第六十八天

[nnozomi]

语法
一直, doing something constantly/always/all along (ずっと in Japanese expresses it better really)
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_%22all_along%22_with_%22yizhi%22

词汇
包, package or bag. (also 包子，bun; 面包, bread [dang it, 简体字, this should really be 麺 not 面]; 钱包, wallet; 书包, bookbag)
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-1-word-list/

Guardian:
我小的时候一直在想等我长大了, when I was little I was always longing to be grown up.
今天你一直在学校吗, have you been at school the whole time today?
我们一直都是朋友，从来没变过, we have always been friends, that has never changed.

My practice:
从小时候我一直爱过学语言。
昨天一直下雨，我整一天差不多留在家里。
我朋友烤面包烤得很擅长，不幸的事因为她住在台湾所以我不能吃她的面包。

Comments

[trobadora]

So here's a possibly stupid question - when I looked up 一直 in the dictionary, why does the 直 look completely different?! I would never have recognised that as the same character. Compare:

[grayswandir]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I feel like I may have seen that character before. No idea where, though. :/

This kind of reminds me of the time I ran into 眞 and had no idea what it was, and then it turned out to be just a variant of 真. (And there's also another variant, 真, apparently!)

Wiktionary lists the alternate version of 直 as Japanese, but I don't know. Wiktionary also lists 眞 as Korean, but the place I ran into it was on the cover of a Hong Kong DVD set (image from Wikipedia), and I remember when I asked my Cantonese language partner about it, she at first didn't know why I was confused. She said it was just a different/fancy way of writing 真, and didn't seem to think it was unusual at all...

[trobadora]

Oh, that's fascinating!

With 眞 at least my pop-up dictionary knows it as a variant of 真. It doesn't know 真, though!

The thing that confuses me the most is that the versions of 直 don't seem to be different characters - I copied from here and pasted it into the dictionary, and it came out looking differently there. (Also happens when you paste it into Google Translate; I checked just now ...)

[grayswandir]

Yeah, I was just about to comment on that! In fact, I only just now realized that your first image is from nnozomi's post, which is extra weird because on my screen, the character in the post shows up the same as the one in your dictionary, 直. The one in your first image is the one Wiktionary says is Japanese (like you said, I can't copy and paste it here because every time I paste it, it turns back into the Chinese 直 in your second image)! I can see the Japanese version on Wiktionary, but I don't see it in this post!

[trobadora]

Haha, and I just checked, and if I look at nnozomi's post in different browsers, sometimes I get one variant and sometimes the other!

[grayswandir]

Hah, okay, I think it's just a font thing! I pasted it into MS Word, and in some fonts (e.g. MingLiu, SimSun, YaHei) it looks like your second image (from the dictionary), but in other fonts (e.g. Yu Gothic, Gulim, Meiryo), it looks like the character in your first image. So, literally the exact same character, just different fonts!

I've run into that with some radicals looking really different in different font styles (mostly I'm thinking of the radical in words like 神, which can look like either 示 or 礻 depending on the font), but I've apparently never noticed this 直 one before!

[trobadora]

Oh, that's a good idea, trying out the fonts in Word. Yeah, I guess that makes sense with the copy/paste thing and with the different browsers, then! But still, the difference is pretty stark.

Now that you mention it, I've noticed that with 神 as well. And the thing that gets me is, how do you know it's the same character/radical? I mean, I'd also like to know where the different ways of writing it come from, just for curiosity's sake, but mainly I want to know if there's a way to recognise these different forms as the same character if you aren't already familiar with both ...

[grayswandir]

I mean, to be fair, there are quite a few letters in the Latin alphabet that can look pretty different depending on the font. The letter "J" can have a line across the top, or not; the letter "I" can have lines at the top and bottom, or no horizontal lines at all; lowercase "a" can have a hook at the top or no hook; lowercase "g" can have a closed circle at the bottom or just a hook that's open on the left side... and that's without even bringing cursive writing into it at all. :P Granted, the number of possible letters to guess from in the Latin alphabet is a lot more finite! But I guess I assume once you get used to seeing different fonts, the variations become so familiar that you don't really even notice them.

I have no idea if someone would be able to guess that 礻 was ⺬if they'd somehow only ever encountered one of the options before, though, except from context if it was obvious what the character had to be.

[trobadora]

Totally, totally fair! I guess when it comes to the Latin script, even if someone's handwriting is very different from what I'm used to and they write letters in a way I'm not familiar with, I have a feeling for what kinds of variations to sort into which letter. And I feel like presumenothing's graph below helps me get started on that sort of mental sorting for Chinese, you know?

[grayswandir]

I haven't been able to find any kind of chart of the progress from ⺬to 礻 (like the Baidu images presumenothing posted for 直 and 真), but it sounds like ⺬isn't used in simplified characters, so the variation may just be something for me to worry about. XD What I found was this, on Wikiwand:

This radical takes different forms in different languages or characters.

When used as a left component, traditionally, only ⺬ was used in printing, while 礻 was overwhelmingly preferred in writing regular script. In the Kangxi Dictionary, ⺬ was chosen as the standard form.

In mainland China, after the adoption of simplified Chinese characters and xin zixing (new character forms), 礻, which used to be a handwriting form, became the standard xin zixing printing form [...] 礻 is also chosen as the standard form in the Taiwan standard and the Hong Kong standard of Traditional Chinese, though ⺬ [... is] also widely used in Traditional Chinese publications.

In Japan, 礻 was adopted as the standard form of in shinjitai, and the difference between 礻 and ⺬ is treated as the difference between the new and old forms [...]. However, this simplification applies only to jōyō kanji. [...] Both forms are acceptable when writing hyōgai kanji, but only the simplified form is recognized as the standard form in jōyō kanji.

The left component form is not simplified in Korean hanja [i.e. Korean uses ⺬]

[presumenothing]

This discussion has just reminded me that the colloquial name for this radical is 示字旁, so, well XD

[trobadora]

Oh, that's fascinating, thank you for sharing!

[trobadora]

Super fascinating, thank you!

Like I said elsewhere above, at my level of learning I probably shouldn't be worrying about things like that, but it's so helpful to talk about them and not just sit there stewing in my "????" on my own!

[sakana17]

I was so glad you asked about it! In my browser, nnozomi's post showed both characters and I was puzzling over it. The explanation is good to know.

[trobadora]

I'm glad it was useful to you too! I'm not confident enough to do actual practice sentences, but questions at least I can ask. *g*

[sakana17]

I'm not confident enough to attempt practice sentences, either, but I enjoy trying to find examples from shows (so far, just The Rebel, but I may need to branch out :D).

[trobadora]

Yeah, that's why I do SHL quotes sometimes, too. Much less nerve-wracking than trying to make a sentence of my own. *g*

[nnozomi]

This is really useful, thank you.

so the variation may just be something for me to worry about. XD
and me sometimes in Japanese! especially in original prewar texts, which are basically 繁体字. I know I read ⺬ and 礻 interchangeably as radicals (in context, out of context I might be pretty confused), but I'm not sure how I learned to do so.

[presumenothing]

Possibly-explanatory(?) images, courtesy of Baidu:

My $0.02: yeah, it's not really any more unusual than variations on lowercase a and such, the differences barely even register at this point. And aside from fonts, I think differing levels of browser and/or hardware support for Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters also affects which ones get used? Possibly.

[grayswandir]

Thank you, yes, I think those are helpful! And it looks like there's a similar situation in both characters, where there used to be 目 with a separate line under it, but now it's all connected (and the vertical part of the stroke gets dropped). Seeing the earlier versions of the character (and the stroke order, now that I've looked that up), it's more obvious that they're the same thing.

It's just so hard to guess, when there are also similar-looking characters that are completely different! (已/己, whyyyy.)

[presumenothing]

已/己 is so cursed, goodness. It's like someone sat down at some point and went, hahaHA how are we gonna make life as difficult as possible for everyone?

(except that if you then think about the historical evolution of characters, they must've come from different origins anyway, then Why So Similar in the end)

[grayswandir]

they must've come from different origins anyway

Oh? *looks both up on Baidu*

So 已 is a fetus, and 己 is... 诸多猜测，不一而足。

还有待进一步研究...

[nnozomi]

还有待进一步研究...
笑死我了，你说得对。。。

and thanks for using 不一而足, another useful phrase new to me!

[grayswandir]

It was new to me too!

[presumenothing]

*takes a big marker and changes Baidu's tagline to 百度一下，你 就 还是不 知道*

[trobadora]

Thank you, that's really helpful! Seeing it laid out like that makes it easier to understand and recognise the connection.

(It feels like at my level of learning I really shouldn't be worrying about these things, but it helps so much to be able to ask these questions here, and actually getting answers - or even just confirmation that this is a thing that exists - makes it so much more fun for me! ❤❤❤)

[nnozomi]

actually getting answers - or even just confirmation that this is a thing that exists - makes it so much more fun for me! ❤❤❤
同感！ And it's easier to learn stuff with fewer unanswered questions itching away at the back of your (one's) brain. Very glad there are people around here asking and answering these things! <3

[nnozomi]

Wiktionary lists the alternate version of 直 as Japanese, but I don't know. Wiktionary also lists 眞 as Korean
For the record, I would struggle with the alternate version of 直 in a Japanese context--like trobadora, it doesn't look like the same character to me at all, and I don't think it's a common Japanese font. I've seen 眞 in Japanese, but only in place and people names which sometimes use alternate characters (真理子 vs 眞理子).

[grayswandir]

I don't think it's a common Japanese font

Huh, I wonder how common it is in general. Since it showed up that way for trobadora and sakana17 in your post (or some parts of your post, in some browsers XD), it seems like it can't be that rare! And while I don't see it in the post, I do see the alternate version if I paste it in the address bar. I wouldn't have thought it was common either, since I don't remember noticing it before, but it seems like it's showing up a lot...

I've seen 眞 in Japanese, but only in place and people names which sometimes use alternate characters (真理子 vs 眞理子).

Oh, good point. I think I've seen alternate/older versions of characters used in Chinese names as well, though not this one specifically, as far as I remember.

[presumenothing]

I think I've seen alternate/older versions of characters used in Chinese names as well,

Chinese parents are not above absolutely just making up characters to put in names, for 风水 or whatever other reasons. I remember a classmate of mine always having her name typed wrong because that radical+character combination simply Did Not Actually Exist.

[nnozomi]

it seems like it can't be that rare!
No, fair point, it may just not be a thing in my browser etc. I'll keep an eye out for that particular variant here and there and report back!