Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 July 18

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July 18

Use of 囲 outside of Japanese

Chinese Wiktionary lists 囲 as an alternate form of 圍 in both Chinese and Korean; this surprised me, because the "common knowledge" is that it's a form that only makes sense in Japanese, based on the kun'yomi reading of 井 as (w)i. Has 囲 ever been used outside of Japanese? Is it not a Japanese invention as commonly supposed? Lazar Taxon (talk) 01:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a tangential question, but is it unknown for Chinese languages ('dialects'/'topolects') to adopt characters from Japanese, as opposed to the (as I understand it) very common contrary? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.140.169 (talk) 05:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Taiwanese Mandarin sometimes uses the same characters as Japanese as shorthands, and it is even common to write hiragana の for 的. —Kusma (talk) 06:38, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

It is not unheard of. When Chinese borrows a Japanese word including kokuji, the kokuji itself is often imported and given a Chinese reading. Most obviously this happens when referring to Japanese people whose names include kokuji (e.g. 綾辻行人), but there are other examples. For example, 腺 "gland" is a kokuji invented by ja:宇田川玄真 (Udogawa Genshin), but it was borrowed into Chinese from Japanese and given the reading xiàn (like 線).

Practices for Korean and Vietnamese borrowings into Chinese differ. Chinese Wikipedia writes 李世乭 (Lee Sedol, with a gukja) and zh:北𣴓省 (Bắc Kạn Province, with a Nôm character), but Baidu Baike replaces them with native Chinese characters and writes 李世石 and 北件省. Some Sawndip characters from Zhuang that appear in placenames in Guangxi have already become part of Standard Chinese, e.g. wikt:岜 and wikt:崬. Double sharp (talk) 07:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

As for the original question: I have not managed to find use of 囲 in Chinese on the Internet, but this is not evidence against it being used as an informal simplification.

And besides, it's not unknown to have modern (Chinese!) simplifications that don't make phonetic sense in standard Mandarin, e.g. 进. Double sharp (talk) 03:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)