Questions tagged [radicals]
部首. Components of kanji, which may serve as a semantic or phonetic factor in the meaning or pronunciation of the character. Along with stroke count, radicals provide a way to index and give an ordering to kanji.
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Is there any reason a lot of body parts use the Month/Moon radical?
腕、胸、お腹、肘、脇、肩 are all body parts, and their radical is 月. I wonder how that came to be?
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Is there a difference in drawing between the "mouth" and "enclosure" kanji radicals?
The two kanji radicals from the image are supposed to be 2 different kanji radicals, one meaning "mouth", and the other meaning "enclosure". I'm not sure if they are supposed to look different or not. ...
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How often do single dots stick to the top of kanji?
In Chinese, characters with a single dot on top stay separated from the rest of the character. (Eg. Chinese 宝)
In kanji, this is frequently not the case - virtually all 宀 characters I see have dots ...
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Can an individual Kanji character have more than one radical?
I am learning about radicals and their use in forming an individual Kanji character, but I am wondering if more than one radical can be used in developing one. Thank you.
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Does the etymology of 星 suggest the japanese/chinese knew the sun was a star?
星 contains the radical 日 meaning sun/day. This makes sense from a modern understanding, as it is well known that the sun was a star. However, it appears this has only been known since the 19th century,...
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Relationship between radicals, components, kanji and words
As a novice learner, I'm finding understanding the relationship between radicals, components, kanji and words difficult.
For example, this post on tofugu.com says that:
The kanji is 町, which means ...
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Is there a reliable translation of the kangxi radicals?
Inspired by the Wikipedia page on Kangxi radicals I decided to study the meaning and writing of radicals before I tackle the much more numerous kanji. But in working my way through the list, I started ...
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Is 云 related to 𠫓 in any way?
Depending on the kanji face the left element 言 in multi-element kanjis like 語 is sometimes depicted with 丶 instead of top 一 . It makes me think that the same transformation occurs for 𠫓: 云 changes to ...
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Kanji radicals: Question to the radical assignment in dictionaries
I was browsing through the webpage of Japanese radicals on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Japanese_kanji_radicals)
I noticed
74 - 月
and
130 - 肉
bot entries are referencing in the ...
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Why are there different names for the same kanji radical?
I was wondering why some of the names for kanji radicals are different depending on the source.
For example, right now I'm learning radicals on kaniwani and they called 「丶」 drop, but on my kanji ...
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What is the radical of 全? 人 or 入?
I don't have any kanji reference books so I have to rely on kanji sites for kanji information.
A lot of websites list 入 (いる) as the radical for 全:
Jisho beta (as well as other sites which use the ...