Erbse Posted January 7, 2012 at 06:47 PM Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 at 06:47 PM I'm starting to learn about Chinese radicals and their meanings, however there are some things that I'm unsure of. Some Chinese symbols can be a hanzi and at the same time a radical, for example 又. It seems that there is a meaning when the symbol is used as a radical and a different meaning when used as a hanzi. This implies to me.... 1.) When used as a semantic radical, the meaning is always the radical meaning, never the hanzi meaning. 2.) When used as a hanzi, the meaning is always the hanzi meaning, never the radical meaning. 3.) There is no semantic meaning when a radical is used for its phonetic meaning, or to just fill up space. For example: 又 used as semantic part of any hanzi, will always mean "right hand". When 又 is used as semantic radical of any hanzi it will never carry the meaning "again". (How does this work, when the radical 又 is used in the hanzi 又?) Please let me know if this is correct, because I can't find any document where this distinction is made explicitly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbradfor Posted January 7, 2012 at 07:09 PM Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 at 07:09 PM In my experience, that is mostly correct. When used as a semantic radical, the meaning is always the radical meaning, never the hanzi meaning. Yes, but note that at times, the radical meaning, for various reasons, doesn't really have anything to do with the character meaning. This is pretty rare, but you see it. Also, there are a couple of simplifications that, for whatever reason, changed the radical. How does this work, when the radical 又 is used in the hanzi 又? I don't understand this question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erbse Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:15 PM Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:15 PM The hanzi 又 is made up of the radical 又. Is the radical used here solely for its phonetic meaning? "always" and "right hand" don't have much meaning in common. I guess the semantic meaning of the radical is not used here. The hanzi 日 and the radical 日 both mean sun. The hanzi has a few more meanings, however they are all related. So there is a clear connection, which I can't see in the case radical 又 vs hanzi 又. So what's the story behind 又? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbradfor Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:23 PM Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:23 PM If I think I understand your question correctly, this web site says that it was just borrowed for sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erbse Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:35 PM Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 at 08:35 PM Thanks, your answer and the link help a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gharial Posted January 8, 2012 at 07:11 PM Report Share Posted January 8, 2012 at 07:11 PM I remember when I was writing my 'Guide to Simplified Radicals' ( http://www.chinese-f...__fromsearch__1 ) that I opted to highlight the character-based 'in addition' mnemonic, rather than the radical-based 'right hand' mnemonic, because 1) there are several other radicals already with some sort of hand-related mnemonic-meaning, 2) sometimes it's probably more important to get the meaning of the character rather than the radical per se down as quickly as possible, 3) the character-mnemonic seemed IIRC to work well enough with most of the other characters that had this as their radical in the POCD's index, and 4) there are book-length works available that probably use the 'right hand' mnemonic more extensively and "pictorially-consistently" than I had any real need to within the confines of my 5-page guide to a modern radical system as used in a popular dictionary. Anyway, the important thing is that the guide mentions both mnemonics, and the user is expected to be able to sometimes recall both of them if not forge some sort of implicit link between them (see for example the mnemonic I developed for the character 友: "A friend is like having an additional + right hand. But friendship still has its ups and downs, or rather downs then ups, a bit like a yo-yo." (Second sentence is to help cement the general sound, and canonical tone, of you3)). >>> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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