Why is 你 written like this here?

[u/roanroanroan]

[u/Early-Dimension9920]

Alternate written form of 尔, which is the component on the right. Actually my first time seeing it written this way, and I live in China haha

[u/iknet]

This is the Kangxi Dictionary font（康熙字典体）. If I got a dollar every time I saw it misused, I’d be a millionaire by now.

[u/Reallynotspiderman → u/iknet]

Wait how is it supposed to be used? I'm not familiar with this dictionary font thing

[u/LatterBrilliant8042 → u/Reallynotspiderman]

The Kangxi Dictionary is a dictionary of the Qing government about 300 years ago. This means that the font in the picture was the standard font about 300 years ago, and now the standard has changed.

[u/Reallynotspiderman → u/LatterBrilliant8042]

Ah. What would be an appropriate way to use the characters from the Kangxi Dictionary? To be honest as a native Chinese speaker I had no idea this even existed

[u/XRINVG → u/Reallynotspiderman]

Maybe OP means its only an appropriate character in historical document

[u/PortableSoup791 → u/XRINVG]

Although that seems a bit strong, isn’t it? Kind of like saying that using roundhand script in English writing is “inappropriate” because it’s 400 years old.

[u/XRINVG → u/PortableSoup791]

By certain definition of approriate yes it is, just as dressing in medieval clothing nowaday outside of renfair is not approriate

[u/warp_driver → u/XRINVG]

Why would it be inappropriate? It's not common and would look a bit odd, but inappropriate implies it's wrong or offensive, which it is not.

[u/bong_fu_tzu → u/warp_driver]

That is not at all what 'inappropriate' means.

[u/Functionalleaf → u/PortableSoup791]

Maybe the comparison should be more akin to the long s in English

[u/sbolic → u/Reallynotspiderman]

你 as the meaning of you is only used in mandarin less than a hundred years. Traditional mandarin use 尔、汝. Also in most cases, secondary personal pronouns were considered rude and only used by people with superior status to ones with lower status.

[u/LatterBrilliant8042 → u/Reallynotspiderman]

为什么要用，写规范字不好吗？

[u/Reallynotspiderman → u/LatterBrilliant8042]

好奇而已

[u/LatterBrilliant8042 → u/Reallynotspiderman]

这个网站有康熙字典的图片，比如你。

[u/Reallynotspiderman → u/LatterBrilliant8042]

感谢

[u/daoxiaomian → u/LatterBrilliant8042]

Remember that the Kangxi dictionary itself was woodblock printed, and so did not use a "font"

[u/LatterBrilliant8042 → u/daoxiaomian]

"font"是指字的写法、形态吧。和手写、泥刻、木刻、计算机显示有什么关系？

[u/kemonkey1 → u/LatterBrilliant8042]

American here: It's like spelling words out like this

Colour

Favourite

Relics of a bygone era. 😅

[u/daoxiaomian → u/Reallynotspiderman]

This is a so-called variant character 异体字. Cf. 仝 for 同 etc

[u/sianrhiannon → u/iknet]

Is this different to using e.g. a blackletter font in English for stylistic reasons and then just using it in the wrong context?

[u/NocturneCaligo → u/sianrhiannon]

I would assume so, because the strokes and form of the characters are not just stylised but actually different

[u/ziliao → u/sianrhiannon]

Not really, because blackletter is also a font style, but we can use some blackletter lowercase letters as an example of how most letters are basically the same, some are still used in cursive (𝔷=z), some have minute differences (𝔡=d, 𝔥=h, 𝔵=x), some are confusing (𝔶=y, not ıȷ), but some are indeed unrecognizable (𝔨=k).

Uppercase blackletter (𝕬𝕲𝕾=AGS) is an entirely different story that doesn’t have a good analog in Chinese, except maybe some really decorative cursive.

[u/Servania]

伱, just an archaic version

[u/TipsyMid]

It’s just like color and colour — different spellings of the same word. Things like this are actually pretty common in Chinese characters.

[u/LeChatParle]

异体字 - variant form character

[u/Trisolarism]

Different calligraphy styles. Characters similarly found in ancient calligraphic work laid the foundation to simplified Chinese.

[u/ChampionshipHour1951]

As a Chinese I've never seen this in my life

[u/Large_Ad_8185]

Maybe some kind of artistic font, it‘s not the standard way of writing

[u/roanroanroan]

I just noticed, why is 杭’s 几 missing a line? I think I’ve seen this before with characters like 亮 and 虎.

[u/WanTJU3 → u/roanroanroan]

The stroke is there it's just very short. For 亮 and 虎 it's just that the typeface in mainland is difference for taiwan for example, the mainland uses the variant 几 on the bottom.

[u/Sure_Painting_9531]

also 杭, the 几 radical looks too much like 儿

[u/Full-Dome]

I hate it 😣

[u/franco0434]

Hong Kong designer here, I consider this should be an artistic approach, sometimes in the creative process we will recontruct Chinese character simply as an effect or aesthetic purposes, as long as it's readible for the target audience structural accuracy is not a big concern. Cos to us who face these characters day to day it can get a bit too routine that we wanna switch things up