<p>There are some examples like that, but it's actually not that common, considering there are thousands of commonly used characters, and there's no name for this too (won't call it a phenomenon either).</p>

<p>熱 &amp; 熟: I remember these words from my childhood. I thought they look so similar at that time. Notice I was a native speaker and already speaking Chinese fluently. This is just a part every Chinese learner must learn, and you will certainly get better at recognizing the differences as time goes on.</p>

<p>Those differences may be in a certain stroke (e.g. one character has an extra stroke 大 &amp; 太, or a difference in length 士 &amp; 土, or a difference in angle/order of strokes 千 干), or there are parts of those characters that are different (e.g. 熱 &amp; 熟).</p>

<p>It might help to learn the basic strokes: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character)?oldformat=true#Basic_strokes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character)?oldformat=true#Basic_strokes</a></p>

<p>Stroke orders matter too. Notice the first strokes of 千 and 干.</p>

<ul>
<li>check stroke order here: <a href="https://www.chineseconverter.com/en/convert/chinese-stroke-order-tool" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.chineseconverter.com/en/convert/chinese-stroke-order-tool</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Here's a list of similar characters if you're interested: <a href="http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-23T23:37:18.913Z
2018-06-23T23:37:18.913Z
thyu
<p>No, nothing special.</p>

<p>There is a tip for Chinese kids to memorize 已己巳</p>

<p>已半, 巳满, 不出己</p>

<p>已半 means there is a half stem.</p>

<p>巳满 means there is a full stem.</p>

<p>不出己 means the stem is not appear on 己.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-24T15:02:44.387Z
2018-07-24T15:02:44.387Z
sfy
<p>This is indeed a topic you need to be aware of when learning written Chinese. There are quite a few common characters that look very similar.</p>

<p>I did a web search with this term "similar characters 末 未 士 土" and recommend the following which were among the first 10 answers:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.chinese-tools.com/characters/similar.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.chinese-tools.com/characters/similar.html</a> This is the
simplest, and I recommend it for beginners.</li>
<li><a href="http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/chinese-characters-that-look-alike" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/chinese-characters-that-look-alike</a> ... but maybe this one is more useful as it has sample sentences</li>
</ul>

<p>The next two are at a higher level; for intermediate/advanced students.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Easily_confused_Chinese_characters" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Easily_confused_Chinese_characters</a></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-02T14:47:04.967Z
2018-08-02T14:47:04.967Z
goPlayerJuggler
<p>Another example is 戊、戌、戍。Even now, I still can't tell them apart.</p>
<p>There is this famous 戊戌變法（I had to look up a dictionary to make sure this is the right way to write it。)If I see a combination of 戍戊變法、戌戊變法、戌戍變法 etc., I can't pick up the correct one.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-05-07T13:06:28.690Z
For these three there is "横戌点戍空心戊", I think it's a 口诀. It may help learning/differentiating these characters. Cf my question: https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/31204/mnemonics-for-%e6%b1%89%e5%ad%97-examples-and-resources
goPlayerJuggler
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-21T03:43:43.497Z
2021-04-21T03:43:43.497Z
joehua
<p>There are plenty of those examples, like</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>“日”和“曰”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>They look exactly the same, aren't they? The latter one is just a little bit wider than the previous. The narrow one, “日”，means "the sun", while the other one means "say" in a formal way.</p>

<p>Here is a <a href="https://www.zhihu.com/question/45631430/answer/364205745" rel="nofollow noreferrer">list</a> of some of thoes characters if you are interested. Do not worry on how to distinguishing them, at least one of the characters in all these pairs is by no means commonly used.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T20:04:24.070Z
In 数据输入人员 (data input personnel) , 入(enter) and 人 (person) look quite similar too
Tang Ho
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:25:41.753Z
2018-06-18T17:25:41.753Z
zyy
<p>lnformation are coded badIy in the form of naturaI Ianguage. But we have our top-down perception to heIp resoIve the ambiguity. </p>

<p>Well, I and l are similar, too. I reversed all of them in the above sentences. </p>

<p>In real life, your acuity for certain visual feature is trained through large exposure to these texts. I think for me identifying them is almost no slower than different-looking characters. Similarly I couldn't read Gothic font, but the experts can read it like they wrote it.</p>

<p>For practical reason, people also tend to signify the difference between these similar characters when ambiguity cannot be resolved by the context. </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-03T14:27:47.530Z
2018-08-03T14:27:47.530Z
Xiaoxiong Lin
<p>Well...this phenomenon is NOT Chinese-specific.<br>
I did remember that in Mkhedruli, there are <strong>three</strong> letters (out of less than 40) looking so similar, and all of them look like number "3", but they are pronounced as V, P, K, respectively! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts#Mkhedruli" rel="nofollow noreferrer">See here in Wikipedia. </a> You can also meet <strong>four</strong> letters looking like mirrored Gamma in Asomtavruli.<br>
Therefore, it is not strange to encounter a few groups of similar characters in thousands of Chinese characters. </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-21T03:28:56.947Z
Yes. If you are not familiar with them, they look similar. Once you know them, you can distinguish them. Take Burmese as example. Look at these Burmese alphabets: ထ တ က ယ ဟ ဘ သ လ ဃ. They are pretty much a combination of arc and circle in different orientation but Burmese people are not confused by them.
joehua
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-01T08:07:31.040Z
2018-08-01T08:07:31.040Z
Winfred Huang
<p>I found some characters, that look extremely similar to each other, like</p>
<div class="s-table-container">
<table class="s-table">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Character</th>
<th>Pronunciation</th>
<th>Meaning</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>士</td>
<td>shi4</td>
<td>scholar/warrior/knight</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>土</td>
<td>tu3</td>
<td>earth/dust</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div><div class="s-table-container">
<table class="s-table">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Character</th>
<th>Pronunciation</th>
<th>Meaning</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>于</td>
<td>yu2</td>
<td>(surname), in/at/to/from/by/than/out of</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>千</td>
<td>qian1</td>
<td>thousand, a swing</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>干</td>
<td>gan1/gan4</td>
<td>dry/to concern/shield, to work/to do/to manage, manage/stem</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<p>Is this a real language phenomenon? What is the name of it? Can I get a list of such &quot;homonim sets&quot;?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T16:59:05.937Z
I can’t imagine that they would be anything other than “easily confusable” because other than that they don’t really have anything in common.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:00:11.323Z
Can I have a list of all easily confusable groups of characters?
Dims
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:02:36.877Z
Define ‘easily confusable’ and you can mine the list yourself. It’s not easily cofusable for people who read Chinese fluently.
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:04:01.317Z
@user3306356 said "easily confusable", not me :) My question is if this notion exists
Dims
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:05:49.880Z
my bad..but there’s only a general feeling of what may be easily confusable for people who don’t read Chinese, for the rest of us no such list exists.
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-18T17:34:52.143Z
@droooze Sounds nice in theory. 荼 is often confused with 茶, 祟 is also often confused with 崇 by people who are “fluent” in written Chinese.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-19T21:28:55.137Z
@drooze—I don't think I can agree with your assessment. Yes, it's hard or impossible to precisely and objectively quantify visual similarity, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid concept. There's no denying the fact that, in English for example, the appearances of i, l, I, 1 are extremely similar (in some fonts indistinguishable) when compared to, say, the differentials I/A or l/o. 于千干 can without doubt be said to be objectively more similar to each other than any of them is to any of 已己巳, which form another 'similarity-cluster'.
John Frazer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-21T11:14:46.490Z
@JohnFrazer I agree with i, I, l, and 1. I don't believe that 于, 千, and 干 are easily confused (at least I've never had trouble with them) because they're never indistinguishable in fonts, but 已, 己, 巳 might be confused because some fonts do indeed mix them up (not the characters, but the character components - Japanese fonts use 己 as a component whereas Chinese fonts overwhelmingly use 巳, but since both Japanese and Chinese fonts are spread all over East Asia, this confusion is rampant).
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-02T14:49:57.873Z
@droooze From experience, I can confirm that 于, 千, and 干 are easily confused for someone learning Chinese from scratch. It's one of those numerous little issues that I worked out on my journey...
goPlayerJuggler
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-27T09:17:03.397Z
for 于, 千, and 干, it is confusing when it is written in Simplified Chinese, the corresponding Traditional Chinese characters are 於,千 and 幹/乾(depends on the conversation). have a look here for some more examples :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification
Ray
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-21T02:50:02.200Z
@Raymond 于、千、干 are legitimate traditional Chinese characters. I don't think simplified Chinese makes them more confusing. In other words, the fact that they are confusing has nothing to do with simplified Chinese. Simplified Chinese does create some new characters that are similar (and, thus, confusing) to traditional Chinese, such as 昙、县(縣).
joehua
<characters>
Ambiguous characters
# Ambiguous characters

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-06-18)

I found some characters, that look extremely similar to each other, like

| Character | Pronunciation | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 士 | shi4 | scholar/warrior/knight |
| 土 | tu3 | earth/dust |

| Character | Pronunciation | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 于 | yu2 | (surname), in/at/to/from/by/than/out of |
| 千 | qian1 | thousand, a swing |
| 干 | gan1/gan4 | dry/to concern/shield, to work/to do/to manage, manage/stem |

Is this a real language phenomenon? What is the name of it? Can I get a list of such "homonim sets"?

**Tags:** characters
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I can’t imagine that they would be anything other than “easily confusable” because other than that they don’t really have anything in common.  
> **username_0**: Can I have a list of all easily confusable groups of characters?  
> **username_2**: Define ‘easily confusable’ and you can mine the list yourself. It’s not easily cofusable for people who read Chinese fluently.  
> **username_0**: @user3306356 said "easily confusable", not me :) My question is if this notion exists  
> **username_2**: my bad..but there’s only a general feeling of what may be easily confusable for people who don’t read Chinese, for the rest of us no such list exists.  
> **username_1**: @droooze Sounds nice in theory. 荼 is often confused with 茶, 祟 is also often confused with 崇 by people who are “fluent” in written Chinese.  
> **username_3**: @drooze—I don't think I can agree with your assessment. Yes, it's hard or impossible to precisely and objectively quantify visual similarity, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid concept. There's no denying the fact that, in English for example, the appearances of i, l, I, 1 are extremely similar (in some fonts indistinguishable) when compared to, say, the differentials I/A or l/o. 于千干 can without doubt be said to be objectively more similar to each other than any of them is to any of 已己巳, which form another 'similarity-cluster'.  
> **username_2**: @JohnFrazer I agree with i, I, l, and 1. I don't believe that 于, 千, and 干 are easily confused (at least I've never had trouble with them) because they're never indistinguishable in fonts, but 已, 己, 巳 might be confused because some fonts do indeed mix them up (not the characters, but the character components - Japanese fonts use 己 as a component whereas Chinese fonts overwhelmingly use 巳, but since both Japanese and Chinese fonts are spread all over East Asia, this confusion is rampant).  
> **username_5**: for 于, 千, and 干, it is confusing when it is written in Simplified Chinese, the corresponding Traditional Chinese characters are 於,千 and 幹/乾(depends on the conversation). have a look here for some more examples :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification  
> **username_4**: @droooze From experience, I can confirm that 于, 千, and 干 are easily confused for someone learning Chinese from scratch. It's one of those numerous little issues that I worked out on my journey...  
> **username_6**: @Raymond 于、千、干 are legitimate traditional Chinese characters. I don't think simplified Chinese makes them more confusing. In other words, the fact that they are confusing has nothing to do with simplified Chinese. Simplified Chinese does create some new characters that are similar (and, thus, confusing) to traditional Chinese, such as 昙、县(縣).  

---

## 7 answers

### Answer by username_7 on 2018-06-23. Score: 4

There are some examples like that, but it's actually not that common, considering there are thousands of commonly used characters, and there's no name for this too (won't call it a phenomenon either).

熱 & 熟: I remember these words from my childhood. I thought they look so similar at that time. Notice I was a native speaker and already speaking Chinese fluently. This is just a part every Chinese learner must learn, and you will certainly get better at recognizing the differences as time goes on.

Those differences may be in a certain stroke (e.g. one character has an extra stroke 大 & 太, or a difference in length 士 & 土, or a difference in angle/order of strokes 千 干), or there are parts of those characters that are different (e.g. 熱 & 熟).

It might help to learn the basic strokes: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJKV_character)?oldformat=true#Basic_strokes>

Stroke orders matter too. Notice the first strokes of 千 and 干.

* check stroke order here: <https://www.chineseconverter.com/en/convert/chinese-stroke-order-tool>

Here's a list of similar characters if you're interested: <http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/>


---

### Answer by username_8 on 2018-07-24. Score: 3

No, nothing special.

There is a tip for Chinese kids to memorize 已己巳

已半, 巳满, 不出己

已半 means there is a half stem.

巳满 means there is a full stem.

不出己 means the stem is not appear on 己.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2018-08-02. Score: 3

This is indeed a topic you need to be aware of when learning written Chinese. There are quite a few common characters that look very similar.

I did a web search with this term "similar characters 末 未 士 土" and recommend the following which were among the first 10 answers:

* <https://www.chinese-tools.com/characters/similar.html> This is the
  simplest, and I recommend it for beginners.
* <http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/chinese-characters-that-look-alike> ... but maybe this one is more useful as it has sample sentences

The next two are at a higher level; for intermediate/advanced students.

* <http://carlgene.com/blog/2016/06/top-258-most-commonly-confused-chinese-characters/>
* <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Easily_confused_Chinese_characters>


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2021-04-21. Score: 1

Another example is 戊、戌、戍。Even now, I still can't tell them apart.

There is this famous 戊戌變法（I had to look up a dictionary to make sure this is the right way to write it。)If I see a combination of 戍戊變法、戌戊變法、戌戍變法 etc., I can't pick up the correct one.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: For these three there is "横戌点戍空心戊", I think it's a 口诀. It may help learning/differentiating these characters. Cf my question: https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/31204/mnemonics-for-%e6%b1%89%e5%ad%97-examples-and-resources  

---

### Answer by username_9 on 2018-06-18. Score: 0

There are plenty of those examples, like

> “日”和“曰”

They look exactly the same, aren't they? The latter one is just a little bit wider than the previous. The narrow one, “日”，means "the sun", while the other one means "say" in a formal way.

Here is a [list](https://www.zhihu.com/question/45631430/answer/364205745) of some of thoes characters if you are interested. Do not worry on how to distinguishing them, at least one of the characters in all these pairs is by no means commonly used.

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: In 数据输入人员 (data input personnel) , 入(enter) and 人 (person) look quite similar too  

---

### Answer by username_11 on 2018-08-03. Score: 0

lnformation are coded badIy in the form of naturaI Ianguage. But we have our top-down perception to heIp resoIve the ambiguity.

Well, I and l are similar, too. I reversed all of them in the above sentences.

In real life, your acuity for certain visual feature is trained through large exposure to these texts. I think for me identifying them is almost no slower than different-looking characters. Similarly I couldn't read Gothic font, but the experts can read it like they wrote it.

For practical reason, people also tend to signify the difference between these similar characters when ambiguity cannot be resolved by the context.


---

### Answer by username_12 on 2018-08-01. Score: 0

Well...this phenomenon is NOT Chinese-specific.  
I did remember that in Mkhedruli, there are **three** letters (out of less than 40) looking so similar, and all of them look like number "3", but they are pronounced as V, P, K, respectively! [See here in Wikipedia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts#Mkhedruli)  You can also meet **four** letters looking like mirrored Gamma in Asomtavruli.  
Therefore, it is not strange to encounter a few groups of similar characters in thousands of Chinese characters.

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: Yes. If you are not familiar with them, they look similar. Once you know them, you can distinguish them. Take Burmese as example. Look at these Burmese alphabets: ထ တ က ယ ဟ ဘ သ လ ဃ. They are pretty much a combination of arc and circle in different orientation but Burmese people are not confused by them.  

---

