Variant Chinese characters
Chinese characters may have several variant forms—visually distinct glyphs that represent the same underlying meaning and pronunciation. Variants of a given character are allographs of one another, and many are directly analogous to allographs present in the English alphabet, such as the double-storey ⟨a⟩ and single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩ variants of the letter A, with the latter more commonly appearing in handwriting. Some contexts require usage of specific variants.
Variant character | |||||||||||||
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![]() Regional variants of the character | |||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | |||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 异体 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | variant character form | ||||||||||||
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Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | |||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | |||||||||||||
Literal meaning | alternative form | ||||||||||||
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Second alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | |||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | |||||||||||||
Literal meaning | or form | ||||||||||||
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Third alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Chinese | |||||||||||||
Literal meaning | alternative writing | ||||||||||||
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Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||
Vietnamese alphabet | chữ dị thể | ||||||||||||
Hán-Nôm | 𡨸 | ||||||||||||
Korean name | |||||||||||||
Hangul | 이체자 | ||||||||||||
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Japanese name | |||||||||||||
Kanji | |||||||||||||
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Nature of variants [edit]
Before the 20th century, variation in the shape of characters was ubiquitous, a dynamic which continued after the invention of woodblock printing. For example, prior to the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) the character meaning 'bright' was written as either
New variants also result from larger shifts in the writing system as a whole, such as the process of libian and liding that resulted in the clerical script. According to the palaeographer Qiu Xigui, the broadest trend in the evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape (
There are variants that arise through the use of different radicals to refer to specific definitions of a polysemous character. For instance, the character 雕 could mean either 'a type of hawk' or 'carve'. Variants using different radicals to specify thus developed: 鵰 with a ⿃ 'BIRD' radical and 琱 with a ⽟ 'JADE'.
In rare cases, two characters in ancient Chinese with similar meanings were confused and conflated when their modern Chinese readings have merged, for example,
Orthodoxy[edit]
Character forms that are most orthodox are known as orthodox variants (
Orthodox and vulgar forms may only differ by the length or location of individual strokes, whether certain strokes intersect, or the presence or absence of minor strokes (dots). These are often not considered to amount to being discrete variants. For instance,
Regional standards[edit]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Chinese_standard_variants_samples.svg/130px-Chinese_standard_variants_samples.svg.png)
Character variant exist throughout every writing system that uses Chinese characters, including written Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Several governments of countries that speak these languages have standardized their writing systems by specifying certain variants as the standard form. The choice of which variants to use has resulted in some bifurcation of written Chinese between simplified and traditional forms. The standardization of simplified forms in Japan was distinct from the process in mainland China.
The standard character forms of each region are described in:
- The Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for mainland China
- The List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters for Hong Kong
- The Standard Form of National Characters for Taiwan
- The list of jōyō kanji for Japan
- The Kangxi Dictionary in Korea
Use in computing[edit]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/%E5%8A%8D-variants.svg/180px-%E5%8A%8D-variants.svg.png)
- On the left side, 僉, 㑒 and 佥 qiān are allographs of the same phonetic component.
- On the right side, 刂 'KNIFE', 釒 'GOLD', and
刃 'blade edge' are each distinct signific components used by the different variants. 刄 is an allograph of刃 .
Unicode deals with variant characters in a complex manner, as a result of the process of Han unification. In Han unification, some variants that are nearly identical between Chinese-, Japanese-, Korean-speaking regions are encoded in the same code point, and can only be distinguished using different typefaces. Other variants that are more divergent are encoded in different code points. On webpages, displaying the correct variants for the intended language is dependent on the typefaces installed on the computer, the configuration of the web browser and the language tags of web pages. Systems that are ready to display the correct variants are rare because many computer users do not have standard typefaces installed and the most popular web browsers are not configured to display the correct variants by default. The following are some examples of variant forms of Chinese characters with different code points and language tags.
Chinese | Japanese | Korean | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Mainland | Taiwan | Hong Kong | ||
匯滙 | 匯滙 | 匯滙 | 匯滙 | 匯滙 |
The following examples have the same code points, but different language tags. However language tags rarely work correctly to get the expected forms from text renderers (e.g. in the table below where all rendered glyphs may look the same).
Chinese | Japanese | Korean | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Mainland | Taiwan | Hong Kong | ||
及 | 及 | 及 | 及 | 及 |
Instead, the Unicode standard allows encoding these variants as variation sequences,[3] by appending a variation selector (a glyph-less non-spacing mark) to the standard CJK unified ideograph (it also works directly inside plain text, without needing to use any rich text format to select the appropriate language or script, and allows easier and more selective control when the same language/script combination needs several variants). The list of valid variation sequences is standardized by Unicode, defined in the Ideographic Variation Database (IVD),[4][5] part of the Unicode Characters Database (UCD),[6] and it is expansible without reencoding new code points in the UCS (and since the Unicode versions where variation selectors were encoded and the IVD established, it's no longer needed to encode any new compatibility ideograph to render them; the two blocks CJK Compatibility Ideographs in the BMP and CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement in the SIP are now frozen since Unicode 4.1, except to fix a few past mistakes that were forgotten during the Han unification process for the review of normative sources).[7]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^
玄 is not written completely in the Kangxi Dictionary due to the naming taboo prohibiting writing the characters of an Emperor's given name.玄 , as well as all compounds using it as a component, lack the final dot stroke. The final vertical stroke in 燁 is also omitted.
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
- ^ Bökset 2006, p. 19.
- ^ Qiu 2000, pp. 44–45.
- ^ "Variation Sequences; FAQ". Unicode Consortium.
- ^ "Ideographic Variation Database". Unicode Consortium.
- ^ "UTS #37, Unicode Ideographic Variation Database". Unicode Consortium.
- ^ "Unicode Character Database, Standard Annex #44". Unicode Consortium. Explains the different character properties.
- ^ "Unicode® Standard Annex #45, U-Source Ideograph". Unicode Consortium.
Works cited[edit]
- Bökset, Roar (2006), Long Story of Short Forms: The Evolution of Simplified Chinese Characters (PDF), Stockholm East Asian Monographs, vol. 11, Stockholm University, ISBN 978-9-162-86832-1, archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-12-02, retrieved 2024-03-12
- Qiu Xigui (裘锡
圭 ) (2000) [1988], Chinese Writing, translated by Gilbert L. Mattos; Norman, Jerry, Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, ISBN 978-1-557-29071-7 異體 字 字典 [Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants] (in Chinese), Academica Sinica, 2017