The study page shows [16] in the stroke count field. So does EDICT.

On the other hand, no matter what I do, I could only count 15. The KanjiStrokeOrders font also shows 15 strokes.

¿Any pointers?

I think there is a variation of this kanji where the spoon radical is replaced with 上, which would add an extra stroke to the entire kanji. I think this might be the reason you see it listed as a 16 stroke kanji some places.

OK, that makes perfect sense. Thank you very much ;-)

I'll keep counting it as 15, since IMHO makes more sense (it's what's shown in the book, in agreement with the primitives, and even in the unicode standard -scroll down to "kTotalStrokes"-).

What I wonder now is if this website's database, in this particular case, should be changed to reflect that 15, or keep the 16 listed in EDICT -since it's its primary source for that matter, if I'm not wrong-.

It should be like this



Basically the Japanese government recently expanded its official list of kanji for general use, aka the "joyo" kanji. About twenty of the kanji added to the list were not compatible with simplifications made after World War 2 so they had to be officially modified to fit in line.

The unicode standard hasn't been updated yet but you should know that the 稽 you see on your browser is no longer valid in that form and should be written like the picture.

You can see a complete list of changes here, look for the kanji in brackets towards the bottom. The kanki in brackets are the correct forms replacing the traditional forms.
http://www.kanken.or.jp/teido/pdf/national_list.pdf

The Joyo Kanji list on the official government site has the 稽 version rather than the one with 上.

This site shows 15 too:

http://kakijun.main.jp/page/kei15200.html

but towards the bottom it does mention the other kanji with the 上 in it instead.

kitakitsune Wrote:Basically the Japanese government recently expanded its official list of kanji for general use, aka the "joyo" kanji. About twenty of the kanji added to the list were not compatible with simplifications made after World War 2 so they had to be officially modified to fit in line.

The unicode standard hasn't been updated yet but you should know that the 稽 you see on your browser is no longer valid in that form and should be written like the picture.

You can see a complete list of changes here, look for the kanji in brackets towards the bottom. The kanki in brackets are the correct forms replacing the traditional forms.
http://www.kanken.or.jp/teido/pdf/national_list.pdf

I believe it's the other way around. The govt's stance is that the official forms of kanji that weren't on the pre-2010 Joyo will be their traditional (non-simplified form). That’s the form not in brackets.

Prior to that decision, the unofficially simplified forms of a bunch of non-joyo kanji were being used by some people. (Asahi Shimbun had gone ahead and simplified them consistent with the simplifications made in the Joyo kanji and the JIS people had assigned unique codepoints to some of them.) Asahi has since reverted to using the traditional forms. JIS has cooperated with the govt's decision by displaying the official forms (ie traditional.)The default font in devices are migrating to the official forms.

(A few components have 2 'acceptable' forms - examples might be the right side of 噌 and the left side of 餅. I'm too lazy to check.)

I think kanken decided that those [unofficial simplified] forms will (also?) be accepted as correct for the purpose of the test. (At least, that's my recollection of a blurb that was posted before - anyone taking the test should check if that's correct.) [edit: I had included a reason for accepting both, but that was a misreading or misremembering of what I had read. Thanks for checking it, yudan.]

People can write it as they like. (The link above indicates the 匕 form is typical.) The official forms apply to printed publications, etc. Having two forms for certain primitives complicates RTK a bit, but fortunately there are only a few. As long as people can recognize the forms as variations of the same primitive, that's enough.

You sure about that?

I'm pretty sure the kanken people, (admittedly not the govt but a major authority on kanji), are saying they will only accept the simplified versions as correct for the kanken test.

What it says is that for the Joyo kanji, they will only accept the standard forms from the Joyo list as correct, with the exception of the ones that have forms in brackets on that list; for those, either form will be correct. Probably this was done because before last year or so there was no officially "correct" forms for those kanji so maybe they think it's too soon to force people to use a particular one.

(The comment on the side doesn't say that *only* the forms in brackets will be accepted as correct.)

I wouldn't worry too much about this unless you're taking some test -- especially for the ones that only differ by a dot or single line, nobody's going to notice. I doubt most Japanese people can write 稽 no matter which right side is technically correct.

Okay I see

Ignore everything I said in thread

Thanks for all the info, I really appreciate it!

Just to be absolutely clear: the "future-proof" (if that term even makes sense in what respects to kanji) form people should be learning right now is the one in the 常用漢字 list, i.e. the one with spoon (15 strokes) rather than the other. Did I understand it correctly?

You can probably safely go ahead and learn the version with the spoon radical in it. As yudantaiteki said, you shouldn't worry too much about it unless you're about to take some test, in which case you might want to check up on the accepted form for that specific test.