Saturday 31 October 2015

What kind of animal?

WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL IS RADICAL 153?



Copyright Julie Vaux 2015

Truly People I've seen so many different definitions given?

The one constant factor seems to be its use in characters describing small felid or mustelid or viverid predators though some of those species get written with characters using a dog component.

There's probably going to be a PhD thesis granted for some linguist tracing this character in ancient texts and sorting out why and when so many animals ended up having their names  being written with the dog radical instead!


 

Sunday 25 October 2015

REI is Clever and Spooky


More info about the REI # kanji Ling in #chinese



Copyright Julie Vaux 2015  


I wish someone would use the Paypal tip jar. I'm in sydney but I'ld rather be in Kyoto viewing the autumn colors in the northern hills, something I have not seen in person. Yeah it would take a hug amount of tips to pay just the air fares but ... one can dream ...

Next time maybe some nihonga-e for a change ...

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Friday 16 October 2015

REIKO Spirit Fox or Clever Girl?

#smstirling #Changeverse #kanji

In The Golden Princess an #alternatehistory #Sf novel by S. M. Stirling there's a character whose name is an excellent example of how one character can have different meanings!

I promised my fellow Changeverse fans a post explaining How Reiko could perceive her name as meaning Ghost Fox but Orlaith heard it as Clever/ beautiful lady/girl.

Now there are several combinations of kana and kanji that could write the sounds REI + KO.

Normally in modern Japanese in a girls name KO is the tzu character meaning child though there seems to be a shift away from this practice with some adult women shortening their names to one character.

Lets see the characters I think REIKO would use to write her name on a Personal seal used for private correspondence or poetry.


Copyright Julie Vaux 2015 

In chinese this would be Ling Hu or Leng wu in Cantonese ?

The REi character has several meanings quick clever beautiful intelligent supernatural spirit ghost and its KUN readings is TAMA which means jewel and spirit so Reiko's childhood name could have been Tamako and then changed to Reiko as an adult? Her actual REIGN name will probably be something different.

Here's the traditional form next to the modern form on the right.



Copyright Julie Vaux 2015  

I'll show you the character for Fox with more info in a subsequent post soon!

Fellow Stirling fans please help me out but not just sharing this post but also referring people to my Red Bubble site? Thanks?


Wednesday 14 October 2015

Saturday 10 October 2015

More playing with Phoenixs

I've been playing with filter combos in #inkscape and this time with the #Feng #phoenix trying to craft a combo that doesn't obscure the characteristic and also suggests skies and fragrant breezes and rainbows.

I know some people loather rainbow filters and think they're kitsch but for me they sometimes have synaesthetic effects.

Or is that hypocrisy? Is it only okay for trendy famous male contemporary artists who live in Beijing to play with #hanzi. At least mine are legible. Yes grass or other scripts rendered with a  brush ink and paper are beautiful but ... readability?

Copyright Julie Vaux 2015
 I'm in Sydney but I wish I was in say ... Japan ... enjoying the colors of autumn leaves ...

Tuesday 6 October 2015

4 Phoenixes



Copyright Julie Vaux 2015

More Phoenixes! I've included the Unicode so if you don't like this font you can use the code to generate svgs in a different font.



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Thursday 1 October 2015

The Female Phoenix HUANG

Copyright Julie Vaux 2015

Here are 4 font variations of the #hanzi / #kanji  for Huang
the Feng Phoenix's Consort and the word in a few dialects and languages.