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

From: Tex Texin (tex@i18nguy.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 01:54:15 EDT

  • Next message: jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com: "RE: French group separators"

    Allen,

    Thanks for this. Good points. The ideographic description approach is also a
    good idea.

    The table of Japanese counting characters was a bit off-topic for the
    multicurrency page, and the footnotes that are there now for the Jo/Shi
    character are a further distraction, but seem adequate enough. (Moreso,
    considering how often anyone uses 10**24.) Some day in the future I'll do a
    separate more in-depth page around this and include the IDC approach.

    tex

    Allen Haaheim wrote:
    >
    > Hi,
    > Any similarity between U+5b50 子 at 3 strokes, and U+4e88 予 at 4, is
    > superficial. For example, U+2007 迺 is a common variant for 4e43 乃 ("is,"
    > "then") but can't be confused 逎 900e ("alcoholic beverage"). (Context
    > usually makes that clear pretty quickly!) Since 79ed and 25771 seem to be
    > both interchangeable for your purpose, as well as both still in fairly
    > common use, I agree a note would be a good idea.
    >
    > (Someone correct me please, if the following method should not be used for
    > Japanese--I'm sure it is fine with Chinese.) If you can't get 25771 to work,
    > for the note you might consider using a certain "Ideographic Description
    > Character," namely U+2FF0 ⿰, which indicates that the two characters to
    > follow
    > are meant to represent the two left/right components of the originally
    > desired character.
    > Otherwise you will simply have two incorrect graphs (79be 禾 and 4e88 予),
    > even if what you really
    > mean is obvious enough. E.g., something like "Also written as⿰禾予."
    >
    > There is an explanation in English here (bottom of page):
    > http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/cjkv/elevator.html
    >
    > Allen
    >
    > When you raise chickens, you let them eat what they want,
    > As soon as they fatten, you boil them in a pot.
    > This plan is the best for the man who owns them,
    > But for heaven's sake, don't let the chickens know!
    >
    > Yüan Mei (1776), trans. J.D. Schmidt
    >
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: "Tex Texin" <tex@i18nguy.com>
    > To: "Ben Monroe" <bendono@comcast.net>
    > Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
    > Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 6:51 PM
    > Subject: Re: The character for 10**24 in Japanese numbers (jo)
    >
    > Thanks very much Ben.
    >
    > 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.
    >
    > The character is often represented by two characters as I did on my page or
    > as
    > a glyph image. Very often it is not displayed at all, and is skipped in
    > lists
    > of these characters used for numbers. That's why I am kind of stuck not
    > wanting to recommend a single JIS-based character, if they have been
    > rejected
    > by many users, and also not wanting to lead in a new direction, unless there
    > is a preponderance of agreement it is the right thing to do. It might be
    > best
    > to continue with the two-character or glyph approach.
    >
    > I agree that this number is not going to be used a lot and therefore it may
    > not bear a great investment in sweating over which character(s) to use, but
    > on
    > the other hand I like to make my pages accurate with reasonable
    > recommendations.
    >
    > I was hoping Unicode 4.0 would have a clear solution to the problem, and if
    > the character U+25771 were in the BMP, and if font vendors told me they were
    > going to support it reasonably soon, then it seems to me to be the right
    > thing
    > to recommend (with a caution perhaps) going forward. Given it is part of
    > Ext.
    > B, support seems far away at best and therefore not a good recommendation.
    >
    > 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.
    >
    > I am hoping this won't take 1 jo/shi of emails to straighten out!
    >
    > BTW, I should mention my knowledge around Kanji is next to nil and my
    > sources
    > were mostly other web pages I searched out, so this purely a layman's effort
    > on my part and given the accuracy of the web, I will change positions
    > easily.
    >
    > tex
    >
    > Ben Monroe wrote:
    > >
    > > [UTF-8]
    > >
    > > Tex Texin wrote:
    > >
    > > > On shi/jo the glyph I see in Windows charmap doesn't look
    > > > right. Perhaps it is my particular set of fonts. I expect to
    > > > see a radical on the right that looks like the character for
    > > > child, and charmap shows something else. I'll wait to see if
    > > > someone else chimes in pro or con.
    > >
    > > The right side of the character probably has U+4E88 äº^ instead of U+5B50
    > 子 (child). These two characters are different. As I mentioned before,
    > there are several different glyphs used to write shi/jo.
    > > Several of the forms are U+79ED 秭, U+25797 ð¥z-, U+25791 ð¥z', and
    > U+25771 𥝱.
    > > These all express the value of 10^24 and are read as shi or jo, depending
    > on your source.
    > >
    > > > Also, I wonder what the correct thing to recommend would be?
    > > > Assuming surrogate support was consistently available, and
    > > > fonts were available containing this character (are there any
    > > > today?), since the character was not generally being written
    > > > as a single character until now (and I am still not sure if the
    > > > pair U+79BE U+4E88 is the correct alternative), would it be
    > > > right to recommend this for people to use in number writing
    > > > going forward? I tend to think of Ext. B as there for historic
    > > > and special characters, not those that might be used every day.
    > >
    > > If you are worried about surrogate support and font availability, then
    > U+79ED may be the best, which is attested and documented, and listed in
    > modern dictionaries. Both Koujien and Daijirin (available online at
    > http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/index.html?kind=jn&mode=0se this glyph for
    > it's entry of "shi". Otherwise, go for U+25771, which seems to be attested
    > the most in documents. Daijirin uses this glyph for it's entry of "jo", but
    > Koujien does not list it.
    > >
    > > However, these are not really "every day" characters, at least in my
    > experience. Most people will know "chou", some will know "kei", fewer will
    > know "gai", and even fewer will know "shi/jo". I would be a little surprised
    > if many people could list the rest off the top of their head without prior
    > special study or other references.
    > >
    > > Ben Monroe
    > > [For those looking for my original e-mail message that Tex responded to, I
    > accidentally sent it under a new address forgetting to update my
    > subscription information after my e-mail address changed. (Old one is still
    > being forwarded to this one.)]
    >
    > --
    > -------------------------------------------------------------
    > Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
    > Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com
    >
    > XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com
    > Making e-Business Work Around the World
    > -------------------------------------------------------------

    -- 
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
    Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                             
    XenCraft		            http://www.XenCraft.com
    Making e-Business Work Around the World
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 08 2003 - 02:41:44 EDT