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Level 1

37 points

Bizarre Simplified Chinese Font

Any ideas how I can find the names of iOS' Simplified Chinese fonts?

Background: iOS has two Simplified Chinese fonts, one of which is perfectly reasonable, but the other is ... bizarre! If your iOS device was brought up in English, and then you add Simplified Chinese as an International keyboard, it gives you the "bizarre" font. If you then change your device's screen language to Simplified Chinese, it switches over to the normal-looking font (thank you!), and it stays using the correct font, even if you switch your screen language back to English.

My wife and step-daughter, from Harbin in Northwest China, agree that it looks really bizarre, and attrribute it to weird things computers do. I personally think it goes way beyond font stylization; I think that font is just plain wrong, pure and simple! Strokes are missing or added, entire pieces of characters are drawn entirely incorrectly, "dian" strokes are replaced with "shu wan gou" strokes, etc.

I have my iOS devices set to use the correct font, but I'm finding that a few programs (including Rosetta Stone, eeeeeek!) use the el-bizarro font. I'd like to request that these programs switch over to the correct font, and petition Apple to excise the bizarre font entirely from iOS. To do that, however, I'd have to know what that font is called. Any ideas how I can find out?

iPhone 4, iOS 5

Posted on Sep 6, 2012 8:33 AM

67 replies

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Sep 7, 2012 11:13 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

OK, thanks anyway...

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Sep 7, 2012 11:14 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Deleting the app and reloading it doesn't seem to help. Hmmm... Well, it was worth a try...

WangHan

Level 1

0 points

Dec 12, 2012 5:56 PM in response to mr88cet

Hey Hello!

I was looking for a solution for the same problem. I'm studying chinese and since I installed IOS6 the characters changed and it was driving me crazy.

I found something for IPAD and and I tried on my itouch and it actually worked!

The thing is switch your device's language to chinese (it may install some kind of dictionary/font...?) and i switched again to spanish (in your case english i guess hehe). And since then, i can write "normal characters". You should try

Settings > General > International

Switch to 简体中文

Then let the device install whatever it install, and try to change it again into english.

FONT: http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2012/02/28/unmixing-chinese-and-japanese -fonts-on-the-ipad-and-mac-os

Hope it works too for you!

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 12, 2012 7:50 PM in response to WangHan

谢谢你回答！

Actually, I already am aware of this solution. However, I found that it works for everything except for the iPad version of "Rosetta Course." That one app, and as far as I can tell only that one app, still shows the whacky Kanji-esque font.

"WangHan"，吧？不太可能这是＂汪瀚＂吧？那是我太太的哥哥的名字。:-)

WangHan

Level 1

0 points

Dec 12, 2012 9:01 PM in response to mr88cet

Ok! I just discovered today and I was terribly happy because it was annoying

哈哈，我名字是"王涵", my chinese teacher changed my name because the "han" i choosed was too masculine and agressive apparently 😝 and names for girls must be "soft and delicated" LOL

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 13, 2012 3:54 AM in response to WangHan

Yes, I am very glad that that fix works for ... almost everything ... on the iPad and iPhone! Those characters are really terrible, especially if you're trying to learn the language! I personally think that the entire premise of that font is fundamentally flawed - a really stupid idea. There's no reason why we should expect the characters to look the same in Japan and China. If they hold along different paths, then computer fonts should accurately reflect that disparate evolution.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,438 points

Dec 13, 2012 4:57 AM in response to mr88cet

mr88cet wrote:

I personally think that the entire premise of that font is fundamentally flawed - a really stupid idea. There's no reason why we should expect the characters to look the same in Japan and China. If they hold along different paths, then computer fonts should accurately reflect that disparate evolution.

I am really puzzled by these comments. There is nothing wrong with any font. The one you don't like is intended for use with Japanese and not Chinese. The problem arises when the OS or an app uses the Japanese font when it should be using the Chinese font instead. In both OS X and iOS this can happen if the language settings are in the wrong order. In Unicode all Han characters are unified so there is no way to know from plain text whether the language being used is Japanese, Chinese, or Korean or even ancient Vietnamese. So the info on which font to use has to come from elsewhere, like the language order settings in Apple products.

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 13, 2012 5:04 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

That is a valid distinction, and yes, I agree that the problem is not the entire font, but when it is used incorrectly.

Nevertheless, one portion of that font, I believe is based upon a fundamentally misguided goal. That portion consists of Simplified Chinese characters designed to match glyph patterns of Kanji. These characters are neither correct Kanji nor correct Simplified Chinese, the goal apparently being to try to create a consistent style across multiple cultures. I see no value in that whatsoever.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,438 points

Dec 13, 2012 7:36 AM in response to mr88cet

mr88cet wrote:

Nevertheless, one portion of that font, I believe is based upon a fundamentally misguided goal. That portion consists of Simplified Chinese characters designed to match glyph patterns of Kanji. These characters are neither correct Kanji nor correct Simplified Chinese, the goal apparently being to try to create a consistent style across multiple cultures.

I think this underestimates the extent to which "simplified" Han characters are in fact also Kanji. The fonts in question are designed to reflect actual Japanese glyph usage, and I doubt that any are "wrong" in the Japanese context. Even the apparently crazy glyph used for the simplified version of men2 "door" has an explanation, see example 2 at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryakuji

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 13, 2012 8:04 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

My viewpoint: Japan does not use Simplified Chinese. Therefore the decision to design the Simplified-Chinese portion of that font to reflect Japanese glyph usage is not a "style" decision; it must match how those characters will be used. The only correct decision therefore is to use Simplified-Chinese glyph patterns. Any other choice is purely-and-simply wrong.

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 13, 2012 8:35 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I gather that the Unicode folks' viewpoint is that the font as a whole should look stylistically consistent, meaning that the portions of the font that are unique to Simplified Chinese should borrow glyph patterns from the rest of the Kanji-inspired font. My viewpoint would be that they can at least get that portion that is unique to Chinese-language usage right, even if they have to sacrifice consistency some.

Anyway...

From an API perspective, I gather there must exist calls of the nature of, "use the currently selected system 汉字 font," be that the Kanji-styled one or the Chinese-styled one. Since, even after switching the iPad over to the correct font, the Rosetta Course iPad app still uses the Kanji-inspired font for teaching Chinese, it appears that there must also be API calls of the nature of, "use this particular 汉字 font, regardless of whether it's the currently-selected system 汉字 font"?

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,438 points

Dec 13, 2012 9:57 AM in response to mr88cet

mr88cet wrote:

Since, even after switching the iPad over to the correct font, the Rosetta Course iPad app still uses the Kanji-inspired font for teaching Chinese, it appears that there must also be API calls of the nature of, "use this particular 汉字 font, regardless of whether it's the currently-selected system 汉字 font"?

I don't understand the behavior of that app at all. If there are such calls, I don't know of any other app uses them. I think they normally just use the Unicode codepoints in their text and rely on the OS to be set to use an appropriate font to display it. Or include their own font in the app. The latter is what I would expect Rosetta to do, but in that case you would not have the problem. I gather their tech support is not able to tell you much about this issue?

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,438 points

Dec 13, 2012 10:18 AM in response to mr88cet

mr88cet wrote:

I gather that the Unicode folks' viewpoint is that the font as a whole should look stylistically consistent, meaning that the portions of the font that are unique to Simplified Chinese should borrow glyph patterns from the rest of the Kanji-inspired font.

From the Unicode point of view, the unified Han character set is used by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, and for each codepoint/character a font intended specifically for any of those languages could have differences reflecting local tradition and usage.

The concept of "simplified" doesn't really have a role in this. Japanese text does use Han codepoints that are considered part of "simplified chinese". For example U+4E0E 与 is the "simplified" version of U+8207 與, Chinese yu. In Japanese U+4E0E is can be read as yo or ataeru/kumisuru/tomoni and is one of the 2136 kanji required for k-12 education. The Japanese form differs from the Chinese form by having a longer horizontal line across the lower half.

K T

Level 7

23,883 points

Dec 13, 2012 10:25 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom Gewecke wrote:

I don't understand the behavior of that app at all. If there are such calls, I don't know of any other app uses them.

It is usually at this point where someone elects to create their own font set...be your own hero and go for it, I say 🙂

mr88cet Author

Level 1

37 points

Dec 13, 2012 10:40 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I suppose it's not impossible that they might be including their own font, notably the Kanji-styled one, for whatever misguided (or I would guess, simply mistaken) reason. What's even more weird is that they get it right everywhere else: The iPhone "Rosetta Companion" app has it right, and they use the right font on the Mac. I haven't yet checked the "Rosetta Studio" app, since I haven't done any of their studio sessions yet.

Yeah, when I ask Rosetta Stone's tech support about it, they conclude that the "weird Simplified font" I'm referring to is Traditional Chinese, and tell me how to choose between Pinyin, Simplified, and Traditional. After that, they draw a blank. However, I have filed a very-detailed bug report. I'm hoping that others will do the same.

I'm guessing that the reason why this hasn't long since come to their attention, is that most of their learners have given up on learning 汉字, and are using only Pinyin. I say that based upon what people say on their Chinese-learning chat board; when I write something there in 汉字, almost all of them reply that they're learning only Pinyin. That, or they're learning Traditional, or they're not using the iPad app.

The folks who are using the iPad app to learn Simplified, I suspect, either don't know the difference or don't know what to make of the difference. It's not entirely impossible that I'm one of a very few who using Rosetta Stone primarily to learn 汉字 specifically. That since I have already been speaking Mandarin with my wife, but not writing汉字, for ... 7 years or so. Admittedly, it's only a so-so course for learning detailed 汉字 vocabulary, in that it doesn't go over stroke order, and so forth. But heck, it's a very friendly learning environment, with a nicely-structured approach to the material, and lots of cool supplemental materials. That, plus my wife is using Rosetta Stone to learn English...

Bizarre Simplified Chinese Font