Kanji

radicals Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...

are graphemes, or graphical parts, that are used in organizing Japanese

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

in dictionaries. They are derived from the 214 Chinese

Kangxi radical The 214 Kangxi radicals (), also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals () of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditio ...

Table key

The following table shows the 214 Kangxi radicals, which are derived from 47,035 characters. The frequency list is derived from the 47,035 characters in the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...

. The Jōyō frequency is from the set of 2,136 Jōyō kanji. Top 25% means that this radical represents 25% of Jōyō kanji. Top 50% means that this radical plus the Top 25% represent 50% of Jōyō kanji. Top 75% means that this radical plus the Top 50% represent 75% of Jōyō kanji. Many radicals are not commonly written by themselves so people wouldn't know the technical

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...

reading given here. The simplified table of Japanese kanji radicals page only lists common readings.

Table of radicals

Kanji radicals not recognized by Kangxi

These radicals are either listed as variants or not listed at all in the kangxi radical table.
The 214 Kangxi

are technically classifiers as they are not always etymologically correct, but since linguistics uses that word in the sense of " classifying" nouns (such as in counter words) dictionaries commonly call the kanji components radicals. As dictionaries have moved from textbooks to interactive screens the term "radicals" seems to now be used for any kanji component used in a visual search.

Other possible radical candidates

* 竹 and 西 (西 to a lesser extent) are only used in their original form when representing the original meanings. As components of jouyou kanji they always appear as ⺮ and 覀.

Position of radical within character

There are fourteen different radical positions, seven basic types and seven variant. The following table lists radical types with Japanese name and position in red and indicate how

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

is formed by radical with example.

References

External links

{{Wikivoyage, Japanese phrasebook * http://nihonshock.com/2012/02/kanji-radicals-and-components/ * http://www.hadamitzky.de/english/lp_radical_tables.htm * http://kanjialive.com/214-traditional-kanji-radicals/ * http://www.joyokanji.com/radical-notes * All ( CJK
Unicode Han characters
Kanji