[KS] Obscure Chinese character

[Frank Hoffmann]

Sorghum or maize/corn?
Vladimir, I think that must just be a simple (and rather strange) error 
of the People's 汉语大字典. You just can't trust those modern works, 
can you?
Maize (better known as corn in the U.S.) was introduced to China in the 
16th century. 
If the character Werner is inquiring about was used for corn in China, 
then that indicates it is a neologism. Is it? Werner didn't tell us in 
which text he found that character, but knowing Werner a little, I 
would suppose the text is not quite of THAT recent origin :)

In earlier postings the "Unihan Database" was mentioned, and that the 
character is in there 
(http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=258CB). Then 
again, looking it up there one does not find a single reference for 
this character, no proof that it has ever been used. 
Does anyone know how such characters end up in the still growing 
Unicode DB? Can I just draw a picture of my grandma and send it on to 
someone at the Unicode Consortium and have it listed? Seriously, when 
you look a character up in the Morohashi's Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, it will 
always give you some proof of where exactly it was used. Unicode does 
not by any chance also list non-existing characters (which can be 
constructed from existing radicals)? *If* I recall that correct (I 
might not), that is the case with some never-used Han'gŭl syllables.


Best regards,
Frank


On Tue, 7 May 2013 12:48:10 -0700 (PDT), Glomb Vladimir wrote:
> Dear all
> It is indeed a bit obscure, you may find this entry 
> http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi3/ZdicF0ZdicA5ZdicA3Zdic8B.htm, where it is 
> identified as "[～秫]高粱。冀鲁官话。" but Hanyu Da Zidian p. 2635 
> says that is is rather maize: 𥣋 『𥣋秫』也作”蜀黍“。即玉米。
> Sincerely 
> Your
> Vladimir Glomb
> 

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws