12

I have found a kanji in a manga I am attempting to read, that looks like this:

Unknown kanji

I have tried to find it in numerous dictionaries, and used multiple different methods. I know the third section is a radical, but the first isn't, and searching the third on it's own at WWWJDIC returns many results, but none of them are this one. Skip code has also been unfruitful. Handwriting has been challenging, because I'm not 100% certain on the order.

A friend suggested that it may be a kanji that is out of use, but used because the manga author thinks it's cool. I doubt it's slang, though, due to the context of being a formal statement.

The context is: 我輩はノイ＝クレザント(?)騎士である where the (?) is the character. It was written vertically.

I have stated the question as "How do I look up this kanji?" because I suspect I may get into this situation again.

Edit: The answer I have marked as correct actually contains the answer in the comments, so I've written it up here. It is actually a Google Chrome character font problem. The character did really appear in the dictionaries, but I couldn't recognise it because it was displayed incorrectly (Chinese instead of Japanese). Chrome doesn't check all the fonts on your computer like IE or FF, so I changed the standard fonts and it worked.

senshin
  • 5,615
  • 28
  • 69
AlbeyAmakiir
  • 1,133
  • 2
  • 9
  • 23
  • 3
    This is not _how_, but that kanji is 卿, read as きょう or けい. It is still in use! – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 19 '11 at 03:16
  • I found it on Kotoba for iPhone by looking up the radical on the right (2 strokes) and found the character itself in the resulting list. (It has 12 strokes btw, not 13.) – MatthewD Jul 19 '11 at 07:21
  • 2
    Stroke order for those interested: http://kakijun.main.jp/page/kei10200.html – Nicolas Raoul Jul 19 '11 at 09:28
  • On Wiktionary I can find three which look similar, and some of them look different in different fonts. Here are the three: 卿 喞 唧 – hippietrail Jul 19 '11 at 10:53
  • Only "卿" works in context on Google Translate: 我輩はノイ＝クレザント卿騎士である -> I am a knight, Sir Neu-Kurezanto – hippietrail Jul 19 '11 at 11:00
  • 1
    The centre part does in fact vary quite a bit between fonts. `http://fileformat.info` is a site that can compare a glyph across many fonts: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/537f/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/5527/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/559e/fontsupport.htm – hippietrail Jul 19 '11 at 12:30
  • The Naver Hanja Dictionary (Naver is like the Korean equivalent of Google) is amazing at identifying Chinese characters like hanja and kanji. You can draw the character (no need for radicals), copy what comes up, then paste it in some kanji dictionary to find its meaning. http://hanja.naver.com/ – user3932000 Feb 21 '17 at 04:57

4 Answers4

16

This character is pronounced 'kyoo' or 'kee'. It is the name of a highly-ranked title: 卿

Actually, you have correctly identified that the third section is a radical. Very Good. In this case, it is called ふしづくり. The character is actually listed under this radical: look here. So, don't give up. Try just a little bit harder.

Since you do not seem to have the necessary font installed on your system, I am adding a graphic capture of the character from the wikipedia page that I linked:

kyoo

By the way, this notification on the up right portion of the wikipedia page:

enter image description here

is telling that the character may not be showing up correctly if you do not have the particular setting. So, whenever you see it, you might want to suspect if you are actually seeing the right thing.

Andrew Grimm
  • 16,067
  • 14
  • 70
  • 179
  • Just the middle section is different. There is a small stroke that looks like an accent at the top of mine, but not on yours. At the bottom, the two strokes coming off the main vertical bar are perfectly horizontal, but in yours they are angled, and one is connected to the wrong stroke. The Wikipedia link you provide does not write the character large, so it looks similar, but enlarged, it is not the same. Also, I did not rely on a single source, and I say so in my question. – AlbeyAmakiir Jul 19 '11 at 03:34
  • @AlbeyAmakir Judging from what you report, I think you don't have the necessary fonts installed. I will attach a picture of the character to my answer. –  Jul 19 '11 at 03:38
  • I do have _a_ font that can display it. It displays slightly differently for me though. So, I guess my question becomes "why does it look different under different fonts, enough so that the apparent stroke count can change?" – AlbeyAmakiir Jul 19 '11 at 03:47
  • 4
    @AlbeyAmakir If it displays differently, then you do not have the font. In some font encoding, similar characters are often subsumed under a single character. The differences between Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Cantonese, Taiwanese Mandrin, Korean, and Japanese are sometimes ignored. –  Jul 19 '11 at 03:54
  • 3
    @AlbeyAmakiir: Are you running Chrome, by any chance? Chrome is notorious for using Chinese glyphs (which can have slightly different stroke counts) in place of Japanese glyphs. Try accessing the Wikipedia page with a different browser, or force Chrome to display pages in a Japanese font, and see if that changes anything. – Derek Schaab Jul 19 '11 at 17:44
  • @Derek Schaab: Yes, that was exactly it. Thanks. I've changed the fonts, and now everything displays correctly. Which means the character _really was_ in the dictionary. – AlbeyAmakiir Jul 19 '11 at 22:41
  • @Derek which encoding did you use to make it display correctly? I tried both SHIFT_JIS and EUC_JP but both aint working.. – Pacerier Jul 20 '11 at 05:58
  • @Pacerier The other choices are UTF-8 and ISO-2022-JP. –  Jul 20 '11 at 06:09
  • 3
    @Pacerier: In Chrome, you have to change the global font setting to a font that uses Japanese-specific glyphs (such as Microsoft PMincho or PGothic, or Meiryo). Unlike Firefox, Chrome does not (yet) allow you to specify per-language fonts. – Derek Schaab Jul 20 '11 at 12:17
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Sawa says that you're confusing pronunciation and romanization, and your edit is inconsistent and made Sawa's answer wrong, and that the edit should be done only when you have enough knowledge to do so. – Andrew Grimm May 29 '14 at 23:31
  • @AndrewGrimm -- 1) Why doesn't Sawa comment here? I'm confused why you're speaking for him/her. 2) Pronunciation and romanization are often conflated, given the straightforward nature of Japanese phonetics. The renderings 'kyoo' and 'kee' are neither commonly used romanizations, nor proper pronunciation guides. 'Kyoo' to most English readers would be /kjuː/, and 'kee' would be /kiː/. Given the kana renderings of きょう or けい, both pronunciations would be incorrect. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 29 '14 at 23:38
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Sawa again: (1) > Pronunciation and romanization are often conflated, given the straightforward nature of Japanese phonetics. No they are not. They are precisely the cases where Japanese orthography is not transparent: the vowel changes ou → oo and ei →　ee had applied. – Andrew Grimm May 30 '14 at 00:04
  • (2) > The renderings 'kyoo' and 'kee' are neither commonly used romanizations, nor proper pronunciation guides They are not most commonly used romanizations. Using macrons is outdated even in Japan. (3) > 'Kyoo' to most English readers would be /kjuː/, and 'kee' would be /kiː/. Given the kana renderings of きょう or けい, both pronunciations would be incorrect. Most English readers (especially Americans) would not even know a macron. – Andrew Grimm May 30 '14 at 00:04
  • Sawa's activity stream: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/users/458/sawa?tab=activity&sort=all&page=3 . I wish he'd stop downvoting if he's not prepared to comment on this website, though. – Andrew Grimm May 30 '14 at 00:06
  • Sawa again: On top of that, and most importantly, it is inconsistent to write "o" using a macron while writing the pronunciation "ee" as "ei". – Andrew Grimm May 30 '14 at 00:10
  • @AndrewGrimm, many things to respond to, but this may not be the place, and most of this seems to be Sawa anyway. (Thanks for the link, but I can't see any of Sawa's commentary -- are you two in communication outside this website? Is there some other link where I might be able to read Sawa's comments, as you've relayed here?) Suffice it to say here that 'kyoo' and 'kee' are not recognized by me, at least, as either a romanization scheme or a sufficiently clear pronunciation guide. I strongly suspect that I am not alone in this. My edit was only intended to clarify this uncertainty. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 30 '14 at 18:39
  • I used Hepburn as that appears to be the most common scheme for English speakers working with Japanese. If one knows Hepburn, pronunciation is straightforward -- hence my comment that romanization and pronunciation are often conflated. If Hepburn is to be eschewed for some reason, then I would suggest either using [IPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet) with the // or [] transcription, or at least clarifying how the romanization is intended to be pronounced, such as *'kyoo' with a long 'oh' sound and 'kee' with a long 'eh' sound*. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 30 '14 at 18:46
  • 1
    Still, sawa's romanization is logical, and the same or similar schemes are used by a number of linguists. I don't think anyone in a position to be helped by this answer would be confused by it. In any case, when editing other people's posts, the most important rule is to respect the intent of the author, so in this case we should leave it as it is. –  Jun 05 '14 at 17:20
8

It looks like a cross between

Kanji1

http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E5%96%9E (喞)

and

Kanji2

http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E5%8D%BF (卿)

I love the jisho.org kanji by radical lookup: http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/

mletterle
  • 221
  • 1
  • 4
  • Both the links point to the same one. But I know which ones you mean. I forgot to mention that I found those two already. Am I asking the wrong question? Is a cross between kanji a real thing that happens? – AlbeyAmakiir Jul 19 '11 at 03:17
  • Fixed the link. I'm not sure, but it is telling that the middle radical in both based on 艮. So if you take the form in the first link and pop it in the second link you end up with the kanji in question. Best explanation I have so far.... looking forward to reading some of the follow ups on this one. :) – mletterle Jul 19 '11 at 03:20
0

卿 - きみ Meaning: you, lord, secretary, state minister Not exactly sure if this is the right kanji, but I'm linking a software that I find is really good for looking up kanji: zkanji. I'm just not sure whether you're asking for help looking up kanji in general, or just this one.

Shailesh Vasandani
  • 111
  • 1
  • 2
    Welcome to the site! I'm not the one that downvoted you, but as a probable explanation; there are already two, more complete and more correct answers. You look like a new user. I wouldn't take the downvote too personally. Downvotes don't mean we think you're spam or a jerk, here (though the downvoter should have explained why they did it). A lot of new users expect this place to act like a forum, but it doesn't. For more info, you can check the help page or tour next to the search bar at the top. Also, that zkanji link is nice, thanks. :) – AlbeyAmakiir Jun 02 '14 at 22:13
0

I think the most difficult part of looking up a Kanji is that you can't find any way typing it, and here a solution if you're using computer.

Most of Chinese and Japanese input method in Windows has handwriting input function, you can type a Kanji this way.

For example : Microsoft IME Japanese Input

Step1

enter image description here

Then you can just click on the Kanji as a input for search.

Xeijp
  • 101
  • 1
  • One terrible weakness of this idea is that most IMEs require correct stroke order. Which is quite the deal-breaker for most foreigners studying Japanese when it comes to complex kanji. – virmaior Jun 05 '14 at 11:23
  • 1
    With a bit of practice you can get the stroke order almost always correct as it follows some rules in most cases. Beginners can struggle though. – Szymon Jun 05 '14 at 11:26
  • Stroke order in general isn't all that hard to learn, although I'd bet that most learners get stroke order wrong at least occasionally. (I know I do! :-) –  Jun 05 '14 at 15:38