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A Chinese radical () or indexing component is a graphical component of a
Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator similar to a
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
, though sometimes it may be a phonetic component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases the original semantic or phonological connection has become obscure, owing to changes in character meaning or pronunciation over time. The English term "radical" is based on an analogy between the structure of characters and
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
of words in European languages. Radicals are also sometimes called "classifiers", but this name is more commonly applied to grammatical classifiers (measure words).


History

In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as the '' Erya'' (3rd century BC), characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories. Because the vast majority of characters are
phono-semantic All Chinese characters are logograms, but several different types can be identified, based on the manner in which they are formed or derived. There are a handful which derive from pictographs () and a number which are ideographic () in origin, inc ...
compounds (), combining a semantic component with a phonetic component, each semantic component tended to recur within a particular section of the dictionary. In the 2nd century AD, the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
scholar
Xu Shen Xu Shen ( CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-189). He was born in the Zhaoling district of Run'an prefecture (today known as Luohe in Henan Province). During his own lifetime, ...
organized his etymological dictionary ''
Shuowen Jiezi ''Shuowen Jiezi'' () is an ancient Chinese dictionary from the Han dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary (the ''Erya'' predates it), it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give t ...
'' by selecting 540 recurring graphic elements he called ''bù'' (部 , "categories"). Most were common semantic components, but they also included shared graphic elements such as a dot or horizontal stroke. Some were even artificially extracted groups of strokes, termed "glyphs" by Serruys (1984, p. 657), which never had an independent existence other than being listed in ''Shuowen''. Each character was listed under only one element, which is then referred to as the radical for that character. For example, characters containing 女 ''nǚ'' "female" or 木 ''mù'' "tree, wood" are often grouped together in the sections for those radicals. Mei Yingzuo's 1615 dictionary ''
Zihui The 1615 ''Zìhuì'' is a Chinese dictionary edited by the Ming Dynasty scholar Mei Yingzuo ( 梅膺祚). It is renowned for introducing two lexicographical innovations that continue to be used in the present day: the 214-radical system for i ...
'' made two further innovations. He reduced the list of radicals to 214, and arranged characters under each radical in increasing order of the number of additional
stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
s – the "radical-and-stroke-count" method still used in the vast majority of present-day Chinese dictionaries. These innovations were also adopted by the more famous ''
Kangxi Dictionary The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing ...
'' of 1716. Thus the standard 214 radicals introduced in the ''Zihui'' are usually known as the Kangxi radicals. These were first called ''bùshǒu'' (部首, literally "section header") in the ''Kangxi Dictionary''. Although there is some variation in such lists – depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed – these canonical 214 radicals of the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' still serve as the basis for most modern
Chinese dictionaries Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Han dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language. There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article discusses some of ...
. Some of the graphically similar radicals are combined in many dictionaries, such as 月 ''yuè'' "moon" and the 月 form (⺼) of 肉 ''ròu'', "meat, flesh". After the writing system reform in
Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
, the traditional set of
Kangxi Radicals 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 ...
became unsuitable for indexing Simplified Chinese characters. In 1983, the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language and the State Administration of Publication of China published ''The Table of Unified Indexing Chinese Character Components (Draft)'' (). In 2009, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and the State Language Work Committee issued ''The
Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components ''The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components'' () is a lexicographic tool used to order the Chinese characters in mainland China. The specification is also known as GF 0011-2009. In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any ...
'' (GF 0011-2009 ), which includes 201 principal indexing components and 100 associated indexing components (In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any component or ''piānpáng'' of Chinese characters, while is translated as "indexing component". (Specification for Identifying Indexing Components of GB 13000.1 Chinese Characters Set)).


Shape and position within characters

Radicals may appear in any position in a character. For example, 女 appears on the left side in the characters 姐, 媽, 她, 好 and 姓, but it appears at the bottom in 妾. However, there are two radicals that have the shape
阝 (Kangxi radical 163 & 170) is a character used in Kangxi writing which serves as the combining form of two distinct radicals, distinguished by whether it is on the left or right of a character. It is the combining form of Radical 170 ( 阜) ...
, but are indexed as different radicals depending on where they appear. When used with the abbreviated radical form of 邑 ''yì'' "city" it gives 都 ''dū'' "metropolis", also read as ''dōu'' "all-city" it appears on the right, but when used with the abbreviated radical form of 阜 ''fù'' "mound, hill" (as in 陸 ''lù'' "land") it appears on the left. However, there are regularities in the positioning next to ("within") most characters, depending on function: semantic components tend to appear on the top or on the left side of the character; similarly, phonetic components tend to appear on the right side of the character or at its bottom. These are loose rules, though, and exceptions are plenty. Sometimes, the radical may span more than one side, as in 園 = 囗 "enclosure" + 袁, or 街 = 行 "go, movement" + 圭. More complicated combinations exist, such as 勝 = 力 "strength" + 朕—the radical is in the lower-right quadrant. Many character components (including radicals) are distorted or changed to fit into a block with others. They may be narrowed, shortened, or may have different shapes entirely. Changes in shape, rather than simple distortion, may result in fewer pen strokes. In some cases, combinations may have alternates. The shape of the component can depend on its placement with other elements in the character. Some of the most important variant combining forms (besides 邑 → 阝 and 阜 → 阝per the above) are: * 刀 "knife" → 刂 when placed to the right of other elements: ** examples: 分, 召 ~ 刖 ** counter-example: 切 * 人 "man" → 亻 on the left: ** 囚, 仄, 坐 ~ 他 ** counter-example: 从 * 心 "heart" → 忄 on the left: ** 杺, 您, 恭* ~ 快 :(*) 心 occasionally becomes ⺗ when written at the foot of a character. * 手 "hand" → 扌 on the left: ** 杽, 拏, 掱 ~ 扡 ** counter-example: 拜 * 水 "water" → 氵 on the left: ** 汆, 呇, 沊 ~ 池 ** counter-example: 沝 * 火 "fire" → 灬 at the bottom: ** 伙, 秋, 灱 ~ 黑 ** counter-example: 災 * 犬 "dog" → 犭 on the left: ** 伏, 状 ~ 狙 ** counter-example: 㹜


Semantic components

Over 80% of Chinese characters are
phono-semantic All Chinese characters are logograms, but several different types can be identified, based on the manner in which they are formed or derived. There are a handful which derive from pictographs () and a number which are ideographic () in origin, inc ...
compounds (): a semantic component gives a broad category of meaning – the phonetic component suggests the sound. Usually, the radical is the semantic component. Thus, although some authors use the term "radical" for semantic components (義符 ''yìfú''), others distinguish the latter as "determinatives" or "significs" or by some other term. Many radicals are merely artificial extractions of portions of characters, some of which further truncated or changed when applied (such as 亅 ''jué'' or ''juě'' in 了 ''liǎo''), as explained by Serruys (1984), who therefore prefers the term "glyph" extraction rather than graphic extraction. This is even truer of modern dictionaries, which cut radicals to less than half the number in ''Shuowen'', at which point it becomes impossible to have enough to cover a semantic element of every character. A sample of the ''Far Eastern Chinese English Dictionary'' of mere artificial extraction of a stroke from sub-entries: *一 in 丁 ''dīng'' and 且 ''qiě'' *乙 ''yǐ'' in 九 ''jiǔ'' *亅 ''jué/juě'' in 了 ''liǎo/le'' *二 ''èr'' in 亞 ''yà/yǎ'' *田 ''tián'' in 禺 ''yù'' *豕 ''shǐ'' in 象 ''xiàng''.


Phonetic components

Radicals sometimes instead play a phonetic role: In some cases, chosen radicals used phonetically coincidentally are in keeping, in step, semantically.


Character simplification

The character simplification adopted in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere has modified a number of components, including those used as radicals. This has created a number of new radical forms. For instance, in traditional writing, the character ''jīn'' is written 釒(that is, with the same number of strokes, and only a minor variation) as a radical, but in simplified characters is written 钅 as a radical. That means, simplified writing has created a significant difference not present in traditional writing. A character using this radical is ''yín'' "silver"; traditionally: 銀, simplified: 银.


Dictionary lookup

Many dictionaries support using radical classification to index and lookup characters, although many present-day dictionaries supplement it with other methods as well. For example, modern dictionaries in PRC usually use the Pinyin transcription of a character to perform character lookup. Following the "section-header-and-stroke-count" method of
Mei Yingzuo The 1615 ''Zìhuì'' is a Chinese dictionary edited by the Ming Dynasty scholar Mei Yingzuo ( 梅膺祚). It is renowned for introducing two lexicographical innovations that continue to be used in the present day: the 214-radical system for i ...
, characters are listed by their radical and then ordered by the number of strokes needed to write them. The steps involved in looking up a character are: #Identify the radical under which the character is most likely to have been indexed. If one does not know, then the component on the left side or top is often a good first guess. #Find the section of the dictionary associated with that radical. #Count the number of strokes in the remaining portion of the character. #Find the pages listing characters under that radical that have that number of additional strokes. #Find the appropriate entry or experiment with different choices for steps 1 and 3. For example, consider the character 信 xìn, meaning "truth", "faith", "sincerity", and "trust". Its radical is 亻 rén "human" (a compressed form of 人) and there are seven additional strokes in the remaining portion (言 ''yán'', "speech"). To look up this character in a dictionary, one finds the radical for "human" in the part of dictionary that indexes radicals. The various radicals will be organized by the number of strokes they themselves contain. 人 and its compressed version 亻 contain only two strokes, so it will be near the beginning of the list. Locating it, one can see the page for the index on that radical, and one then normally passes through the lists of characters with one additional stroke, two additional strokes, etc. until one reaches the entries with seven additional strokes. If the chosen radical matches the radical used by the dictionary compiler (which can be difficult to guarantee for more complicated characters), and if both the user and the dictionary compiler count strokes the same way (also often a problem with characters that the user is unfamiliar with), the entry will be in that list, and will appear next to an entry number or a page number where the full dictionary entry for that character can be found. As a rule of thumb, components at the left or top of the character, or elements which surround the rest of the character, are the ones most likely to be used as radical. For example, 信 is typically indexed under the left-side component 人 instead of the right-side 言; and 套 is typically indexed under the top 大 instead of the bottom 長. There are, however, idiosyncratic differences between dictionaries, and except for simple cases, the same character cannot be assumed to be indexed the same way in two different dictionaries. In order to further ease dictionary lookup, dictionaries sometimes list radicals both under the number of strokes used to write their canonical form and under the number of strokes used to write their variant forms. For example, 心 can be listed as a four-stroke radical but might also be listed as a three-stroke radical because it is usually written as 忄 when it forms a part of another character. This means that the dictionary user need not know that the two are etymologically identical. It is sometimes possible to find a single character indexed under multiple radicals. For example, many dictionaries list 義 under either 羊 or 戈 (the radical of its lower part 我). Furthermore, with digital dictionaries, it is now possible to search for characters by cross-reference. Using this "multi-component method" a relatively new development enabled by computing technology, the user can select ''all'' of a character's components from a table and the computer will present a list of matching characters. This eliminates the guesswork of choosing the correct radical and calculating the correct stroke count, and cuts down searching time significantly. One can query for characters containing both 羊 and 戈, and get back only five characters (羢, 義, 儀, 羬 and 羲) to search through. The Academia Sinica's 漢字構形資料庫 Chinese character structure database also works this way, returning only seven characters in this instance. Harbaugh's Chinese Characters dictionaryHarbaugh, Rick (1998). Chinese Characters: a Genealogy and Dictionary 中文字譜 – 漢英字元字典, Zhongwen.com publ., similarly allows searches based on any component. Some modern computer dictionaries allow the user to draw characters with a mouse, stylus or finger, ideally tolerating a degree of imperfection, thus eliminating the problem of radical identification altogether.


Variations in the number of radicals

Though radicals are widely accepted as a method to categorize Chinese characters and to locate a certain character in a dictionary, there is no universal agreement about either the exact number of radicals, or the set of radicals. This is because radicals are merely arbitrarily chosen categories for lexicographical purposes. The 214 Kangxi radicals act as a de facto standard, which may not be duplicated exactly in every Chinese dictionary, but which few dictionary compilers can afford to completely ignore. They serve as the basis for many computer encoding systems. Specifically, the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard's radical-stroke charts are based on the Kangxi radicals or radicals. The count of commonly used radicals in modern abridged dictionaries is often less than 214. The ''Oxford Concise English–Chinese Dictionary'' (), for example, has 188. A few dictionaries also introduce new radicals based on the principles first used by
Xu Shen Xu Shen ( CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-189). He was born in the Zhaoling district of Run'an prefecture (today known as Luohe in Henan Province). During his own lifetime, ...
, treating groups of radicals that are used together in many different characters as a kind of radical. In modern practice, radicals are primarily used as
lexicographic Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretica ...
tools and as learning aids when writing characters. They have become increasingly disconnected from meaning,
etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
and
phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
.


Limitations and flexibility

Some of the radicals used in Chinese dictionaries, even in the era of Kangxi, were not standalone current-usage characters; they indexed unique characters that lacked more obvious qualifiers. The radical 鬯 (''chàng'' "sacrificial wine") indexes only a few characters. Modern dictionaries tend to eliminate these when it is possible to find some more widely used graphic element under which a character can be categorized. Some do indexing under more than one radical and/or set of key elements to make it easier to find characters.


Unicode


See also

*
Chinese character description languages The Chinese character description languages are several proposed languages to most accurately and completely describe Chinese (or CJK) characters and information such as their list of components, list of strokes (basic and complex), their order, a ...
*
List of kanji radicals by stroke count Kanji radicals are graphemes, or graphical parts, that are used in organizing Japanese kanji in dictionaries. They are derived from the 214 Chinese Kangxi radicals. Table key The following table shows the 214 Kangxi radicals, which are derived fr ...
*
List of kanji radicals by frequency This is a simplified table of Japanese kanji visual components (graphemes) that does away with all the archaic forms found in the Japanese version of the Kangxi radicals. The 214 Kanji radicals are technically classifiers as they are not always ...


Notes


References


Works cited

* (revised 2003) * * (English translation of ''Wénzìxué Gàiyào'' 文字學概要, Shangwu, 1988.) * * Translated from the French original ca. 1915 by L. Davrout, S.J., orig. Catholic Mission Press; reprinted in US – Dover; Taiwan – Lucky Book Co. Dover paperback . * * * * * *


Further reading

* Luó Zhènyù (羅振玉) 1958. 增訂殷墟書契考釋 (revised and enlarged edition on the interpretation of oracle bone inscriptions). Taipei: Yiwen Publishing (cited in Wu 1990). * Serruys, Paul L-M. (1984) "On the System of the Pu Shou 部首 in the Shuo-wen chieh-tzu 說文解字", in 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 Zhōngyāng Yánjiūyuàn Lìshǐ Yǔyán Yánjiūsuǒ Jíkān, v. 55:4, pp. 651–754. *
Xu Shen Xu Shen ( CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-189). He was born in the Zhaoling district of Run'an prefecture (today known as Luohe in Henan Province). During his own lifetime, ...
''Shuōwén Jǐezì'' (說文解字), is most often accessed in annotated versions, the most famous of which is
Duan Yucai Duan Yucai () (1735–1815), courtesy name Ruoying () was a Chinese philologist of the Qing Dynasty. He made great contributions to the study of Historical Chinese phonology, and is known for his annotated edition of ''Shuowen Jiezi''. Biograph ...
(1815). 說文解字注 ''Shuōwén Jǐezì Zhù'' (commentary on the ''Shuōwén Jíezì''), compiled 1776–1807, and still reproduced in facsimile by various publishers. The reproduction by 天工書局 Tiāngōng Books (1998) in Taipei is useful because the seal characters are highlighted in red ink.


External links


Chinese Character Radicals
List of Chinese Character Radicals
汉语大词典部首表
a list of radicals in the
Hanyu Da Cidian The ''Hanyu Da Cidian'' () is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Ch ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radical (Chinese Character) Chinese characters Collation Hanja Kanji