In sending along the photograph below, Geoff Dawson writes:
I find it hard to believe it takes nine characters. Curious as to what they really say.
From a furniture shop in South Melbourne Australia.
Read the rest of this entry »
This is a story about the frustration of a mom in China over the fact that the character for her child's surname, cuàn 爨, has 30 strokes (some sources say 29).
Aside from its use as a surname, this monstrosity of a glyph can also mean "to cook" and "oven; cooker; cookstove". Although cuàn 爨 certainly should have been a candidate for simplification, so far as I know, no simplified character for it exists, at least none that is official.
There are a dozen or so alternate forms, e.g., 熶, but most of them are very obscure and cannot be found in electronic fonts. See here for a few.
Read the rest of this entry »
