"朩 pìn: one of the characters used in kwukyel (phonetic "pin"), an ancient Korean writing system; equal"

I hate that one!

Yeah, I don't believe it anyway, I think the characters that have it in their breakdown are actually derived from more reasonable (albeit possibly archaic) characters.

James

And now they are teaching even Korean! Thank you Skritter guys.

I don't think it's Korean.

It's a component used only in simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese (in Taiwan at least) doesn't use that component.

I actually like it a lot. What's to hate about it ?

I would like "朩 pìn" a lot more if I could trust its definition and pronunciation. As it is it seems bogus.

It doesn't help me to understand or learn a character to say that one of its components comes from a Korean phonetic script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gugyeol
that certainly postdates the character itself. I'm learning traditional characters.

For example, it does not help me learn 親 qīn​ "dear; intimate; closely related" to know that 亲 is composed of 立 lì "stand" and 朩 pìn "Korean thingie"
http://www.skritter.com/scratchpad?words=亲

To me 朩 in characters often seems closer to 木 mù or maybe 示 shì.

Zhongwen.com seems to say it's 木 mù:
http://goo.gl/2h0DX
Chinese etymology doesn't mention the component:
http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=亲

I’ve never thought about that 朩 is a component in the Korean writing system until I’ve seen this message. Thanks to the extra effort of the Skritter team, I now know that in kwukyel, 朩 is similar in meaning to the Chinese character 等 and its definition in English is “equal, grade, wait”.

Of course, I know that 朩 is a component in simplified Chinese. I can also remember that it is also used in the traditional Chinese character 條 (according to the 通用规范汉字表 issued by the Mainland MOE in Aug 12, 2009). So, I’d suppose that there are many of us here who are eager to find out what’s its reading and meaning in the context of a Chinese character component. Anyway, we are here learning Chinese but not Korean.

@pts and Kai Carver

When practicing traditional characters on Skritter, we see 朩 show up all the time, in characters like 茶， 條， 雜 , 親, 殺 and other characters, BUT native traditional Chinese writers don't ever use this component. The use 木 , and in the case of 殺/杀 they use 术 .

One way you can see for yourselves (besides asking a Taiwanese person) is to open a Word Document and type out 條， 雜 , 親, 殺 using Zhuyin Fuhao. Typing in pinyin will just show those characters with the 朩, but native traditional Chinese writers don't use 朩 . This could be because pinyin is the mainland's phonetic system, and they therefore stay consistent with the mainland's 朩 component

Should I just change every instance of 朩 to 木 in the decompositions?

@Nick
Please don't change the simplified characters that have 朩 , because that's how native simplified Chinese writers write them.

It would be cool if you changed the traditional ones, however, because native traditional Chinese writers don't use 朩 .

Also, if you meant that you might just change the decomposition section that says something link : 国 口kou3 玉yu2, then I think if there is a 朩 displayed in the character on Skritter, then if should be consistent in the decomposition section .

Wow thanks @Bohan for teaching me a difference in writing of traditional and simplified characters I didn't know about. I thought if the characters at least had the same number of strokes and looked the same, they would be written the same, but apparently there are subtle differences.

I don't have Word, but if anyone is interested, the differences in the characters you mentioned can be seen here
http://screencast.com/t/RDvrP5XFdzo5
The characters are shown in a few different traditional fonts, with the last line a more "standard" font that displays both traditional and simplified characters.

(I love how simplifying things can also make them more complicated :-))

So I take it back: I don't hate the component anymore (thank you!), but I wish the reference to Korean were replaced by something more sensible (though I don't know what that should be, "tree"? And should there really a "pin" sound associated with it? if not is there a sound?).

"You write 朩 I write 木 let's (not) call the whole thing off"

@Kai Carver
Think nothing of it :)

Another example that I thought of earlier is 新 . In mainland China it's written with a 朩 , but traditional Chinese writers write a 木

I'll be fixing a bunch of decompositions this week, and I'll make sure to fix the definitions of this and other components.

The origin of this unhelpful definition is the fact that there 10's of thousands of archaic characters in our database, and we try to mark them as such.

But obviously, when a character like this is a component in modern characters, that usage is most important to Chinese language learners, and I'll fix the definitions to reflect that. Definitely let me know if you come across characters like this in the future, probably the easiest way is to submit a correction.

@Bohan
Let’s have a look at how the “native traditional Chinese writers” wrote those characters:

http://www.9610.com/zidian/index.asp?key=%B2%E8&Submit=%CA%E9%B7%A8%D7%D6%B5%E4

Clicking the small 茶 link at the bottom of each image will open up a bigger image with a description of who wrote it and when it was written. You can find the other characters by pasting their respective simplified forms (条, 杂, 亲) into the search box at the top. It is obvious that 朩 is not a component unique to the simplified Chinese. It is just a variation of the character 木.

Edit: The above link does not work. So you have to paste the character 茶 into the search box at http://www.9610.com/zidian to see how the character 茶 is written.

Images on the different writing styles of ...

新：http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6Zdic96ZdicB0.htm

茶：http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE8Zdic8CZdicB6.htm

@pts

I checked out your link and clicked on many of the samples. I didn't see anywhere that showed where the people who wrote those samples are from and when they wrote them.

For example, clicking the rightmost 茶 of the middle row will bring out this page http://www.9610.com/zidian/view.asp?id=11285

At the bottom of the image, it said 图片说明:唐 柳公权《玄秘塔碑》. This mean, it is written by 柳公权, a famous calligrapher from the Tang dynasty.

@pts oh okay. Well I think 茶 might be the only character that's written like that. What about for 條， 親，雜 ， and 殺 ？

Why not paste the 条, 杂, 亲 into the search box and check for yourself?

條 - http://www.9610.com/zidian/view.asp?id=24305 by 唐 怀仁《集王羲之圣教序》

親 - http://www.9610.com/zidian/view.asp?id=11174 by 唐 柳公权《玄秘塔碑》

雜 - http://www.9610.com/zidian/view.asp?id=19573 by 晋 王献之小楷《洛神赋十三行》

Traditionally 殺 does not have a 木 component. So it should not be included in this discussion.