17
votes
Why does 八 have an extra thing on top?
Not all fonts have that horizontal thing. Here are examples of the same 八 rendered with various fonts installed on my PC:
Basically, that horizontal bar is something similar to serifs in Latin fonts. ...
- 267k
11
votes
Why does 八 have an extra thing on top?
It is a design typically used for the typeface called Minchotai (roughly equivalent to Latin serif fonts). Basically it is designed so that glyphs are closer to those written with brushes.
In ...
- 14.2k
7
votes
Accepted
What does 坊 mean in 隠れん坊?
-ん坊【ぼう】/-んぼ is a now largely unproductive suffix that tells "who tends/likes to do —", usually in a childlike manner.
かくれんぼ "(the game of) sneaky people"
くいしんぼ "foodie / ...
- 48.5k
4
votes
Accepted
How should I read 購売部?
It should be 購買部, and 購売部 is plain wrong. And you are right, in a lot of words 買 and 売 do share the same pronunciation バイ. 買 means to buy and 売 means to sell. There is even a word 売買{ばいばい} meaning ...
- 9,751
4
votes
How should I read 購売部?
It is こうばいぶ. Apparently 購買部 is the correct one, literally meaning "buying department".
According to this chiebukuro answer, since 購 means "to buy", 購買 is the only possibility and ...
- 14.2k
4
votes
Accepted
What form does 満を持して贈る take on here in this context?
満を持して in this context (a promotional material) means that the company has spent a lot of time and effort in manufacturing the product, brushing up its quality, and keeping it up until the right time ...
- 853
4
votes
What does 坊 mean in 隠れん坊?
Actually, the bou/bo means person here.
So you can simply explain the kakurenbo as hiding person (game).
- 51
3
votes
Special Kana in Man'yōgana?
Actually the Wikipedia article (at least the Japanese and English versions) does show voiceless and voiced consonants, though the distinction between them was not always clear-cut in the actual usage. ...
- 48.5k
3
votes
Special Kana in Man'yōgana?
Note the following is based on web searches.
濁点
Mostly different kanjis were used for those pairs. E.g. か：加、迦、訶、下、日、賀、河、鹿、甲、川、蚊、乎、家、香、華、可、夏、化 and が：賀、之、髪、何、加、鹿、迦、我
See the full list below.
万葉仮名一覧
ん(...
- 14.2k
3
votes
Stroke Order in Writing
I guess it is partially opinion-based, but the answer is no. Generally it is not possible to infer the stroke order from a glyph on the screen.
You can think in the reverse. If it were (always) ...
- 14.2k
2
votes
Accepted
Stroke Order in Writing
Theoretically speaking, if you are only going to read or write kanji like a computer san-serif font, a wrong stroke order may not severely hurt readability. But the subtle nuances of each line ending ...
- 267k
2
votes
Accepted
How are different spellings sorted in the Daijisen dictionary?
Apparently the more widely used come first. From here:
漢字表記が二つ以上考えられる場合は、原則として広く用いられるものを先に掲げた。
FYI This kind of "how to use" is called 凡例{はんれい}.
- 14.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible