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There are some characters in Chinese which give me severe headaches, especially those that have the same pronunciation and mean more or less the same thing.

I have learnt three characters which are all pronounced shēng: 升, 陞 and 昇. Is there any significant difference between these characters in modern usage? I'm talking about traditional Chinese here, I don't think 陞 and 昇 are used at all in simplified Chinese.

Alenanno
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Olle Linge
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2 Answers2

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The answer to this one turned out to be fairly straightforward (assuming the website I found is accurate). The following is quoted from this website:

升 ① 容積的法定單位（市升與之相同），1升等於1000毫升。 ② 量糧食的器具，容量爲斗的十分之一。 ③ 向上，高起：升旗。 ④ 提高：升級。 昇 同「升」③④。 陞 同「升」④。 （《新華字典》第436頁左列「升」字）

說明：「升」「昇」「陞」三字在「登」的意義上相通，以「升」為正體。「昇」本義為太陽上升，例如「旭日東昇」，用「旭日東升」也正確，需要注意的是，「歌舞昇平」似用「昇」更正式。在一些人名上，如淸代寫《長生殿》的洪昇，宋代發明活字印刷術的畢昇。「陞」，古代「升」的寫法，可用於當今書法。 舉例： 昇──昇華，昇天，歌舞昇平，高昇。 升──毫升，升高，升堂，升班，直升機，回升，調升，提升。 陞──步步高陞，指日高陞。

So, in short, it's safe to use 升 in most cases (except in some names and fixed expressions).

Olle Linge
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What the two entries above said is true.

An addition, however, is that the simplest version, 升, is the only one of the three that can be used as a unit of measurement of liquid.

I've also seen both 升 and 昇 used in mens' names a lot, but 陞, not so much.

user6533
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