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Chinese characters

Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 4:49 pm
by WonderingSpaniard
Well, I'm afraid I can only give a description of how they looks like, for I don't know its pronunciation and I cannot find them in the dictionaries available to me (rather bad).

On the first there are three little "mouths" (口), encircled by a "wrapping" such as in 国 but without the right stripe (and of course nothing inside but the aforementioned 口's). Is it region?

The second on consists (apparently) of two 心 written successively from left to right in their "radical form" and a single stroke as in the central part of 中.

Can you guess which they are? What do they mean? They're both in an inmigration application form, between 市 and 邮政号码, so it mustn't be something utterly complicated.

Thanks a lot!

WS.

Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 10:23 pm
by Flaminius
WS, the first one is 區 (I use a more bastardised form 区 but this may be seen only in Japanese). It is district, ward or whatever you call the smaller divisions that conprise 市 or town/city.

The second one puzzles me. Does it really look like "忄忄| "? Then this seems to call for a real Chinese speaker. My relation to Chinese is that of English to Latin. :oops:

Flam

Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 10:25 pm
by Brazilian dude
? ?

Now the second one I don't know. I have never seen two "hearts" beside each other. Is that what you mean?

Brazilian dude

Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 10:26 pm
by Brazilian dude
Oops, Flam was quicker than me.

Brazilian dude

Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 10:27 pm
by Flaminius
BTW, if I understood you right, you seem to be using a published dictionary for your Chinese study. I recommend you should install MS Chinese or Japanese IME. With their hand-written input function, those tools let you draw kanjis with your mouse. No need to fumble for pinyin! Then you can capitalise on the advantage of Web resourses.

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 3:27 am
by WonderingSpaniard
I have Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0 in my computer and that's how I wrote the other characters... Could you guide me for that hand-writing feature?

Thanks for the first one!! I knew it must be something like that... Ah, and the simplified form exists also in Chinese (for the PRC of course...).

As to the second character...  I found it in the IME's embedded dictionary: 州 (zhou) It was my fault, for actually there are no two hearts standing beside each other... the thing is that I don't know what the first two strokes to the left compound.

Do you know it now?

问好

WS.

PD: Couldn't you two answer to the word order thread as well :?:

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 3:57 am
by Flaminius
Uhhmm, according to the explanations in this page, only Japanese IME allows users to input hand written characters. But this is worth installing since kanji characters generated by Japanese IME can pass as valid input for online Chinese dictionaries, although they are mapped in different places from those of their Chinese equivalents.

Flam,
who knows not squat about Chinese word order.

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 9:33 am
by WonderingSpaniard
Ok, I've got them finally.

First one, meaning district, as Flam indicated: 区 qu.

Second one, meaning state: 州 zhou.

Many thanks!!

I will install the Japanese IME... I'm curious about that hand-writing thin...

Regards,

WS.

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:54 am
by anders
The handwriting works (via "IME Pad"). But I don't find instructions for how conversions from Romaji to Kanji/Katakana/Hiragana work. I have tried the help file, but found nothing. Please help (in English...).

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 11:15 am
by Flaminius
anders, have you tried instructions in Fig. A-1 of the link I provided supra?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 11:23 am
by anders
Obviously, I hadn't. Seems to be what I need. Thanks.

Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2005 6:44 pm
by M. Henri Day
Uhhmm, according to the explanations in this page, only Japanese IME allows users to input hand written characters. But this is worth installing since kanji characters generated by Japanese IME can pass as valid input for online Chinese dictionaries, although they are mapped in different places from those of their Chinese equivalents.
Flam, thanks for this link ! I'm much too tired to explore all its possibilities tonight (it's way past midnight), but I think it will help me with no few queries that I have had. Too bad I didn't happen upon your posting three months ago !...

Henri