Ocean
I found the painting above at dreamstime.com by Morrhigan:
Image name: Ocean Kanji
Description: Kanji (Japanese Character) for the word Ocean. Hand painted, then scanned and manipulated in Photoshop.
One small problem, there are two small dots missing from the character.
海 = sea, ocean; maritime
Update: In Japanese, the two small dots can be written as a vertical stroke. (Thanks to Ken for verifying this).
posted by tian at
11:48 PM
24 Comments:
FWIW, Bitstream Vera doesn't have two dots, but a vertical stroke through where they are instead.
Code2000 has it with the two dots, as depicted on the unicode page you link.
海 has 10 strokes, which indicates there are two dots, not a vertical stroke.
here is second reference via zhongwen.com:
http://zhongwen.com/d/174/x252.htm
It's a single stroke in Japanese (海), though alone, as in "mother," it's two dots: 母. For what that's worth.
In any case, that is one awful piece of calligraphy. This person needs to spend some serious time studying the structure of Hanzi/Kanji before trying to sell his/her work.
My web browser(or OS, or fontset) shows a vertical line instead of two dots. This is the way we, Japanese, write the character. At least for more than some decades, this has been the way it is.
We use dots in 苺 (strawberry). I don't know why.
Ken,
I think the dots in 苺 to emphisize the seeds on the strawberry's surface.
:)
-tian
From an aesthetic point of view I think it's quite pretty, but judging it as a hanzi, apart from the missing dots I also find myself thinking that there shouldn't be such a big gap between the "mu" radical and the line above it. Of course, these sorts of variations are what give calligraphy its beauty, but I guess that you still have to stay within certain constraints -- for example, English calligraphy would look weird if the dot above an "i" was too high or too off-centre. But exactly where you draw the line (no pun intended) is probably subject to debate.
It's worth clicking on the link to the painting, because it shows some other kanji by the same artist. The "Joy" one also looks slightly odd, for example the bottom "mouth" radical is smaller than the top one, whereas it's usually the reverse.
you dork. it doesn't matter.
the single line in printed japanese kanji 海 occured after the writing reform there. the two dots stay in printed korean, simplified and traditional characters in chinese. the easiest way to verify this is look at the same character in the following font sets:
MS PMincho (Japanese)
SimSum (simplified Chinese)
Gulim (Korean)
like i said though, it doesn't matter. all of these languages use the single verticle line in hand-writing. you dork.
Todd,
Was your last comment a reply to someone else's comment? Who is the "dork" you are referring to?
"all of these languages use the single verticle line in hand-writing"
*****
You sure? Are you 100% positive? Is this indisputable?
I, for one, hand writes in two dots and know many more that also hand writes it as two.
If you are not certain, don't assume.
Oh, another thing, the calliagraphy is terrible but somehow you think it is quite pretty. Oh well.
-Ken L.
Looking at some of her/his other works, it looks like the writing of a little kid. The word 魔 he had in 魔術 (magic) is missing strokes, as well. My Chinese writing probably looked like that--when I was in the second grade.
Have you seen the 壽?
Here is what 壽 suppose to look like.
I didn't go through that site's other kanji-related material, but from an artistic stand point, I think the "壽" you linked to looks much better than the works by Morrhigan.
I don't have access to the many Chinese fonts I used to have, but it seems possible that 壽 could be written that way in certain fonts.
Another issue is with stroke order and direction. No native writer would write the bottom stroke of the "water" radical from the top down, as in this case. No matter how quickly or sloppily a native writer was writing, he or she would never write it like that. It's just wrong, period.
ha ha ha ha... i didn't see the other ones until now. they are quite hilarious, especially the 壽. i wonder if this artist has any contact info anywhere, so that someone could at least let her kno that her characters look like they may have been done by a gradeschooler with their feet.
there's no other way to look at it; the development of the rules of character-writing were affected by what looks good and when the rules are so blatantly ignored, they turn out very ugly.
her imaginary characters reminds me of an art installation done by xu bing a decade and a half ago, called "a book from the sky" ("天書"). those characters were fascinating and looked great. hers do not.
"all of these languages use the single verticle line in hand-writing"
I would say in Chinese a verticle line is considered acceptable (i.e., not unrecognizable) in hand-writing but most people would not write it that way.
you dork. it is indisputable.
Andy, thanks for that link to "A Book from the Sky". I can't help thinking, though, that for many people in mainland China some traditional characters look just as nonsensical as those ones!
I think the artist needs to take a few more classes.
Chinese latest trend in language education
todd@waze: You are correct that many people in PRC do have trouble reading Traditional Chinese (although there are also many with college level eduction who take time to learn Traditional Chinese). A few years ago I visited the Summer Palace (頤和園) in Beijing, and while standing in front of the gateways, I overheard some folks trying to figure out the writing on the plaque hanging at the gate, which is in Traditional Chinese.
"like i said though, it doesn't matter. all of these languages use the single verticle line in hand-writing."
Korean doesn't use a single line when writing. They use the two dots.
you dork.
Isn't calling people names, ie. dork, kind of childish?
no, it's a sign of affection and pity. you dork
Wow!I had no idea my little kanji experiments had received so much attention. If you think they look like they were done by someone who has no clue about writing the language, well, you're correct. I've never studied kanji, Chinese, Japanese, or even calligraphy. All I did was Google the kanji for various words, then create my own version with paint on canvas. Hardly surprising that they'd resemble a child's efforts. But what the heck, I had fun playing around with them, and they sell occasionally.
Thanks for the laugh. You guys are harsh, but funny.
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