I started a collection of variants some time ago on Google Docs, but I gradually forgot about it – would be happy to hear from anyone about variants they have discovered in their language learning process.
| Strokes (Original) | Standard Form Character | Variant | pinyin | 倉頡碼 | Unicode | Note |
| 3 | 以 | 㠯 | yi3 | unknown | u382f | Classical only |
| 5 | 冉 | 冄 | ran3 | 月一一 | u5184 | |
| 8 | 姐 | 姊 | jie3 | 女中x竹 | u59ca | |
| 10 | 挽 | 輓 | wan3 | 十十弓日山 | u8f13 | |
| 10 | 笑 | 咲 | xiao4 | 口廿大 | u54b2 | |
| 10 | 鬥 | 鬭、鬬、閗 | dou4 | 中弓口一中、中弓月一中、中弓卜十 | U9B2D, u9b2c, u9597 | found in 齊物論 |
| 12 | 普 | 暜 | pu3 | 卜廿日 | u669c | |
| 13 | 群 | 羣 | qun2 | 尸口廿手 | u7fa3 | |
| 14 | 褒 | 闁 | bao1 | 日弓日弓 | u95c1 | |
| 15 | 鋪 | 舖 | pu4 | 人口戈十月 | u8216 | 4th tone 鋪 only – both written 鋪 in classical, later 舍 replaced 金 as it reflected the noun’s meaning more accurately |
| 15 | 璇 | 璿 | xuan2 | 一土卜月山 | u74bf | |
| 17 | 斂 | 歛 | lian3 | 人人弓人 | u6b5b |
Comment below!
I can contribute 裏/裡 🙂
I’ve actually never heard anyone pronounce 姊 as jie3, although perakun/mdbg indicates jie3 as the Taiwan pronunciation… Also mdbg lists another variant for it: 姉.
Yeah, actually in Taiwan they use 姊 an actual sister or a female cousin, whereas they use 姐 for non relatives and in cognates like 小姐。 裏 and 裡 is a good example of a very common variant pair without any apparent pattern. Would be interesting to collect examples of different instances to see which one is used generally in which context, like novels and court documents etc. Thanks for the great contribution 😉
Out of curiosity, I typed in “variant of” in mdbg and it turned up a nice list to look into http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=variant+of ✌️
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