Henh

[flemmings]

The nciku Chinese dictionary page, the one that lets you draw with the mouse, has changed hands to some other kind of dictionary that doesn't. Fortunately there are others, like MDBG, but their mouse controls, if that's what I mean, aren't as good as nciku's used to be.

This in aid of finding the hanzi for little Guaiguai at work. Her mother says it has only one meaning, 'happy child', so no surprise that it doesn't show up in any of the online pages. Must haul out L's old hardcover hanzi dictionary and see if it's there. FWIW it's written with rice plant 禾 and north 北 mashed together, with north sitting between the two parallel(ish) lines of rice plant.

Comments

[karalee]

Is it not 乖乖?

(It means GOOD AND OBEDIENT child, ha ha ha, with like 1000 layers of various meanings/expectations on top.)

[flemmings]

"The ocean called Pacific, to counteract its tendency to be otherwise." Yes, that's it. My hanzi memory suffers from disuse.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

It took me a while to figure out it out. I think you want 乖. As follows: https://dictionary.writtenchinese.com/worddetail/guai/20280/1/2. The radical is the pain in the butt 丿. Which I always rat hole in the wrong directions and fail to find. 乖乖 is the term Ithink of being used to praise little kids as good/obedient. I'm not sure why but doubled terms are frequently baby talk, but not all, so it's a minefield. Also the name of some kind of snack chips brand from when I was little.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Nice, I just realized that site demos stroke order with the radical in brown and the rest of the character in black!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Argh that one stroke radical thingy.

I remembered the 'north' location wrong, but Guaiguai's mom also wrote it wrong, because she gave it the two downward strokes from the rice plant.

And what am I to make of the definition: (of a child) obedient, well-behaved / clever / shrewd / alert / perverse / contrary to reason / irregular / abnormal. Like English English, where 'very nice' means 'utterly terrible'?

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Depends on the compound it's in, I suppose. Most commonly, especially as a duplicated compound, it means the positive stuff. The snack chips from my childhood were advertised as a treat/reward for good children.