I'm no expert, but it was described to me years ago by native Chinese speakers that many of the characters are written like that 🤩 "Man", "woman", "cart", "gate/door", etc. Pictograph origins🖖🏼.
So one the unique things about 月 is it contains several other character depending the context. In this case, 月 represents 肉 or flesh. My interpretation of the character is the bones that suspends flesh.
Here's more context specific transformations of 月 in other characters
another one i'm a bit blown away by but might not be totally accurate
狗
Guo, for dog, is like a dog lieing down, 犭, the character for mouth, 口 and the character meaning 'wrap' 勹, like your arms wrapped around your mouth talking to a dog, who obviously understands you
I also really like
看
kàn meaning 'to look', which is the character for hand 手 above the character for eye 目 🫡
I've been practaticing a lot this year and I'm finally starting to get some of this to click
It's a Unicode CJK variant. There are a bunch of characters that Unicode considers to be the same character but with small regional differences (e.g. how it's written in Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Japan vs. Korea, etc.). Since the region isn't encoded in the character, you're seeing whatever your system locale and font default to. For web pages, you can specify the region inside the HTML or HTTP headers and hopefully you get the correct character rendering, but that also requires you to have a font installed that includes the variant.
A lot of characters in Asian languages look like the thing the symbol represents. Can't remember which language it was, but it has characters for "house," "home," and "family" that all look like slight variations to a simple drawing of a house.
There are thousands of Asian languages. Chinese and Japanese are the only languages that still use a logographic system. Korean also uses Chinese characters but only for special purposes, like academia.
43 Comments
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 25 pts · 76d
I'm no expert, but it was described to me years ago by native Chinese speakers that many of the characters are written like that 🤩 "Man", "woman", "cart", "gate/door", etc. Pictograph origins🖖🏼.
Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 76d
heres those kanji for reference:
Person: 人
Man: 男
Woman: 女
Cart: 車
Gate: 門
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 75d
@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com Thanks! 🤩🖖🏼
Also, is "man" essentially a field character atop a sword/weapon one?
Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 75d
I think the lower part カ I think means power, so field power, ie. A man has the power to plow a field
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 75d
Ah! I had them mixed up, as sword seems a very close relative: 刀 vs. カ
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 75d
How bout 未 vs 末 ?
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 75d
Isn't that Waymo? 🤪 Ah, good ol' End/Not Future. What a prescient malaprop.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml · 24 pts · 76d
That little top part (冎) is the how it was originally drawn. It's supposed to look like a bone. It's more pronounced in the earlier drawings.
The bottom part (which is the kanji for moon and month) as a radical often means something like "flesh", and is present in the kanji for body parts.
So I don't think the whole thing was intended to be the pictograph of a skellington, or at least can't say for sure.
jdr@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 76d
That's what all 203 of my bones look like anyway
chellomere@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 76d
AlfalFaFail@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 75d
So one the unique things about 月 is it contains several other character depending the context. In this case, 月 represents 肉 or flesh. My interpretation of the character is the bones that suspends flesh.
Here's more context specific transformations of 月 in other characters
manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 75d
黽 黾
měng is a Chinese character for frog or toad
another one i'm a bit blown away by but might not be totally accurate
狗
Guo, for dog, is like a dog lieing down, 犭, the character for mouth, 口 and the character meaning 'wrap' 勹, like your arms wrapped around your mouth talking to a dog, who obviously understands you
I also really like
看
kàn meaning 'to look', which is the character for hand 手 above the character for eye 目 🫡
I've been practaticing a lot this year and I'm finally starting to get some of this to click
pianoplant@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 76d
Odd that the 'head' is mirrored. The real kanji is 骨。agree it looks like a lil skeleton guy though.
nagaram@piefed.social · 39 pts · 76d
Am I loosing it?
It looks the same. Not mirrored at all
CyberSeeker@discuss.tchncs.de · 20 pts · 76d
Here is an example of stroke order, showing the phone kanji is backwards.
https://jitenon.com/kanji/%E9%AA%A8
gid@piefed.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 76d
Thank you! I couldn't work out how it was backwards when every version I saw of it looked the same.
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 76d
Losing*, ironically. 😜
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 76d
No, they're tightening it.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 14 pts · 76d
Weird, both versions seem to exist.
Wiktionary
dosboy0xff@infosec.pub · 11 pts · 76d
It's a Unicode CJK variant. There are a bunch of characters that Unicode considers to be the same character but with small regional differences (e.g. how it's written in Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Japan vs. Korea, etc.). Since the region isn't encoded in the character, you're seeing whatever your system locale and font default to. For web pages, you can specify the region inside the HTML or HTTP headers and hopefully you get the correct character rendering, but that also requires you to have a font installed that includes the variant.
https://www.typotheque.com/articles/understanding-cjk-regional-character-variants
pianoplant@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 75d
Fascinating, thanks!
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 8 pts · 76d
Google translate shows the character backwards, for some reason.
pianoplant@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 76d
Seems simplified Chinese uses that version. But Kanji is Japanese.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 0 pts · 76d
Japanese: 骨
Simplified: 骨
Andonome@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 76d
This is what I see.
belluck@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 76d
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 76d
Try ⾻ (ideograph U+2FBB) vs. 骨 (CJK "bone" used in Asian Typography, different Asian fonts may show differently).
::: spoiler screenshot table from Wikitionary
:::
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 75d
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 75d
Probably a Japanese or Korean font. 過 probably shows up on the right as well for you.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 75d
Samsung phone, would make sense.
CyberSeeker@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 76d
ripcord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
Weird, on my phone the character rendered like it is in the picture
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 8 pts · 76d
Well, how do you think most ideographics were created? Graphical representation of an idea.
lyralycan@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 76d
What's bone daddy?
jdr@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 76d
Nm, what's bone witchu?
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 4 pts · 75d
A lot of characters in Asian languages look like the thing the symbol represents. Can't remember which language it was, but it has characters for "house," "home," and "family" that all look like slight variations to a simple drawing of a house.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 75d
There are thousands of Asian languages. Chinese and Japanese are the only languages that still use a logographic system. Korean also uses Chinese characters but only for special purposes, like academia.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 75d
yeah that's what gets me, like it would make getting context easy, but remembering which fine detail just won't stick in my head.
Impractical_Island@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 76d
New Binding of Isaac familiar just dropped.
frunch@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
Reminds me of the early vaporwave artist called 骨架的
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tD064_ifO7w
Mwa@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 76d
Creative ngl.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 76d
Why would you lie about that
Mwa@thelemmy.club · -1 pts · 76d
huh?
smh@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 76d
NGL=not gonna lie
smh@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 76d