Chinese languages

Dear Mr. Thomas Chan,


Hi! I just wrote again if you can also ive the character etymology of this character: the rain radical is on the upper part of this character.The character for green is on the lower part of the character. It means "goddess of frost and snow".Is this character still used today? I've been trying to search for it in newspapers but I couldn't find the compound name for this goddess. In what area in China is she worshipped? I've made a lot of research about the gods and goddesses of China but the only character that I've found are those like chang e and hou yi.I hope you can scan and give me references again for this character.What are the compound words for it?



Thanks a lot. regards,



Richard

Why would you look for such a rare character in a newspaper? Newspapers have to do with current events, and I don't think a goddess is going to show up in the newspaper.

Sounds like you need to get yourself a copy of Hanyu Dazidian. In the traditional, one-volume version, it's listed on page 1692, eleventh character down.

I checked the unicode fonts, couldn't find it in there. And it's not in the extension B either, it would be around U+290E0 if it were there.

So you won't find it in digital format, and you most likely won't find it in print either.

According to this dictionary and my Korean one which also has the character, it's usage is in this form: 青女. The online Guoyu Cidian didn't have the character, but it did have this phrase:
http://140.111.1.22/clc/dict/
or more specifically:
http://140.111.1.22/clc/dict/GetContent ... yString=青女

I haven't checked this chinalangauge website, but it might have it.

If you've done a lot of research on gods and goddesses, do you have a compiled list of them online somewhere?


James

Dear all,

The character is on this web page at the chinalanguage web site:

http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/vi ... in,english

It has a unicode codepoint # of 4A1D, but I can't see the character on my browser at the unicode web page for this character:

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... utf8=false

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

James Campbell wrote:
>
> Why would you look for such a rare character in a newspaper?
> Newspapers have to do with current events, and I don't think
> a goddess is going to show up in the newspaper.

Probably only the few that are still taken seriously, like Guan(shi)yin 觀(世)音
or Mazu 媽祖, or less obscure ones like Chang'e 嫦娥.


> Sounds like you need to get yourself a copy of Hanyu
> Dazidian. In the traditional, one-volume version, it's listed
> on page 1692, eleventh character down.

There's a one-volume version? I thought I had seen a "condensed print"
edition in two or three volumes, but I didn't know it could be fit into one
volume. As you can see from my scans for min 岷 in the other thread, I
have a traditional character version (from Taiwan) of the eight volume
edition. (I bought mine from US International Pubishing
http://www.usipusa.com/--it's 8 red volumes--but I suppose in Asia one
could buy it from Yuandong 遠東 itself.)

Can you provide us the bibliographical info on the one volume edition?
Is it also a PRC publication? My 8 vol. one is rather unwieldy (but not as
bad as some 19th c. Western books).


> I checked the unicode fonts, couldn't find it in there. And
> it's not in the extension B either, it would be around
> U+290E0 if it were there.

You must have slightly older Unicode fonts that only include the URO
and not Extension A (or B).

It's in Extension A. U+4A1D.

$ grep "U+4A1D" unihan.txt
U+4A1D kCantonese CHING1
U+4A1D kDefinition a pure woman; name of a goddess of frost and snow
U+4A1D kHKSCS 9641
U+4A1D kHanYu 64066.080
U+4A1D kIRGHanyuDaZidian 64066.080
U+4A1D kIRGKangXi 1375.230
U+4A1D kIRG_GSource KX
U+4A1D kIRG_TSource 3-534E
U+4A1D kRSUnicode 173.8
U+4A1D kTotalStrokes 16

That means, it is in HKSCS and CNS 11643, as well as the _Kangxi Zidian_
康熙字典 (modern number p. 1375, 23rd character) and the _Hanyu Da
Zidian_ 漢語大字典 (vol. 6 of the eight-volume edition, p. 4066, 8th character).

(BTW Richard, it should be qing1, not qing2, in Mandarin.)

Extension B to Unicode is supposed to include the balance of the _Kangxi
Zidian_ and the _Hanyu Da Zidian_, as well as characters from the _Siku
Quanshu_ 四庫全書, the _Zhongguo Da Baike Quanshu_ 中國大百科全書
("Chinese Encyclopedia"), the PRC _Cihai_ 辭海, the _Ciyuan_ 辭源, the
Fangzheng paiban xitong 方正排版系統 ("Founder Press System"), and the
_Hanyu Da Cidian_ 漢語大詞典, as well as characters from Japanese, Korean,
and Vietnamese sources. So unless it's a character omitted from these
works (e.g., some dialect characters) or it was omitted erroneously, it should
be findable (it's nice to know that a character is there to be found and that
you are just looking in the wrong place, instead of searching for what might
be impossible to find).


> So you won't find it in digital format, and you most likely
> won't find it in print either.

See previous paragraph--it's theoretically possible to find it among HKSCS
or CNS 11643 data, although who knows where, since those two character
sets are also used by governments for their records. An additional
possibility is that it is used in a usage other than the name of a goddess.

If there are some HK-based search engines that comprehend the HKSCS
extension to Big5, there might be some chance of tracking down some
references to that character.


> According to this dictionary and my Korean one which also has
> the character, it's usage is in this form: 青女. The online
> Guoyu Cidian didn't have the character, but it did have this
> phrase:

I found the alternate name 青女 in the _Ci Hai_ (the third bearer of the
name, first published in the PRC in 1979) too. The online _Guoyu Cidian_
shouldn't have it, as it works solely in Big5. (Common character sets such
as GB2312 or Big5 are all within the core URO part of Unicode, i.e., basically
anything existing by the early 1990s; only some newer ones like HKSCS are
scattered through the URO, Extension A, and Extension B.)

With an alternate name of 青女, I would expect that somewhere along the
line, there was also a *~女, where the 雨 radical was added to 青 as
"decoration", and then, having the 'rain' radical, the 女 part could be deleted
for an abbreviated one character name.


> I haven't checked this chinalangauge website, but it might
> have it.

If it's in Unicode 3.1, it's in there (but perhaps little or no data if it's a
rare character):
http://chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/view.php?query=4A1D


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

Dear all,

The chinalanguage web page for the character has a Mandarin reading for the character of 'qing1' but no Cantonese reading, while the Unicode web page for the character has a Cantonese reading for the character of 'ching1' and no Mandarin reading.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

Thomas Chan wrote:
>
> With an alternate name of 青女, I would expect that somewhere
> along the
> line, there was also a *~女, where the 雨 radical was added
> to 青 as
> "decoration", and then, having the 'rain' radical, the 女
> part could be deleted
> for an abbreviated one character name.

It looks like I might have guessed right. In the _Kangxi Zidian_ 康熙字典, it
says: "《集韻》親盈切音清《玉篇》女神《集韻》～女神名". If "～女神名" is
parsed as "～女﹐神名", then it would support a "～女"; else, if it is parsed as
"～﹐女神名", then it wouldn't.

From the _Hanyu Da Zidian_ 漢語大字典, vol. 6, p. 4066:

[beginning of quote]
qing1 《集韻》親盈切﹐平青清。
傳說中主霜雪的女神﹐既青女。《玉篇·雨部》﹕"～﹐女神。"《正字通·雨部》﹕
"～﹐《淮南子》﹕'秋三月﹐_青女_乃出﹐降霜。'_梁昭名太子_ _蕭統_曰﹕'_青女_司
寒。'_杜甫_《詩》:'飛霜任_青女_。'改作～﹐汎言女神。"按﹕《淮南子·天文》"_青女_
乃出﹐以降霜雪"_高誘_注﹕"_青女_﹐天神﹐青霄玉女﹐主霜雪也。"
[end of quote]

It doesn't really give clues as to when the character first appeared, but
it is already being included by the time of the _Yupian_ 玉篇 (AD 543) with
citations provided other than itself; the _Zheng Zitong_ 正字通 (AD 1671)
offers citations, but not of that character--it just gives mentions of her as
early as the _Huainan Zi_ 淮南子, which is a Han era work.


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

>There's a one-volume version? I thought I had seen a "condensed print"
>edition in two or three volumes, but I didn't know it could be fit into one
>volume. As you can see from my scans for min 岷 in the other thread, I
>have a traditional character version (from Taiwan) of the eight volume
>edition. (I bought mine from US International Pubishing
>http://www.usipusa.com/--it's 8 red volumes--but I suppose in Asia one
>could buy it from Yuandong 遠東 itself.)

Thomas:
I saw that version. I didn't buy it because of its size, but was thinking about it. Then, only a few months later, the one-volume came out. For the last three years or so, every bookstore has been stocked with like 5 copies (不少啦!) There are also the massive 成語 and 漢英 (21世紀) dictionaries equaling it in size and content.


I never heard of extension A. I guess that's why there's extension B, now that I feel really stupid. But all the hype has been ext. B, and I didn't even know about A when it happened!?! So how do I get a copy of it, if it's apparently NOT on my system?

That explains why I couldn't figure out why it was missing because it didn't seem to look very strange.


I guess if we continue to discuss rare and individual characters in this way on the forums, we will become experts in them, even though at this rate it will take us several decades

James

James Campbell wrote:
>
> I never heard of extension A. I guess that's why there's
> extension B, now that I feel really stupid. But all the hype
> has been ext. B, and I didn't even know about A when it
> happened!?! So how do I get a copy of it, if it's apparently
> NOT on my system?
> That explains why I couldn't figure out why it was missing
> because it didn't seem to look very strange.

Extension A, ranging from U+3400 to U+4DB5, came out in Unicode
3.0 in 2000. Tthis occupies the space that was occupied by precomposed
hangul syllables in Unicode 1.1, which were moved elsewhere. (Some
old fonts still have precomposed hangul syllables in the U+3400 ... space,
like Bitstream Cyberbit.) It adds 6,582 characters, which seems to be a
mixed bag of characters from some of the larger character sets, but perhaps
not as rare as the Extension B ones. You're right--I think a lot of the
Extension B ones look odd too, but probably because they are the zhuan->
kaishu ones. I did notice that there were some characters from the "GS"
source, labeled "Singapore characters"--some looked to me like simplified
versions of Cantonese dialect characters.

I think by now font vendors have started including Extension A for fonts
designed to be used with the new GB18030 encoding from the PRC. One
way to get a font with Extension A is to get fonts advertised for GB18030
usage, e.g., "Microsoft's GB18030 Support Package":
http://www.microsoft.com/china/windows2 ... /18030.asp


> I guess if we continue to discuss rare and individual
> characters in this way on the forums, we will become experts
> in them, even though at this rate it will take us several
> decades

No kidding. There's a lot of treasure to be found just by digging around
a dictionary. A while ago I was tracking down various characters claimed
to have been created by (female) emperor Wu Zetian, and came up with
a list that was exceeding the 15-20 that people usually talk about (which
seems to be just the ones mentioned in the _Tangshu_.


Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu

Dear Mr. James Campbell,

Nin hao. I was wondering does your company have an subsidiary office in San Francisco.

Also, does your company also hire free lance editors? For some people, writing is a gift, not a job.

Hi, no we don't have an office in SFO. But we can hire writers on a freelance basis. In fact, we're in need of some technical writers for the IT industry. You didn't leave your name, but be sure to send us some information if you're interested. For editing work, we prefer bilinguals who can check the translations.

I know what you mean with writing being a gift, not a job. Music is like that too. That's why when I graduated from college I decided not to be a musician for work, but rather for leisure.