羡 or 羨？

[kankanuk]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know if the second word 羨 is still used today? It is in traditional chinese and has 13 strokes which is slightly different to the simplified chinese which has 12 strokes? The traditional writing has an extra stroke on the bottom left hand side of the word. I would like to use the traditional method so I was wondering if this is still used?

Thanks for your help

kankanuk

[jbradfor]

羡 does not appear in the TW MOE dictionary, while 羨 does. So based on that I would assume that 羨 is correct whenever you are writing traditional.

[Lugubert]

Perapera-kun gives identical popups for the two.

PlecoDict has an entry for "羡/羨".

Wenlin seems to regard 羡 as the primary form, giving 羨 as a "variant of 羡", and states

The bottom was originally 氵(水 shuǐ) 'water' plus 欠 qiàn phonetic, which was an old form of 涎 xián 'saliva'.

...

The bottom is commonly written like 次 cì 'time', the left being 冫 two dots instead of 氵 three dots, but the form 羨 with three dots exists as a variant. Compare 盗 (or 盜) dào 'steal'.

[skylee]

Some more reference - The Taiwan MOE Variant Dictionary says that the one with three dots on the lower left is the correct form and the one with two dots on the lower left is a variant ->

http://140.111.1.40/yitia/fra/fra03224.htm

Also, the Hong Kong Education Bureau says that the word has 13 strokes -> http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/result.jsp?id=3202&sortBy=stroke&jpC=lshk

[jbradfor]

Perapera-kun gives identical popups for the two.

Just a small warning: perapera-kun (which I love) uses the CC-CEDICT (which I love and contribute to). However, in the past, they've had lots of errors wrt traditional characters. It is much improved, but I still wouldn't recommend it for the final word on simplified vs traditional forms. Although they are correct in this case. I recommend trusting the Taiwan MOE and the Hong Kong Education Bureau more.

[Jose]

This difference between the simplified and traditional standard forms is found in other characters. Besides 羡 and 盗, there's also at least 决, 况, 减, 凑, 凉, 冲 and 净. In all these cases the modern simplified form with two drops is regarded as a variant in the traditional system, where the standard form has the three-drop component. Another character that lost the three drops in the simplification process is 準, which has been eliminated from the simplified system and replaced by 准.

Something similar has happened with those characters that traditionally could alternate between 广 and 厂, like 廁, 廚, 廈 and 廠. In these cases the simplified form is based on the 厂 variant, whereas the current standard traditional form has 广.

[richwarm]

I searched around 3200 articles in Taiwan Panorama magazine and found that 羨慕 appears in 74 of them, while 羡慕 appears in none of the articles. Searching for just the single characters 羨 and 羡, there were 170 and 2 hits respectively.

[Hofmann]

In some cases, three dots could legally become two, such as 沖 and 況.

[iangreen]

Hofmann:

Legally according to which rules? (curious)

[Hofmann]

The writing rules (書法), based on descriptive linguistics. e.g. most instances of 況 have been written 况 since at least Northern Qi.