RE: The character for 10**24 in Japanese numbers (jo)

From: Ben Monroe (bendono@comcast.net)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 23:23:04 EDT

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    Tex Texin,

    Part of the problem I think is that the character used to express 10^24 is
    not fixed to a single character (glyph?). If you only want a character with
    U+79BE and U+4E88 stuck together, then that would be U+25771. However, if
    you want a character that expresses the value 10^24, you have several other
    options.
    Please take a look at
    http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~fxba0016/misc/suumei/suumei.html#shi
    Granted the whole page is in Japanese, but it shows several of the ways that
    "shi/jo" are written. I hope you can pick them out; they are written between
    the corner brackets U+300C and U+300D. The first one is U+79ED. The next one
    is U+25797 (minus one stroke). The fourth one is U+25771, which seems to
    have the _visual_ appearance that you desire. And the last one is U+25791.

    I suggested U+79ED since two of my modern J-J dictionaries use it to express
    this value, although it does not have the visual appearance that you seem to
    desire. Also, it is in the BMP and fonts are available today.

    > The radical I see used on several web pages corresponds to
    > either U+4E88 or
    > U+5B50 (child), they are very similar.
    > If you look at the Unicode charts, the character 79ED has a
    > radical on the right which doesn't look like the child
    > character at all (to me). http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U4E00.pdf
    >
    > For ext. B, the character James suggested U+25771 also has
    > the child radical. However, the other two U+25797, U+25791 do
    > not. http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20000.pdf
    >
    > If you look at the charts you can see what I am referring to.

    I mentioned U+79ED, U+25797 and U+25791 as three of the various glyphs used
    to express the value 10^24, not to imply that the right side contains the
    character for "child" (or something similar to it); sorry if I was unclear.
    U+25771 is yet another character used to express the same value.
     
    > It might be best to continue with the
    > two-character or glyph approach.

    That might suggest to some that the word is actually composed of two
    different characters, and the pronunciation is the sum of each character
    read individually.

    Here is a site that decided to use a picture to express U+25771.
    http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/japanese/message/jpnENtBuX3HENS97SEe.html

    > At this point, I probably should footnote the character and
    > provide the suggestions you have documented (which I
    > appreciate!). Before I do, let me know what you think of the
    > glyphs in the Unicode charts, to make sure that the rightside
    > radicals there, are something you would agree are reasonable
    > alternatives to child. They look nothing like U+4E88 or U+5B50.

    A footnote may be a good idea.
    The right hand side should not be U+5B50 ("child"), but rather U+4E88
    (meaning "give" "I", "beforehand" etc.).
    Looking at the charts now, U+25771 is U+79BE and U+4E88 stuck together. I do
    not see a problem with the visual appearance. It looks reasonable to me.

    Hope this helps,
    Ben Monroe

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