Quick old character question

[roddy]

The picture here...

 

煽革命 - I'm assuming that's 火? When / where was it written like that? And what's the first character on the second line ?

 

Thanks.

[skylee]

煽 as in 煽動顛覆國家政權 (http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?dss=1&wdrst=1&wdqchi=煽動顛覆國家政權) and 煽動分裂國家.

The other one is 點.

PS - as to "When / where was it written like that?", I didn't see what you mean as I didn't see a difference. I suppose you mean the right dot of the fire being horizontal? It is not even a variant ...

[Nathan Mao]

Huh. Wow.

I do not remember encountering the 奌 variant before. Thanks for pointing that out.

The horizontal line of the 火 radical in 煽 seems to be just a result of handwriting...in the same way that an English speaker might write an A or an R without closing all the intersections correctly...a native English reader wouldn't even notice, but a non-native might get confused.

Speaking of non-natives getting confused, what the heck is the 4th character in each line? My initial reaction is 头, but when I drew it exactly on my iPad, the dictionary program read it as 兴. Neither seems overly compelling to me, what am I missing?

[skylee]

The 4th one is 之.

The two lines are 煽革命之風 點革命之火. The two ends of the two lines make up 煽風點火.

[Nathan Mao]

Cool, thanks!

Funny-looking 之, seems to have too many 撇 / 捺 / 点 strokes at the top, and seems to be lacking the 橫 stroke, but I fully understand that's the handwritten/native recognition aspect I mentioned earlier.

Again, thanks for helping me understand what I was looking at!

[skylee]

Funny-looking 之

Not really. This form is not uncommon and is documented. Take a look at the 3rd variant on this page -> http://140.111.1.40/yitia/fra/fra00029.htm

[Nathan Mao]

We'll, it's funny looking to someone with no experience with the variants.

In any case, that is why you are such a treasure to this board: a veritable font of knowledge. I always learn something from your posts and I am most appreciative.

[陳德聰]

Never having seen that variant of 之 before, when I saw the parallelism of the two lines I think I just assumed it was a "font" difference.

[Nathan Mao]

Well, yes, of course you recognized it immediately.
But I'm curious, in which two lines are you seeing a parallelism?
I see parallelism in the main/big 撇 stroke, but since it lacks the top 橫 stroke and the lower 捺 stroke attaches near the midpoint of the main/big 撇 stroke, it seems to be closer to 入 or 人 than 之.

I understand completely what you mean by "font"' but just couldn't make that mental leap this time. I'd like to see if I can learn it, though.

[陳德聰]

煽革命 __ __

点革命 __ __

 

So...

 

Verb 革命 X __

Verb 革命 X __
 

To me that parallelism is what solidified the "X" as being not part of a compound word, but its own stand-alone character. Makes me think of things like 时尚之都, 创新之最, 暮光之城 etc.

Sorry for not being clear. If it's a matter of looking at the character, I think stroke order is what I would have used to figure it out, since the way the pen moves would be the same for both of them. But I used the context rather than that.

[Nathan Mao]

Oh! Lines of text, not lines within a character.
My fault for not following you on that, I was still stuck in thinking 一撇 一捺 一橫 mode from character writing classes 20 years ago.

[skylee]

What 衡？？ Did you mean 橫？

[Nathan Mao]

Yes.

Fixed.

[roddy]

Thanks, Skylee!

 

We had a bit of confusion here. It was the 之 I didn't recognise. I think I vaguely recognised the phrase and remembered it had 火 in, and I was wondering if the fourth character was some kind of variant 火.

"煽革命 - I'm assuming that [the fourth character is] 火". 

But you logically assumed I meant the radical in 煽. 

 

Also never seen 奌 before, it's a fun one. Thanks again. It's bizarre, getting thrown twice in two lines like that....

[skylee]

I see. Thanks for the clarification. I didn't understand your question as I knew the 4th character was 之 and could not associate it with 火 (and the only 火 that can be seen in the picture is the radical of 煽).

[Lu]

奌 is pretty common in Taiwan, as a simplification when handwriting. I've never seen it in mainland China, funny to have it show up in a picture like that, about as far removed from Taiwan as you can get.

[roddy]

You know what I love about it? This:

 

"Hey, this character, which commonly means 'a little', 'a bit', and other terms not really associated with large sizes, is hard to write. I shall skip the hard bits and just write 'big' at the bottom instead."

[OneEye]

奌 is pretty common in Taiwan, as a simplification when handwriting.

 

Yup, just about everyone I know here uses this form in handwriting. Not too difficult to explain how it got that way. Think of 点. The bottom is 火, right? Now look at the 火 in roddy's picture. The dots can be connected when writing quickly, which makes it end up look something like 大. Somebody misreads it as 大 and it catches on, but the original form doesn't disappear either, and so what was originally one form splits into two. This sort of corruption happens a lot, actually. The 小篆 form of 殺 developed into both 殺 and 煞, for example.

[Kamille]

奌 is pretty common in Taiwan, as a simplification when handwriting. I've never seen it in mainland China, funny to have it show up in a picture like that, about as far removed from Taiwan as you can get.

 

Unofficial handwritten simplification has pretty much always existed with Chinese characters. The communists only selected some of them and made them into an official standard (granted I think that they also created some out of the blue, I'm not sure). They sometimes had to make choices because some characters had 2 or more simplified versions. 奌 and 点 for 點 is an example. 

In other words, 奌 is nothing of a "typical Taiwanese simplification", but yes of course, when 点 was promoted to the rank of official standard, 奌 was kind of bound to disappear from continental China, which explains why it is still used in Taiwan but not on the continent.

And no, 点 is not popular in Taiwan, as for the reason I have no clue. I'd be interrested to know which version is used in Malaysia, Hk and Macao by the way (maybe both ?)