Chikara

Draw of カ (X30AB)

Draw of 力 (X529B)

Chikara as forces

     Wrestling Logo 

     Fitness Logo 

   Anopheles gambiae

Chikara is set of the four Unicode characters:

⼒ X2F12 , KanjiRadical

カ X30AB , Katakana "ka".

力 X529B , KanjiLiberal

力 XF98A, KanjiConfudal

Also, term Chikara may refer to sound, denoted with any of the characters カ, ⼒, 力, 力; in most of cases, it is either "ka" or "Chikara".

Also, term Chikara may refer to an object, denoted with any of characters カ , ⼒ , 力 , 力 . Term Chikara has many meanings . Some of them refer to Energy, Force or Power.

Encoding

Characters of Chikara are highly confusive.

Even a native Japanese speaker, looking at characters ⼒ , カ , 力 , 力 , is unlikely to answer:
Which of them is X2F12 ?
Which of them is X30AB ?
Which of them is X529B ?
Which of them is XF98A ?

This causes mistakes at the automatic processing of texts; in particular, at the search and at the replace. The original URLs of the first two pictures (at the top) may look similar, although these are different pictures: the first one represents the Katakana character, and the second shows the KanjiLiberal. The author M4RC0 tried to show the difference with bigger serifs at the ends of the 2-segment line in the pic of Chikara Katakana.

In order to avoid the errors, some programming is necessary.
The PHP program ud.t can calculate the Utf8 encoding or these four characters.
For the execution, file uni.t also should be loaded. Then, command

php ud.t 2F12 30AB 529B F98A

reveals the encoding of these characters:

2F12 12050 ⼒ ⼒
Unicode character number 12050 id est, X2F12
Picture: ⼒ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
XE2 XBC X92 in the hexadecimal representation and
226 188 146 in the decimal representation

30AB 12459 カ カ
Unicode character number 12459 id est, X30AB
Picture: カ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
XE3 X82 XAB in the hexadecimal representation and
227 130 171 in the decimal representation

529B 21147 力 力
Unicode character number 21147 id est, X529B
Picture: 力 ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
XE5 X8A X9B in the hexadecimal representation and
229 138 155 in the decimal representation

F98A 63882 力 力
Unicode character number 63882 id est, XF98A
Picture: 力 ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
XEF XA6 X8A in the hexadecimal representation and
239 166 138 in the decimal representation

Phonetic and semantic

X2F12 ⼒ , KanjiRadical

Wictionary suggests the following reading of character X2F12 ⼒:

リョク、

ちから

X30AB カ, Katakana

X30AB カ, Katakana has obvious pronunciation, "ka".

The same sound may denote also the insect-parasite 蚊, mosquito(s).

X529B 力, KanjiLiberal

For character X529B 力, Russian site "Потеря Веса За 28 Дней" suggests the following reading and meaning:

Kanji 力
..
Radical: ⼒ (19)
Strokes: 2
On: リョク、リキ、リイ ryoku, riki, rii
Kun: ちから chikara
Meaning: power, strength, strong, strain, bear up, exert
Grade: 1
JLPT: 4
In names: じから、つとむ jikara, tsutomu
Shape: idc
Elements: 丿
Look alike: 刃, 刀
Categories: N4 (JLPT)

Jisho suggests longer description:

ちから
力
1. force; strength; might; vigour; vigor; energy​
あなたは
わたし
私の
にばい
２倍の
ちから
力がある。You are twice as strong as I.
Noun
2. capability; ability; proficiency; capacity; faculty​
あなたは
しゅうちゅう
集中する
ちから
力を
うしな
失ってしまった。You've lost the ability to concentrate.
Noun
3. efficacy; effect​
チョコレートにはＬＤＬの
さんか
酸化を
ぼうし
防止する
ちから
力がある。Chocolate acts to prevent LDL oxidisation.
Noun
4. effort; endeavours; endeavors; exertions​
Noun
5. power; authority; influence; good offices; agency​
あいての
きじゅん
基準を
うけい
受け入れるのは、そのあいての
ちから
力に
ふくじゅう
服従することだ。Accepting the other's norms is submitting to the other's power.
Noun
6. support; help; aid; assistance​See also 力になる
Noun
7. stress; emphasis​
たい
大した
ちから
力にはならないかもしれませんけど、
おうえん
応援します。It might not be worth much, but you have my support.
Noun
8. means; resources​
Wikipedia definition
9. Force​In physics, a force is any influence that causes an objec... Read more
Details ▸
りょく
力
strength; power; proficiency; ability​
りき
力

Character X529B 力 seems to be most usual among other Chikara.

XF98A 力, KanjiConfudal

Article entitled 力 (XF98A) cannot be created in the usual way: the software confuses characters XF98A 力 and X529B 力.

The attempts to access 力 (XF98A) redirect to 力 (X529B).

In such a way, characters XF98A 力 and X529B 力 are forced to have the same meaning.

However, at some software, the pictures of these two characters may look different.

Basic meanings of Chikara

Examples of the four basic meanings (according to the dictionaries) of term Chikara: energy, force, power, mosquito.

Term Chikara is defined to substitute the formally-correct, but absurdly cumbersom construction

"⼒ and/or カ and/or 力 and/or 力"

The construction above is not good (and not usual at all), because, as it is mentioned above, with the most of software, characters ⼒, カ, 力, 力 are difficult to distinguish from each other.

Term Chikara is necessary to refer this set (or to an element of this set), while it is difficult to guess, which one of these four characters should be mentioned.
Word Chikara allows to refer the generic image of the Karakawa or kanji, without to indicate the specific character, while its number is not yet known (or even is not yet assigned).

According to the dictionaries cited, term Chikara has the four basic meanings:

1. Energy
2. Force
3. Power
4. Mosquito.

There are

\( 4!= \) Factorial\((4)=24\)

ways to assign the four values ( X2F12, X30AB, X529B, XF98A ), id est, the chikara characters, to these four principal meanings.

The four meanings above are so different, that, from the context, the native Japanese speaker can easy guess, which meaning refers to each sentence.
However, at learning of Japanese, the process of recognition is opposite: the reader looks at the possible meanings of the characters and tries to guess the context; in this case, the generic terms, like Chikara, are essential in analysis of Japanese texts.

At the beginning of century 21, it is difficult to trace any preference in use of some of the four characters ⼒, カ, 力, 力 indicating each of the four meanings mentioned; the chikara characters seem to be used in the random order, confusing the readers; both Humans and robots, which try to analyze the text.

The confusion could be caused by the graphical similarity of the Chikara characters (see the two pictures at the top of the article). The authors (even native Japanese) cannot distinguish the characters and so do not care, which of the Chikara characters is better to use.

With centuries, the graphical representation of characters change; some graphical representations become obsolete. The terms tend to become more specific, more sharp. One may expect, that the graphical representation of the Chikara symbols will also change; looking at a Chikara character, one should be able to identify it. Then it will be possible, to assign the specific character to each of the four basic meanings of term Chikara.

Even if this does not happen, the generic term Chikara helps to adjust, correct the most usual meaning of the four characters. This is important, as any translation (even if made by a Human professional) from one language to another unavoidably change the meaning of the terms and sentences. Such misunderstanding may be reason for conflicts and wars. Systematization of knowledge of terms (in particular, knowledge about characters combined with term Chikara) is expected to help to avoid the errors.

References

Keywords

Chikara, Confusion, Energy; Force, Japanese, Kanji, KanjiConfudal, KajniLiberal, KajniRadical, M4RC0, PHP, Power, ud.t, Unicode, Utf8, X2F12 ⼒ , X30AB カ , X529B 力 , XF98A 力