General Literary Chinese from Scratch/The Kangxi Radical System

thumb|200px|康熙帝 Kangxi radicals are a system of organising characters in dictionaries. They originated in Zihui 字彙 in 1615, and crystalised in the Kangxi Dictionary 康熙字典 in 1716, one of the biggest aggregations of dictionary sources on Han characters ever conducted. The Kangxi Emperor was a lover of Literary Chinese and would make major contributions to classical resources for the language that, thanks to the internet, are now very widely available, often in more accessible forms than before. Therefore, when learning Literary Chinese through Literary Chinese, the Kangxi Dictionary is, to this day, a gold standard. What are radicals? Put simply, a "radical" (部首) is the component of a Han character that is considered distinctive. Usually, it will be a semantic component that implies the meaning. All radicals are components, but not all components are radicals. There are 214 Kangxi radicals in all. Look, if you can remember 151 Pokemon or hundreds of baseball players, 214 pictures shouldn't kill you! Looking back in our lessons, I brought up this blink-it-and-you'll-miss-it sentence: 土在地均 The earth is on level ground This uses characters only of the 土 "earth" radical. As you can see, the radical does not always appear in the same place, but its semantic value is largely consistent. This is not always consistent; as with anything made by the masses, there are exceptions, but it is a fairly decent way of identifying what the radical of a character is. Take this other sentence, for example, which uses characters only of the 彳 "step" radical: 循德得徽 Follow virtue to attain excellence. If you look to the left of each character, there is a 彳, though the meaning has diverged a bit for the rest. 214 radical table The following table compiles all 214 radicals. These are all individually quite useful words, including animal names, weapons, food, terrain, and other qualities. If there are any you do not know, it is strongly recommended to look them up and learn them, and use them in your own sentences. 1一 2丨 3丶 4丿 5乙 6亅 7二 8亠 9人 10儿 11入 12八 13冂 14冖 15冫 16几 17凵 18刀 19力 20勹 21匕 22匚 23匸 24十 25卜 26卩 27厂 28厶 29又 30口 31囗 32土 33士 34夂 35夊 36夕 37大 38女 39子 40宀 41寸 42小 43尢 44尸 45屮 46山 47巛 48工 49己 50巾 51干 52幺 53广 54廴 55廾 56弋 57弓 58彐 59彡 60彳 61心 62戈 63戶 64手 65支 66攴 67文 68斗 69斤 70方 71无 72日 73曰 74月 75木 76欠 77止 78歹 79殳 80毋 81比 82毛 83氏 84气 85水 86火 87爪 88父 89爻 90爿 91片 92牙 93牛 94犬 95玄 96玉 97瓜 98瓦 99甘 100生 101用 102田 103疋 104疒 105癶 106白 107皮 108皿 109目 110矛 111矢 112石 113示 114禸 115禾 116穴 117立 118竹 119米 120糸 121缶 122网 123羊 124羽 125老 126而 127耒 128耳 129聿 130肉 131臣 132自 133至 134臼 135舌 136舛 137舟 138艮 139色 140艸 141虍 142虫 143血 144行 145衣 146襾 147見 148角 149言 150谷 151豆 152豕 153豸 154貝 155赤 156走 157足 158身 159車 160辛 161辰 162辵 163邑 164酉 165釆 166里 167金 168長 169門 170阜 171隶 172隹 173雨 174靑 175非 176面 177革 178韋 179韭 180音 181頁 182風 183飛 184食 185首 186香 187馬 188骨 189高 190髟 191鬥 192鬯 193鬲 194鬼 195魚 196鳥 197鹵 198鹿 199麥 200麻 201黃 202黍 203黑 204黹 205黽 206鼎 207鼓 208鼠 209鼻 210齊 211齒 212龍 213龜 214龠 Radical variants Some radicals are heavily abbreviated to ensure they stay in the same square, which results in the following variants: 人 / 亻 水 / 氵 心 / 忄 / ⺗ 手 / 扌 火 / 灬 衣 / 衤 示 / 礻 阜 and 邑 become left- and right-side 阝 forms too. Using a traditional Chinese dictionary When organising characters traditionally, dictionaries will take the radical of a character and then count the strokes coming afterwards. For example, 在 is 土 + 3 strokes for the rest of the character. If you go to the 土 section of a dictionary, then go to where you start seeing 3 strokes, 在 will appear. This is why identifying characters by their strokes and composition is useful: You can see the makeup, use the character, and remember it better. Exercises Identify the radical 休 河 情 燃 神 衫 均 循 Recognise the variants Match each variant form to the radical it represents. 亻 氵 忄 扌 灬 衤 礻 Count the remaining strokes Identify the radical in each character and then count the additional strokes. 在 地 河 林 明 情 Compare with Cangjie Now that you understand the radical system, let's compare it with Cangjie and see how it can enrich our understanding. Take the following characters and their Cangjie codes. Which of their components do you think is the Kangxi radical? How many additional strokes are there? 明 林 炎 地 情 Dictionary lookup Having passed those exercises, you now understand Kangxi radicals well enough to try using a traditional Chinese dictionary. Kangxi Dictionary is available in its original order on Chinese Text Project (https://ctext.org/kangxi-zidian), so you can use that. Try taking some characters you are unsure about, guess the radical, and try to find it in there! Conclusion With that, you have cleared Unit 0 and are now ready to engage with the Han script. These past two lessons have certainly been heavy, but they are important ways to put the Han script to use without necessarily knowing how to use it yet. The next units will get heavily into using the script, though, so get ready to learn some Literary Chinese! References Jiang, L., & Ren, M. (2023). A general theory of ancient Chinese (Y. Zhu & W. Gao, Trans.). Zhejiang University Press. Zhang, Y., & Chen, T. (with Aisin-Gioro, X.). (2015). 康熙字典 [Kāngxī Zìdiǎn] (H. Wang, Ed.; Revised Ed., Vols 1–2). 社会科学文献出版社 [Social Sciences Academic Press]. 《字彙》