And you thought biáng was complicated... (more weird characters)

[naturegirl]

Just came over a site with 22 of the most difficult and/or strange Chinese characters.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46e815bb01000bw8.html

The site is in Chinese, but it's fascinating to see what weird characters exist or used to exist.

For example 一 (one) used to be written like this:

Or the original version of 雷 (thunder)

Betcha, the thunder was over before you finished writing it..

The mouth 口 used to be triangular... well but then people ate more and got bigger mouths, or what?

Nothing left to say here...

But check out the site yourself!

*add* Title explanation: biáng is one of the most complicated Chinese characters still in use today. There are the biang biang noodles from shanxi (Shaanxi, shǎn xī，陕西) province. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles

[yonglin]

Biang2 biang2 noodles are native to Shaanxi （陕西）, not Shanxi （山西）.

It should be noted that there is also a simplified version of the biang2 character in use, i.e., were 長 is replaced by 长, 馬 by 马, etc. I found this quite hilarious. I would have thought 乂 on top of 辶 would have been an appropriate simplification....... .

[naturegirl]

yonglin wrote

Biang2 biang2 noodles are native to Shaanxi （陕西）, not Shanxi （山西）.

Oh, I never noticed that you could also differ their pronunciation in pinyin...

[muyongshi]

Well it's not pinyin...it's just the way it was romanized as a place name...

[yonglin]

Well it's not pinyin...it's just the way it was romanized as a place name...

Fair enough, but if you're omitting the tone and writing "Shanxi", I take for granted that you are writing in English, rather than in pinyin. Either English or pinyin works for me.

[muyongshi]

Fair enough, but if you're omitting the tone and writing "Shanxi", I take for granted that you are writing in English, rather than in pinyin. Either English or pinyin works for me.

I agree with you on that, especially when it comes to place names....