The left part of mā, a Chinese character meaning "mother", is a radical that means "woman"

A radical (from Latin radix, meaning "root") is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. (This includes not only Chinese Hanzi, but also the Japanese Kanji, Korean Hanja and Vietnamese Chữ nôm and Chữ nho.) In languages that use Chinese characters, a radical is called 部首 (Pinyin: bùshǒu; Japanese bushu and Korean busu), literally meaning "section header". Radicals are important for the organisation and use of Chinese dictionaries, Japanese Kanji dictionaries, and Korean Hanja dictionaries. Radical_de_sinogramme_ma1. ... Radical_de_sinogramme_ma1. ... Latin is an Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... 漢字 hànzì, hanja, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 â–¶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... Hanja (lit. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Chữ nho (字儒) is one of the Chinese based scripts used for writing the Vietnamese language. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard...

Despite initial appearances, Chinese characters are not unstructured glyphs. They are composed of a certain number of distinct, simpler elements composed of one or more lines (generally called strokes when referring to Chinese writing). It would be hard to imagine maintaining a system as long-lasting as Chinese writing without some internal structure because it would be nearly impossible to memorize so many characters if each were constructed completely arbitrarily. Instead, Chinese characters are in practice built out of specific components called radicals. 漢字 hànzì, hanja, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... These are the astrological glyphs as most commonly used in Western Astrology A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. ... Stroke order refers to the way of writing Chinese characters. ... The Chinese written language consists of a writing system stretching back nearly 4000 years. ...

The Origins of Radical System

Originally, Chinese writing seems not to have had any particular structure. The earliest attested Chinese characters appear to be stylized drawings of the things they represent (as the archaic Seal script sometimes still shows). However, the system quickly became more systematic and coherent as characters were increasingly composed of a finite set of components, with fewer new elements being invented. The Chinese written language consists of a writing system stretching back nearly 4000 years. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ...

The radical system appears to have been the work of Chinese lexicographers. In order to collect and document Chinese characters, early lexicographers had to develop a system for indexing them. Xu Shen (許慎/许慎; Pinyin: Xǔ Shèn; 58-147) wrote the seminal dictionary of Chinese, the 15-volume Shuowen dictionary (說文解字/说文解字; Pinyin: Shuōwén jiězì; "Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters"), in 121, during the Han dynasty. This was the first attempt to construct a comprehensive dictionary of Chinese and the first to catalogue its roughly 10000 characters in a systematic way. Xu Shen catagorized all the characters in his dictionary using a system of 540 graphical elements that he called bùshǒu (部首) or head part, found in different characters and often reflecting some common semantic or phonetic characteristic. This set of elements was the basis of the radical system. XÇ” Shèn XÇ” Shèn (許慎) was the author of Shuōwén JiÄ›zì, which was the first Chinese character dictionary. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... For other uses, see number 58. ... Events First year of Jianhe of the Chinese Han Dynasty Births Deaths Categories: 147 ... a version of Shuowen Jiezi Shuōwén JiÄ›zì (說文解字, Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters) was the first Chinese character dictionary, compiled by XÇ” Shèn between 100 CE and 121 CE in Han Dynasty China. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... For other uses, see number 121. ... Han commanderies and kingdoms AD 2. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ...

The characters in the Shuowen dictionary fall primarily into the following classes:

• Pictograms (象形; Pinyin: xiángxìng; "form imitation"): Characters composed of just one meaningful radical.
• Simple Ideograms (指示; Pinyin: zhǐshì; "indication"): Characters composed of a single radical or a modified version of a single radical, used to indicate a single concept.
• Composite Ideograms (會意; Pinyin: huìyì; "joined meaning"): Characters composed of two or more radicals that are associated in order to indicate a single concept.
• Phono-semantic compounds (形聲; Pinyin: xíngshēng; "form and sound"): Characters composed of a meaningful radical and a radical used to indicate its pronunciation.

These categories are more fully explored in the context of modern Chinese in the article Chinese character classification. Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... A Chinese character. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... A concept is an abstract, universal idea, notion, or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events, or relations. ... A Chinese character. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... A concept is an abstract, universal idea, notion, or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events, or relations. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... There are several kinds of Chinese characters, including a handful of pictograms (象形; xiángxìng) and a number of ideograms (指示; zhǐshì), but the vast majority are phono-semantic compounds (形聲; xíngshēng). ...

The list of radicals was later trimmed to 214 in the 1615 dictionary Zìhuì (字彙/字汇; "Lexicon") by Méi Yíngzuò (梅膺祚). The Kangxi dictionary of 1716 was indexed using the Zìhuì radicals, and they form the standard radical list still used today. Although there is some variation in radical lists - depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed - the canonical 214 radicals of the Kangxi dictionary still serve as the basis for most modern Chinese dictionaries. Events June 2 - First Récollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France. ... The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: 康熙字典; pinyin: ) was a dictionary, compiled under an edict from the Qing Dynasty Emperor Kangxi of China in 1710. ... // Events August 5 - In the Battle of Peterwardein 40. ...

Mei Yingzuo's Zìhuì was also the first dictionary to order the characters for each radical using stroke count - the "radical-and-stroke-count" method still used in the vast majority of present-day Chinese dictionaries.

In modern times, all new characters have been composed, in whole or in part, of radicals from the Kangxi list. However, they may in some characters be distorted somewhat in order to meet the requirement that all Chinese characters fit into a unit square. Viewed exclusively as graphic elements without connection to sound or meaning, it is always possible to completely decompose any Chinese character into a set of fundamental radical elements, although this requires some 500 radicals rather than the 214 Kangxi radicals used to index characters in more recent dictionaries.

The Kangxi radicals themselves are listed in the article List of Kangxi radicals. The following is a list of all 214 Kangxi radicals, used originally in the 1716 Kangxi dictionary, in order of the number of strokes along with some examples of characters containing them. ...

Identifying Radicals in Characters

In the images below, the red part of the character is the radical.

In the characters 妞, 媽, 她, 好, 姓 and 妾, you can see that each character has a common graphical element: 女. In 妾, you can see that it is somewhat deformed in order to make the whole character fit into a unit square, but it is in each case present. 女 is also an independent character (Pinyin: nǚ), signifying a woman or the concept of femininity. This meaning is in some respect reflected in the characters above, although the relationship is sometimes historical, culture-specific, or even simply remote and uncertain. The other part of each of the above characters is used either for its phonetic value, playing no part in the meaning of the character but indicating something about its pronunciation; or as an indicator of meaning which has in some way been modified by the addition of 女 or which is used to modify the radical's meaning, as shown in the table below: Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard...

Radical + phonetic ideo-phonograms	Radical + radical ideograms
妞 jiě "elder sister" → "woman" + phonetic element 且 qiě Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ...	好 hǎo "good" → "woman" + 子 zǐ "child" (a cultural cliché of a woman with a child being the symbol of goodness) Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ...
媽 mā "mother" → "woman" + phonetic element 馬 mǎ Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ...	姓 xìng "surname" → "woman" + 生 shēng "birth" (possibly a reference to ancient matrilineal customs) Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ... Matrilineality is a system in which one belongs to ones mothers lineage; it may also involve the inheritance of property or titles through the female line. ...
她 tā "she", "her" - a pronoun modeled on its homophone 他 (tā "he", "him") by replacing the radical 亻 ("man"). Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ...	妾 qiè "empress", "mistress", "concubine" → "woman" + 帝 dì "emperor". Created and uploaded to the French Wikipedia by Vincent Ramos under GFDL. File links The following pages link to this file: Radical (Chinese character) Categories: GFDL images ...

These examples intentionally use the radical for its semantic value, but this not always the case. Furthermore, in these examples it is easy to identify 女 as a graphic element separate from the rest of the character. In other cases, identifying the radical is not so simple.

Shape and position of radicals in characters

In the examples above, five of the six characters have the radical on the left side (妞, 媽, 她, 好 and 姓) but it appears at the bottom in 妾. There is no fixed rule about where it can go in a character - it may appear in any position in a character. However, there is one pair of radicals that have the same shape, but are indexed as different radicals depending on where they appear in the character: 阝 (the abbreviated radical form of 邑, Pinyin: yì; see below) as in 都, is always on the right side of characters, while 阝 (the abbreviated radical form of 阜, Pinyin fù) as in 阳, is always on the left. Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard...

The section below uses Unicode characters from the Kangxi Radicals block. These characters are not always available in common fonts. Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ...

Radicals and their variants

In writing, many radicals are distorted or change in form in order to fit into a block with other radicals. They may be narrowed, shortened, or may have different shapes entirely. Changes in shape, rather than simple distortion, may result in a reduction in the number of strokes used to write it. In some cases, these written forms may have several variants. The actual shape of the radical when it is used in a character can depend on its placement with respect to the other elements in the character. In the image to the right, the colour blue is used for "irregular" forms. Tableau_de_radicaux_en_composition. ... Tableau_de_radicaux_en_composition. ...

Some of the most important variant written forms (except for ⻏ → 邑 et ⻖ → 阜 which have already been discussed):

• 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
• 心 "heart" → 忄 on the left (rarely: 㣺):
  • 杺, 您, 恭* ~ 快

(*) 心 becomes ⺗ when written at the bottom of a character.

• 手 "hand" → 扌 on the left:
  • 杽, 拏, 掱 ~ 扡,
  • counter-example: 掰,
• 水 "water" → 氵 on the left:
  • 汆, 呇, 沊 ~ 池,
  • counter-example: 沝,
• 火 "fire" → 灬 at the bottom:
  • 伙, 緋, 灱 ~ 黑,
  • counter-example: 災,
• 犬 "dog" → 犭 on the left:
  • 伏, 突, 嵇 ~ 狙,
• 目 "eye" → ⺫ at the top:
  • 助, 見, 盲 ~ 曼.

In the above examples, it makes no difference if the radical is used for its meaning or not. The changes in form remain the same.

The character simplification adopted in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere has modified a number of radicals. This has created a number of new radical forms: 食 is written 飠 when it forms a part of other traditional characters, but is written 饣 in simplified characters. Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiÇŽntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiÇŽnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

Limitations of the radical system

Some of the radicals used in Chinese dictionaries, even in the era of Kangxi, were not genuinely distinctive graphic elements. They serve only to index certain unique characters that do not have more obvious possible radicals. The radical 鬯 (Pinyin: chàng, "sacrificial wine") is used to to index only one character: 鬱 (Pinyin: yù, "luxuriant", "dense", or "moody"). Modern dictionaries tend to eliminate these kinds of radicals, at least when it is possible to find some more widely used alternative graphic element under which a character can be categorised. Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard...

Furthermore, classification using semantic radicals is not always easy. Often, the relationship between the meaning of a character and the meaning of its radical is etymological. It is sometimes only possible to make the connection by knowing the history of the character and its origins because the meaning has shifted over time. This problem applies equally to phonetic radicals. Their presence in a modern character often reflects ancient pronunciations and may no longer have any relationship to modern pronunciation. Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ...

In many modern dictionaries, characters may be indexed under more than one radical in order to make it easier to find characters. This has promoted an increasingly exclusively graphical conception of radicals instead of a semantic one.

Learning and using radicals

Character Decomposition

Learning to write Chinese characters, even the most complicated, means mastering the fundamental graphic components of characters and then learning which ones are used in particular characters and how they are combined. This is much easier than learning to write each character as a whole through pure memorisation. For example, you can remember how to write 義 (yì, "right conduct") by knowing that it consists of a 羊 (yáng , "sheep") above 我 (wǒ, "I", "me" - one of the first characters learned in Chinese classes, but not listed as a radical in dictionaries). The same applies to the very complicated 30-stroke character 鸞 (luán, a mythical bird from Chinese mythology): 糸, 言, 糸 over 鳥. (See the image to the left.) In this case, all four components are dictionary radicals. Even though there are in total some 50,000 Chinese characters (although a far smaller number - some 4,000 to 6,000 - see daily use), all characters no matter how complex can be decomposed in this way. Radicaux_de_luan. ...

Learning to write characters based on graphical decomposition requires no knowledge of whether the component elements relate to the character's meaning or to its pronunciation. Once the 200-odd dictionary radicals have been mastered, the amount of memorisation needed to master Chinese writing is dramatically diminished. This is somewhat like learning the alphabet in languages that use them: Once a relatively small set of letters have been mastered, the spelling of a word involves only memorising the chain of letter used to write it. Although Chinese radicals are not comparable in function to alphabet letters, they play to some extent a similar role in Chinese writing. An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into List of writing systems. ...

Dictionary lookup

Most dictionaries use radical classification to index and lookup characters, although many present-day dictionaries supplement it with other methods as well. Following the "radical-and-stroke-count" method of Mei Yingzuo, 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:

1. Identify the radical under which the character is most likely to have been indexed.
2. Find the section of the dictionary associated with that radical.
3. Count the number of brush or pen strokes in the non-radical portion of the character.
4. Find the pages listing characters under that radical that have that number of additional strokes.
5. Find the appropriate entry or experiment with different choices for steps 1 and 3.

For example, consider the character 信 (mouth with sound - a "human" standing next to his "words") meaning "truth", "faith", "sincerity", and "trust". Its index radical is "human" (人) and there are 7 additional strokes in the remaining portion (言). To look this character up in a dictionary, one finds the radical for "human" in the part of dictionary that indexes radicals, finds the page for that radical, and then passes through the lists of characters with one additional stroke, 2 additional strokes, etc. until one reaches the entries with 7 additional strokes. If the radical chosen by the user matches the radical used by the dictionary compiler (which can be difficult to guaratee 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, radicals in 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 index radicals. For example, 信 is typically indexed under the left-side radical 人 instead of the right-side 言; and 套 is typically indexed under the top 大 instead of the bottom 長. There are, however, ideosyncratic 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.

Because of the difficulty in determining what part of a character is a semantic radical, most dictionaries assign radicals exclusively by graphical principles, which makes it 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), even though 羊 is traditionally considered its sole semantic radical. Furthermore, with digital dictionaries, it is now possible to search for characters by cross-reference. Using this multi-radical method (which you can try out at Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server), a relatively new development enabled by computing technology, the user can select all of a character's radicals from a table and the computer will present a list of matching characters. This eliminates the guesswork of choosing the correct index 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.

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 situation is still further complicated by the dichotomy between traditional Chinese characters and simplified ones. Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

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 standard's radical-stroke charts are based on the Kangxi radicals. The following is a list of all 214 Kangxi radicals, used originally in the 1716 Kangxi dictionary, in order of the number of strokes along with some examples of characters containing them. ... De facto is a Latin expression that means in fact or in practice. It is commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning by law) when referring to matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are found in the common experience as created or developed without... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ...

The count of commonly used radicals in modern abridged dictionaries is often less than 214. The Oxford Concise English-Chinese Dictionary (ISBN 0195911512), for example, has 189. A few dictionaries also introduce new radicals based on the principles first used by Xu Shen, treating groups of radicals that are used together in many different characters as a kind of radical. Xǔ Shèn Xǔ Shèn (許慎) was the author of Shuōwén Jiězì, which was the first Chinese character dictionary. ...

In modern practice, radicals are primarily used as lexicographic tools and as learning aids when writing characters. They have become increasingly disconnected from meaning, etymology or phonetics. Lexicography is either of two things Practical lexicography is the art or craft of writing dictionaries. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ...

See also

• Chinese language
• Japanese language
• Korean language
• Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja
• Chinese character
• List of Kangxi radicals

Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... Japanese (Japanese: 日本語, Nihongo â–¶(?)) is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. ... The Korean language (한국어 / ì¡°ì„ ì–´) is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 â–¶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... Hanja (lit. ... 漢字 hànzì, hanja, kanji… in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... The following is a list of all 214 Kangxi radicals, used originally in the 1716 Kangxi dictionary, in order of the number of strokes along with some examples of characters containing them. ...

External links

• http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/radicals.html - A good detailed introduction on radicals