Over 47,000 漢字 entries in the Kanxi Zidian 康熙字典﹐ were all of these 漢字 ever used???

[Xi'Er Dun]

Were all of the 47,000+ Hanzi 漢字 listed as entries in the Kangxi Zidian 康熙字典 ever used at some point in Chinese history?

I know that the vast majority of the obscure characters 漢字 are variant forms.

I own a copy of the dictionary and found an extremely rare and all but unknown character that was listed with a caption stating that it has no known meaning. It looked like 弗 but insted of two strokes going down the middle, it had three just like 川... (If anyone has ever seen it before, tell me more about it but I doubt that will ever come across it, let alone know anything about it.) Even if you have a copy of the Kangxi dictionary, I don't expect anyone to have ever bothered to lookup or come across such a character. It's not ever found under the main body of entries but under an exteneded section at the back of the book which I think is only included in expanded editions like mine?

I have looked at a few of the multi-volume Morohashi Daikanwa Jiten 諸橋大漢和辞典　at my university library which is possibly the biggest Japanese Kanji dictionary with almost 100,000 Kanji 漢字 entries, am I right? I found some entries on what I believed to be Cantonese dialect characters, like 口地 (I couldn't input in my IME, but it has the mouth radical then 地) It's Japanese On-reading (On-yomi　音読み）

was [tetsu テツ] which is possibly from Middle Chinese [tiet, diet - fully aspirated or unaspirated]. So are these commonly thought to be Chinese dialect characters of infact once mainstream Chinese character inventions? Because how could Cantonese or other dialect characters make it into Japanese borrowings? Another obscure character is just like 俺 [an3] , but without the person or male radical from 人 with insted having the female radical 女. I found this with an entry in a Vietnamese Chữ Nôm database (Chu Nom if you can't see the Vietnamese encoding). It just had a meaning of a second person female pronoun much like 妳.

By the way, are there any Shandonghua 山東話 dialect characters I should be able to read before I go there?

Yes, I know I read too much.....

謝謝您

Xi 'Er Dun 希爾頓 from 澳洲 Australia

[DrZero]

You indeed love the obscure. You should focus on the mainstream first!

My wife knows some very obscure characters that are no longer used in Mandarin, but correspond to words used in her local dialect, Changzhouhua (a cousin of Shanghaihua). I'll try to get her to show them to me again and post them if possible. I bet you'd like them.

[gato]

You should buy a textbook instead of just browsing through dictionaries.

If you are truly interested in linguistics, try these books and articles.

http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cambridge-Language-Surveys-Norman/dp/0521296536

Chinese (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

by Jerry Norman

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/articles/norman-a.htm

A Critical Review of Norman's Chinese

http://pinyin.info/readings/index.html

Recommended romanization-related books in English

[zhwj]

Oh, c'mon guys - reading the dictionary is fun. Not everything Chinese has to be directly related to efficient learning.

Kangxi says that 哋 comes out of a Buddhist chant (where it's most likely used phonetically).

Here's the unihan entry for your 弓川 character. No further info is given. There are more than a few characters in old dictionaries where the only info is 阙. Maybe the character was ritualistic or part of some Taoist inscription where stroke count was critical.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, 希爾頓 Xi'Er Dun (is that Chinese for Sheldon? ),

Fret not, you are not alone. I am a Chinese character dictionary and dialect enthusiast (read: fanatic!), too. I also own a copy of the 康熙字典 Kangxi Zidian, which I browse through from time to time, just for fun. I also have a copy of the 辭源 Ci Yuan, which is a much more readable dictionary for single-character entries, even if the number of characters is nowhere near 康熙字典 Kangxi Zidian.

To answer you original question: Sources estimate that only about 9-10 thousand of the total number of characters in 康熙字典 Kangxi Zidian were ever in common use. The bulk of the characters are either repeated forms of the same characters, or obsolete ones. You will even an appendix of characters at the end of the dictionary, where no definition of their meanings are even ascribed.

To the rest of the forum readers,

I am actually on the look-out for a good-condition 2nd hand set of 諸橋轍次 Morohashi Tetsuji's 大漢和辭典Dai Kanwa Jiten... one at an affordable price! I have tried searching through online 2nd hand bookstore websites, but have not been successful. I am also aware that there are some pirate copies sold in Taiwan, but I am not sure about the print quality, so I thought it best to "buy original"! And no, the last time I checked, there are no copies available on E-Bay, either!

Can anyone help?

[Mugi]

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