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 ...
- 6,073
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 ...
- 22.2k
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 ...
- 3,853
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. ...
- 22.2k
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 ...
- 22.2k
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 (...
- 15.9k
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 ...
- 1,511
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 ...
- 1,867
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♦
- 35.7k
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 ...
- 77.1k
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....
- 22.2k
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 ...
- 15.1k
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 ...
- 512
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 ...
- 22.2k
5
votes
Can 地 be used in place of 的 as a stylistic choice?
I think the document has simply not been well proofread. The usage of 地 is not consistent though. We can see the examples like:
没错，唐三的父亲唐昊，就是一个铁匠。村子里唯一地铁匠。
So, I don't believe it's anything ...
- 24k
5
votes
Accepted
can I get help with the concept of "balance" in chinese writing/speech?
My answer to this question What is the difference between 有时 and 有时候? How are they used differently in context? may explain some aspects of this topic.
Generally, using the full term make the speech ...
- 77.1k
5
votes
Accepted
How much less of chinese written language does GB2312 cover versus GB18030 and UTF8?
GB2312 is a strict subset of GBK, which in turn is a strict subset of GB18030.
Windows CP936 originally only covers GB2312, but expanded to most of GBK since Win95.
GB2312 has 6763 Chinese characters.
...
- 8,725
5
votes
Different first stroke forms of 月 (yuè)
It's common for components to be drawn is multiple ways depending on their location in the characters. Compare 朋 阴 望 嬴 with 有 肓 育 肯 脊. Perhaps this distinction is more apparent when 衣 is used in ...
- 15.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Can someone provide a translation of this old HK smoking ad?
Long gone are the days when companies would advertise cigarettes
You can see the brand is "World" on the package, 金牌 (Gold medal) is a Chinese name created by the Hong Kong seller
- 77.1k
5
votes
Accepted
What does 飄過 mean in this context?
Actually in your context, the 飘过 is not it's official meaning. It's a kind of Network language. you can treat "飘过" here as "I'm just a passerby. What's going on right now has nothing to ...
- 1,242
5
votes
Accepted
When years are (or were) written using Hanzi numerals, what are the usual variants/options?
Today is 二零二三年十一月四日 (04- Nov-2023)
in 公曆 (Gregorian calendar) 2023 is a date, not a counting number, therefore, it is not written as 二千零二十三 as in $2023 (二千零二十三元)
壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖 mostly appear in cheques or ...
- 77.1k
4
votes
How to write "BiángBiáng麵" using pinyin?
Now Unicode has just supported it.
Click http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/, In detail, you can check this document https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-13.0/U130-30000.pdf.
- 41
4
votes
Stroke order of 㠭
It is a rarely used Chinese character. It has two pronunciation: "zhǎn" and "zhàn".
English meaning: to open, to stretch; to extend, to unfold; to dilate; to prolong.
The radical of 㠭 is 工, such as ...
- 327
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible