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掲示板 Forums - (Solved) Why do 子 and 孑 look so similar?

Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese



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飴細工
Level: 717

子 usually means "child," but 孑 means "mosquito wriggler"...

Why do they look roughly the same? (I figure it has something to do with mosquito wrigglers being "mosquito children" but I'm not sure.)

2
1 year ago
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Anonymous123
Level: 1459

According to the wiktionary:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...

孑孓 (Chinese)

"Glyph origin
Via deformations of the character 子 (“child”). The individual characters originally meant “without a right arm” and “without a left arm” (Shuowen Jiezi)."

Then the Japanese borrowed it from the Chinese in the Edo period.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...

Which then gives you these two kanji that are rarely used in Japanese, and look like 子


2
1 year ago
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ポールおじちゃん
Level: 1636

Part of the problem is the tendency of fonts to make unrelated characters conform to the same esthetic, obscuring their differences. There is an older glyph that more clearly shows the one-armed nature of the character.

6
1 year ago
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飴細工
Level: 717
ポールおじちゃん は 11月5日, 7:22に

Part of the problem is the tendency of fonts to make unrelated characters conform to the same esthetic, obscuring their differences. There is an older glyph that more clearly shows the one-armed nature of the character.

と言いました。

I looked up the older versions of the character and noticed this, and it definitely makes more sense when the characters are differentiated properly. I suppose modern fonts have a downside when they oversimplify certain characters and language learners mix them up

0
1 year ago
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Coolcatsandramen
Level: 3

I agree with everyone


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1 year ago
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レミンカン
Level: 122

me too

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1 year ago
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マイコー
Level: 302

Please refrain from "me too" posts, as they don't add to the conversation, yet still send always to everyone who is subscribed to this topic.

3
1 year ago
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Getting the posts




Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese


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