Richard wrote:
>
> Hi! I just wrote to ask you something about this
> character:(U+2034B), C+2F403B) . It is located in the ren
> (person, man) bushou in this ccdict.It has 13 strokes in all
> and only 11 residual strokes.I really wonder what that
> character means, since von the left side after the ren
> bushou, a curved line with a dot on the top can be found. On
> the right part can be found the small triangle bushou
> together with the insect bushou at the lower part of it. I am
> also curious to know whether this character is a Chu Nom, a
> Japanese character, a korean one, or a Chinese one. I hope
> you can also scan some info about the character.
It is an unusual-looking character, and I think the part in the middle
column is the result of a uncompleted attempt to convert a cursive form
into a kai form, cf., the simplified form of 應, U+5E94, is the result of
converting 應 to cursive, and then converting back but taking only the
seven strokes that still remained in the cursive form.
The unihan.txt file lists the following:
--begin--
U+2034B kIRGKangXi 0116.041
U+2034B kIRG_TSource F-403B
U+2034B kRSKangXi 9.11
U+2034B kRSUnicode 9.11
--end--
The first line says that it would be on page 116 (modern page numbering
added to the corner of each page, not traditional numbering) of the _Kangxi
Zidian_ and would be placed after the 4th character, but is not actually in
that dictionary. (Lack of inclusion in the _Kangxi Zidian_ just means that
the character didn't exist circa 1716 when it was published, or the compilers
accidently or intentionally omitted it.)
The second line says that it is from plane 15 (F) of the 1986 edition of
Taiwan's CNS 11643 character set. Apparently it didn't make it into the
1992 edition. (There can be multiple kIRG* lines, but these don't necessarily
mean that the character only exists in those countries, e.g., U+203F9,
'man from a western country', is a variant of fo2 佛 'Buddha', is in Unicode
from a Japanese source, but the same character with an unsimplified 國,
which is not yet encoded as far as I know, can be found in Chinese sources,
such as the 1940s Mathews' dictionary.)
The third and fourth lines are pretty simple--the radical number and the
number of residual strokes in the _Kangxi Zidian_, and what radical/strokes
is adopted by Unicode (sometimes dictionaries differ).
I think the second line offers the largest clue. Plane 0x0F is not really an
integral part of the 1986 ed. of CNS 11643. The character is probably
redundant in some way, such as being the same as some other character
(perhaps you can take a guess at what the cursive form really is, and see
if that character is in Unicode?), or an obscure character like a name
character, or something not considered important, or a mistake, etc.
I see U+203A6, where the rightmost column is a bit different (but I think
within tolerable levels, cf., 強), but is 弓 written that way in cursive?
(Although you post this in the Chinese forum, and not the Cantonese forum,
I feel obliged to go on tangent and mention U+20372, since that is one of
the few characters in Extension B that I know, and is not uncommon. The
character used in Cantonese for the third person pronoun, keui5, is �,
is created by simplifying the phonetic portion U+20372 (渠 -> 巨), and
U+20372 is in turn 渠 expanded with a 人 radical. the use of 渠 'gutter;
drain' as a phonetic loan for the third person existed in ancient times--what
happened in Cantonese (and as I understand, also Hakka), is simply a
further and natural refinement of the character, turning it into a 形聲
character, and simplifying it. Tone #5 in Cantonese is a 陽上, which doesn't
match the pronunciation of 渠, keui4 in Cantonese, but this change is said
by some to be result of influence from the other pronouns ngo5 我 and nei5
你.)
> About the hanyu da zidian or the Kangxi Dictionary, sorry but
> I couldn't find
> any here in the Philippines. The only Chinese books that I
> can find here are the Ci hui and the Guo yu cidian.Do you
> know any person(s) who carries or sells the books here in the
> Philippines?
I don't know where I'd buy books if I were in the Philippines, but can
you order books from online stores in Asia, e.g., Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc?
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu