Radical (Chinese characters)

A radical ( from Latin radix, root ) or class main or root characters (Chinese部首, Pinyin bù shǒu; jap bushu; Korean: 부수, Busu ), is the graphic or semantic mapping component of a Chinese character (including Kanji and Hanja ). Each Chinese character has exactly a radical. This assignment is often obvious, sometimes purely traditional and only from the historical development of the character understandable, sometimes rather arbitrary. In reference books, the characters are indexed by free radicals and can be found.

The figure shows how the radical 2 (the red vertical line ) is included with several characters:

In the Chinese dictionary, the lemmas are ordered by radicals. These are classified by the number and form of the marks. This system of recognizable elementary character has been preserved until today. The number of radicals in the lexicon Shuowen Jiezi (Chinese说文解字/说文解字, Pinyin Shuowen jiezi, explanation of characters ) from the year 121 or 512 was, was still further reduced.

The number of 214 radicals was written by the renowned Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese康熙字典, Pinyin Kangxi zìdiǎn ) from 1716 under the Kangxi Emperor. With the reform of the characters in 1955, the radicals were changed and enlarged their number, so that dictionaries for simplified characters instead of the traditional 214 radicals often now use 224 or 227 radicals.

Function of a radical

The easiest method to look up a Chinese character in a modern dictionary is, when you know the pronunciation, alphabetical search for the pinyin or Wade- Giles romanization of that character. But that's only if you know the pronunciation. Mostly, but you have to look up characters, of which one still knows meaning neither pronunciation. The most common method for this is to search for the radical of a character.

For this purpose must be the radical of the character recognized ( which can be difficult sometimes, see below), a radical table helps that is sorted by the number of strokes 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 strokes all characters are then listed, to which it applies - usually only a handful.

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

However, the traditional radical system also has significant weaknesses. In particular the identification of the radical can be difficult since it is not clearly separated from the rest in some characters and there are several candidates for other characters. It may also be that have taken place in the composition of several radicals to a (usually complex ) characters changes. Modern dictionaries try to reduce this problem by being applied fault-tolerant and characters perform not only from the radical right, but also among those that you can easily hold it wrongly. Another disadvantage is that the subdivision by radicals is not uniform - to some radicals there are only a handful of characters, thousands of other radicals characters, so sometimes you must still choose among dozens of characters with unidentified radical number and line number.

There are a number of approaches to develop better organizational systems in order to look up Chinese characters more quickly and more easily. The most famous are the four corner index and the SKIP system. With the increasing power and proliferation of computers direct handwriting recognition plays an increasingly important role that dominates modern electronic dictionaries.

Encoding

The 214 radicals are included in the Unicode block Kangxi radicals. You are compatibility equivalents (but not canonically equivalent ) to the characters formed by them without additional strokes. For example, radical 65 are differentiated U 2 F40 ( ⽀ ) and with the written characters U 652 F (支).

Korean language Wade–Giles Four-Corner Method Optical character recognition Radical 1 Radical 3 Radical 5 Radical 7 Radical 8 Radical 11 Radical 12 Radical 14 Radical 15 Radical 17 Radical 19 Radical 20 Radical 21 Radical 22 Radical 23 Radical 24 Radical 25 Radical 26 Radical 27 Radical 28 Radical 30 Radical 31 Radical 32 Radical 33 Radical 34 Radical 35 Radical 36 Radical 37 Radical 40 Radical 41 Radical 42 Radical 44 Radical 45 Radical 46 Radical 47 Radical 49 Radical 50 Radical 51 Radical 52 Radical 53 Radical 54 Radical 55 Radical 56 Radical 57 Radical 58 Radical 59 Radical 60 Radical 61 Radical 62 Radical 64 Radical 66 Radical 67 Radical 68 Radical 69 Radical 70 Radical 76 Radical 78 Radical 80 Radical 81 Radical 82 Radical 83 Radical 84 Radical 85 Radical 86 Radical 87 Radical 88 Radical 89 Radical 90 Radical 91 Radical 92 Radical 93 Radical 94 Radical 95 Radical 96 Radical 97 Radical 99 Radical 100 Radical 101 Radical 103 Radical 107 Radical 108 Radical 109 Radical 110 Radical 111 Radical 112 Radical 113 Radical 114 Radical 116 Radical 117 Radical 119 Radical 120 Radical 121 Radical 122 Radical 123 Radical 124 Radical 125 Radical 127 Radical 128 Radical 129 Radical 130 Radical 131 Radical 132 Radical 134 Radical 135 Radical 136 Radical 137 Radical 139 Radical 141 Radical 142 Radical 144 Radical 148 Radical 150 Radical 151 Radical 152 Radical 153 Radical 154 Radical 155 Radical 156 Radical 157 Radical 158 Radical 159 Radical 160 Radical 161 Radical 162 Radical 163 Radical 164 Radical 165 Radical 166 Radical 167 Radical 168 Radical 169 Radical 170 Radical 171 Radical 172 Radical 173 Radical 174 Radical 175 Radical 176 Radical 177 Radical 178 Radical 179 Radical 180 Radical 181 Radical 182 Radical 183 Radical 184 Radical 185 Radical 186 Radical 187 Radical 188 Radical 189 Radical 190 Radical 191 Radical 192 Radical 193 Radical 194 Radical 195 Radical 196 Radical 197 Radical 198 Radical 199 Radical 200 Radical 201 Radical 202 Radical 204 Radical 205 Radical 208 Radical 209 Radical 210 Radical 211 Radical 212 Radical 213 Radical 214

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