阝

X961D 阝: village and/or hill

X961D 阝 is Unicode character number 38429, KanjiLiberal, JapanBeta, Kozato.

X961D 阝 can be pronounced as Kozato, Kozatohen or Oozato and refer to some village(s) or to some hill(s).

X961D 阝 is easy to confuse with other JapanBeta: with the default fonts, characters ⻏, ⻖, 阝 look similar.

Character 阝 by itself is not so usual, but images, similar to 阝, appears as parts of images of other kanjis.

JapanBeta

 X2ED6 ⻖, hills; appear at left ;   X2ECF ⻏, village; appears ar right

阝 looks similar to the Greek letter \(\beta\). Some other Unicode characters, used in Japanese, have similar pictures. Set of these characters is denoted with symbol JapanBeta.

By definition, JapanBeta is set of the following Uicode characters:
X2ECF ⻏ , KanjiRadical
X2ED6 ⻖ , KanjiRadical
X961D 阝 , KanjiLiberal

Characters of JapanBeta can be pronounced "Kozato" or "Kozatohen" or "Oozato" and refer to a geographic place, village, country, city, hill, community .

View of characters of Characters of JapanBeta at the default font depends on the operational system, but this characters look similar to each other.

At Macintosh default font, all the three characters ⻏, ⻖, 阝 look just the same:

At Linux, characters ⻏ and ⻖ look the same, but 阝 appears a little bit smaller:

Even a native Japanese speaker, watching some of ⻏, ⻖, 阝, is unlikely to answer:
Is it X2ECF ⻏?
Is it X2ED6 ⻖?
Is it X961D 阝?

In such a case, the correct specification of the character is "X2ECF ⻏ or X2ED6 ⻖ or X961D 阝"

Term JapanBeta is short substitute for this long and complicated construction.

Up to year 2021, the computer support of the Japanese characters is underdeveloped. There is no unique standard for the default font, that would allow each character look the same at various computers, but different from other characters.

While this fault is not fixed, term JapanBeta is useful:
1. It looks the same at various computers.
2. It is easy to distinguish from more specific terms Kozato, Kozatohen and Oozato.
The last three terms can be used to denote each of the three realizations of JapanBeta.
In the vulgar interpretation, terms Kozato, Kozatohen and Oozato can be considered as ascii transliterations of words こざと,　こざとへん,　おおざと.

Synonyms

Character 阝 by itself is not popular; but its image appears as component of graphical representation of more complicated kanjis.

Examples:

X90FD 都 or XFA26 都 , capital; 都市, city.

X9632 防 , defence

限, limit

郵, mail

In cases, when some of meanings of character 阝 needs to be indicated, instead, the the more specific synonyms are used:

X2FA2 ⾢ and/or X9091 邑 : おおざと, むら, ユウ (village, rural community)

X2FA9 ⾩ and/or X961C 阜 : フ、 フウ; Hill, mound, dam , おか

Examples of descriptions of namely 阝 in various dictionaries are presented below.

Jisho

Jisho suggests: 阝 3 strokes

Radical: mound, dam (阝 left) 阜 (阝)

Parts:

place, left village radical - 2 stroke form (no. 170)

Kun: こざと

Nihongomaster

Nihongomaster suggests:

阝 place

left village radical - 2 stroke form (no. 170)

Kun'yomi (訓読み) こざと

Kanjitisiki

Kanjitisiki suggests: 阝（おおざと） スポンサードリンク

部首「阝（おおざと）」

部首が「おおざと」の漢字一覧です。邑部に属する部首で右側に位置するとき、「阝」の形になり、「おおざと」と呼びます。地名などに関する漢字、「阝」を含む漢字などが集められています。 主にJIS第1水準・JIS第2水準の漢字を対象に記載しています。

部首が邑「むら」の漢字一覧

Kotobank

Kotobank suggests:

邑・阝（読み）おおざと 精選版 日本国語大辞典「邑・阝」の解説

おお‐ざと おほ‥【邑・阝】

〘名〙 漢字の旁(つくり)の一つ。「郡」「郎」「部」などの「阝」。「邑（里の意）」の字の変形したもの。この旁を持つ字は、字典で邑部に属する。おおざる。のぼりざと。 おお‐ざる おほ‥【邑・阝】

〘名〙 ＝おおざと（邑）〔運歩色葉（1548）〕

Ameblo

Ameblo suggests two pronunciations of character 阝:

阝（こざとへん）と阝（おおざと）について

..

阝（こざとへん）と阝（おおざと）の漢字を調べてみると、2010年改定の常用漢字では全2136字のうち、次のように

①阝（こざとへん）が31字、
②阝（おおざと）が12字含まれていました。

意外に阝（こざとへん）の漢字が多いことに驚きましたが、 これも阝（こざとへん） には「はしご」と 「おか」の二つの系統があったということが間接的な理由になっているのかもしれません。

Mismath

Descriptions by various dictionaries do not match each other.

Pronunciation こざと (Kozato) is suggested by Jisho and Nihongomaster .

Pronunciation おおざと (Oozato) is suggested by Kanjitisiki and Kotobank .

Confusion with the two pronunciations is discussed .

Two pronunciations こざとへん and おおざと are suggested by Ameblo .

Apparently, the strong confusion with interpretation of character X961D 阝 takes place. Even the set of the possible pronunciations is not established.

This confusion may be related with similarity of the graphical representation of the JapanBeta characters: at some computers, with the default font, characters ⻏, ⻖, 阝 look similar. Apparently, at the beginning of century 21, the teachers and textbooks of Japanese, as well as the tutorial sites just ignore this similarity.

The goal of this article, and other articles about JapanBeta, is to elaborate the efficient notations. These notations should help to avoid confusions, caused by similarity of the characters and the resulting misinterpretation.

While the default fonts do not allow to see difference between characters ⻏, ⻖, 阝, these characters can be called with more distinguishable names Kozato, Kozatohen, Oozato, or specified with their hexadecimal numbers X2ECF, X2ED6, X961D.

The phonetic specifications こざと, こざとへん, おおざと also are useful, but each these sounds may have many meanings; this makes the terms Kozato, Kozatohen, Oozato more efficient. At the vulgar interpretations, the ascii names can be interpreted as Romanji transliteration of the Japanese words こざと, こざとへん, おおざと; however, such interpretation also may lead to confusions, as each of these sounds corresponds to various words.

References

Keywords

Charles Kelly, Confusion, Japanese, Kanji, KanjiConfudal, KanjiLiberal, KanjiRadical, Kotobank, Nihongomaster, Unicode X2ECF ⻏ , X2ED6 ⻖ , X2FA2 ⾢ , X2FA9 ⾩ , X961D 阝 ,