votes
Bottom component of 青 and 䏍
Just adding this to the already answered question to point out a few pertinent things:
(1) the question of whether the 月/⺝ as seen in e.g. 能青育 and so on is really 'the same' or 'different' can be ...
- 639
8
votes
Accepted
Why would this insect pest poster in Taiwan have phonetic characters (Zhuyin) on every Chinese character?
Texts written for schoolchildren will be annotated with phonetic symbols. The last sentence indicates that this poster is made for schoolchildren:
如果發現了，趁著沒孵化之前通知老師來移除。
If any [eggs] are found, take ...
- 21.7k
8
votes
Is it viable to write Chinese in emoji?
What is possible:
你好 = 你好 (consider Chinese characters as emojis; they already seem to meet the definition).
你好 = Ⓝⓘ③ⓗⓐⓞ③ (writing its pronunciation in pinyin via "emojis").
你好 = ⿰亻尔 ⿰女子 (...
- 15.5k
7
votes
Accepted
written characters: yuē vs rì
I was secretly expecting this question. :)
In handwritten and calligraphic realization, these characters can be tough to distinguish, although the context will help you a lot.
In printed text, the ...
- 7,168
7
votes
Accepted
How to indicate "long pronunciation" in writing in Chinese?
The one I see most often is the use of "～": "啊～～～"
- 592
7
votes
What does 甘蝦 mean when used as an answer to 保重? (Taiwan)
It is a similar pronunciation of Hokkien 感謝/感谢, so the meaning is to thank.
The 臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典 shows that the pronunciation is kám-siā.
It is a style of humor, not a joke.
We use them a lot.
Another ...
- 1,501
7
votes
Why native speakers always say "一块钱" and write "一元钱 "instead of "壹圆钱"？
To begin with, there is one thing called 大写 (daxie, “upper case”), in contrast to 小写 (xiaoxie, “lower case”).
小写：一二三四五六七八九十百千 - 元
大写：壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖拾佰仟 - 圆
Daxie numbers are only used in ...
- 1,827
6
votes
How many characters do I need to learn?
If you want to have a quantitative answer you can look at the commulative character frequencies of larger Chinese text corpora. If compiled a list of the most common Chinese characters here (using ...
6
votes
Accepted
Braille and Chinese Input
I had a student in Taiwan who was blind, so I've had a chance to work with this.
There are articles on Chinese Braille in both the English and Chinese Wikipedias if you haven't read them yet. It is ...
- 4,335
6
votes
How to indicate "long pronunciation" in writing in Chinese?
Use 破折号(dash), for example:
我们在天安门前深情的呼唤：周——总——理——
- 146
6
votes
Accepted
Why is 开 written within a 门 in this sign (without being written 開)?
BabelStone wrote a Proposal to Encode Obsolete Simplified Chinese Characters which also contains a lot of history and other important information.
Under the heading 2.2 we find:
Table of First Batch ...
Mou某♦
- 35.9k
6
votes
Accepted
How do Chinese students write words whose characters they haven't learned?
If a person didn't know, or forgot how to write 餐 in 晚餐, he would not knowingly use a wrong word for substitute. The first thing he would do is to ask people who know.
If there's no one to ask, he ...
- 75.9k
6
votes
Accepted
What did the original Tao Te Ching use for punctuation?
So far, the earliest version of Tao Te Ching found is on the Guodian Chu Bamboo Slips, written in the Warring States era State of Chu.
From 楚簡書法网 (http://www.cjsfw.net/Html/?287.html, http://www....
- 21.7k
6
votes
Accepted
How are Chinese people taught Chinese Hanzi?
I can give a short answer to this question. I would say both. When I entered primary school and started to learn Hanzi systematically, Pinyin is the very first thing to learn, and we learn the sounds ...
- 101
6
votes
Accepted
What are characters called when they have three of the same radical used?
maybe, called “三疊字”, have a look of this page
10個少見「三疊字」 你識唔識讀？
btw, the wiki page:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/三叠字
have fun :)
edited.
i checked a book in literary chinese, it was called “三字”. a ...
- 14.8k
5
votes
Writing direction on seals
The general principle is from top to bottom, from right to left, but the format can be very flexible. For a four-character seal, there are 6 ways to arrange the characters (see picture). Seal ...
- 96
5
votes
How are blanks indicated for placeholders in Chinese (like ???)
□ (white square) is used to indicate that some characters are missing or unrecognizable. Each white square correspond to one such character.
See 虚缺号的用法.
- 150
5
votes
Accepted
Question to radical (部首)"辵"
Your idea is correct, at least most Chinese people agree with this.
But in this case, 辵 is acturally combined of 彳 and 止.
彳 means "walk slowly" or "the step with left foot".
止 means "stop" or "halt"....
- 76
5
votes
Accepted
What does 甘蝦 mean when used as an answer to 保重? (Taiwan)
This is because Taiwanese Hokkien doesn't have its own official written form. It has a romanization, but none of the Taiwanese know it, despite most speaking the language fluently.
So when they want ...
- 492
5
votes
Accepted
Chinese gibberish in a desktop program
Any idea why this is?
This is called Mojibake, or in Chinese, Luan Ma (乱码). This is most likely due to language code mismatch -- Each character in the computer is represented by a number, and your ...
- 467
5
votes
Is there an official stroke order for each character?
There isn't an official stroke order for each character, but only a subset of all characters used, and official stroke order exists solely for the purpose of educating schoolchildren.
Japanese stroke ...
- 21.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible