Optional Horizontal Stroke in 肯德 (KENDALL in Chinese Calligraphy)

When writing 德 (moral; virtue) in many Chinese calligraphy styles, the horizontal stroke in the right part was often omitted in ancient time. (Explained in the later half of this video with references from www.9610.com free Chinese calligraphy dictionary.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGkD0KLMx4

書法 "德" 字中的一橫

肯德 (phonetic translation of KENDALL) written during the 15th annual Chinese Culture Day sponsored by Families with Children from China North Texas http://www.fccnt.org

Founded in 1996, FCCNT is a volunteer-run, nonprofit organization that serves as a resource and support network for adoptive families and individuals waiting to adopt from China. The group presents a wide variety of cultural, social and educational programs for parents, children and youth. Annually FCCNT host Chinese Culture Day to join together to celebrate their children's rich Chinese heritage.


Filename: Kendall-ChineseCalligraphy-Lishu-NoMissingStroke-fccnt-Nov2010.wmv

Category:

Education

Tags:

• 書法
• Shufa
• Chinese
• calligraphy
• name
• name in Chinese calligraphy
• Mandarin
• China
• art
• Shodo
• Shoudo
• Kanji
• Hanji
• Chinese calligraphy name
• Chinese calligraphy
• 德

[SokudoJutsu]

It actually looks more beautiful without the extra stroke.

Is that character at 3:07 from one of your videos?

[artvirtue]

@SokudoJutsu The ancient Chinese calligraphers preferred to write with extra or omitted strokes compared with today's standardized characters, such as an omitted 橫 in 德 and an extra 橫 in 澤.

The 德 at 3:07 was written for Texas Instruments ( 德州儀器 ) in 2008 on a premounted scroll with dragon print.

[jcsf9]

The 徳 variant occurs more frequently in modern Japanese.

[artvirtue]

@jcsf9 Thank you for your sharing and typing 徳.

[artvirtue]

@001Asoer Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

My high school teacher, who encouraged and enlightened me in calligraphy, was a renowned etymologist and calligrapher in Taiwan. Luckily, he often mentioned many exceptions like this in class. Unluckily, I was too young and most of my classmates and I did not pay enough attentions.

Even today, I have pressures that some Chinese school teachers (who do not practice calligraphy) might question me why I write with omitted & extra strokes.

[001Asoer]

@artvirtue Indeed. It seems that beds in large seal script usually evolve to something like 爿 or 疒 in small seal script, but 廢 was an exception. Perhaps this was because of 說文解字, which used 广.

In any case, 疒+业+弓+攵 (I don't think I can type it.) seems to be most popular. I'm sure even few people have seen it.

[artvirtue]

@001Asoer There are many situations like this. For example, the dot in 鬼 was usually omitted in the ancient time and originally there were two extra strokes in the left part of 廢.

[001Asoer]

Ironic. At least 9 out of 10 instances of that grapheme is 徳, yet at least 9 out of 10 Chinese people think it is wrong.

[artvirtue]

@cristobelle56 Thank you. The reasons are partially due to evolutions of Chinese characters (including calligraphy styles) - we may also wonder in many situations why certain horizontal strokes are added as "extra" strokes and some strokes are "omitted."

[cristobelle56]

thank you for sharing... lovely character "de". Wonder why some horizontal strokes are omitted in ancient writings ? Best,