The kanji 令

I usually do my reviews on my mac and on the iOS app, but today I was doing them on a linux machine. I stumbled completely on this radical because it felt like I hadn’t seen it before. No wonder, since it looked completely different on my mac. I’ve noticed some small font differences that sometimes threw me off but nothing this radical.

Here is a screenshot of the two readings, since I wasn’t sure which would get rendered:
Screenshot%20from%202019-03-15%2022-05-24

What is going on here? Which one is correct, or are they both correct? For me the mac one used the bottom one and linux the top.

The bottom one is the one you’ll see in JP texts, I think the top one is the Chinese font version of the characterとか

Example screenshot from WK:

image

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I’m sorry. It’s stupid but I couldn’t resist.

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I’m dying here
:rofl::rofl::rofl:

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There is a similar variation in Japanese depending on the font. Here are four Japanese fonts I have on my computer:

image


@morteasd I highly recommend installing the Jitai script, which will show different fonts during reviews. You just have to have the fonts installed on your computer. For iOS, the Allicrab app has a setting to turn that script on.

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For what it’s worth, my pocket kanji book seems to list both as acceptable handwritten variants.

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Aye, that’s how the kanji is hand-written. It’s certainly not merely the Chinese version.

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I have never handwritten 令 as it appears in print. By hand I only write the Chinese version.

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Oooh, what’s the book called?

Think about it this way. The two letters below are clearly different, but still they are the same, right?
image
Kanji (and hiragana) are the same. For most characters you may have a standard for what “should” be written nowadays, but now and then there is a character that managed to preserve multiple styles until now. 糸 is also clearly different depending on the font and writting style. Many hiragana also have “connected” or “unconnected” versions that may make them look quite different.

I’v never seen anyone who hand-writes like this, but this old し with a sort of dot on its top is quite common on signs, shop names and such.
image image

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Also 人 or 入. The hat on 八. The way the little hooks and serifs work on chacters like 足. The list goes on…

No, but I have seen handwritten し that are practically just a vertical line. It’s like, how lazy can you get? There’s one thing that’s distinctive about し: the fact that it curves back up again. And you’re just leaving that out?

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You think that’s bad, you should check out cursive kanji.

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I try not to, thanks. :stuck_out_tongue:

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image

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It’s the fault of the person who made the website. If they would declare the right ‘lang’ tag, it would display the right one in every browser/operating system.
Even this forum doesn’t do it. I have my language settings in Firefox set to prefer Chinese, so in order to see Japanese characters on here I had to write a Tampermonkey script.

script off
off
script on
on

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I don’t think that’s WaniKani’s fault. The forums are built using a third party software.

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No, but it’s amusing to pretend that it is, considering they’re the guys who wrote… uh… an article on Tofugu ranting about bad language settings on websites making kanji appear funny but which doesn’t seem to be on Tofugu any more to link to.

Well, that joke fell flat.

Thanks my accuracy is plummeting… I guess it’s a good thing :joy:

Thank you all for the explanations!

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