Variant Chinese character


Chinese characters of non-standard application

































Variant character
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese異體字
Simplified Chinese异体字
Literal meaningdifferent form character






Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese又體
Simplified Chinese又体
Literal meaningalso form






Second alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese或體
Simplified Chinese或体
Literal meaningor form






Third alternative Chinese name
Chinese重文
Literal meaningrepeated writing






Korean name
Hangul이체자
Hanja異體字


Japanese name
Hiraganaいたいじ
Kyūjitai異體字
Shinjitai異体字









Variant Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 异体字; traditional Chinese: 異體字; pinyin: yìtǐzì; Kanji: 異体字; Hepburn: itaiji; Hangul: 이체자; Hanja: 異體字; Revised Romanization: icheja) are Chinese characters that are homophones and synonyms. Almost all variants are allographs in most circumstances, such as casual handwriting. Some contexts require the usage of certain variants, such as in textbook editing.




Contents





  • 1 Regional standards


  • 2 Orthodox and popular variants


  • 3 Usage in computing


  • 4 Graphemic variants


  • 5 See also


  • 6 External links




Regional standards




From right to left: Kangxi Dictionary forms, Mainland China standard, Hong Kong standard, Taiwan standard, Japanese standard. Areas in the rightmost column where there are significant differences among different standards are highlighted in yellow. (玄 is not written completely in the Kangxi Dictionary because 玄 is a character in the Kangxi Emperor's given name, 玄燁. It was taboo to write a character in the emperor's given name.)


Variant Chinese characters exist within and across all regions where Chinese characters are used, whether Chinese-speaking (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore), Japanese-speaking (Japan), or Korean-speaking (North Korea, South Korea). Some of the governments of these regions have made efforts to standardize the use of variants, by establishing certain variants as standard. The choice of which variants to use has resulted in some divergence in the forms of Chinese characters used in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This effect compounds with the sometimes drastic divergence in the standard Chinese character sets of these regions resulting from the character simplifications pursued by mainland China and by Japan.


The standard character forms of each region are described in:


  • The List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese 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 (de facto) for Korea


Orthodox and popular variants


Character forms that are most orthodox are known as orthodox characters (Chinese: 正字; pinyin: zhèngzì) or Kangxi Dictionary form (Chinese: 康熙字典體; pinyin: Kāngxī zìdiǎn tǐ), as the forms found in the Kangxi dictionary are usually orthodox. Other variants are known as popular characters (Chinese: 俗字; pinyin: súzì; Revised Romanization: sokja; Hepburn: zokuji).



Usage in computing


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Variants of the Chinese character for guī 'turtle', collected ca. 1800 from printed sources.




Five of the 30 variant characters found in the preface of the Kangxi Dictionary which are not found in the dictionary itself.



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 web pages, 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.




















































Different code points,
Mainland China language tag
Different code points,
Taiwan language tag
Different code points,
Hong Kong language tag
Different code points,
Japanese language tag
Different code points,
Korean language tag
戶戸户戶戸户戶戸户戶戸户
戶戸户
爲為为爲為为爲為为爲為为
爲為为
強强強强強强強强
強强
畫畵画畫畵画畫畵画畫畵画
畫畵画
線綫线線綫线線綫线線綫线
線綫线
匯滙匯滙匯滙匯滙
匯滙
裏裡裏裡裏裡裏裡
裏裡
夜亱夜亱夜亱夜亱
夜亱
龜亀龟龜亀龟龜亀龟龜亀龟
龜亀龟

The following are some examples of variant forms of Chinese characters with the same code points and different language tags.






















































































Same code point, different language tags
Mainland ChinaTaiwanHong KongJapaneseKorean















































































































Same code point, different language tags
Mainland ChinaTaiwanHong KongJapaneseKorean
































Graphemic variants


Some variants are not allographic. For a set of variants to be allographs, someone who could read one should be able to read the others, but some variants cannot be read if one only knows one of them. An example is and , where someone who is able to read might not be able to read . Another example is , which is a variant of , but some people who could read might not be able to read .



See also


  • Ryakuji

  • Han unification


External links


  • Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants

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