kiăm-siăp (stingy) and khiām-iŏng (thrifty)

[SimL]

But how to write a*3 (to bend our neck down) or a*7 (a kind of bun's filling) or e*1 嬰 (i*1 in my variant)?

Very well spotted, niuc!

As the "w-" and "y-" solution don't help these cases, there's yet another reason to reject them as components of a possible orthography for Hokkien (as if we didn't already have enough of them ). I wonder what the mainland dictionary where Andrew saw the "yni" solution does for the cases mentioned by niuc...

[Ah-bin]

That dictionary from China uses:

na for aⁿ
lna for na

It is the same spelling system as in that Amoy Hokkien book that I gave you (Sim). It has fallen out of favour in China though, most of the newly published dictionaries and new coursebooks prefer using IPA based systems and ~ to indicate nasalisation.

[SimL]

Oh, *that* ghastly system! I remember on the proponents (someone from an American university) was talking about it here on the Forum. Well, good that it's fallen out of favour in China then.

[niuc]

And many so-called "Traditional" kanji are themselves simplified versions of even more intensely "traditional" characters.

Amhoanna, do you mainly mean seal scripts yet also including 正體/楷書 e.g. 纔 -> 才, 臺 -> 台?
Is 台 in 臺灣 -> 台灣 considered 簡體 in Taiwan itself?

I want some fried face and some Hokkien face please.

If you have Microsoft Word it is easy to input the dot. Just go to “insert” then “symbol” and then when you find it on the table of characters.

Thanks a lot, Ah-bin, ciàⁿ-sìt-ke-duā-kuē_ë 正實加偌快兮!

[amhoanna]

Amhoanna, do you mainly mean seal scripts yet also including 正體/楷書 e.g. 纔 -> 才, 臺 -> 台?

What's a seal script? 台 and 才 may be a subset of what I'm talking about... We actually still know 纔 and 臺... We still see these hanji in print from time to time... But most of the iceberg lies submerged, creating this illusion of 正体字 being uniquely 正. Even just on the 異体字字典 http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/main.htm -- which doesn't seem to go all the way back to 甲骨 origins -- most characters have so many variants. Over half of the unfamiliar forms are more complicated than our 正体字. I'm guessing they're generally also older. This is just a guess. To the extent (i.e. percentage) that my guess is right, though, our 正体字 are actually 簡体字 themselves.

Is 台 in 臺灣 -> 台灣 considered 簡體 in Taiwan itself?

I think most TWese would consider it to be an alternative hanji, kind of like 線 and 綫 or 館 and 舘. On the other hand, 湾 would be considered 簡体, yet the 湾 form is everywhere, in writing, on khanpáng (shop signs), in ads, etc. ... but in full text, printed or typed, there's almost an instinctive, nationalistic insistence on 灣 as a FUBU marker (for us, by us).

[amhoanna]

And Ah-bin makes a good pt in bringing up the fonts. Using the right fonts, even PRC hanji "don't look that bad".

Hopefully hanji computing will be leaving "font hell" soon... I guess the problem starts with Microsoft Windows not shipping with more fonts. One kongsi has us all by the lānhu̍t.

In the same vein, has anybody here figured out how to blog in vertical hanji?

[SimL]

In the same vein, has anybody here figured out how to blog in vertical hanji?

I thought that was only for 對聯 .

[SimL]

That dictionary from China uses:

na for aⁿ
lna for na

It is the same spelling system as in that Amoy Hokkien book that I gave you (Sim). It has fallen out of favour in China though, most of the newly published dictionaries and new coursebooks prefer using IPA based systems and ~ to indicate nasalisation.

PS. I think this must be a different dictionary from the one Andrew mentioned, as the na/lna-system doesn't need y- and w- in order to use as (pseudo) initial consonants, so that nasalization can be written as an -n- after the initial consonant (Andrew's example was "yni"). In order of non-preference, I think "na/lna" would be my very least liked, followed by "yn-", "wn-". Any POJ- or TLPA-related one has my preference.

[AndrewAndrew]

Although I dislike 簡體字, there are times when the 簡體字 is the older and more attractive form. For example, 網 / 网 ("net") 眾 ／ 众 ("multitude")

I think the simplifiers missed some serious opportunities to revert to older characters that are simpler, e.g. from 畺 ("border" - you can see lines between rice fields) was derived 彊 ("strong", jiang sound + bow to denote meaning), and from that was rederived 疆 ("border" - qiang sound + earth to denote meaning)

A testament to the flexibility and capacity of Malaysian Chinese in the linguistic arena is the way that Malaysian Chinese newspapers use 繁體字 in the headings/titles and 簡體字 in the text, and people are expected to be able to read both!

[amhoanna]

I remember reading a newspaper in Sabah that had kánthé and hoânthé articles sitting side by side on the front page.

畺 is great, I think I'll use that. Another one is 从.

Then there's 艸.