蟹 vs 蠏 (simp/trad in Pleco and MDBG)

[mungouk]

I just noticed this today...

 

xiè (crab) is 蠏 in traditional and 蟹 in simplified.

 

They both have the same number of strokes, and the same components even... they're just in a different order.

 

I wondered what the rationale or story behind this might be...?  Are there many examples of this kind of thing? What was the point?

 

 

[oceancalligraphy]

蟹 is used in traditional. 蠏 is a variant. 

[mungouk]

Really?  This is not what Pleco and MDBG are telling me.

 

[oceancalligraphy]

According to moedict.tw (which takes data from Taiwan Ministry of Education)

These are the entries for 蟹 https://www.moedict.tw/蟹  and 蠏 https://www.moedict.tw/蠏 

[mungouk]

Yes, I saw your link. It makes much more sense.

 

Wondering why MDBG and Pleco are showing them as Simp and Trad... is this an "error" in CC-CEDICT?

 

 

[889]

You can argue too whether there's any difference between 峰 and 峯.

[Tomsima]

can confirm, I have seen both used in traditional, but it's almost always 蟹

[oceancalligraphy]

In Pelco, I see the traditional entry as 蟹/蠏 for Pleco C-E and CC-CEDIT

I do have it characters set to traditional characters. Not sure if that makes a difference

[mungouk]

OK, my bad.... it looks like I've misunderstood Pleco, and that

 

蟹 [ - / 蠏 ]

 

actually means

 

simp [ no-different-trad-character / variant ]

 

(I have Pleco set to simplfied for my main character set.)

 

I couldn't actually find anything in the manual that confirms this though.

 

 

 

However, I still find MDBG's output confusing:

 

 

 

Why does it say 蟹 is a variant of 蟹？  And it's definitely showing 蠏 for traditional.

 

I've seen this a lot with MDBG, where it says X is a variant of X (exactly the same character)... is it a font thing maybe?

 

 

 

 

[calibre2001]

Hi,

 

Hope the explanation in the links below help

 

https://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/variants/rbt/word_attribute.rbt?quote_code=QTAzNjg3

 

https://www.zdic.net/hans/蟹

[mungouk]

Thanks @calibre2001 ... I don't understand much of the dense traditional Chinese text on those pages, but I did find it interesting to see in ZDIC that there are further very subtle variations, including in Japanese.

 

[calibre2001]

Basically , 蟹 is today’s standard character but with many variant characters (異體字) over the course of time. 蠏 too is a variant.

 

Historically, in the 2nd century character dictionary ( 說文解字 ), it only recorded a description of the structure of 蠏; there was no 蟹 (only appeared in a dictionary when Kangxi Dictionary was published).

[oceancalligraphy]

11 hours ago, mungouk said:

However, I still find MDBG's output confusing:

 

 

 

Why does it say 蟹 is a variant of 蟹？  And it's definitely showing 蠏 for traditional.

 

I've seen this a lot with MDBG, where it says X is a variant of X (exactly the same character)... is it a font thing maybe?

 

That's weird. I searched for traditional and got two results.

 

 

I guess what the simplified search comes up with is the second row of the traditional results, but going the opposite direction.

 

But why doesn't the first row of the traditional result have a simplified character? Is that why there's not a row with 'crab' as the English definition for the simplified character? 

 

I'm not familiar with MDBG. Do Pleco and MDBG share the same dictionary? Is that the reason for the '-' in Pleco when you have the settings set to simplified?

[Tomsima]

You could go down the rabbit hole and discover that nearly every common character has some sort of old variant. What we now call the standard form of a character may once have been the variant (eg 群 used to usually be written 羣, whereas now it's the other way round (in mainland at least). So every character that has a variant can also be called a variant itself, due to changing writing trends over the centuries

[mungouk]

On 5/8/2020 at 1:05 AM, oceancalligraphy said:

Do Pleco and MDBG share the same dictionary?

 

They both use CC-CEDICT, yes.  Pleco also has its own dictionary.

 

 

[oceancalligraphy]

On 5/9/2020 at 3:19 AM, mungouk said:

They both use CC-CEDICT, yes.  Pleco also has its own dictionary.

 

Ah, then I guess the dictionary might have the entry for 蟹 set up weird.