Simple radical breakdowns for common hanzi
Simple radical breakdowns for common Hanzi reveal that most Chinese characters are made up of smaller components called radicals. Radicals are often semantic indicators that provide clues about the meaning or category of the character. Each character has one main radical used in dictionaries for indexing.
Here are some simple examples of common radicals and how they relate to characters:
- 人 (rén) “person” radical appears in 你 (nǐ) “you” and 他 (tā) “he”.
- 氵 (shuǐ) “water” radical appears in 河 (hé) “river” and 洗 (xǐ) “wash”.
- 日 (rì) “sun/day” radical appears in 时 (shí) “time” and 早 (zǎo) “early”.
- 女 (nǚ) “female” radical appears in 好 (hǎo) “good” and 妈 (mā) “mother”.
- 手 (shǒu) radical appears on left as 扌 in 推 (tuī) “push” and 拉 (lā) “pull”.
- 言 (yán) radical appears as 讠 on left in 说话 (shuōhuà) “talk” and 语言 (yǔyán) “language”.
- 木 (mù) “wood” radical appears in 林 (lín) “forest” and 桃 (táo) “peach”.
- 火 (huǒ) “fire” radical appears in 热 (rè) “hot” and 点 (diǎn) “dot”.
Characters can be broken down into radicals and sometimes further into smaller components if those radicals themselves are compounds. For example, 想 (xiǎng) “to think” breaks down into 相 and 心, which further break into 木 (wood) and 目 (eye), and 心 (heart) which are not broken down further.
Radicals are most commonly found on the left side or top of characters, but can also appear at the bottom or surrounding the character. Knowing radicals helps to understand, memorize, and look up Chinese characters. A focused study of about 100 common radicals covers a large portion of everyday characters. 1, 6, 7, 8