Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

What's the name for a stroke of a chinese character?


klortho

Recommended Posts

I know it's pronounced "huà", but is the character for this "划" or "画"? In my pocket dictionary, in the radical index, the headers are, for example, "十二画". When I asked my Chinese friends, there was massive disagreement.

Perhaps they are interchangeable. I recently bought a new, massive dictionary, and one entry it has for "划" is "see '画'". Can anybody help clarify this for me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in the radical index, the headers are, for example, "十二画"
This is correct.

In the past, Chinese use '毛笔' (what's the English name for this? brush pen? hair pen? I don't know.) to write and paint. but '划' has a 'knife' in it, which I think suggests 'scratch' in the sense of 'Stroke'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are actually talking about three words in traditional Chinese. They are 劃 (hua2, hua4), 畫 (hua4), and 划 (hua2).

The simplified version of 劃 is 划.

The simplified version of 畫 is 画.

劃 and 畫 share the meaning of "stroke" as in "strokes of a character". (But both words have other meanings.)

Thus both 划 and 画 are ok for the meaning of "stroke" as in "strokes of a character".

划 also means the action of rowing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...