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Note the right component of the kanjis 褐, 喝, 謁 and 渇. It doesn't exist as a separate Chinese character, at least I couldn't find it. Those who have used Heisig will know that he refers to this component as 'siesta'.

It's not 曷, but it's close.

Now, when I look these kanjis up on Wiktionary, it gets complicated. Take 褐 for example. There are two forms of the kanji given, which look different on screen, one is 褐 and the other has 曷 as the right component, but when I copy and paste the latter, it looks exactly the same as 褐.

So I am confused now. Are there indeed two forms of these kanjis? How can the forms look different on screen but not when copied? And does the right component of 褐 exist as a separate Chinese character?

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You're experiencing what happens on the internet due to han unification, and really bad handling of fonts if your browser language isn't set as one of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.

These are all actually the exact same character, but browsers and webpages each change how it looks depending on if they think it's simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, or shinjitai (jpn).

Under shinjitai, it's represented differently, despite being the same in traditional and simplified. Below is a comparison, using the respective "lang" attribute for each:

  • 繁 (traditional Chinese): {{zh-TW:褐}}, using 亾

  • 簡 (simplified Chinese): {{zh-CN:褐}}, using 亾

  • 新 (shinjitai): {{ja-JP:褐}}, using 匕

Note: The above comparison might not display correctly if you don't have fonts for the respective languages installed on your computer.

Because of Chinese, these different forms of the same character all have one codepoint, and are just seen as variant forms of one character (which they technically are). Because of that, though, unless a page tells a browser to represent it one way, or your browser consistently does so on its own (i.e. you set your language to one of chinese character forms, jpn, or kor), confusion arises.

Below are some images comparing the complete form of the character 喝, in the event you don't have the appropriate fonts installed:

  • zho (simplified, traditional), kor, vie: zho, kor, vie 喝
  • jpn: jpn 喝
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    You can use images to show the difference, if you like :-)
    – user1478
    Commented Dec 7, 2015 at 1:40
  • Yes, images please! I use the smartphone app, so i cant see the url, and the characters all look roughly the same, so i cant understand the question at hand. Its probably because android will opt to use a chinese font when encountering kanji since my language is english.
    – user11589
    Commented Dec 7, 2015 at 15:48
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    Here's a comparison of the various lang attributes as viewed on my Windows 8 / Chrome system: i.sstatic.net/gyEZK.png. You can't represent Han-unified characters correctly on SE. I have a feature-request for this on Meta Stack Exchange: meta.stackexchange.com/q/251743.
    – senshin
    Commented Dec 7, 2015 at 15:54
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    meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1502/1478
    – user1478
    Commented Jan 22, 2016 at 4:01

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