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必 (bì): what is the etymology, and how do you write it?


Ruben von Zwack

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大家好!

 

As I am reading along the 秘密花园 book, I was looking up the stroke order of 必 and found a few different results. Depending on which I follow, the result will look different in handwriting. So, how is this Character commonly written in Chinese then?

 

The odd thing is, I was assuming that nciku should use "the" Chinese stroke order. But when I follow the nciku stroke order animation, simply left-to-right in this case, the result won't look like this at all: mi_bi.jpg (source: Hanzigrids) - which I assume must be Chinese standard too.

 

 

And do any of you know about this character's etymology?

I have always found it curious. I looked it up on zhongwen.com and chinese-characters.org, but the explanation that it's an 弋 splitting a 八 does not make much sense to me, nor can I make a lot of sense from the older pictographs.

 

Thank you for your thoughts!

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I know nothing about etymology and the stroke order of simplified characters. I write the word the same way as shown in the webpages below -

http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/characterQueryResult.do?word=必

http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/result.jsp?id=1293&sortBy=stroke&jpC=lshk

The websites are pretty official I think (not saying they are "right" as some might challenge this). And this is the way I write the word all my life. First the heart then the 撇. Is there a reason you don't refer to them, or perhaps you simply don't know about them?

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Thank you Skylee! I wasn't aware of these pages. This is the fourth different stroke order I see now!  :shock:

 

I was using nciku a lot, as an online dictionary and as a reference for stroke order. But look what they do: post-51349-0-95982500-1386859126_thumb.jpg (source: nciku) it's just a minor difference, but then, the Japanese one is really different! post-51349-0-94112400-1386859369_thumb.jpg (1/2 of it is still missing)

(source: kakijun.jp)

 

Why I am wondering is: I had been studying Japanese quite a few years ago. I did not get too far, alas. But lately when I began Chinese, I would check on the stroke order of complicated Hanzi, just to be sure. To my surprise I noticed there were minor things that I had always been writing differently. I assumed I was wrong and forced myself to write "correctly".

Only recently I became aware that there simply are different standards. If I had known that, I would just have stayed with the way I had  used to write. But now, with half a Japanese standard internalised, and a bit of Chinese on top of that, I am slightly confused right now.

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Thanks for the link to Sinosplice. I'm glad to see it's a common issue!

 

But the odd thing is: using the "bizarre" (ouch, that is a harsh word! :wink: ) Japanese stroke order is the only way you'd get the cursive Chinese script like on Imron's Hanzigrids. (the thumbnail in my initial post up there)

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For etymology this place is usually OK, but because its information about etymology is from 說文解字, it has errors. I haven't found any easily accessible resources that try to correct 許慎 errors.

 

About 必, the stroke order you found on Hanzigrids is correct. 必 is listed in my blog post here. The Japanese standard you know is also acceptable, but I prefer the former. See this place for more examples. I also like to show people this example, 4th line, in the "想必及" cluster.

 

BTW, Sinosplice calls it "bizarre" because they've never seen 必 written in 隸書, and they might think it has something to do with 心.

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  • 6 months later...

Having stumbled upon this thread (which isn't too old, I hope), may I add my own thanks to Hoffmann for those useful links. I had learnt to write 必 with the ROC stroke order (i.e. 心 followed by 丿), but I was vaguely aware that it had nothing to do with 心 but never really grasped the logic behind it. But considering it as 弋 + 八, 丿㇃top丶left丶right丶now makes perfect sense (albeit that the direction of the first stroke of 弋 seems to be reversed).

 

Changing the way I write 隹, however, will be more of an effort. I've no doubt that emulating 歐陽詢 is a great thing, but does anyone actually use that order nowadays? Modern calligraphers, even?

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