Looking for a certain character

[sightless]

Hi. I'm a bit stuck and hoping someone can help...

I am trying to type the chinese character that can be seen here:

but I have no idea how. In fact, even when I search by radicals and so on, I can't find it in Unicode! I am told it is an old form of 你 though that seems slightly dubious to me (the context is a song where the word refers to god, so I suspect there is some distinction being drawn). It seems to me to be equivalent to 祢 as it has a different form of the radical in the left, and the page

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A5%A2

for that character refers to KangXi page 842 character 10 shown here

http://www.kangxizidian.com/kangxi/0842.gif

which is written like the character I want.

I don't really want to to find an alternative equivalent form, though--I want to find the actual character! So...does somebody know of a font (preferably a free one, but I'm not too fussed) that contains this character, and what code I could use to enter it, etc.? Or even more helpfully, what encoding scheme the character can be found in and where to get fonts using that sceme? Sorry it's a bit of a technical question!

Anyway here is the character again:

Really hoping somebody can help me here!

Ben.

P.S. I don't really know any Chinese...I learnt it over 10 years ago at Primary School, but that's it...so I'm pretty much guessing when it comes to the language-related stuff...

[muyongshi]

What you are looking at is not an old form of anything it is a "created" word for the you form of God. Brought in by the early missionaries and now mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There should be some other posts on this in here somewhere...

[OracleBone]

祢

traditional form: 禰

pinyin: mí

(1) 奉祀死父的宗庙 [temple]。如:祢庙(父庙。或称考庙);祢祖(父与祖的庙)

(2) 古代军旅之事,常载神主而行,随行神主称弥 [god in the army]

侯氏裨冕,释历于祢。——《仪礼》

(3) 姓

1. a word that the descendants call their dead father.

2. the temple where the descendants offer sacrifices to their dead father.

3. the spritual tablet of God in the army.

4. surname

[muyongshi]

It seems to me to be equivalent to 祢 as it has a different form of the radical in the left, and the page

祢

traditional form: 禰

pinyin: mí

The character you are talking about is not this 祢 and from the pictures you gave the radical is not different on the left they are the same....just different forms of writing a 示字旁

In the song you listened to if it is talking about god they may have used the character you provided in the picture and has the same meaning of 你 or 妳 but by adding the 示字旁 it is drawing a distinction to refer to deity. 禰 is a different character than the "ni". Hard to explain as I don't have the character either...

[sightless]

Hi again, and thanks very much for the responses. I am still confused, but learning more and more as I get information from more and more people! For this post I will use PIC to refer to the character I gave the picture of, since I can't type it!

So, first let me see if I've got these things right:

(1) PIC is completely equivalent in terms of writing to 祢. It contains exactly the same radicals, just in a varied form of writing. Correct?

(2) However, the meaning of PIC is not the meaning of 祢 because PIC was actually invented by missionaries as a modified form of 你. As such, it is not equivalent to 祢, even though they have the same radicals, because PIC has this jargon meaning.

(3) So I can't replace PIC by 祢 because they have different meanings, despite having the same radicals.

(4) Neither can I replace PIC by 你 because that removes the distinction the author was trying to make by using the fancy God word.

(5) The Traditional form of 祢 is 禰.

However, I still have a couple of points of confusion...continuing the numbering...

(6) If PIC was invented by missionaries, yet Simplified Chinese not introduced until last century, how come PIC appears in the KangXi dictionary? Surely KangXi must have Traditional forms, so it should have 禰 or the same with the other variant of the radical at the left, not PIC? What does the definition in KangXi say for PIC? Is it the missionary definition?! I wouldn't have thought so...

I'd be very much obliged if you'd let me know whether my points 1-5 are correct, and have a go answering 6. Or whichever of them you're able to address!

Thanks so much,

Ben.

[sightless]

And of course, let's say (7), I'd still love to hear from anybody who can enlighten me on how to type this thing, as points (3) and (4) basically mean I need to find it, as I can't replace it!

Smiles,

Ben.

[muyongshi]

No they are slightly different in their written form......the one that means temple for a dead father is 祢 notice how it doesn't have a "gou" stroke on the "shu" like in 尔 That's where the difference is. Still can't help with the typing part though sorry.

[roddy]

Microsoft word

Type or paste in 祢

Set font to Gungsu, Gulim, Batam, or Dotum.

Not sure if you'll have those fonts - I didn't install them but I may have picked them up along the way.

Hope that's what you are looking for - to be honest I didn't bother reading the above discussion, I just started looking for the character

[sightless]

Thanks, muyongshi. OK, cool. So (1) and (2) were mostly wrong. (3) and (4) were mostly right. (5) was right. OK. I'm confident I understand that stuff now. Thanks a lot.

Now, this doesn't matter, but I'm curious. Can anyone explain what on earth is it in KangXi?! A Simplified form in 1716?! Though the right hand side of the character in KangXi looks exactly the same for 妳 and 祢 which is interesting in itself. Anyone know why that is? Did characters start simple, get complex, and then get Simplified again?

Hmmm. Actually, maybe I should take back that part about understanding it. I'm interested to see this webpage

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=%E7%A5%A2#

which seems to have the character written with that stroke as in PIC. Though it seems to have both words/meanings listed. Maybe the distinction between the strokes is a recent thing.

All this is interesting, and I'm enjoying it, but still not getting further towards my goal! Anyone out there know how I can type that little fella, or what encoding/font I can find it in?

Grins,

Ben.

[sightless]

G'day, Roddy, and thanks for the pointer. I don't have those fonts, particularly as I'm on a Mac, and I do need to find a cross platform solution, but it is interesting to note that they appear to be Korean fonts. So that seems to be the way to get this character--resort to Korean! It looks like at least one of the fonts is freely downloadable, so I will try that, and also look for Korean fonts on my system and see if I can get it happening! I'll let you know how I go!

Ben.

[sightless]

Sadly, no, it didn't work. Neither the Korean fonts on my system nor those I can download which have similar names to yours

ftp://ftp.mizi.com/pub/baekmuk/

seem to have that character. Certainly don't get it by changing the font of 祢.

Any other ideas anyone? It was looking so promising for a moment there!

Ben.

[imron]

Do you use bootcamp and/or parallels? If so you can just copy the font from the windows partition.

[OracleBone]

(1) PIC is completely equivalent in terms of writing to 祢. It contains exactly the same radicals, just in a varied form of writing. Correct?

I think 祢 is PIC and PIC is 祢.

(2) However, the meaning of PIC is not the meaning of 祢 because PIC was actually invented by missionaries as a modified form of 你. As such, it is not equivalent to 祢, even though they have the same radicals, because PIC has this jargon meaning.

I don't think PIC is invented by missionaries, because PIC is completely equivalent to 祢. in other words, I'm sure that 祢 is always printed in the form of PIC in ancient books.

(3) So I can't replace PIC by 祢 because they have different meanings, despite having the same radicals.

祢 is PIC and PIC is 祢, so there is no problem with replacing one by another one.

(4) Neither can I replace PIC by 你 because that removes the distinction the author was trying to make by using the fancy God word.

(5) The Traditional form of 祢 is 禰.

it seems that both 祢 and 禰 are used in ancient books.Maybe 祢 was used by late ancient Chinese of the Ming or Qing Dynasty(not by the CCP after 1949） as a simplified form of 禰 , because 祢 isn't found in another ancient dictionary Shuo Wen Jie Zi说文解字 which was completed in Han Dynasty and earlier than Kang Xi Zi Dian康熙字典 almost 1,600 years.But it's no doubt that 禰 has been completely replaced by 祢 in modern simplified Chinese.

there is the explanation of 祢 in Kang Xi dictionary, which I find in another website:

http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE7ZdicA5ZdicA2.htm

【午集下】【示字部】 祢

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

【集韻】乃禮切，音(革+爾)。【揚雄·蜀都賦】宗厥祖祢。【字彙補】同禰。

（禰）【廣韻】奴禮切【集韻】【韻會】乃禮切【正韻】乃里切，(革+爾)音瀰。【說文】親廟也。【增韻】父廟曰禰。【公羊傳·隱元年秋七月註】生稱父，死稱考，入廟稱禰。【疏】禰字示旁爾，言雖可入廟是神示，猶自最近於已，故曰禰。　又行主亦曰禰。【禮·文王世子】其在軍則守於公禰。【註】公禰，行主也，行以遷主言禰，在外親也。　又地名。【詩·邶風】飮餞于禰。　又姓。魏禰衡。○按公禰，註疏讀如字，不必依??澔讀作祧，《字彙》乃據此入蕭韻，非也。

"乃禮切" or "奴禮切" or "乃里切" means the right pronunciation of 祢 should be ni3, just the same as 你. However, "音瀰" means 祢 can also be pronunciated as mi3.

There are some confusions here, but you should know that the evolution of the pronunciations of Chinese characters is very very complicated, most of the Chinese characters in mandarin have totally different pronunciations in the ancient time.

"生稱父，死稱考，入廟稱禰" means: One's father should be called 父 when he is alive and should be called 考 after he is dead, and should be called 禰 when his spiritual tablet has been brought in the family's temple.

So I think:

1.祢 is PIC and PIC is 祢.

2.Long before the CCP releases the standard of the modern simplified Chinese after 1949, 祢 has been used as a simplefied form of 禰 for several centuries.

3.In ancient time, 祢 or 禰 may have two different pronunciations, ni3 and mi3.

4.Because it can be pronunciated like 你 and means the dead father whose spiritual tablet lies in the family's temple, 祢 was more recently used as the God or some deity else by some missionaries in the religious books. In this situation, the meaning of 祢 just likes 你.

[sightless]

Imron, thanks for the thought. Between my last post and reading yours I did check a Windows machine belonging to a family member. It doesn't have those fonts so I am no better off, I'm afraid.

OracleBone, thanks a heap for the informative reply. I will sit down at some later stage and look at it more thoroughly, though I've already got a lot out of it at a first read. I will keep 祢 in mind and use it or 你 (probably prefer 祢 though I may consult some nearer Chinese people before deciding) as a last resort.

I would still prefer to print it in the form of PIC, though, so if anyone is out there with an idea of how to get it, I'm still keen to hear it!

[imron]

It doesn't have those fonts so I am no better off, I'm afraid.

They are standard fonts that come with windows, but you will probably need to make sure that the windows machine has installed font support for east asian languages.

You can do this under start->control panel->regional and language settings, then click on the languages tab, and select "install files for east asian languages" (you will need the Windows XP CD to do this).

I think 祢 is PIC and PIC is 祢.

Yes, sightless, the best way to think of this is how sometimes the letter g will be written "g" and sometimes it will be written "g". They are both the same, even though they look different.

[sightless]

I'm afraid installing the fonts isn't an option. :-( The PC I have access to is a work PC (laptop) that comes with XP preinstalled. Big site license kind of thing. No disks provided. And evidently it isn't installed with those fonts. Hmmm. I will keep investigating...I might be able to dig up the fonts from somewhere. It should be legit enough. Or purchase a copy perhaps, if I can find the original vendor. Hmmmm.

Still...other solutions welcome...if none is forthcoming I will keep exploring this option, though...

[OracleBone]

There are some characters like 祈禧福禮(礼)祝 which were printed as similar forms of PIC in a old fashion book published in nearly 1890s. The author of the book is a outstanding general of Qing Dynasty who dedicated his life to fight with the Taiping Rebels, the content of the picture is from his diary.

Can you see this picture? If not, I will try to choose another web album to show it:

http://img5.tianya.cn/photo/2007/11/8/5580704_2154632.gif