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Kanji that are pretty/ugly
Index » 喫茶店 (Koohii Lounge)
First of all, my apologies if this is a double thread - I didn't find anything.
I just thought it would be a fun idea to talk about which kanji are the pretty ones 
I wonder if other people would be attracted to the same kanji that I am.
Bear in mind I don't have finished RtK1 (I'm in the 1400s atm), so the prettiest kanji might be yet to come.
So far, I really like:
158 寺 "Buddhist temple"
1011 傾 "Lean" (I like the way you can tuck the "spoon" primitive a bit in the "person" one)
1256 者 "Someone" (especially as it appears as parts of other kanji... it's just elegant)
1427 酉 "Sign of the bird"
I guess we might as well talk about the ugly kanji as well 
here's some of the ones I don't like:
106 少 "Few" (this one's not so bad actually, just a little ugly)
213 暦 "Calendar" (just looks like a creepy clown's face to me)
Meh, I gotta go now... I'll add others later if I come across them again.
Thankfully, in general I think kanji are very pretty, btw.
Burritolingus wrote:
麗 will always look hilarious and hideous to me, which is a little ironic considering its meaning. Can you visualize the eyebrows, eyes, nose and gritted teeth? Dang, son, that's one fugly kanji.
On the other end of spectrum, I'm a big fan of 夢 - just looks so elegant to me.
Hah! An American student saw me wrote 麗 and told me that it looked like a hobo's face. I can never look at that character the same way again...
夢 is also one of my favorites
I also like 夢, and I like the 鬥 primitive. Little different from 門. A funny one is 囧, which gets used a lot as a 
smiley. I've always thought 笑 kinda looked like the face of a laughing cat.
Last edited by bflatnine (2009 June 27, 11:35 pm)
bflatnine wrote:
I also like 夢, and I like the 鬥 primitive. Little different from 門. A funny one is 囧, which gets used a lot as a
I have *never*, *ever* seen a cat laugh.
Several thousand years ago the Egyptians thought they were gods -- because the reflection of fire in a cat's eyes was thought to reveal where the sun god went at night.
The cats have never forgotten.
Last edited by Wally (2009 June 27, 11:46 pm)
Machine_Gun_Cat wrote:
I love the Beans/table primitive and I love the "sow" primitive
My favourite Kanji at the moment are 遠、激 and 疑 Is really fun to write for some reason
As for ugly ones
忙ーWhat the ****
毎ーIs a pain in The ass
And 赤 I just don't like it, never have
AND simplified chines- what the ****, I know it isn't particularly culturally sensitive to say so but oh my god could they mutilate the traditional Hanzhi worse if they were trying
I especially detest
gate:門＝门
Piggy bank：湯 Becomes 汤
飛 Becomes 飞 *Vomits*
個 Becomes the "retard umbrella” 个
馬ー马
And perhap the most offensive
龍 Becomes this mucked up thing here 龙
I love how you censor "****" all the way through you post until you reach the last line .
My favorite is 為. I just love writing it and how it looks. It's a shame its not really used with suru anymore; you can't even get it to show up in Windows IME (is that what it's called?) My goal while in Japan will beto bring it back into style. Haha
I hate writing anything with the wind radical/primitive. I just can't make it look good, and most kanji with it in it look stupid.
EDIT: I guess the board self censors...sort of. I didn't know that.
Last edited by strugglebunny (2009 June 28, 3:30 am)
magamo wrote:
Burritolingus wrote:
Aijin wrote:
Hah! An American student saw me wrote 麗 and told me that it looked like a hobo's face. I can never look at that character the same way again...
Haha, it does look like a hobo! http://ryouko.imsb.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?162151_%CE%EF
Can't unsee it.
I laughed so hard, but my girlfriend scolded me for "bad learning techniques." Though, she thought it was funny, too 
yukamina wrote:
I think simplified hanzi like 广 and 飞 look terrible.
Instead I find those intriguing, mysterious. It's like they have invisible elements inside. I wonder what would be a good story for those
nac_est wrote:
yukamina wrote:
I think simplified hanzi like 广 and 飞 look terrible.
Instead I find those intriguing, mysterious. It's like they have invisible elements inside. I wonder what would be a good story for those
To me it's like the people who simplified them couldn't be arsed to some up with something better. Like when various complex components get simplified into 又, with no apparent rule. Your view is more enjoyable, though :p
Yay, I agree with just about everyone
I found another pretty one:
1592 陰 "Shade" (I don't particularly like the "pinnacle" primitive, but I like how it looks like a sort of Z in the right half, with maybe a kind of bridge running over it or something. I like to write it such that the bottom half of the diagonal of that Z can be thought of as extending straight from the top half of the diagonal, if you know what I mean.)
Last edited by Whatsifsowhatsit (2009 July 02, 3:51 pm)
yukamina wrote:
nac_est wrote:
yukamina wrote:
I think simplified hanzi like 广 and 飞 look terrible.
Instead I find those intriguing, mysterious. It's like they have invisible elements inside. I wonder what would be a good story for those
To me it's like the people who simplified them couldn't be arsed to some up with something better. Like when various complex components get simplified into 又, with no apparent rule. Your view is more enjoyable, though :p
There was a legitimate reason for each simplification. It's not like some guys just sat around and thought of ways to make them have fewer strokes. Many of the simplifications were standardized from shorthand or straightened out cursive forms (訁vs. 讠, 應 vs. 应). Some reverted back to original forms of characters which had changed over time (無 vs. 无). A lot of phonetics were changed to make more sense in Mandarin if the phonetic in the traditional character didn't (鐘 vs. 钟).
This isn't to say that I like the simplifications; I don't. I think they should have kept those forms as they were: cursive forms, archaic forms, etc. But there was a lot of thought and research that went into it.
