己 = yi3 in 起?

[woliveri]

Hi all, I'm looking at the word： 起

but the book I have doesn't have the character with the ji3 (己) radical. It has it with the yi3 radical. This yi radical looks like 巴 but without the vertical line disecting the top part of this radical. I see the yi3 radical in my dictionary but my IME doesn't have it.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Is my book incorrect or can the yi and ji radicals be interchanged in this instance?

Thanks in advance,

[HashiriKata]

There seem to be a number of questions within your question, which needs some sorting out. So let's see:

1. The radical for 起 is 走, and not 己.

2. 己(ji3) is a variant of 已(yi3 ) . For this reason, your book doesn't list 己(ji3); also for this reason, IME doesn't list 已(yi3 ) and they both end up confusing learners like you and me!

3. Although 己(ji3) is a variant of 已(yi3 ), they are not interchangeable, I'm afraid. They're both used as words and radicals but you have to remember specifically which variant goes with which combination, etc.

4. In order to get your IME to output 已(yi3 ), type in any word with yi3 in it, such as yi3jing, you'll then be able to get 已.

Happy New Year and I wish you a year with success in learning Chinese!

[Altair]

HashiriKata,

They're both used as words and radicals

Are you sure that 已(yi3 ) is used as a radical in any common characters? I can only find it in Wenlin in very obscure ones.

By the way, you might also have mentioned 巳 (si4) as yet another character that is easily confused with 已(yi3 ) and 己 (ji3). I first learned characters in their modern Japanese form and was appalled to learn later that these were three different characters.

[woliveri]

That's it Altair, this 巳 character is what I was looking for!!

This word, 起 I'm looking at in my book has the 巳 where the 已 is. Is this word still qi3?

So I'm seeing 走 + 巳 as a word.

Is that the same as 走 + 已?

Thank you all,

[HashiriKata]

Hi,

So I'm seeing 走 + 巳 as a word.

Is that the same as 走 + 已?

Yes, but see the remaining of the reply (and I must say, I've not seen qi3 written as 走 + 巳).

---------

Although I intended to keep the matter simple, Alstair has forced me to make it less so :

Are you sure that 已(yi3 ) is used as a radical in any common characters? I can only find it in Wenlin in very obscure ones.

Actually, there are many characters with this variant as the radical. Just a few examples: ，异, 导, 包, 巷, etc. (See my answer below for any anomalies you may see here)

I first learned characters in their modern Japanese form and was appalled to learn later that these were three different characters.

I can confirm that in Japanese, all three (己, 已, 巳 ) are variants of the same radical. I assume that it’s also the same in Chinese. However, there are only loose, if helpful, guides and not hard & fast rules concerning the non-interchangeability between the variants. This statement accounts for the possible variations in the output of the 4 characters I’ve just given, depending on the software package you’re using.

I hope this reply clarifies rather than confuses the matter !

[Jose]

起 is one of those characters that are slightly different in their simplified and traditional standard forms. The form with 巳 is used in traditional characters, whereas the form with 已 is the simplified version.

I recently posted a list of characters that are extremely similar in their two standard versions: http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=3836

If you view Unicode-encoded web pages on a non-Asian operating system you're most likely to see the character in its simplifed version, even in texts that use traditional characters. This is because the people who designed the Han Unification scheme didn't think such differences were important enough to warrant two different slots in the Unicode index. The result is that for those characters the particular form you see will be the same on simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and Japanese texts. That's also the reason why on my Spanish Windows XP system I always see the character 港 in its Japanese standard form: with 已 instead of 巳.

[HashiriKata]

If you view Unicode-encoded web pages on a non-Asian operating system you're most likely to see the character in its simplifed version, even in texts that use traditional characters. This is because the people who designed the Han Unification scheme didn't think such differences were important enough to warrant two different slots in the Unicode index.

And another new standard set by the computer will result!

(I welcome changes but just can't help feeling a little depressed by the kinds of powers the computer can assume.)