 |
|
The radical (or 部首 - bushu) of a kanji character is a classfication system which can be roughly thought of as a basic element of a character, either in terms of semantics or visual structure (or both). Since kanji (and hanzi, the Chinese characters from which kanji are derived/copied) cannot be lexicographically ordered as with words of an alphabetic writing system, radicals provide a means of classifying (and ordering, when combined with stroke count) characters which would otherwise be unavailable. However, although radicals are a generally useful way of thinking about kanji, it is important to remember that they are an entirely artificial and somewhat arbitrary method of classifying characters which were in use long before radical systems were developed. The original radical system, designed by Xu Shen for his Shuowen dictionary (121 CE), used 540 radicals to classify Chinese hanzi. By the publishing of the Zihui dictionary (1615 CE) this had been refined to 214 radicals, the basis of what is used today, to classify what was largely the same set of characters. Even today, although the 214 radicals are relatively standard in all writing systems derived from Han characters, many dictionaries will make minor alterations, either reclassifying characters or changing the character that stands for a radical.
An example of a radical is the 儿 (にんにょうひとあし - human legs) radical, which is both a radical and a character in its own right. It appears as a component element of characters such as:
A radical may have more than one form depending on its usage. For example, the 人 (ひと - person) radical may also appear as イ. All the following characters have the same radical:
The difference may be even more pronounced. The 心 (こころ - heart) radical often appears like 忄. Some examples:
All those characters contain one of the two forms of the heart radical. The last two characters are interesting for two reasons. One is that they are actually the same character, but the second is a simplified Shinjitai (新字体 - "new character form") of the first, older, Kyuujitai (新字體 - "old character form") character. The second reason is that although both contain the heart radical, only the first character is classified under it. The second character is classified under the 亠 (なべぶた - pot lid) radical.
This demonstrates an unfortunate fact about radical classification systems. Many kanji contain more than one radical element in their structure, and it can be very difficult for those inexperienced with kanji to locate which radical the kanji belongs to.
Another problem to be wary of is that some radicals may appear very similar, even though they represent distinct categories:
These are all radicals to watch out for.
To use radicals effectively as a search tool, you will need to develop an eye for them. Browse through the kanji radical index, which contains every character in the JIS X 0208 and 0212 standards classified by radical. The KANJIDIC datasets, which KanjiDB runs on, generally follow the Nelson Modern Japanese-English Character Dictionary for radical classifications. Be aware that other dictionaries may classify some characters differently.