Most complicated chinese character seen?

[blob]

Hi all,

Just thought to ask, what is the most complicated chinese character (simplified or traditional) that you have ever seen, that is with the most number of strokes?

The one with the max strokes I've seen is with 3 traditional dragons, 1 on top, 2 at the bottom, I can't type chinese with the computer I'm using, but I've found a place where you can view it in http://www.zhongwen.com/zi.htm.

Just go to 16 strokes, and select the dragon. The very last character (pronounced ta4) is the 3 dragon word. It has a massive 48 strokes.

Apparently means the appearance of a dragon walking.

Anyone knows anymore really complicated ones?

[skylee]

I though there was one with four dragons (64 strokes). Thought I read it somewhere.

[skylee]

You can find that four-dragon character here.

[blob]

Thanks, I wonder how it is pronounced, what its meaning would be, and which text this can be seen. I wonder if the dictionary jinshanciba would have it, despite being mainly for simplified chinese.

[skylee]

That probably is an archaic character. You may be able to find it in 康熙字典 (try the library, or a bookshop).

[confucius]

The Chinese word for "snuffle" (nang) has nose on the left and a complicated mess on the right. Too many strokes for me to count, but it's easily found in most Chinese-English dictionaries.

[akdn]

The Chinese word for "snuffle" (nang) has nose on the left and a complicated mess on the right. Too many strokes for me to count, but it's easily found in most Chinese-English dictionaries.

nang4 = 齉

I make that 36 strokes.

Great word, by the way!

Here's the example sentence in the dictionary:

他感冒了，说话有点齉鼻儿．

He had a cold, and snuffled when he spoke.

[blob]

Great stuff, I didn't know about the nang4 word. Now I know

Anyway, the above-mentioned 3 dragon word is: 龘

I think it should be unicode, GB doesn't have this, but big5 does.

As for the 4 dragons, I think unicode has this. But my browser just shows ??.

It seems the few places that has this is in the hanyu da zidian, that 5-8 volume chinese dictionary, which I have no access to, nor do I have to the tang.zidian given earlier too. Oh well, otherwise, it would make an interesting "read" to find any other huge-stroke-number characters.

But I have a feeling the 4 dragons word be at the top.

Cheers everyone

[skylee]

I borrowed a 康熙字典 from a friend yesterday (it is/used to be THE family dictionary, I remember there was one at my folks when I was little) but strangely could not find the 4-dragon character. It has the 3-dragon one, though, and says its sound is "杳". Is it right? (I am not sure I understood that dictionary.)

[blob]

Hmm I think the sound is different to 杳, which is yao3 (unless my browser is displaying this wrongly, and it actually is another word)

Here is an explanation from a website (http://www.edu.tw/mandr/anser/k7.htm#q57)

「龘」一字之音為：〔玉篇〕音沓。

　　其釋義為：龍行也。〔玉篇〕龘，龍行也。

　（參考資料：《中文大辭典》，第十冊，中國文化大學印行，p1179）

Interestingly, while we are in the 3-4 word many strokes characters, there is one with 3 horses:

「驫」一字之音為：

　　　甲、〔廣韻〕甫烋切〔集韻〕悲幽切。

　　　乙、〔廣韻〕甫遙切〔集韻〕卑遙切。

　　　丙、〔集韻〕仕戢切。

其釋義為：(1)眾馬也。〔說文〕驫，眾馬也。從三馬。

　　　　　(2)眾馬走也。〔玉篇〕驫，走貌。〔集韻〕驫，眾馬走也。

　　　　　(3)水名。與飄同。〔康熙字典〕驫，與飄同，水名。

　　　　　(4)與"馬集"同。〔集韻〕驫，"馬集"或從集。

which is quite interesting too.

[skylee]

Yeah, it could be "沓" not "杳" (they do look similar, don't they?).

[tetsuo500]

When I was staying in Nanchang (南昌） in Jiangxi (江西) province, there was a vegetable that we ate often. Everyone told me that variety of vegetable only grows in Poyang lake. They said the character for it is really complicated. I asked them to show me the character, but no one knew how to write it. I ｗｉｓｈ　Ｉ could remember what it was called.

[wix]

I always thought the character for "turtle" was the most complicated (at least in the traditional form). It is made difficult by the fact that it is a single radical.

[skylee]

Just checked my dictionary. The radical with the most strokes is not 龍 (dragon, 16 strokes) or 龜 (turtle, 16 strokes), but 龠 (a musical instrument, 17 strokes).

HA!!

[blob]

Ahh.. yes, but, there are only a few characters that have this "radical" (it is so complicated i wonder why they still call it a radical). I know of 3. The flute itself,

龢 (he2) - calm, peaceful, etc.

and more complicated:

龤 (xie2) - to agree/harmonize/accord with.

Dragon still wins out I think.

[edit:

Can we use the size tags for very complicated characters - don't know about you, but otherwise I just can't see them. I've done the ones in this post, example below.

[size=24]龢[/size]

Roddy]

[ax]

I've discussed about complicated character with a chinese friend. I actually asked about how to use the 難 [nan2] key on 倉頡 [cang4jie2] IME. She told me that a character is called difficult not because of the number of stroke. According to her 馨 [xin1] is considered difficult. I guess the four dragon is not a difficult one if it exist. Dragon is pretty easy character made of 立[li4] 肉[rou4] 卜[bu3] 己[ji3] and 三[san1].

if you can breakdown a character that way, no chinese character is complex enough :-)

I'm planning to make a wildcard for my squabble. And the card will be called 難部 [nan2bu4] - Difficult Element. Because of the vague definition of what is difficult, I'm going to draw the line somewhere that an element is considered difficult when it has 12 strokes or above.

Anyway analyze characters below:

龘 鸞 龞 鸚

癵 戇 钀 饢

鬱 麤 鱻 爩

爨 灥 籲 龠

鶘 鸝 籱 靐

麤 龗

I just check out 康熙[kangxi], and found a characters I couldn't type. The four dragons mentioned above I couldn't type. Another character I couldn't type is [hu1] three little pigs 豕豕豕 [shi3] under 雚 [guan1] on the left and a 鳳 on the right totaling to 48 strokes.

ax

squabblemaker

www.yoop.ch/~anton/csmanuals.html

[tsp_uk]

Could somebody tell me how to write the character 龜?

I've tried searching for websites showing the stroke-order but couldn't find this character.

Many thanks!

[nipponman]

These are some of my favorite characters.

龢 龤 麤

I consider these two to be variants of 和諧and 粗respectively, and use them rather than their simpler variants.

[Mugi]

Not the most complicated character, but surely the one with the most strokes!

Taito

Granted, it's not a "Chinese" Chinese character, but rather a Japanese-made Hanzi (和製漢字 or 国字 in Japanese). Impressive nonetheless though.

[pandaxiongmao]

There is a discussion of that 84-stroke 「たいと」character here:

http://f7.aaa.livedoor.jp/~kanji/strokes.html

Apparently it has not been proven to be a real character yet.The character itself was a family name on a business card, but that business card was last seen decades ago. The family name itself hasn't been found in any official registry.