I've seen some pretty wild kanji, but this one is just ridiculous.



????????

Even good ol' "gloom" can't hope to be as weird. I can't find it in any online dictionary I know of. If someone has any information on the meaning, reading or stroke order of this kanji... please contact your local police department!

Seriously though, I'd be very grateful if someone was so kind as to shine a light on this mystery...

These are Chinese noodles called biangbiang.

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=-R-tCdFU...sfc-bbXI9K

The Japanese Wikipedia page has a whole section on the name.^-^
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9...3%E9%BA%BA

EDIT: Ah, the English one does too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles

The Chinese must really like their noodles.

If I've figured this out correctly, the stroke order is as follows:

穴
月
幺言幺
長馬長
刂
心
⻌

Wikipedia also provided an ''ideographic description sequence'' ⿺辶⿳穴⿲月⿱⿲幺言幺⿲長馬長刂心
Does this mean 辶 should be first?

Oh, and ⻌ and 辶 are one and the same, right?

It looks like the kanji for Hiroshima after WW2...

AppleCider Wrote:Oh, and ⻌ and 辶 are one and the same, right?

With my font they look exactly the same oO

Illuminaty confirmed!

EDIT: Uhh... wut? With my font, the first is normal, but the second has two drops instead of one.
http://jisho.org/search/%E8%BE%B5
Can you see it here?

Yes there they're normal. (jisho is extremely slow here in China -.-)
I think it's because this site doesn't specify an encoding so Firefox uses a Chinese font.



Edit: Wikipedia also does it right it seems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification

Fonts can be tricky little things.

Anyway, I've dug a bit deeper and apparently no, the ideographic description sequence does not imply the order in which the character should be rendered.

Therefore, I think the stroke order I came up with is more or less correct (unless it isn't...).
So:
穴
月
幺言幺
長馬長
刂
心
⻌
[58 strokes]

Great! I think I'll actually go ahead and learn it at some point in the future. (Why? 'Cause I want to!)
Thanks for all your contributions!

EDIT: Who wants to start a petition to add this to the Jouyou Kanji? (jk don't hit me)

On wikipedia there are even versions with 67 strokes xD edit: even 68

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/Bi%C3%A1n...g%E9%9D%A2

They also tell you the right stroke order.
宀八言幺幺馬長長月刂心辶

How splendid! I'll make sure I don't skip any! xD

I watched a video of a guy writing this nearly half a year ago:

This character is so absurd that it stuck with me after watching the video only once...

AppleCider Wrote:I've seen some pretty wild kanji, but this one is just ridiculous.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/image...mwA-2KbZMw

Absolutely ridiculous. Is it even real?

A 3:47 long video on how to write noodles? I could eat the noodles quicker than that

john555 Wrote:

AppleCider Wrote:I've seen some pretty wild kanji, but this one is just ridiculous.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/image...mwA-2KbZMw

Absolutely ridiculous. Is it even real?

What's your definition of "real"? It actually is used to represent those noodles. There's a picture on Wikipedia. The origin of the character is unclear though, and it's very possible that it was created by a store or restaurant to represent the noodles, and they probably intentionally made it ridiculously complex as an advertising gimmick. But it's more widespread now than just one store or chain.

In that sense it's like the Toys R Us sign/logo/cathc copy, I guess. Everyone knows the R is reversed, their logo reflects it, and we have to use euphemisms to write it on the internet.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

john555 Wrote:

AppleCider Wrote:I've seen some pretty wild kanji, but this one is just ridiculous.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/image...mwA-2KbZMw

Absolutely ridiculous. Is it even real?

What's your definition of "real"?

By "real" I mean a real character listed in official dictionaries, attested to in the literature, as opposed to someone fooling around and just making it up.

Sort of like, an English word is real if it's in the Oxford English Dictionary. At least as far as yours truly is concerned.

English doesn't have an official dictionaries.

And for your reference, being in a dictionary doesn't make a word any more or less "real. The word "D'oh" as in homer simpson's catch phrase is in the OED.

Kanji and hanzi work differently. It can be considered a real hanzi, just nonstandard.

RandomQuotes Wrote:English doesn't have an official dictionaries.

And for your reference, being in a dictionary doesn't make a word any more or less "real. The word "D'oh" as in homer simpson's catch phrase is in the OED.

Sorry, but if a word is in the OED it's real. Time to move on.

john555 Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:English doesn't have an official dictionaries.

And for your reference, being in a dictionary doesn't make a word any more or less "real. The word "D'oh" as in homer simpson's catch phrase is in the OED.

Sorry, but if a word is in the OED it's real. Time to move on.

Yea, no. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The OED isn't a prescriptive dictionary at all. It's descriptive. Obviously, you don't seem to understand what these words mean, so I'm here to enlighten you. A prescriptive dictionary describes what is "correct." A descriptive dictionary, on the other hand, simply describes what is used. So, if you make up a word, like "doh" or other neologism like "carnapping", they end up in a descriptive dictionary.

On top of the that, the OED has no official authority other than the fact that it has been around for a long time.

So, by your own logic. This hanzi is real, because it exists in a dictionary somewhere. Not to mention, it's used in real life.

RandomQuotes Wrote:

john555 Wrote:Sorry, but if a word is in the OED it's real. Time to move on.

Yea, no. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The OED isn't a prescriptive dictionary at all. It's descriptive.

Um, I think you're totally missing john555's point. For example, d'oh is a real word that people use, therefore it's been included in the OED. Wtracx is not a real word that anyone uses, ergo, not in the OED. Yes, the OED is descriptive. It's not an arbiter of what people *should* say, but rather, what they *do*. Much the same as what he meant about kanji, is this a 'real' kanji, ie not just a bunch of squiggles (or random letters).

ktcgx Wrote:

RandomQuotes Wrote:

john555 Wrote:Sorry, but if a word is in the OED it's real. Time to move on.

Yea, no. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The OED isn't a prescriptive dictionary at all. It's descriptive.

Um, I think you're totally missing john555's point. For example, d'oh is a real word that people use, therefore it's been included in the OED. Wtracx is not a real word that anyone uses, ergo, not in the OED. Yes, the OED is descriptive. It's not an arbiter of what people *should* say, but rather, what they *do*. Much the same as what he meant about kanji, is this a 'real' kanji, ie not just a bunch of squiggles (or random letters).

Yes but as you see this quote which he responded to,

yudantaiteki Wrote:It actually is used to represent those noodles. There's a picture on Wikipedia. The origin of the character is unclear though, and it's very possible that it was created by a store or restaurant to represent the noodles, and they probably intentionally made it ridiculously complex as an advertising gimmick. But it's more widespread now than just one store or chain.

answers the question he asked as a reply to that question.

What I was pointing out was that existence in a dictionary does not make something a word, and that not being in a dictionary doesn't make something not a word.

Does this count as a food fight?

RandomQuotes Wrote:What I was pointing out was that existence in a dictionary does not make something a word, and that not being in a dictionary doesn't make something not a word.

Don't speech and words predate dictionaries? What was 'correct' before dictionaries? I was under the impression that dictionaries catalogue and categorize words and their meanings the same way an atlas does for geography, or an encyclopedia ornithology catalogues birds. How can a bird or a word be 'correct', or not?

And doesn't language change over time? I'm assuming language changes first, and then dictionaries play catch-up.

Prescriptive dictionaries are only an attempt by the publisher to establish order on the language and different publishers even disagree on what is 'correct'. So even a fake thing like correctness is debatable.