As Andrew,
explains quite clearly below this is a case where uunicode got it
correct. The difference is slight but very significant, even though
confusing (I think I earlier got these two reversed). To unify these
would be to change the language, which is not unicode's job.
Regards
John
Quoting Andrew West <[email protected]>:
> On 26/10/2007, Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]> wrote:
>> m
>> >> (Examples exist, like U+3ADA (?) and U+66F6 (?).)
>> >
>> > The two charcaters have different meaning, though i have to admit I am
>> > hard pushed to find a font that maintains the differnce in the bottom
>> > half of the character 曰 U+66F0 and 日 U+65E5 respectively.
>> Yeah, and an "x" in English has a different meaning (sound) than an "x"
>> in Spanish (letters "mean" sounds; Chinese graphs mean words. More or
>> less). Yet we still encode them the same because they look the same.
>> Unicode generally tries to code what's written more than what's meant, I
>> thought.
>
> These two characters *look similar*, and in many fonts it is difficult
> to distinguish them clearly, but they are actually written with
> different, *non-unifiable* components.
>
> U+3ADA ?
> Written with Radical 72 (RI4 ? "sun") and ? WU4 phonetic
> Also written as U+6612 ? HU1
> Pronounced HU1
> Means "early morning, daylight" (hence the RI4 ? "sun" radical)
>
> U+66F6 ?
> Written with Radical 73 (YUE1 ? "speak") and ? WU4 phonetic
> Also written as U+5FFD ? HU1
> Pronounced HU1
> An onomatopoeic word meaning "the sound of exhalation" (hence the YUE1
> ? "speak" radical)
>
> Unfortunately the similarity between these two characters means that
> sometimes the wrong character is used. For example, in the on-line
> version of the Kangxi Dictionary U+3ADA is used throughout for the
> entry for U+66F6, and U+66F6 is used throughout for the entry for
> U+3ADA !
>
> <http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6Zdic9BZdicB6.htm> (click on "Kangxi
> Zidian" tab)
> <http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi2/ZdicE3ZdicABZdic9A.htm> (click on "Kangxi
> Zidian" tab)
>
> (at least I think they've got the characters the wrong way round --
> but maybe it's me and/or Unihan that is confused)
>
> Andrew
>
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