Radical (chinese script)

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Radicals from 1 to 126 (the red numbers indicate the number of dashes)
Radicals from 127 to 214 (the red numbers indicate the number of dashes)

A radical (from the Latin radix 'root' ) or root symbol or rather a class symbol ( Chinese  部首 , pinyin bùshǒu ; Japanese bushu ; Korean 부수 busu ) is the graphic or semantic component of a Chinese character (also of Kanji and Hanja ). This assignment is often obvious, sometimes purely traditional and can only be traced back to the historical development of the sign, sometimes it is also quite arbitrary. In reference works, the characters are indexed according to radicals and can thus be found. “Radical” is actually a misnomer, as it has no original “root” character, but was added later for classification purposes in terms of linguistic history.

The figure shows how radical 2 (the red vertical line) is contained in different characters:

Radical 2 and its occurrence in four Chinese characters

In the Chinese dictionary, the lemmas are arranged according to radicals. These are arranged according to the number and shape of the lines. This system of recognizable elementary signs has been preserved to this day. The number of radicals, which in the lexicon Shuowen Jiezi ( 說文解字  /  说文解字 , Shuōwén jiězì  - "Explanation of the characters") was 540 from the year 121 , was continuously reduced.

The number of 214 radicals was written down by the renowned Kangxi dictionary ( 康熙字典 , Kāngxī zìdiǎn ) from 1716 under the Kangxi emperor. In the course of the reform of the characters in 1955, the radicals were also changed and their number increased, so that dictionaries for simplified characters often now use 224 or 227 radicals instead of the traditional 214 radicals . In the modern large dictionary Hanyu Da Cidian and in the character lexicon Hanyu Da Zidian , however, the number of radicals was reduced to 200.

Function of a radical

Radical 53 and its uses

The easiest way to look up a Chinese character in a modern dictionary is to search alphabetically for the pinyin or Wade-Giles transcription of that character , once you know the pronunciation . But that is only possible if you know the pronunciation. Most of the time, however, you have to look up characters of which you neither know the pronunciation nor the meaning. The most common method for this is to search for the radical of a character.

To do this, the radical of the sign must be recognized (which can sometimes be difficult, see below), whereby a radical table helps, which is sorted according to the number of dashes of the radical. Then you count how many strokes the character has in addition to the radical. Under the number of the radical and the number of additional dashes all characters are listed to which this applies - usually only a handful.

A line is everything that is drawn in one go. This is often not immediately apparent to the inexperienced, but the amount of structures is relatively limited. If you have internalized some basic rules (bars almost always go from left to right or from top to bottom, rarely have more than one kink), you can quickly identify the number of bars in most characters. In the example 中 'Middle' , there is a square in addition to the radical, the vertical line. This is drawn with three lines, because the top and right edges are drawn in one go.

However, the classic radical system also has significant weaknesses. Identifying the radical, in particular, can be tricky because some characters aren't clearly separated from the rest and other characters have multiple candidates. It is also possible that when several radicals were combined to form a (mostly complex) sign, changes occurred in them. Modern lexicons try to alleviate this problem by being fault-tolerant and not only listing characters under the correct radical, but also under those that can easily be mistaken for. Another disadvantage is that the subdivision into radicals is not even - for some radicals there are only a handful of characters, for other radicals there are thousands of characters, so that you sometimes have to choose from dozens of characters even with the radical number and line number identified.

There are a number of approaches to developing better organizational systems to make looking up Chinese characters faster and easier. The best known are the quadrangle index and the SKIP system .

Nowadays, many of the renowned dictionaries are also available in electronic form on smartphones or tablets, which have excellent handwriting recognition and make a search that has to rely on radicals largely superfluous.

Character encoding

The 214 radicals are contained in the Unicode block Kangxi radicals . They are compatibility equivalents (but not canonically equivalent) to the characters formed by them without additional strokes. For example, a distinction is made between radical 65 U + 2F40 (⽀) and the character U + 652F (支) written with it.

See also

Web links

Commons : Radicals  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : radicals and their variants  - radicals inregular script
Commons : Kangxi radicals  - the 214 radicals in the style of theKangxi dictionary
Commons : Shuowen radicals  - the 540 radicals in the style of theShuowen dictionary