汽 vs 气

[daofeishi]

My teacher has taught me to write 汽车 for car/vehicle, but my Chinese friend consistently uses 气车 in his text messages. I can't find the latter in my dictionary, and I wonder whether it's a little used variant, or just a mistake on his part.

[monto]

汽车 is right for car/vehecle.

In Chinese 汽 is vapor/ steam, all the ideas come from the steam engine invented by watt, though things laterly seem have nothing to do with steam;

气： gas

[pandaxiongmao]

It is laziness most likely. Same pinyin for 'qi'. The meanings of 气 (air) and 汽 (gas, vapor) are similar, but not the same. 气 comes up before 汽 on my computer with pinyin input, if I don't continue to type 'qiche' before converting.

I often get text messages where the pinyin of the characters tell me the meaning, but the characters themselves are not correct. My friends do it for speed/laziness reasons.

[daofeishi]

Hmmm... If I search for 气车 in www.dict.cn, I get the translation "bus." What's the reason for that?

[roddy]

see here

[monto]

Hmmm... If I search for 气车 in www.dict.cn, I get the translation "bus." What's the reason for that?

Search result can not be considered as a evidence for rightness of any wording, because any mistake we can find the reason logically thereof is there.

气车 mistake usually ocurs in Pinyin input while 五笔 input has different typo.

[elevenWANG]

Maybe your friend mistaked it.Sometimes Chinese people write wrong word because it's easy to write,for example,歺厅（in fact 餐厅），仃车处（in fact 停车处),but the words are really wrong.

[self-taught-mba]

Because despite their attachment to characters, even the Chinese see the inefficiencies.

Should be the first. The dictionary will give you the definition only because it is meant to serve as a resource to find the word that was intended. A E-C dictionary will give the "proper" rendering when bus/car is entered.

Btw. Simplification does not necessarily equal laziness. By typing btw am I necessarily lazy btw? Disagree? Only smoke signals or stone tablet responses accepted..

--Typed.

[imron]

Typing btw is acceptable. Substituting 'u' for 'you', and 'r' for 'are', however, is a hanging offense

[self-taught-mba]

ur right.