this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

That little top part (冎) 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.

[–] jdr@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

That's what all 203 of my bones look like anyway

[–] chellomere@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

a skellington

[–] AlfalFaFail@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

So one the unique things about 月 is it contains several other character depending the context. In this case, 月 represents 肉 or flesh. My interpretation of the character is the bones that suspends flesh.

Here's more context specific transformations of 月 in other characters

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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 🤩 "Man", "woman", "cart", "gate/door", etc. Pictograph origins🖖🏼.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

heres those kanji for reference:

Person: 人

Man: 男

Woman: 女

Cart: 車

Gate: 門

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com Thanks! 🤩🖖🏼

Also, is "man" essentially a field character atop a sword/weapon one?

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I think the lower part カ I think means power, so field power, ie. A man has the power to plow a field

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah! I had them mixed up, as sword seems a very close relative: 刀 vs. カ

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Isn't that Waymo? 🤪 Ah, good ol' End/Not Future. What a prescient malaprop.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago

黽 黾

měng 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, 犭, the character for mouth, 口 and the character meaning 'wrap' 勹, like your arms wrapped around your mouth talking to a dog, who obviously understands you

I also really like

kàn meaning 'to look', which is the character for hand 手 above the character for eye 目 🫡

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.

[–] pianoplant@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

Odd that the 'head' is mirrored. The real kanji is 骨。agree it looks like a lil skeleton guy though.

[–] nagaram@piefed.social 29 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Am I loosing it?

It looks the same. Not mirrored at all

[–] CyberSeeker@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Here is an example of stroke order, showing the phone kanji is backwards.

https://jitenon.com/kanji/%E9%AA%A8

[–] gid@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago

Thank you! I couldn't work out how it was backwards when every version I saw of it looked the same.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world -1 points 6 days ago

No, they're tightening it.

Losing*, ironically. 😜

Weird, both versions seem to exist.

Wiktionary

[–] dosboy0xff@infosec.pub 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] pianoplant@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Fascinating, thanks!

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Google translate shows the character backwards, for some reason.

[–] pianoplant@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Seems simplified Chinese uses that version. But Kanji is Japanese.

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Japanese: 骨

Simplified: 骨

[–] Andonome@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Try ⾻ (ideograph U+2FBB) vs. 骨 (CJK "bone" used in Asian Typography, different Asian fonts may show differently).

screenshot table from Wikitionary

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Probably a Japanese or Korean font. 過 probably shows up on the right as well for you.

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 3 points 6 days ago

Samsung phone, would make sense.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Weird, on my phone the character rendered like it is in the picture

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] frunch@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Reminds me of the early vaporwave artist called 骨架的

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tD064_ifO7w

New Binding of Isaac familiar just dropped.

[–] lyralycan@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] jdr@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Nm, what's bone witchu?

[–] Chakravanti@monero.town 1 points 6 days ago

Almost White Wolf Hermetic Forces

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Why would you lie about that

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)