The stroke 彎

[yakeyglee]

The origin of my question comes from a confession between the strokes 撇 and 彎. They both look identical to me when written on paper. What is the distinction between them? Also, sone lists of types of strokes used in Chinese characters neglect to list 彎, making me wonder if perhaps sometimes 撇 is used to name it in lieu since they're so similar. Any comments on this?

[Hofmann]

Same thing.

[chaussen]

as far as i know,'wan' is not considered a separate stroke like 'pie' or 'dian'.we would say the 2nd stroke of 'da' is 'pie',but never say it's 'wan'.

'wan' indicates only the bent part of some strokes.eg,shu-wan-gou is one large stroke that connects 'shu'(vertical stroke),'wan'(bent part) and 'gou'(something like a tick).so the 2nd stroke of 儿 is shu-wan-gou. the character 乙 has only one stroke called heng-zhe-wan-gou.etc

'heng','shu','pie','na','zhe' are the five basic types of strokes.there are other ways of categorizing though.'wan' is only found in some strokes which fall into the group of 'zhe'.

just my understandings.hope they help.

[yakeyglee]

Same thing.

Thanks for being specific. If they were exactly the same thing, they wouldn't have the same name. That much I have been able to deduce already, so really that response is of little help to me.

[small tree]

撇比较平滑 但是弯有明显的转折

撇 goes smoothly,while 弯 has obvious turn.

撇 丿

[Hofmann]

Would you believe that 直 and 豎 are different names for the same thing? If you do, you should also consider that 撇 and 彎 are the same thing.