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Variant Chinese characters
Chinese characters outside of a standard / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chinese characters may have several variant forms—visually distinct glyphs that represent the same underlying meaning and pronunciation. Variants of a given character are allographs of one another, and many are directly analogous to allographs present in the English alphabet, such as the double-storey ⟨a⟩ and single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩ variants of the letter A, with the latter more commonly appearing in handwriting. Some contexts require usage of specific variants.
Quick Facts Chinese name, Traditional Chinese ...
Variant character | |||||||||||||
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![]() Regional variants of the character 返 as rendered by the Source Han Sans font family | |||||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 異體字 | ||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 异体字 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | variant character form | ||||||||||||
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Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 又體 | ||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 又体 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | alternative form | ||||||||||||
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Second alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 或體 | ||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 或体 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | or form | ||||||||||||
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Third alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||
Chinese | 重文 | ||||||||||||
Literal meaning | alternative writing | ||||||||||||
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Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||
Vietnamese alphabet | chữ dị thể | ||||||||||||
Hán-Nôm | 𡨸異體 | ||||||||||||
Korean name | |||||||||||||
Hangul | 이체자 | ||||||||||||
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Japanese name | |||||||||||||
Kanji | 異体字 | ||||||||||||
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Two road signs in San Po Kong, Hong Kong indicating the same name for Kai Tak with different variants (啓 and 啟) of the character for "Kai".