Chinese Writing: Types of Radicals and Their Application

Radicals in Chinese are like alphabets in English, but easier and more logical!

Image courtesy of https://blog.skritter.com/2015/03/understanding-chinese-characters-components-and-radicals/

Last updated: 08 Feb 2021

In the introductory article on Chinese writing, we got an overview of the 3 core concepts of Chinese writing: radicals, characters and words. That introductory article isn’t required reading (it’s light and easy reading, though!), but the reference sources (official, from China) are documents you should keep by your side at all times.

(This article has been converted into a course at this Facebook group.)

This article is part 2 of 4 that fully explain the Chinese writing system:

• Learning Chinese: Writing made easy (introductory article)
• Chinese Writing: Types of Radicals and Their Application (this article)
• Chinese Writing Strokes: Basic Building Blocks (our own nomenclature)
• Chinese Writing: Character Construction Strategies

(The 4-part foundational series provides solid ground for actually learning Chinese! Visit our compendium of 3500 characters when you’re done with the series!)

You must have ready access to the Table of Radicals (汉字部首表) and the Table of Characters (通用规范汉字表), which are the reference sources mentioned above, in order to read this article!

If you need a phonetic handle on every Chinese character in this article, you’ll also need Chinese Pronunciation: From English Perspective. However, this article focuses on how radicals are used to construct characters, so you won’t be needing to pronounce them; you’ll just need to visually recognize them. In case I miss out specifying the pronunciation for any Chinese character here, you can look it up at dict.youdao.com.

Let us now take an in-depth look at radicals, the most fundamental building blocks of Chinese writing.

Radicals in Chinese are like alphabets in English. They’re the most fundamental building blocks of Chinese writing.

There are 4 types of radicals in the Chinese writing system, the first 3 of which are officially listed in the Table of Radicals. The following list also serves as a good TL;DR:

• Indexing Radicals
  (Radicals that are used as lookup keys in dictionaries.)
• Abbreviated Radicals
  (A morphed form of certain indexing radicals. There may be more than one for each indexing radical.)
• Traditional Radicals
  (Only used to convert the Table of Radicals from Simplified Chinese, its original form, to Traditional Chinese to be used in Traditional Chinese dictionaries. Consider these radicals as a morphed form of indexing radicals, one morph per indexing radical.)
• Improvised Radicals
  (Constructed from a small and special subset of indexing radicals that can build any pictorial form needed in Chinese writing.)

The above TL;DR may only serve you well after you’ve read the fascinating details below.

This article is tightly related to Chinese Writing Strokes: Basic Building Blocks (our own nomenclature, part 3 of 4 in this series), the basic building blocks of Chinese writing. We will develop our own system of stroke naming convention that is clean without confusing redundancies (overlaps). This article does not require you to know about Chinese writing strokes, but does lead naturally to those basic building blocks.

Radicals that Lexically Categorize Characters

Indexing radicals, a term I semi-coin as an improvement over China’s Ministry of Education’s terminology, refers to the 201 (main) radicals in the Table of Radicals. They’re called “indexing” because they’re used by dictionaries to help users look up dictionary entries. China’s Ministry of Education calls them “indexing components” (page 1 of Table of Radicals), but we’ll stick with the term “radicals” because “components” sounds too generic to be easily remembered.

Indexing radicals generally cleanly categorize Chinese characters into semantic or thematic groups. That is also why they’re used as indexes in dictionaries to aid users in looking up dictionary entries.

From here on, we’ll number all indexing radicals according to how the Table of Radicals does (pages 3–5).

For example, the indexing radical for ‘初’ (chu1) is ‘⼑’ (dao1, radical 22, also character 18). We’ll explain abbreviated radicals, ‘衤’ (radical 117.a) in this case, in a section below. (The character ‘初’ was introduced in the introductory article Learning Chinese: Writing made easy.)

Indexing radicals are often also characters. This becomes even more apparent when we explore abbreviated radicals later in this article.

(We’ll explain abbreviated radicals in a section below. For now, ignore the fact that there are actually more than 201 radicals listed in the Table of Radicals.)

Let’s get a quick idea of how indexing radicals are used to look up dictionary entries.

Keys that Index

Using the example we introduced above, the character ‘初’ (chu1) contains an indexing radical ‘⼑ ’ (dao1, radical 22). Using that indexing radical, you can look up the character ‘初’ in a current dictionary like 现代汉语词典.

The process to look up a dictionary entry (which I’ll write up in detail with an actual dictionary accompanying if you demand it) involves 2 tables:

• A table of indexing radicals ordered by radical stroke count (also the exact same order as seen in the Table of Radicals), which links to
• A table of characters ordered by character stroke count, which points to the lexical entries you’re interested in.

You can check what radical(s) a character is indexed by in a dictionary by looking it up at baike.baidu.com , like for the example above (search for “部 首” with 4 spaces between the 2 characters).

(We’ll explain abbreviated radicals in a section below. You’ll easily notice even now that abbreviated radicals, ‘衤’ in this case, are also used as indexes in dictionaries.)

Now that we’ve gotten a rough idea of how indexing radicals serve as keys when looking up dictionary entries, let’s see how indexing radicals also logically and cleanly group Chinese characters.

Keys that Group

How do indexing radicals put characters into “semantic or thematic groups”? And how are indexing radicals thus semantically significant in character construction?

An example of indexing radicals cleanly categorizing Chinese characters into semantic or thematic groups can be seen in the group of characters under the indexing radical ‘刀’ (knife): we see ‘分’ (to divide), ‘剪’ (to cut with scissors), ‘切’ (to slice). Notice the relation to “knife”.

In the next subsection, we’ll explain how ‘初’ (“initial, nascent”) is semantically grouped with ‘刀’ (“knife”). Curious? Explore, onward!

(We need to know what ‘衤’ stands for. Currently, we only know ‘刀’.)

Abbreviated radicals

By now, if you had diligently looked up both radicals especially the ‘衤’ (radical 117.a, page 4 of Table of Radicals, column 1 last entry marked “[142]”), you’ll realize that there seems to be more than 201 radicals in the Table of Radicals.

Most of the indented entries (eg. radicals 8.b ‘⺉’, 10.a ‘亻’, 19.a ‘讠’, etc) in the Table of Radicals are what we should term as “abbreviated radicals”, which I explain in the following. (The rest are Traditional radicals, explained in a later section.)

Some indexing radicals have abbreviated forms, which we should term as “abbreviated radicals”. China’s terminology that is “associated indexing component” is apt too, but not as descriptive. “Associated” because abbreviated radicals stem from indexing radicals. “Indexing” because they also serve as indexes in dictionaries.

China’s Ministry of Education refers to our abbreviated radicals as “associated indexing components” (page 1 of Table of Radicals), but let’s coin our own term “abbreviated radicals” that is more descriptive and memorable. So what exactly are abbreviated radicals and what do they do?

Abbreviated radicals function identically to the indexing radicals they stem from: indexing and grouping characters. Abbreviated radicals exist to address space constraints since each Chinese character must occupy a consistent square space.

Let’s look at some actual examples of abbreviated radicals in the following subsections.

Space efficiency

Space efficiency is the main theme for abbreviated radicals. The radical ‘衤’ (radical 117.a) is efficiently packed to the left of the square space of a Chinese character, such as in ‘初’. Contrast its space efficiency to that of its indexing radical ‘衣’ (yi1, radical 142). The abbreviated radical has the exact same semantics as its indexing radical: “clothing”.

(So now you know that the beautifully packed form that is abbreviated radical ‘衤’ means “clothing”!)

Space efficiency is the main theme for transforming indexing radicals into abbreviated radicals. Note how the indexing radical ‘衣‘ packs beautifully into a concise ‘衤’.

Slanting is also a transformation to conserve space, like for ‘⺁’ (radical 10.b).

Exceptions: Variants rather than Abbreviations

In rare cases, such as ‘亅’ (radical 2.a), ‘卩’ (radical 21) and ‘士’ (radical 29.a), which are simple (low stroke count) indexing radicals, the associated “abbreviated radicals” are actually variants rather than abbreviations.

Of particular note is also indexing radical ‘王’ (wang2, radical 61), whose “abbreviated radical” ‘玉’ (yu4, radical 99.a) is really a variant form rather than an abbreviated form. In fact, indexing radical ‘王’ can serve as the abbreviated form of character ‘玉’ (character 190). No other confusing exceptions exist (far as I can tell). Let’s take a closer, but quick, look at this curious exception.

The indexing radical ‘王’ is a very special case. It can serve multiple roles: as an indexing radical or an abbreviated radical. In each role, it takes on a different semantic, “king” and “jade”, respectively.

In this special case that is radical 61 ‘王’, we see that this form can serve multiple roles.

As an indexing radical, it means “king”, just like the character it resembles (‘王’, character 75). This is seen in character ‘皇’ (huang2, “royal”, character 1571), whose story is “a king with a crown on top” (‘白’ pictorially resembles a crown; semantically it is actually “white”).

As an abbreviated radical, it means “jade”, because it then becomes an abbreviated form of character ‘玉’ (character 190). This is seen in character ‘玩’ (wan2, “to play”, character 944). In a time gone by, before the advent of computer games, people may have considered dazzling jade pieces as worthwhile toys.

May have more than 1 abbreviated form

Some indexing radicals are related to more than 1 abbreviated radical each. A commonly encountered set is the abbreviated radicals ‘⺘’ (radical 29.b) and ‘龵’ (radical 80.a) that derive from indexing radical ‘手’ (shou3, radical 80) which means “hand”.

Some indexing radicals have more than 1 abbreviated radical, such as ‘⺘’ and ‘龵’ for indexing radical ‘手’ (“hand”).

Rather than leave you hanging with that above example “out of the blue”, I’ll complete that detour by illustrating an actual use of one of the abbreviated radicals. The character ‘看’ (kan4, character 1539) consists of abbreviated radical ‘龵’ (radical 80.a) and indexing radical ‘目’ (radical 105). The story: placing your “hand” (‘龵’) over your “eye” (‘目’, mu4), you “see” (‘看’). (Presumably, you see something in the distance.)

At this point, it is also worth reminding you that:

An abbreviated radical has the exact same semantics as its indexing radical. ‘⺘’ and ‘龵’ mean the same thing as their indexing radical ‘手’ (“hand”).

Keys that group, just like indexing radicals do

As with what we did for indexing radical ‘刀’ (radical 22), we see if ‘衤’ (radical 117.a) puts characters into a semantic or thematic group. Recall that the abbreviated radical ‘衤’ stems from indexing radical ‘衣’ (radical 142) which means “clothing”.

Note also that the Table of Radicals marks abbreviated radical ‘衤’ with a (non-unique!) label “[142]”, which indicates its stemming from indexing radical 142.

Abbreviated radicals, like indexing radicals, also cleanly categorize Chinese characters into semantic or thematic groups, as can be seen in the group of characters under the abbreviated radical ‘衤’ (clothing): we see ‘补’ (to patch something torn), ‘衫’ (shirt or upper garment), ‘衬’ (inner garment). Notice the relation to “clothing”.

Finally, we can deduce how the character ‘初’ is semantically grouped by abbreviated radical ‘衤’. When a garment (‘衤’, “clothing”) is to be created, the initial step is to to cut (‘刀’, “knife”) cloth. (We take ‘衤’ to anecdotally relate to “cloth”.)

The character ‘初’ means “initial, nascent”.

The semantic grouping is anecdotal in this case, rather than literal.

I mentioned that “most of” the indented entries in the Table of Radicals are what we should term as “abbreviated radicals”. What about the rest of the indented entries?

Traditional radicals

If an indented entry in the Table of Radicals isn’t an abbreviated radical, it is a Traditional radical used in Traditional Chinese writing form.

Traditional radicals are markedly different from abbreviated radicals. You can spot them by noticing they are more complex (more strokes) than the indexing radicals they “morph from”.

I say that Traditional radicals “morph from” indexing radicals because we’re looking in from the perspective of the Table of Radicals, whose original form is Simplified Chinese. In reality, indexing radicals morphed from Traditional radicals when China promulgated the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme in the 1950s.

We don’t need to note much else about Traditional radicals, except that Traditional Chinese writing form is more complex (but beautiful) than Simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese actually plays a crucial role in how we easily learn and memorize Chinese characters, a role I’ll discuss in another article (Chinese Writing: Character Construction Strategies).

Dictionaries for Traditional Chinese use an appropriately modified version of the Table of Radicals, where all Traditional radicals become indexing radicals by replacing the Simplified Chinese version of indexing radicals.

Now that we’ve looked through all types of radicals in the Table of Radicals, we will need to consider an unspecified type of radical. Let’s start with a quick real-life illustration.

Here’s another example of indexing radicals in action, but with a twist. The character ‘监’ (jian1, character 1883) has the indexing radical ‘皿’ (min3, radical 108). However, the other 2 radicals, the top-left and top-right, are not indexing radicals (nor abbreviated radicals, nor Traditional radicals) so they don’t appear in the Table of Radicals. So wait, do I mean that Chinese characters can be built from stuff other then indexing radicals and abbreviated radicals? Yes, but they’re still radicals, just another kind!

Improvised Radicals

Improvised radicals, a term we have to coin for lack of better handles on this concept, are built from a small and special subset of indexing radicals.

Improvised radicals are built from a small and special subset of indexing radicals: the single-stroke indexing radicals (caveat mentioned further below!).

Improvised radicals are not found in the Table of Radicals, and are certainly not used as lookup keys in the indexes of dictionaries.

Improvised radicals do not serve as lookup keys in the indexes of dictionaries.

Semantic density, space efficiency

Improvised radicals are important to Chinese writing because they contribute semantically to character construction as much as the official radicals (indexing and abbreviated) in the Table of Radicals do. Also, the beauty of the various shapes of Chinese characters demand that artistic strokes deviate at times from the official radicals listed in the Table of Radicals, often for space constraints if not for aesthetics and pictorial clarity.

Improvised radicals are usually even more abbreviated and concise than abbreviated radicals. They are as semantically significant in character construction as indexing radicals and abbreviated radicals.

But how are they built? Do we have an example to illustrate why they are used?

The first group of indexing radicals, which comprise 1 stroke (page 3 of Table of Radicals, radicals 1 through 5), usually don’t contribute semantically to the characters they build. Instead, they are mostly basic building strokes that build up semantically significant structures we call improvised radicals.

The character ‘监’ is composed of 3 radicals: 1 indexing (皿) and 2 improvised (‘丨丨’ and ‘丿一丶’). Improvised radicals don’t appear in Unicode nor in the Table of Radicals, but are crucial semantic components of character construction. Deeper explanation below.

In the character ‘监’ (jian1, character 1883), the indexing radical ‘皿’ (min3, radical 108) is what we look up in a dictionary to locate the lexical entry for the character. The other radicals are improvised.

• The top-left improvised radical is built with 2 strokes ‘丨丨’, which represents a “person”: ‘人’ (ren2, radical 12) or ‘⺅’ (radical 10.a).
• The top-right improvised radical is built with 3 strokes ‘丿一丶’, which looks like a human eye from the side view. Ultra concise compared to ‘目’ (radical 105) meaning “eye”.
• The indexing radical (at the bottom) ‘皿’ means “shallow dish”.

Presumably, a person looks into a shallow dish of water, indicating self-reflection (introspection). (We’ll talk about more about character construction in another article: Chinese Writing: Character Construction Strategies.)

Improvised radicals are usually really concise variant forms of indexing radicals, often even more space-efficient than abbreviated radicals. Besides providing semantic density and ease of writing, these concise forms are often more aesthetically pleasing as well.

The basic building blocks of improvised radicals, in fact of all of Chinese writing, is actually a simple “7 stroke types” system that I develop in the next article. While not as simple as I had claimed (and hoped) in the above when I mentioned that just 5 indexing radicals (the single-stroke ones) are used to build improvised radicals, the “7 stroke types” system is nonetheless the first one to truly be cleanly functional for learning Chinese writing.

Also built from Characters

Improvised radicals can also be constructed from entire characters; there isn’t always a need to build them from scratch using single strokes. In character ‘球’ (qiu2, “ball”, character 2155), the improvised radical on the right is ‘求’ (qiu2, “to beg”, character 690).

We will still term such radicals as improvised radicals, since they occur only in the Table of Characters but not in the Table of Radicals.

We’ve now examined everything to know about radicals. But before we’re dive into constructing Chinese characters, please have a quick read about Chinese Writing Strokes: Basic Building Blocks.

Using a “7 stroke types” system for describing any Chinese character shape, the community can easily discuss these shapes using standardized and easy nomenclature. This system is covered in the next article.

This article is part 2 of 4 that fully explain the Chinese writing system:

• Learning Chinese: Writing made easy (introductory article)
• Chinese Writing: Types of Radicals and Their Application (this article)
• Chinese Writing Strokes: Basic Building Blocks (our own nomenclature)
• Chinese Writing: Character Construction Strategies