I'm no expert, but it was described to me years ago by native Chinese speakers that many of the characters are written like that ๐คฉ "Man", "woman", "cart", "gate/door", etc. Pictograph origins๐๐ผ.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
415 points (99.3% liked)
Wholesome
4454 readers
111 users here now
Weโre here to help you have a better day! For all wholesome and heartwarming content including memes, news stories, etc.
We chose Reddthat specifically because no downvotes are allowed. Negative comments will be removed.
Please see our twinned community for more wholesome joy...
!dadforaminute@lemmy.world !superbowl@lemmy.world
Rules:
- Be wholesome. Trolling, passive aggressive, nasty comments aren't allowed.
- No politics. It's not wholesome.
- Don't hate on ANY groups. Racist, transphobic, ableist etc comments aren't allowed.
Positive Communities of Lemmy:
- !goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
- !motivationalmemes@reddthat.com
- !OptimistsUnite@reddthat.com
- !positivity@lemmy.today
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
heres those kanji for reference:
Person: ไบบ
Man: ็ท
Woman:ใๅฅณ
Cart:ใ่ป
Gate:ใ้
@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com Thanks! ๐คฉ๐๐ผ
Also, is "man" essentially a field character atop a sword/weapon one?
I think the lower part ใซ I think means power, so field power, ie. A man has the power to plow a field
Ah! I had them mixed up, as sword seems a very close relative: ๅ vs. ใซ
How bout ๆช vs ๆซ ?
Isn't that Waymo? ๐คช Ah, good ol' End/Not Future. What a prescient malaprop.
That little top part (ๅ) is the how it was originally drawn. It's supposed to look like a bone. It's more pronounced in the earlier drawings.
The bottom part (which is the kanji for moon and month) as a radical often means something like "flesh", and is present in the kanji for body parts.
So I don't think the whole thing was intended to be the pictograph of a skellington, or at least can't say for sure.
That's what all 203 of my bones look like anyway
a skellington
So one the unique things about ๆ is it contains several other character depending the context. In this case, ๆ represents ่ or flesh. My interpretation of the character is the bones that suspends flesh.
Here's more context specific transformations of ๆ in other characters
Looks like a Dalex
้ปฝ ้ปพ
mฤng is a Chinese character for frog or toad
another one i'm a bit blown away by but might not be totally accurate
็
Guo, for dog, is like a dog lieing down, ็ญ, the character for mouth, ๅฃ and the character meaning 'wrap' ๅน, like your arms wrapped around your mouth talking to a dog, who obviously understands you
I also really like
็
kร n meaning 'to look', which is the character for hand ๆ above the character for eye ็ฎ ๐ซก
I've been practaticing a lot this year and I'm finally starting to get some of this to click
Well, how do you think most ideographics were created? Graphical representation of an idea.
Odd that the 'head' is mirrored. The real kanji is ้ชจใagree it looks like a lil skeleton guy though.
Am I loosing it?
It looks the same. Not mirrored at all
Here is an example of stroke order, showing the phone kanji is backwards.
Thank you! I couldn't work out how it was backwards when every version I saw of it looked the same.
Losing*, ironically. ๐
No, they're tightening it.
It's a Unicode CJK variant. There are a bunch of characters that Unicode considers to be the same character but with small regional differences (e.g. how it's written in Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Japan vs. Korea, etc.). Since the region isn't encoded in the character, you're seeing whatever your system locale and font default to. For web pages, you can specify the region inside the HTML or HTTP headers and hopefully you get the correct character rendering, but that also requires you to have a font installed that includes the variant.
https://www.typotheque.com/articles/understanding-cjk-regional-character-variants
Fascinating, thanks!
Google translate shows the character backwards, for some reason.
Seems simplified Chinese uses that version. But Kanji is Japanese.
Japanese: ้ชจ
Simplified: ้ชจ
This is what I see.
Weird
Try โพป (ideograph U+2FBB) vs. ้ชจ (CJK "bone" used in Asian Typography, different Asian fonts may show differently).
screenshot table from Wikitionary
Probably a Japanese or Korean font. ้ probably shows up on the right as well for you.
Samsung phone, would make sense.
Weird, on my phone the character rendered like it is in the picture
A lot of characters in Asian languages look like the thing the symbol represents. Can't remember which language it was, but it has characters for "house," "home," and "family" that all look like slight variations to a simple drawing of a house.
There are thousands of Asian languages. Chinese and Japanese are the only languages that still use a logographic system. Korean also uses Chinese characters but only for special purposes, like academia.
yeah that's what gets me, like it would make getting context easy, but remembering which fine detail just won't stick in my head.
New Binding of Isaac familiar just dropped.
What's bone daddy?
Nm, what's bone witchu?
Almost White Wolf Hermetic Forces
Creative ngl.
Why would you lie about that
huh?