Radical 213 Explained

Radical 213 meaning "turtle" is one of only two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes.

In the Kangxi Dictionary there are only 24 characters (out of 40,000) to be found under this radical.

In Taoist cosmology, 龜 (Polyhedron) is the nature component of the Ba gua diagram 坎 Kǎn.

Characters with Radical 213

strokes	character
without additional strokes	龜 龟
5 additional strokes	龝
12 additional strokes	龞
21 additional strokes

Variant characters

There are a number of variant characters that appear different but mean the same thing:

By typefont

As a CJK Unified Ideograph, has seven separate reference glyphs shown in the Unicode code charts, no two of which are exactly identical:^[1]

• "G" (Mainland China), for Traditional Chinese in Mainland China (i.e. the forms listed alongside their Simplified Chinese equivalents in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters), as in the Guobiao standard GB/T 12345 (the form for Simplified Chinese is encoded separately; see below)
• "H" (Hong Kong) for use in Traditional Chinese
• "T" (Taiwan) for use in Traditional Chinese
• "J" (Japan) for Japanese kyūjitai (the form for Japanese shinjitai is encoded separately; see below)
• "K" (South Korea) for use in Korean hanja
• "KP" (North Korea) for use in Korean hanja
• "V" (Vietnam) for use in Vietnamese Hán Nôm

As such, appearance may subtly vary between fonts intended for different regions:

scope=row	Region	Mainland China (traditional)	Hong Kong	Taiwan	Japan (kyūjitai)	South Korea	North Korea	Vietnam
Preview with local font	龜	龜	龜	龜	龜	龜	龜
Features of Unicode reference glyph
Very top	Dot stroke	⺈ shape (like top of 鱼), crosses corner of box below				⺈ shape (like top of 鱼), does not cross corner of box below
Vertical strokes	From bottom of upper box to tail	From top of upper box to bottom of turtleshell		From top of upper box to between turtleshell and tail	From top of upper box to tail		From bottom of upper box to tail
Horizontal strokes	Legs and turtleshell entirely separate strokes	Legs and turtleshell separate strokes but aligned	Legs and turtleshell single strokes crossing verticals		Legs and turtleshell separate strokes but aligned	Legs and turtleshell single strokes crossing verticals	Legs and turtleshell entirely separate strokes

In Unicode

Due to an especially large number of variant forms associated with Radical 213, an exceptionally large number of Unicode characters exist displaying variants of the character itself, as opposed to derived characters.^[2]

Supplementary Ideographic Plane

Literature

• Book: Fazzioli, Edoardo . calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko . Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters . 1987 . . New York . 0-89659-774-1 .
• Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993,

External links

• Unihan Database - U+9F9C

Notes and References

1. Web site: CJK Unified Ideographs . The Unicode Standard, Version 15.1 . . 2023.
2. Web site: The Road to 'Ideograph Hell'… . Lunde . Ken . Ken Lunde . . 2023-08-11.