Importance of Knowing Chinese Radicals

[Jim]

On 2/7/2022 at 12:16 AM, phoneticsem said:

are these names equivalent to pinyin, I think. But not sure as you mentioned it in Japanese.

No, they are the names used in common parlance to identify/describe the radicals when someone mentions them in conversation, for example when they are telling someone else which character appears in a name - "No, it's the 'jiang' with the roof radical."

[Publius]

To those who got sucked in again and again, who couldn't resist a quote or an @: Get a life! Lol

 

 

[Jim]

On 2/7/2022 at 2:22 AM, Publius said:

To those who got sucked in again and again, who couldn't resist a quote or an @: Get a life! Lol

 

I was put in mind of that olde English chengyu, "thick as mince".

[TheBigZaboon]

I assume you two are talking about me. And you're right. I didn't read all the posts, only enough to follow the gist of the thread. That's why I asked for God's forgiveness before jumping in with both feet.

 

I was sitting here with a Taiwan romance drama on the TV, debating whether to edit my second post to remove some possible ambiguity because I wrote it hastily on my phone in a Starbucks while waiting for my wife. But deep in the back of my mind, the suspicion was growing that I had encountered this guy on the forum before, maybe two or three years ago, although under a different user name. The key element is the story about carrying on this fruitless activity for the sake of his son, who is studying Chinese. The common modus operandi involves continually misinterpreting  serious posts and replies to questions to drag out a thread endlessly. I don't remember the subject of the previous thread, but it was something I was interested in, at least at the time.

 

Another olde English chengyu says "Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice and I deserve all the approbation people have the right to heap on me..."

 

In any case, I hope I'm not right about all of this, but...

 

OMG, the two principals in my Taiwanese drama are kissing in public!!! I've never seen that before. I'm going back to my drama. That's probably all the life I'm gonna get...

 

TBZ

[Jim]

@TheBigZaboon Not aimed at you! Admire your patience.

[phoneticsem]

hmmm. Learning pronunciation of kangxi radicals might take less than a week. Understanding ambiguous messages and convincing them to learn pronunciation for just 214 radicals takes more time than that. 

 

Everyone has to enjoy life. a person not enjoying by posting some messages in the forum ? Enjoy Man

[TheBigZaboon]

A remarkable improvement in the ability to communicate...

 

Just sayin'...

 

TBZ

[alantin]

On 2/7/2022 at 2:16 AM, phoneticsem said:

are these names equivalent to pinyin, I think. But not sure as you mentioned it in Japanese.

I think the question about the differences between radicals and components has already been discussed here at length (multiple times) so there is nothing more to say about it.

 

The question about the names of the components however is something new and interesting, and I also wholeheartedly endorse memorizing them.
A quick google search yielded the following Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1862159170

A couple of examples:

户 = 户字旁 (hù zì páng)
走 = 走字旁 (zǒu zì páng)

冫= 两点水 (liǎng diǎn shuǐ) These will actually help when discussing characters, like others have already pointed out. Though I'm not sure about the quality of this deck. I'm not sure if you do actually call "走" "走字旁" in both "起" and "徒".

[TheBigZaboon]

After all of the back and forth in this thread, I'm still not convinced of the usefulness of radicals in Chinese other than making it easier to visually distinguish two competing character candidates, one with a 手 radical and the other maybe with a 土 radical, think 推 versus 堆. Pleco makes puzzling out the difference a moot point with no further role for a radical. But I'm afraid that my posts may have brought a topic trundling  towards a well-deserved obituary, and turned it into the walking dead: lifeless and useless, but as hard to get rid of as ugly on an ape.

 

My examples of Japanese radicals and how they're used was intended only to describe how I learned them (and depended on them then) many, many years ago. And I tried to give a sense of how one had to "guess" the radical to look up a character for which a non-native speaker knew neither the reading (pronunciation) nor the meaning. One then had to resort to a Kan-Wa-Ei (Kanji→Japanese→English) dictionary. That dictionary was called "a Nelson" in honor of the Christian missionary who compiled it.

 

In Chinese, dictionaries like Pleco and its rivals make that task far, far less common than it was 50 years ago. The corresponding Chinese dictionary in those days was called  "a Mathews" in the office. (The location and current possessor of one of the multiple copies of either a Nelson or a Mathews was always a source of contention at work.) Pleco  doesn't yet completely eliminate that need, but in my case, for example, I have never, ever even come close to needing to look up a character using its radical. A student probably has to progress some distance into the study of Chinese before needing the skill. Not to say it will never happen, but it is now far, far from the locus of a modern student's study pattern.

 

In Japanese, it is still common to refer to the radical when trying to determine which character is being talked about because there are On readings (where the word is derived historically from Chinese) as well as Kun readings (where a character is assigned to a reading for an originally Japanese word). This is because the character used can differ for the same meaning and pronunciation depending on aspects of what one is talking about ( seeing, looking, watching, (all pronounced as "miru") etc.). And there are relatively few sound resources available for Japanese (only five vowels, no diphthongs, and a limited number of consonants), so lots of homonyms. And there is no real rival to Pleco. Japanese hardware manufacturers long ago signed seemingly unbreakable contracts with the dictionary companies, so there are no really good Android or iOS phone dictionaries, only hardware based thingies that take up space in a bag or on a desk. (Hint, hint...)

 

In Chinese, at least in my experience, a character is often referenced by means of a well-known example, bound to be known to both parties. For example to refer to 柯 a conversation might go something like “我姓柯，柯达的柯...” (I hope 柯达 is Kodak...). An obscure character in a two or three character word might be referenced by citing a simpler, but easier understood two character word in which the unknown character is featured prominently. If the character still eludes understanding, then you try writing it on the palm of your hand with a finger or the back of a credit card receipt or menu with a pen. I've never had anybody try to differentiate a character with reference to a radical in the character in my many, many years in a Chinese environment in China, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia.

 

Sorry for my transgressions... 

 

TBZ

 

 

PS: My wife, who is working from home at 10:00pm on this Monday night, looked over my shoulder, read my wordy post, and expressed the hope that someone in charge come up with an appropriate punishment, with emphasis on punishment more so than appropriate.

[alantin]

@TheBigZaboon, Seriously! LoL. ?

I found your post interesting. Did you really study Japanese 50 years ago? That was a completely different world to do it back then! When I started it 20 years ago, I was still using paper dictionaries and finding characters based on radicals in a dictionary. I never got one of those electronic dictionaries as I found some online dictionaries good enough to use. Lately especially https://jisho.org/ . I was tempted to get one at some point, but it was too expensive. I with the Japanese online dictionaries the radicals have also always been especially helpful. When you don't have a clue about the pronunciation of a character, you can just go to the index and find it with the radicals. Having studied Chinese for about three years now, I've probably done that once or twice. It's so much easier and quicker to just write the character on Pleco handwriting recognition.

 

I also haven't studied the character components in Chinese much and I find the simplified characters sometimes(often) obscure them. Though I already knew the character components and the meanings of 2000+ characters to varying degrees and began studying Chinese partly because I thought the characters would make it easier to learn. I find that the simplified characters largely seem to do what they promise. I think it is easier to learn to write the Chinese simplified characters than the Japanese characters. There are less strokes and overall less going on in a single character, so it is a bit more "flowing" to write them. Which makes sense because the simplifications seem to be based on the cursive forms of the characters.

I personally find the components helpful in creating mnemonics to remember the characters and also in studying how to simplify them in handwriting, but if you brute force memorize them like the Chinese and Japanese kids do, you may not need them. I think you'll pick up the patterns anyway if you do that. If you study the etymology of the characters, knowing the components is helpful, but I'm not sold on the idea of studying semantic or sound components of characters in order to somehow help guessing their meanings or pronunciations. I think you get that from exposure and the semantic and sound components are more of a curiosity if you're interested in them or the etymology.

[phoneticsem]

On 2/7/2022 at 6:23 PM, alantin said:

The question about the names of the components however is something new and interesting, and I also wholeheartedly endorse memorizing them.
A quick google search yielded the following Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1862159170

A couple of examples:

户 = 户字旁 (hù zì páng)
走 = 走字旁 (zǒu zì páng)

冫= 两点水 (liǎng diǎn shuǐ) These will actually help whe

 

Thanks for explaining Colloquial names of Radicals in a simple structure with 3 examples with link and good Anki Deck.Very Helpful. Might learn in future.

 

[Taoyuan Chinese]

As many have already pointed out here, since the term 'radical' only refers to the 'Section Headers' under which characters are listed in a dictionary, learning characters by solely relying on them is definetly not the ideal way to go. In my opinion the two major problems with learning through radicals are:

 

 1. Radicals are (in many cases) inherently misleading. Since the whole point of the system is to have ALL characters listed under a relatively small number of radicals, many characters are only randomly assigned to a radical only because based on their strokes without any semantic, phonological or etymological justification. For instance, under the radical 一 'one' there are several characters listed that would otherwise be very hard to assign to any other radicals, such as 丙、且、並、不、世 etc. The only reason they are assigned to 一 'one' is that they have a horizontal stroke.

 

 2. Even if we consider all the radicals to be a relatively useful tool for understanding characters, the list of necessary building blocks for all characters is still far from complete. Since most Chinese characters (up to 90%, according to some estimates) have a phonetic component and, with relatively few exceptions (such as 马 and 木 in some characters), radicals are in most cases the semantic components of the characters, learning only the radicals without the other components is, I would say, half the work at best.

 

However, learning hundreds of other character components before learning an even greater number of characters can also seem like an unnecessarily difficult way.

 

In my opinion, the solution here is to learn the characters in a systematic approach, where we do not necessarily distinguish between radicals and other types of components, but rather focus on the function of each building block in certain types of characters, and most importantly, learn only those characters from each component that are understandable with the previously learned components. For this method to be effective, it is crucial to have the right order in which characters are learned, so that new components are introduced gradually without having to learn dozens of new ones at a time.

 

 

[phoneticsem]

On 3/30/2022 at 10:13 PM, Taoyuan Chinese said:

rather focus on the function of each building block in certain types of characters,

agree

 

Main thing is whatever you are learning, practice regularly and progress. Do not stuck there either it is radicals or learning other building blocks

[abcdefg]

On 1/22/2022 at 2:25 PM, Jan Finster said:

I probably know between 0-5 and I do not believe they are necessary unless you want to learn how to write. I can imagine they might come in handy then.

 

Some knowledge of radicals often helped me figure out the probable meaning of unfamiliar words that I encountered "in the wild" -- in the course of daily life. 

[anonymoose]

I've been learning Chinese for over 20 years (on and off, recently more off than on). I reached what I would deem to be a reasonably advanced level (completed a medical degree in Chinese alongside native speakers).

 

In all this time, I've never specifically set out to learn radicals. If you learn enough Chinese, you will pick the useful ones up pretty quickly anyway.

 

I think if you are trying to memorize lists like 匚 fāng, 匸 xì, 凵 qiǎn/kǎn, 冂 jiōng, you are completely wasting your time and it will be detrimental to your Chinese in the long run (i.e. you will burn out with frustration before you've learnt anything useful).

 

I would say what you're doing is like a beginner student of maths trying to memorize pi to the first 100 decimal places before they've even learnt how to add and subtract.

 

 

[phoneticsem]

@anonymoose my view is like this:

 

Take this example:

攵pū = tap, hand holding staff. 攵Explanation Learn 攵first and then the words which have 攵as component. Alternatively whenever you come across 畟 then you learn all the components.

 

If someone is learning 20 words which contain   

攵without knowing that character, is loosing lot of time, especially Adult learners (native kids are excluded)

 

 

My view is that someone is learning circumference and area of circle, without learning that pi = 22/7, if an adult chinese learner is not learning radicals