Incomprehensible characters instead of text in the browser. How to fix a font if there are strange symbols instead of Russian letters Why are there hieroglyphs in a text document?

Chinese writing is hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs are also found in other languages influenced by China - Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Korean. The Vietnamese language used hieroglyphic writing until the 20th century. Students of these languages are especially faced with the question of how many hieroglyphs they need to know, how to remember them and, most importantly, not forget them.

Hieroglyph in classical written language wenyan文言 usually meant a whole word. In modern Chinese, words mostly consist of one or two, rarely three or more characters. Therefore, there are a lot of hieroglyphs.

In 1994, the dictionary “Sea of Chinese Characters” was published. Zhonghua Zihai中華字海, which has 85568 characters! True, the vast majority of them can be found only a few times in classical literary works. Conventional bilingual dictionaries contain about 6-8 thousand hieroglyphs, among which there are also many rare ones. More complete explanatory dictionaries contain about 10-20 thousand characters.

It is believed that to understand 80% of modern ordinary Chinese text it is enough to know the 500 most frequent hieroglyphs; knowledge of 1000 hieroglyphs gives an understanding of approximately 91% of the text, and 2500 hieroglyphs - 99% of the text. In order to pass the highest level Chinese language exam for foreigners, HSK 6, you need to know just under 3,000 characters. To read specialized scientific or classical literature, you need to understand a larger number of hieroglyphs.

However, you must keep in mind that even if all the hieroglyphs in the text are familiar to you, you will not always completely understand the meaning of what is written. You also need to know words—various word combinations of hieroglyphs. The Chinese language uses quite a lot of abbreviations, when stable phrases of several characters are reduced to shorter ones.

For example, the phrase “Beijing University” 北京大学 Běijīng dàxué shortened to 北大 Běida, which literally means "northern big". Another difficulty of the Chinese language is the use chengyu 成语 - idioms usually consisting of four characters. If each sign is translated literally, the meaning of what is said may not be understood. There are special Chenyu dictionaries, as well as collections of stories that explain the meaning of the most famous idioms. Translations of chengyu can also be found in dictionaries.

IN Japanese there is a mandatory list of hieroglyphs Joyo kanji常用漢字, accepted by the Japanese Ministry of Education as sufficient for everyday use. It consists of 2136 kanji(hieroglyphs) and includes 1006 kyoiku kanji, which are studied by schoolchildren in 6-year primary schools and 1130 kanji who teach in high school.

Hieroglyph structure

At first glance, the hieroglyph seems to be a chaotic collection of various lines and dots. However, it is not. There are several basic elements that make up a hieroglyph. First of all, these are the features that make up graphemes. Graphemes, in turn, form a more complex sign.

Traits

Any hieroglyph consists of a certain set of features. The traits themselves have no lexical meaning or reading. There are four types of traits and more than two dozen varieties:

Simple (basic) features: horizontal, vertical, inclined left and right, folding left and right, special points.
Features with a hook: horizontal, vertical (can be with a hook to the left or a hook to the right), folding to the right.
Broken features: the line changes direction one or more times, has a complex configuration.
Broken features with a hook.

There are also slightly different classifications of traits, but this does not change the general essence. Traits are written in hieroglyphs in a strictly defined sequence: “first horizontal, then vertical, first folding to the left, then folding to the right, first top, then bottom, first left, then right, first in the middle, then on both sides of it, first we go inside, then close the door”.

In the past, hieroglyphs consisted of a large number of strokes, and remembering them was not easy. Therefore, one of the goals of the writing reform carried out by the Chinese government in the 60s of the 20th century was to simplify the characters by reducing the number of strokes.

A similar simplification of hieroglyphs was carried out in Japan. However, simplified Japanese characters do not always correspond to Chinese ones, although knowing the full and simplified versions of Chinese characters, it is usually easy to understand the simplified Japanese ones. For example, the word "library" written in Simplified Chinese: 图书馆, Long Chinese: 圖書館, and Japanese: 図書館. In Chinese it reads túshūguǎn, in Japanese - toshokan.

In Taiwan, Singapore and some other places, the full version of writing hieroglyphs is still used. And in mainland China you can find texts written in full hieroglyphs. In addition, hieroglyphs with several dozen features have survived to this day. As a rule, they are rarely used and therefore have not been simplified.

The most difficult hieroglyph to write is considered biáng (bian), which consists of more than 60 traits. It refers to a type of noodle popular in Shaanxi Province. Outside the region, this hieroglyph is practically not used, and therefore it is absent from dictionaries and computer fonts.

The hieroglyph "byan" is considered the most difficult to write. They say that students at one of the institutes in Chengdu were systematically late for classes. And the professor, angry with them, ordered everyone to write the hieroglyph “byan” a thousand times. Not everyone was able to do this. And everyone tearfully asked for forgiveness, promising not to be late for classes in the future.

Graphemes and clues

From traits are formed graphemes– simple hieroglyphic signs with stable lexical meanings. These are the basic characters of Chinese hieroglyphic writing that make up Chinese characters. They are the most ancient and express the basic elements of the surrounding world and man.

Examples of graphemes: person 人 ren, woman 女 nǚ, child 子 zǐ, sun 日 rì, sky 天 tiān, earth (soil) 土 tǔ etc.

There are about 300 graphemes in total; linguists differ in their estimates regarding their exact number. Most graphemes are used in modern Chinese writing as the most common characters. Graphemes make up about 10% of the most commonly used hieroglyphs.

In addition to graphemes, there are keys. Keys are the main classification marks. The standard list of keys contains 214 characters. It includes many graphemes and some features that do not have a fixed meaning. Thus, not all graphemes are keys and not all keys are graphemes.

For a long time, a list of 214 keys constituted the so-called hieroglyphic index, according to which hieroglyphs were ordered in Chinese dictionaries. However, after simplified hieroglyphic writing was introduced into the PRC, some characters underwent either partial simplification or structural changes.

For students of languages with hieroglyphic writing, knowledge of the key table is mandatory.

Complex signs

Most hieroglyphs consist of two or more graphemes. Traditionally, they are divided into two large groups: ideographic signs and phonideographic signs.

Ideographic signs

Ideographic signs (ideograms) consist of two or more graphemes. In them, the meaning of the hieroglyph is derived from the semantics of the graphemes included in it, but the reading of the hieroglyph is in no way connected with them. In modern Chinese, the share of ideographic signs is about 10%.

Examples of ideograms:

好 hǎo(good): 女 nǚ(woman) and 子 zǐ(child)
明 ming(understanding, enlightenment): 日 rì(sun) and 月 yuè(moon)
休 xiū(rest): 人 ren(person) and 木 mù(tree)
众 zhòng(crowd): three people 人 ren
森 sēn(forest, thicket, dense): three trees 木 mù

Phonoideographic signs

About 80% of hieroglyphs are so-called phonideographic signs, or phonideograms. Hieroglyphs of this type usually consist of two parts. One part is called semantic factor, or hieroglyphic key. It indicates that the hieroglyph belongs to a certain group of semantically related characters and thereby suggests an approximate meaning.

The other part of the hieroglyph is called phonetician and suggests an approximate reading. After the reform of Chinese writing, the number of phonideograms consisting of two graphemes increased significantly, which greatly facilitated the memorization of hieroglyphs.

Examples of phonoidograms:

妈 mā(mother): 女 nǚ(woman - key) and 马 mǎ(horse - phonetician)
性 xìng(nature, character, gender): 心 xīn(heart, consciousness - key) and 生 shēng(birth - phonetician)
河 hé(river): 水 shuǐ(water, in the hieroglyph “river” the element “water” in the position on the left changes to a flap with two dots - key) and 可 kě(modal verb of possibility or obligation - phonetician)

However, in the process of development, the reading of many hieroglyphs has changed and nowadays it is not always possible to guess even the approximate reading of a hieroglyph. Especially when it comes to .

Easy ways to remember writing hieroglyphs

I think you are convinced that the hieroglyph has a clear structure and cannot contain random elements. This makes it quite easy to remember the spelling and meaning of hieroglyphs.

Graphemes go back to pictograms, representing modified, extremely simplified and abstract drawings. On the Internet you can find many pictures showing how the image gradually became more abstract and abstract. This helps with quick memorization.

The most ancient hieroglyphs, from which modern ones are derived, date back to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. These are Yin fortune-telling inscriptions on animal bones and turtle shells. Gradually, the images became more and more abstract until they acquired the modern spelling

人 ren man: two legs and a body
大 dà big: man spreads his arms
天 tiān sky: something big over a big man (option: One over a big man)
山 shān mountain: three peaks
口 kǒu mouth: keep your mouth wider
曰 yuē speak: tongue in mouth
竹 zhu bamboo: resembles two bamboos

When I first started studying Chinese at university, we first studied a list of 214 keys. I wrote them down many times, trying to write beautifully and remember the correct order of features, which is strictly fixed. This is not worth wasting your time on.

Having studied the keys, it is not difficult to remember complex signs - ideograms and phonideograms. You can come up with a story that will allow you to forever remember complete hieroglyphs with a large number of features.

Memorization examples:

妈 mā mother - woman 女 nǚ which works like a horse 马 mǎ
好 hǎo good - when a woman 女 nǚ gives birth to a child zǐ
江 jiāng river - water shuǐ who does the work 工 gong(the hieroglyph “river” is an example of a phonideogram where the reading of the phonetic “work” has changed over time)
仙 xiān holy, immortal - man 人 ren who lives in the mountains 山 shān
怕 pà to be afraid - heart 心 xīn turned white 白 bai because of fear
休 xiū rest - person 人 ren lay down to rest under a tree mù
难 nán difficult - difficult with the right hand (again) 又 yòu catch a short-tailed bird 隹 zhuī
国 guó state - ruler with a spear 玉 yù(jade, symbol of imperial power) behind the fence 囗 (without reading).

The main thing is to give free rein to your imagination. Over time this will become a habit and To remember a hieroglyph, it will be enough to simply remember the names of the graphemes that make up its composition.

And here is an example of memorizing the full spelling of the character “love” 愛 ài. If you break it down into its component elements, add a little humor, you get the following phrase: “the claws sank into the heart, the legs gave way, and then the lid came.”

Or here's how you can remember the hieroglyph 腻 nì. Its dictionary meanings are “grease, dirt, shiny, glossy, smooth.” It consists of the graphemes “moon” (very similar to it is “meat”), “shell”, “archery” and “two”. You can come up with a story: a man shot game with a bow (glossy meat, fatty, shiny, with a lot of fat), and sold it for two shells (in ancient times - money) to the Japanese. Just in Japanese “two” is read as neither.

The funnier and more absurd the story, the easier you will remember the hieroglyphs.

In addition, very often such an analysis of hieroglyphs helps to further clarify the meaning of the most complex and polysemantic categories of Chinese philosophy and culture. In my lectures on Chinese philosophy, I often resort to this method of explanation.

way, road, tract; track, road; on the way, on the way
path, route; tract; astr. path of a celestial body, orbit; anat., med. tract
paths, direction of activity; way, way, method; an approach; means; rule, custom
technology, art; trick, cunning; trick
idea, thought; teaching; doctrine; dogma
reason, basis; rightness; truth, truth
philosopher. Tao, true path, highest principle, perfection
Taoism, the teachings of Taoists; Taoist monk, Taoist
Buddhist teaching.

And these are not all the meanings! However, if you break the hieroglyph into its constituent graphemes, then all the meanings will become intuitively clear. The first grapheme is 首 shǒu, “head, crown, beginning, main, main, essence.” The second is “move forward.” That is, Tao is something basic that moves forward, is in motion.

Or, another example, the most important 仁 ren- philanthropy, humanity. The hieroglyph consists of two graphemes: man 人 ren and two 二 èr. And it is read the same way as “man”. That is, philanthropy is relationships between people that are built on the basis of justice. As he said, “Only those who love humanity can love people and hate people” (“Lun Yu”, IV, 3).

One of the favorite pastimes of the Chinese is to write characters with a brush dipped in water. Moreover, here the hieroglyphs are also written in a mirror image!

How to remember reading hieroglyphs

Although in the Chinese language most of the characters fall into the category of phonoid ideograms, however, the character does not contain a direct indication of reading, like phonetic languages. Another difficulty of the Chinese language is the widespread phenomenon of homophony: due to the limited number of syllables (just over 400), different characters can be read the same, which creates certain difficulties in understanding spoken language. However, it is very convenient to memorize a whole series of hieroglyphs that have the same reading.

In the early days of my study of the Chinese language, I usually remembered the tone by some line: a horizontal line at the top of the character meant the first tone, a slanted line to the left meant the second tone, a horizontal line at the bottom meant the third tone, and a slanted or tilted line to the right meant the fourth tone. Although there were hieroglyphs where the required line was not found.

A completely different situation arises in the Japanese language, where there are two types of reading hieroglyphs: onny, which came from the Chinese language, and kunnoe, traditional Japanese. Thus, one hieroglyph can have up to 5 or more different readings! In different phrases, hieroglyphs can be read differently.

For example, in Japanese the words “yesterday” 昨日 and “tomorrow” 明日, which contain the same sign 日 (day, sun), are read completely differently: movie: And Ashita respectively. In the phrase “every day”, “daily” 毎日 will be read mainichi, “third number”, “three days” 三日- mikka. Although, in theory, all four words should end the same.

That is why the only effective way to remember reading hieroglyphs in both Chinese and Japanese is by cramming: repeat them repeatedly to yourself and out loud, try to remember the melody. In the Chinese language, in my opinion, this is easier to do due to the presence of phonideograms and the general repetition of syllables; in Japanese it is a little more difficult.

Is it easy to learn Japanese characters after Chinese?

For those who speak Chinese, Japanese seems simpler from the outside, at least in terms of hieroglyphs. Indeed, a significant part of the characters in Japanese are written in the same way as in Chinese or very similar. Especially if you know the full spelling of Chinese characters. However, as always, the devil is in the details. I’ll tell you what I discovered already in the early stages of my study of the Japanese language.

Set the character set

Meta tag

You need to add a special meta tag to each page (or header template) that tells the browser what set of characters to use to display texts. This tag is standard and usually looks like this:

charset=UTF-8» />

charset=”utf-8″/> (option for HTML 5)

You need to paste it into the section - better at the very beginning, right after the opening one :

Meta encoding tag

Via .htaccess (if all else fails)

Usually the first two options are enough and browsers display the text how to. But some of them may have problems and therefore you can resort to help .htaccess file.

To do this, you need to write the following line in it:

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

That's all. If you apply sequentially these 3 methods of setting encoding on your project, then the likelihood is that that everything will be displayed as it should, close to 100%.

How to “see” what is hidden behind strange symbols on a website?

If you go to a web page, see “crazy words” and want to see normal text, then there are only two ways:

inform the site owner so that everything is configured properly
try to guess the encoding yourself. This is done using standard browser tools. In Chrome, for example, you need to click on the menu "Tools => Encoding" and from a huge list select the appropriate set of characters (i.e. guess).

Fortunately, almost all modern web projects are done in UTF-8 encoding, which is “universal” for different alphabets and therefore it is less and less likely to see these strange characters on the Internet.

What should you do if the text on your computer or in your browser is displayed as a combination of incomprehensible symbols, in simple terms - hieroglyphs? We solve the problem in this article.

First, let's clarify one detail... We are not talking about Japanese or other hieroglyphs, but about those incomprehensible combinations of letters, numbers and symbols that appear instead of text. The hieroglyphs (as we will conventionally call them) will look approximately as shown in the picture below.

If you try to open any library or file (for example, with extensions .dll, .exe) in Notepad, you will be shown exactly these hieroglyphs. But this does not mean that your computer is faulty. It’s just that some files need to be opened in the appropriate editors. Those. if you try to open a pdf book in notepad, you will get hieroglyphs instead of text. This leads to the first rule: Open and edit text only in programs suitable for this!

However, it also happens that absolutely all text on your computer is displayed incorrectly. This may be due to the fact that the virus has damaged some files, or everything is quite harmless (you installed some crooked program, or something was crookedly updated, or something was crookedly Russified). In this case, there is no need to panic and hit yourself in the chest with your heel. To solve the problem, simply configure your computer.

To configure, we need to find the “Regional and Language Options” utility in the “Control Panel”.
In Windows XP, this is done in this way: Start - Settings - Control Panel - Date, time, language and regional settings - Language and regional settings.
In Windows 7, everything is a little simpler: Start - Control Panel - Language and Regional Standards.

After running this utility, you will need to set “Russian language” as the main language in all tabs.

If you have entered all the values (or you already have them), and the text continues to display incorrectly, then try restoring the system. Restore your system to the day (or earlier) before the day you had this problem. The system will repair damaged system files and the text will be displayed normally.

There are times when text is displayed incorrectly only in a specific application or (most often) in an Internet browser. Then you need to rummage through the settings of your browser or application, selecting Russian as the main language. Typically, browsers have a “default” option in their text encoding. If you have already selected this item, but problems still arise, then try changing the encoding to Cyrillic. If nothing helps, then simply reinstall your browser. In most modern browsers, when you reinstall them, all your settings and bookmarks are saved (and saved passwords too). Therefore, you can safely reinstall the browser without fear of losing any data.

If the above methods still don’t help, then try asking your friends or acquaintances - maybe they have already encountered a similar problem. Or look for information on various forums and websites. In general, whoever seeks will always find. Unlike most problems, font problems can have many root causes.

The methods described above are basic, and therefore I hope they will help you.

Latest articles in the “Computers & Internet” section:

Which computer mouse to choose
Computer monitoring and prevention
Disposable mail
What is an IP address and why is it needed?

Krakozyabry- What kind of word is this interesting? This word is usually used by Russian users to describe the incorrect/incorrect display (encoding) of characters in programs or the Operating System itself.
Why does this happen? You won't find a definite answer. This may be due to the tricks of our “favorite” viruses, perhaps due to a malfunction of the Windows OS (for example, the electricity went out and the computer turned off), perhaps the program created a conflict with another OS and everything went haywire. In general, there can be many reasons, but the most interesting one is “It just broke down like that.”
Read the article and find out how to fix the problem with encoding in programs and Windows OS, once it has happened.

For those who still don’t understand what I mean, here are a few:

By the way, I also found myself in this situation once and I still have a file on my desktop that helped me cope with it. That's why I decided to write this article.

Several “things” are responsible for displaying the encoding (font) in Windows - the language, the registry, and the files of the OS itself. Now we will check them separately and point by point.

How to remove and correct krakozyabry instead of Russian (Russian letters) in a program or Windows.

1. We check the installed language for programs that do not support Unicode. Maybe it's lost on you.

So, let's follow the path: Control Panel - Regional and Language Options - Advanced tab
There we make sure that the language is Russian.

In Windows XP, in addition to this, at the bottom there is a list of “Conversion table code pages” and in it there is a line with the number 20880. There needs to be a Russian there too

6. The last point in which I give you a file that helped me fix everything once and that’s why I left it as a keepsake. Here is the archive:

There are two files inside: krakozbroff.cmd and krakozbroff.reg

They have the same principle - correct hieroglyphs, squares, questions or exclamation marks in programs and Windows OS (in common parlance) krakozyabry). I used the first one and it helped me.

And finally, a couple of tips:
1) If you work with the registry, then do not forget to make a backup (backup copy) in case something goes wrong.
2) It is advisable to check the 1st point after each point.

That's all. Now you know how to fix/remove Crackers (squares, hieroglyphs, exclamation and question marks) in a program or Windows.

When I first started studying the topic of website development, hacks were one of my constant problems. I created an HTML page - krakozyabry in the browser, installed Denver and tried to create a site in PHP - again instead of letters krakozyabry. I downloaded a foreign theme, connected to the database - the same problem.

On my websites, I usually use UTF-8 (this is a text encoding, also called Unicode), so it will be present in all the examples in this article.

1. UTF-8 without BOM

Let's start with the simplest problem. You created some HTML file, opened it in the browser and got:

Krakozyabry (problem with encoding).

The problem is relevant mainly for Windows users; I have never encountered this on a Mac.

The solution to the problem depends mainly on what editor you are using. For Windows users, I recommend the free awesome Notepad++.

So, open the file in Notepad++ and go to Encodings > Convert to UTF-8 without BOM. Question - why without BOM? Because with BOM you will constantly insert empty characters (in fact, they are not empty, they also have their own function, but we don’t need it in this case) where it is not necessary, and for PHP this is already critical.

2. Meta tag charset

If you did what I described in the previous step and your problem is not resolved, then it’s time to try the second method of eliminating cracks.

All we need to do is paste the following code between the tags site. First of all, check to see if you already have this meta tag. If yes, then look at the value of the charset parameter.

3.htaccess

If Russian letters are still displayed as crappy letters, then open your .htaccess , which is in the root of the site and insert this there on a new line:

Important! This code must be inserted before anything is displayed on the site page, otherwise there will be an error.

5. Problems with the last character when trimming a line

How to solve this problem?

Easy - all we need is to find the substr() function in the code and change it to mb_substr() .

If after this you get errors on your site, then most likely multibyte functions are not supported by your hosting, the first thing you should do is write to the support and ask if they can be connected to your account. If not, we change the hosting, for example to one with .

6. MySQL

It has happened to me more than once that I connected to MySQL, pulled out some data, and when it was displayed on the site, the text was displayed as crappy text.