Chinese characters. Is there a website that gives components and radicals + analysis?

[大为]

你们好,

 

it is my first time being here, I hope I didn't break any rules.

 

Im an HSK2 student and I have problems memorizing certain characters when it comes to writing (reading is fine), especially when their components don't make too much sense to me.

An example would be 舒服 or 应该, because I dont know most of the components. I do however know the corresponding radicals. Can someone explain the logic of the character 应该 to me? If i knew all the components and radicals of every word, memorizing how they are written would be much easier.

 

Also, is there a website/dictionary/app where I can search for a word like 应该 and then all used components/radicals of this specific word are shown? In pinyin and with translation? Any recommendations regarding this or in general when studying the writing of new words would be very much appreciated! For now, I write down all of the words I study several times by hand.

 

I'm sorry in case my question is poorly posed, neither chinese (obviously) nor english are my native languages.

 

Have a nice sunday.

 

- 大为

[大块头]

You may find HanziCraft and the Outlier Dictionary useful. Don't expect to find some sort of Grand Unified Theory that explains the radicals of each character or the characters of each word.

[stapler]

also https://characterpop.com/

[大为]

Thank you very much to both of you! Very helpful sources, exactly what I was looking for. 

[mungouk]

I'm a regular user of the online dictionary at mdbg.net, which has all the same public domain "decomposition" data as other sites use, showing how characters break down into components.

 

Once you've done this you can easily search for other characters with the same components. Tofulearn can do the same, as well as helping with learning how to write. It's free but possibly precarious, unlike Skritter which is the opposite.

 

If you also have the Chrome extension "ZhongWen" installed it works really well together with MDBG, including being able to hover over words and copy the words and meanings onto the clipboard, so you can paste them into anywhere you want to record them.

 

btw, in case you don't realise — there's no need to build your own HSK word lists for Anki etc... they already exist out there.

 

Having said all of that... +1 for the Outlier Dictionary in Pleco (paid add-on) as well... I use it every day when understanding the etymology of new vocab. There are some very recent improvements (within the last 1-2 weeks) that make it even more useful and usable. 

[markhavemann]

I think that the fact that some 

On 7/4/2021 at 11:56 PM, 大为 said:

Im an HSK2 student and I have problems memorizing certain characters when it comes to writing (reading is fine), especially when their components don't make too much sense to me.

An example would be 舒服 or 应该, because I dont know most of the components. I do however know the corresponding radicals. Can someone explain the logic of the character 应该 to me? If i knew all the components and radicals of every word, memorizing how they are written would be much easier.

It might be worth remembering that many characters have been simplified over time, so the logic that you are hoping for might have been lost for the sake of writeability, or the current meaning has changed so the original logic doesn't hold up anymore. 

 

 

Not sure if this is useful but you could take a look at this website. It's in Chinese. Even if you can't read the page, you can scroll down to the bottom and see the earlier forms of a particular character. Maybe seeing how certain characters looked in the past can give you a little more insight, or somehow make it easier to remember them.