口

ワニの口 by Pbuergler

口 by msdmanuals, 2017

口, X53E3 is unicode character number 21475, KanjiLiberal.

In Japanese, 口 can be pronounced as "kuchi" and mean mouth.
At site nihongomaster, 口 appears as kanji number 845 .

Many other Unicode characters have similar drawing and are easy to confuse each other.

⼝,⼞,ロ,口,ﾛ

The 5 unicode characters are similar.
All of them, at the first glance, look as rectangles.
Some programming is necessary to identify each of these characters.
Their Utf8 encoding can be revealed with PHP program du.t; command

php du.t ⼝⼞ロ口ﾛ

produces the following output:

⼝⼞ロ口ﾛ
The array has 15 bytes; here is its splitting:
e2 bc 9d e2 bc 9e e3 83 ad e5 8f a3 ef be 9b
array(5) {
  [0]=>
  string(3) "⼝"
  [1]=>
  string(3) "⼞"
  [2]=>
  string(3) "ロ"
  [3]=>
  string(3) "口"
  [4]=>
  string(3) "ﾛ"
}

Unicode character number 12061 id est, X2F1D
Picture: ⼝ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xE2 xBC x9D in the hexadecimal representation and
226 188 157 in the decimal representation

Unicode character number 12062 id est, X2F1E
Picture: ⼞ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xE2 xBC x9E in the hexadecimal representation and
226 188 158 in the decimal representation

Unicode character number 12525 id est, X30ED
Picture: ロ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xE3 x83 xAD in the hexadecimal representation and
227 131 173 in the decimal representation

Unicode character number 21475 id est, X53E3
Picture: 口 ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xE5 x8F xA3 in the hexadecimal representation and
229 143 163 in the decimal representation

Unicode character number 65435 id est, XFF9B
Picture: ﾛ ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xEF xBE x9B in the hexadecimal representation and
239 190 155 in the decimal representation

Phonetic

Character 口 can be pronounced as "kuchi".

Being written close to other kanji(s), it can be pronounced also as "guchi".

Graphic

Character 口 appears as a rectangle; this rectangle may be slightly deformed, dependently on the software, used to observe it. Five other Unicode characters (⼝,⼞,ロ,ﾛ) have similar shape.

Semantic

Character 口 may mean "mouth"

Examples

入口 , でいりぐち ("Iriguchi"), entrance

出口, でぐち ("deguchi"), exit

Confusion

口 (X53E3) is highly confusional character. Even a native Japanese speaker, looking at characters
⼝, ⼞, ロ, 口, ﾛ, cannot answer:
which of them is X2F1D (KanjiRadical)?
which of them is X2F1E (KanjiRadical)?
which of them is X30ED (Katkana "ro")?
which of them is X53E3 (KanjiLiberal)?
which of them is XFF9B ( Character from the UnicodeBottom table)?

The manuals on Japanese, as well as dictionaries (Jishos) usually ignore this confusion.
Those, who learn Japanese, have to investigate such a cases by themselves.

Only one of the 5 characters, 口, X53E3, is qualified as KanjiLiberal.
Perhaps, namely this character should be used for generation of Japanese texts.

References

Keywords

Japanese, Kanji, KanjiConfudal, KanjiLiberal, KanjiRadical, Unicode, SomeU, ⼝ (X2F1D), ⼞ (X2F1E), ロ (X30ED), 口 (X53E3), ﾛ (XFF9B)