力

Force meter

Anopheles gambiae

力 X529B is Unicode character number 21147, KanjiLiberal.

力 can be pronounced as ちから (chikachi) and mean force or energy

力 can be pronounced as か (ka) and mean mosquito .

力 is easy to confuse with other characters:
⼒, カ, 力, 力 have similar pictures.

Confusion: ⼒, カ, 力, 力

The four Unicode characters have similar pictures:

⼒ X2F12 , KanjiRadical

カ X30AB , Katakana "ka".

力 X529B , KanjiLiberal

力 XF98A, KanjiConfudal

Manuals do not even mention this confusion . The confusions may lead to errors, misunderstandings, wars. In order avoid the mistakes, some programming is necessary.

Encoding

The Utf8 encoding of カ and similar characters can be revealed by program ud.t with command

php ud.t 2F12 30AB 529B F98A

File uni.t also should be loaded for the execution. Then, the output is

K= 5

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

This confusion refers not only to the Human perception of the images.
The most of software confuses the last two, substituting 力 XF98A to 力 X529B without any warning message.
The Google search for ⼒ kanji suggests https://jisho.org/search/%23kanji%20怪 that has nothing to do with character ⼒.

In cases of the confusion, character 力 can be supplied with its hexadecimal number X529B.

Semantic

Term 力 is highly ambiguous: many physical quantities (force, energy, power, etc) are combined into a single character. This confusion is an addition to the similarity of the graphical representation of the four characters ⼒, カ, 力, 力.

力 perfectly matches the needs of an ignorant author, who does not know difference between the mathematical expectation and probability, between integral and logarithm, between Nibelungs and Fudoki, between virus and bacteria, between voltage and current, between force, energy, power and momentum, or does not know order of magnitude of quantities he or she is talking about: 10^12 or 10^18 (in the last case, term Trillion can be used to indicate the ignorance of the author).

For this reason, character 力 is not recommended in expressions of scientific concepts. Instead, the terms borrowed from English, written in Katakana or Romanji, can be used:

エネルギー (Energy)

力_(物理学) (Force)

パワー (Power)

etcetera.

Conclusion

The four Unicode characters ⼒, カ, 力, 力 have similar graphical representations, similar sounds and similar (and pretty wide) sets of meanings.

This is not a problem of a foreign language. Even a native Japanese speaker, looking at characters ⼒, カ, 力, 力, cannot guess, which of them is 力 (X2F12).

In some cases, the sound and meaning of character 力 can be revealed, guessed from the context.

Manuals of Japanese do not mention the confusion above, and do not suggest any way to handle it.
For this reason, the four characters above are not recommended for the use in meaningful (scientific) tests.

References

Keywords

Confusion, Force, Japanese, Kanji, KanjiConfudal, KanjiLiberal, KanjiRadical, Katakana, SomeU, X2F12 ⼒, X30AB カ, X529B 力, XF98A 力,