Expert: Sir William - 12/1/2011

Question
QUESTION: Hi,

I was inputting some old texts into my computer and ran across a character I am unsure of.  It is attached.  I cannot seem to input it using my current ime pad.  I was wonder if you knew the pinyin, or the unicode of the character.  This is, of course, not including the punctuation mark.

Many Thanks.

Best,
Lucian

ANSWER: Good morning, Lucian,

The character that you posted appears to me to be partial. The nearest character would be:

号 - meaning "a number" (Simplified Chinese. Noun). Pinyin for this character is "shù"; the corresponding unicode is "21495".

However, if you could provide me with the complete sentence containing the character that you provided, I should be able to assist you further.

Thank you for your question and have a nice day for now.

Sir William



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hello Sir William,

Thank you for the quick reply.  Here is the entire passage.  I don't think this is simplified Chinese, since the text is quote old, though this is a copyist's writing.

Thank you for your expertise.

Best,
Lucian

Answer
Good morning, Lucian,

Thank you for your follow-up question.

The word should have been written as 兮. It is frequently found in old Chinese poems and literatures. The word is a particle in old Chinese similar to "啊"(oh); and also regarded as the act or sound of "sigh".

The pronunciation in Traditional Chinese is "hai"; in Pinyin, "xī". The unicode is 20846.

I hope you'll find the above information helpful, and appreciate your providing the platform for clarification.

Have a nice day,

Sir William

P.S.  I do miss the beautiful winter Ottawa.