98787
I was wondering why the Japanese character for hashi (はし) (箸), seems to have
an extra character stroke when compared to the Chinese character zhu4 (箸).

In both Japanese and Chinese, this character, represents, chopsticks.

However, in Japanese, the extra character stroke (the single dash, downwards
and ti the left) can be found above the "sun" subcharacter, which is rì (日) in
Chinese, and hi (ひ) (日) in Japanese.

This can only be seen in the Pleco dictionary. When I cut and paste the entry
from Pleco into Chrome, the extra dot is added.

Why is this?

(The entries below are from the Takoboto and Pleco dictionaries on Android).

[![chopsticks in
Japanese](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r7W3j.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r7W3j.jpg)

[![chopsticks in
Chinese](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ztyxO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ztyxO.jpg)

[![sun in
Chinese](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yRJAs.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yRJAs.jpg)

[![sun in
Japanese](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1ZFFo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1ZFFo.jpg)

Why is this?
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2023-03-03T01:24:12.737
98782
2023-03-03T07:51:29.487
2023-03-03T01:30:14.720
54319
54319
question
words
Japanese hashi (はし) (箸) and Chinese zhu4 (箸) (extra dot above sun character)
The "why" is that once upon a time, Chinese characters were written with a
much greater degree of variation than today.

When each polity that uses Chinese characters decided to standardise (for a
variety of purposes, including printing, digitisation, education etc),
somebody had to choose one (or at most a few) of these variations to represent
the abstract character. Note that this sometimes overlaps with, but is not
strictly the same as the [concept of
simplification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters)
in CJK scripts. Check out [this list on
Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Han_unification&section=6#Examples_of_language-
dependent_glyphs) for other examples of variations between Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Mainland China, (marginally Vietnam), Korea, and Japan's chosen
representations.

Sometimes the changes are small (the top-right of 過 faces the other side in
Chinese typographic practice), and sometimes they are reasonably large (as in
真).

Different polities chose differently, leading to differences like you've
observed. That's why we have [Han
unification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification) in
[CJK(V)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK_characters) computing.
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2023-03-03T03:42:45.553
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2023-03-03T03:42:45.553
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98782
answer
In 者 as a component, the form with an additional dot (者) is the one considered
'orthodox' in the sense it appears in the _Kāngxī Dictionary_. This does not
mean that it is somehow more etymologically correct compared to the dot-less
form; as most of these 'orthodox' forms, this one was created by the authority
of the _Shuōwén jiězì_ , which assumed the character to contain 白 (to my
knowledge, actually the character 者 developed from a pictogram of a sugarcane,
originally writing the word *tAk-s 'sugarcane' and borrowed for the similarly
pronounced grammatical particle *tAʔ > zhě, so there is no 白 in the
character).

However, in most of the regions, the dot-less form was more prevalent despite
the injunctions of the normative dictionaries, and in modern times it was the
one that was standardized. In fact, 者 without a dot is the normal Mainland,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnamese form. Only Korea insists on having a dot (but
even Korea is not willing to follow the prescription of normative dictionaries
to the extreme and demand the lower component to be an 曰 instead of an 日).

[![Local versions of
者](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uu2M8.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uu2M8.png)

However, Japan was different here: while any other region standardized into
one option or the other, Japan picked both. In fact, it decided to 'simplify'
(pick the dot-less form) for a limited number of characters (basically, those
that were a part of jōyō kanji list before the extension of 2010) but 'not
simplify' (have a dot) for all the rest. So, now there is a distinction
between the spellings for the 'frequent' and the 'remaining' characters in
Japan.

Specifically:

[![者 as component in
Japan](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s1vmD.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s1vmD.png)

So, in fact, currently the correct orthography in Japan contains the dot for
two particular jōyō kanji, 賭 and 箸, which were both added to the list in 2010
only.

The non-jōyō characters are supposed to be written all with a dot, as if
'unsimplified', though for the characters allowed in personal names both forms
are provided, like 猪 and 猪, and even the jōyō characters without a dot are
allowed in a dot form when in names: 者.

All of this is about printed text. In manual writing, no dot:

[![者 in
handwriting](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6WUNd.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6WUNd.png)
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2023-03-03T07:51:29.487
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answer