Bizarre Simplified Chinese Font

Ah, I just remembered that I was able to type Chinese characters correctly in this forum software. They won't look weird here, because the font here is correct, but...

Yes, "见" and "个" are correct in this weird font.

Characters like the following are "wrong" in that font, although they're correct in this font: 门，房，扇，喝，外，八，孩，包，今，收 (only slightly weird)，空，哪 (slightly)，系，冷，臭，治 (slightly)，步 (slightly)，么 (slightly)，苹...

STHeitiSC, you say. Good info, thanks!

I don't suppose you know what the good font on the iOS devices is called - the one where, for example, the above characters look like shown above? Or is that just another part of the same STHeitiSC font?

Yip, that's them alright! Dang, they're annoying...

So then, I can't ask Apple to whack that font entirely, but I can try to get Rosetta Stone to use the correct font. Or is it the correct portion of the same single font.

I'll probably ask Apple to not use that portion of the font, and always make iOS devices display Simplified characters as if I'd selected Simplified as the screen language.

What's the Wikipedia link for that?

mr88cet wrote:

So then, I can't ask Apple to whack that font entirely, but I can try to get Rosetta Stone to use the correct font. Or is it the correct portion of the same single font.

Sorry, I intended that last line to be a question: Do you know whether the correct Simplified characters - the ones you get after you switch your screen language over to Chinese - are all part of the same STHeitiSC font but in a different code range, or as opposed to an entirely separate font altogether?

Indeed!

These are really obnoxious when you're trying to use your iPhone as a Chinese-language learning aid. Then again, I'm partly so annoyed with them because I went years and years constantly having to double-check whether the iPhone is drawing the character correctly or not, and occasionally learning incorrect stroking of a character. That before I, only a few months ago, finally found the simple-but-obscure solution of switching the screen language (even if only temporarily) over to Simplified.

So I'm a bit disappointed with Rosetta Stone - a premier language-learning program - is using this bizarre character set. In their partial defense, however, I should point out that this appears to be limited specifically to the "Course" on the iPad. They're drawn correctly on the Mac, and in the iPhone's "Companion."

On my iPad, where Rosetta Stone is producing the weird characters, I've already done the trick of switching the screen language over to Simplified, then back to English. The list of languages reads out English, then Simplified, German, French, Japanese, ... I probably ought to move Traditional up ahead of Japanese, but anyway, Japanese is way below Simplified. All other apps, or at least all I can recall off the top of my head, are showing Simplified correctly.

Deleting the app and reloading it, I haven't tried. Sounds worth a try.

Contacting the Rosetta Stone folks, yes, that I've already tried. They don't seem to understand the question, even though I've sent them screenshots, and illustrations of the nature of the problem. I'm thinking about contacting them again, and asking them to point their developers to this thread in particular.

By the way, do you have a link to the Wiki page from which you copied that set examples of Japanese-Simplified discrepancies? Searching, I found a few related topics that were interesting, but not that in particular.

Is there any way to move the languages in this list around in the list, other than making that language into the screen language and switching back?

To put them in the order of English, then Simplified, then Traditional, it sounds like I have to switch screen language to Traditional, then to Simplified, and then to English. Can be done, I suppose, but kinda complicated and indirect...