Chinese Characters and Radicals

Each Chinese character on the right-hand column of the following table contains or is classified by a radical. Occasionally a radical may simply be a character. The radicals displayed in the table can be seen in radical indexes of most Chinese dictionaries for simplified characters. However, some characters are catalogued under different radicals. For instance, a same character can be found under a particular radical in one dictionary but under another in a different dictionary. The radical usually, but not invariably, gives a name or clue as to the meaning of the character, as can be seen from the second column of the following table.

For more information on Chinese characters please visit Wikipedia

Click on the links below to find the answers.

• How is a Chinese character formed?

• How do I learn and remember Chinese characters?
• What are the advantages of leaning the radicals?
• Where will I find the radical of a character?
• Do I have to learn all the radicals?
• Radical table

How is a Chinese character formed?

Chinese characters are formed in the following 7 different ways.

1. Single structured such as 雨 yŭ rain.
2. Left and right structured such as 好hăo good, which is formed by the radical女   nǚ woman and the character子 zĭ child.
3. Left, middle and right structured such as粥 zhōu porridge, which is formed by the character 米mĭ rice, placed between two characters of 弓gōng bow.
4. Top and base structured such as 华huá China, which is formed by the character 化huà to transform orconvert and the radical 十shí ten.
5. Top, middle and base structured such as 鼻 bí nose, which is formed by 自zì oneself 田tián field and the radical 廾 which means to join hands.
6. Half enclosure structured such as 医 yī medicine, cure, which is formed by the radical匚 which means basket and the character 矢 shĭ arrow; 周 zhōu circle, which is formed by the radical冂which means boarders and the character 吉 jí  auspicious; 凶 xiōng inauspicious, which is formed by X and the radical凵 which means receptacle.
7. Enclosure structured such as 国 guó state, which is formed by the character 玉 yù jade and the radical囗 which means enclosure.

Some characters have components which hint of the pronunciation of the characters. For instance, as it demonstrates above in 4: 华, one of the components of the character has a similar pronunciation as the character华.

How do I learn and remember Chinese characters?

One way of remembering characters is to make up “stories” which would make “sense” to yourself. For instance, in 休 xiū to rest, the radical on the left, 亻means “a person”, and the part on the right, 木, means wood or tree, so the made up “story” could be “a person is leaning against a tree to have a rest.” Let’s look at another example; 队 duì a queue. The radical on the left, 阝means plenty and the part on the right, 人 means people, so one could say: “Plenty of people make a queue.” Sometimes the radical doesn’t have enough to allow a story to be made up then one should use one’s imagination. For instance, in 办 bàn to deal with the middle part of the character 力 means strength, and the two dots, 、 look like sweat, so one could say: “Nowadays one needs strength and sweat to deal with business.”

Using the following radical table while you are learning the Chinese characters in the Characters section on the CD will help you to become familiar with counting strokes and remembering the characters.

What are the advantages of leaning the radicals?

There are at least three advantages for learning the radicals.

1. It will help you to remember characters. In some cases, radicals can also give categorical information. For instance, the character忘to forget is formed by the radical 心 heart and 亡 perish. The heart radical often associate with words which imply thinking such as 想 to think.  The character想 to think is formed by 心, the heart radical and the character 相, it is pronounced xiāng which is similar to the character想xiăng.
2. Radicals and components are used to describe characters. As there are many homophones in Chinese, characters are often are described by their radicals and components. For instance, if you want to describe the character河river which is pronounced hé. As there are many characters sharing the same pronunciation, when a Chinese person describes this character to you he or she might say: “water radical氵with the character 可.”
3. Most importantly, Chinese characters are often catalogued under a radical index in a dictionary. Without knowing radicals will be impossible to use a dictionary. However, the radical indexes in Chinese dictionaries are not always the same. For example, one character can be listed under a particular radical in one dictionary but can be listed under another radical in a different dictionary.

Where will I find the radical of a character?

Radicals of characters are placed either on left, right, top, base or outside of a character as indicated in Column 3 of the following table.

Do I have to learn all the radicals?

There is no need to learn all the radicals first before learning characters. The best way to use the following table is to look up the meanings of radicals when you are watching the animation of the “Radical” column below and the Characters section on the CD. This might help you to make up stories to remember the characters. Highlight the radicals which you have learned with a highlight pen and add the relevant characters into the examples boxes below.

The radical table

****

List of Chinese Radicals

Chinese characters can be decomposed into components called radicals or bushou. The most commonly accepted table of radicals for traditional Chinese characters consists of 214 entries. These 214 radicals were popularized back in the reign of Qing emperor Kangxi, who commissioned what is now known as the Kangxi Zidian, a character dictionary listing over 47,000 entries. Tables with fewer or greater number of radicals have been devised for simplified characters. Being able to recognize the common radicals helps in the learning and recognition of new characters. Some but not all radical are complete characters in their own right. Some radicals have more than one form. Finally, simplified characters have resulted in additional variants.

In the following table, the English names were taken from the Unihan database, a database of international characters. The stroke count refer to the main form of the radical only.

Do some radicals look very similar? We have compiled another table of similar looking radicals.

See also

• Search Chinese character dictionary using radicals
• Similar Looking Radicals

‘;