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And you thought biáng was complicated... (more weird characters)


naturegirl

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Just came over a site with 22 of the most difficult and/or strange Chinese characters.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46e815bb01000bw8.html

The site is in Chinese, but it's fascinating to see what weird characters exist or used to exist.

For example 一 (one) used to be written like this:

117648_4276_1193137479032.jpg

Or the original version of 雷 (thunder)

116685f372a.jpg

Betcha, the thunder was over before you finished writing it..

The mouth 口 used to be triangular... well but then people ate more and got bigger mouths, or what?

116685f58f8.jpg

Nothing left to say here...

117648_4129_1193137471845.jpg

But check out the site yourself!

*add* Title explanation: biáng is one of the most complicated Chinese characters still in use today. There are the biang biang noodles from shanxi (Shaanxi, shǎn xī,陕西) province. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles

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Biang2 biang2 noodles are native to Shaanxi (陕西), not Shanxi (山西).

It should be noted that there is also a simplified version of the biang2 character in use, i.e., were 長 is replaced by 长, 馬 by 马, etc. I found this quite hilarious. I would have thought 乂 on top of 辶 would have been an appropriate simplification....... :wink:.

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Well it's not pinyin...it's just the way it was romanized as a place name...

Fair enough, but if you're omitting the tone and writing "Shanxi", I take for granted that you are writing in English, rather than in pinyin. Either English or pinyin works for me.

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Fair enough, but if you're omitting the tone and writing "Shanxi", I take for granted that you are writing in English, rather than in pinyin. Either English or pinyin works for me.

I agree with you on that, especially when it comes to place names....

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