Question regarding some simplified vs traditional forms

[davoosh]

Recently I have been trying to get into the habit of handwriting traditional and I have noticed some small differences between characters.

For example 兑 vs 兌

Do people who tend to write traditional make this small distinction, or is it simply a printed variant?

(By handwriting, I mean the (semi-)cursive form which people use in their daily handwriting.)

Also, what about '詹' here it is displayed with 八 as the 5th and 6th strokes, whereas some fonts have something which looks more like 儿. How would you handwrite it?

Is there a list of such variants/simplifications anywhere?

[Gharial]

Apparently the fonts that used to be used in printing were at odds with the actual handwritten variants, and it wasn't until 1964 that the mainland government published a "List of Chinese Character Forms for General Printing" containing the 6,196 Song style characters we are familiar with nowadays. (I'm not sure that it makes much sense to view them as simplified versus traditional forms rather than simply typeface differences when there is little or no difference in stroke number or order, but one dictionary that always presents them as such, which may of course be helpful for our purposes here, is the Far East C-E Dictionary (远东汉英大辞典(简明本)) published in Taiwan).

Yin & Rohsenow's Modern Chinese Characters (from which the above unbracketed info was drawn) has 9 pages (pp 112-120) of discussion and examples, but the charts of old versus new font forms included in some dictionaries (such as the Xinhua, and the ABC ECCE) are usually more than sufficient. An example of one can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/32r6wet .

Then, there is always Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Xin_Zixing

Regarding 詹, I believe it should be written with 八 rather than 儿 as its 5th and 6th strokes, as per the modern font.

Lastly, I'm not sure if this is an issue here, but any non-standard variants displayed on one's PC are sometimes due to gaps or shortcomings in one's font set-up and/or software, or in that of the sites one visits.

[davoosh]

Interesting! I wonder if anyone from HK/Taiwan, or people who have experience with writing in these places could tell us how they handwrite (or were taught to handwrite) such characters?

[Hofmann]

Do people who tend to write traditional make this small distinction, or is it simply a printed variant?

Most people use one or the other universally. However, if they're writing in Traditional Chinese, it is likely that they learned it from Taiwan where this (Note ハ on top) is standard, or Hong Kong where 兑 is standard. In 行書, it is most often that ハ is on top and the 口 is replaced by 厶, sometimes with the dot linking to the next stroke 丿.

Also, what about '詹' here it is displayed with 八 as the 5th and 6th strokes, whereas some fonts have something which looks more like 儿. How would you handwrite it?

It is 儿 without the hook, as is standard in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is the case in both 楷書 and 行書.

The reason why you see characters here like this is because your browser is configured to use a Mainland standard font (most likely SimSun), which renders all characters (including Traditional) according to the Mainland Chinese type styles.

[jbradfor]

Gharial, thanks for that link to 新字形. I didn't know what it was called, so I couldn't even look it up.

It also lead me to this wikipedia page, which lists different characters using different language tags. Very interesting. On my system, I apparently do have it setup to have different fonts for different languages (for the same unicode code point). I don't know quite how I did this.... I do wish that page had some graphics on how it "should" look.

[davoosh]

Does anybody know of an (online) dictionary or resource which uses the traditional forms as learnt in handwriting (as opposed to font-only differences), for example, so I know whether 内 has a 人or 入 inside (I've seen both....)?

That wiki page about the different language tags, chrome is displaying them all the same, but IE is displaying them differently!

[Hofmann]

jbradfor is probably not using Chrome, which doesn't respond to language tags.

Does anybody know of an (online) dictionary or resource which uses the traditional forms as learnt in handwriting (as opposed to font-only differences)

http://9610.com/zidian/index.htm You'll have to search in Simplified Chinese, which sometimes yields different characters as a result of many-to-few simplification. They're far from complete and occasionally wrong.

[jbradfor]

Does anybody know of an (online) dictionary or resource which uses the traditional forms as learnt in handwriting

If you want an overload, you can also check out TW MOE's variant dictionary. It's a bit hard to use (no search, for example), and you might need to manually change your browser encoding to Big-5, and it of course gives the Taiwan standard.

Here's the entry for 兌, for example.

[OneEye]

Does anybody know of an (online) dictionary or resource which uses the traditional forms as learnt in handwriting (as opposed to font-only differences), for example, so I know whether 内 has a 人or 入 inside (I've seen both....)?

It's a 入, both traditionally and in the Taiwanese standard (and, I assume, the Hong Kong and Japanese standards as well). In simplified Chinese, it's 人. I have no idea why. It does nothing to simplify the character, and as far as I can tell, it has always been 入 (說文 says 入也從冂自外而入也). Maybe this is why some people call them 殘體字.

[skylee]

The OP might find this helpful -> http://www.edu.tw/files/site_content/M0001/bishuen/c8.htm?open

[Hofmann]

内 is standard in Japan, and it is not a creation of Japanese Shinjitai or Simplified Chinese. 內 in 楷書 have been written this way since at least the Jin (晉) dynasty, and probably since the Three Kingdoms when 楷書 was developed. 內 is illegal because there should be nothing right of a 捺 (㇏). Writing the 入 with 反捺 might be marginally legal but never occurs.

[OneEye]

Good things to know, thanks.