A report on Radical (Chinese characters), Chinese dictionary and Chinese characters

In the traditional Chinese character 媽 mā "mother". The left part is the radical 女 nǚ "female". The character is the semantic component of a phono-semantic compound (}, and the right part, 馬 mǎ "horse", is the phonetic component.

Dunhuang manuscript (c. 8th century) page from the Yiqiejing yinyi, the oldest extant Chinese dictionary of Buddhist technical terminology

Excerpt from a 1436 primer on Chinese characters

A page from the 1865 reprint of Morrison's Chinese dictionary, the first major Chinese–English dictionary. In this section, words are arranged alphabetically based on Morrison's transcription of Chinese.

Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in cuneiform, Egyptian and Chinese characters

The Shi Qiang pan, a bronze ritual basin dated to around 900 BC. Long inscriptions on the surface describe the deeds and virtues of the first seven Zhou kings.

A page from a Song dynasty publication in a regular script typeface which resembles the handwriting of Ouyang Xun from Tang Dynasty

The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.

Current (dark green) and former extension (light green) of the use of Chinese characters

The first two lines of the classic Vietnamese epic poem The Tale of Kieu, written in the Nôm script and the modern Vietnamese alphabet. Chinese characters representing Sino-Vietnamese words are shown in green, characters borrowed for similar-sounding native Vietnamese words in purple, and invented characters in brown.

Mongolian text from The Secret History of the Mongols in Chinese transcription, with a glossary on the right of each row

Sample of the cursive script by Chinese Tang dynasty calligrapher Sun Guoting, c. 650 AD

Chinese calligraphy of mixed styles written by Song dynasty (1051–1108 AD) poet Mifu. For centuries, the Chinese literati were expected to master the art of calligraphy.

The first four characters of Thousand Character Classic in different type and script styles. From right to left: seal script, clerical script, regular script, Ming and sans-serif.

Variants of the Chinese character for guī 'turtle', collected c. 1800 from printed sources. The one at left is the traditional form used today in Taiwan and Hong Kong,, though may look slightly different, or even like the second variant from the left, depending on your font (see Wiktionary). The modern simplified forms used in China,, and in Japan, 亀, are most similar to the variant in the middle of the bottom row, though neither is identical. A few more closely resemble the modern simplified form of the character for diàn 'lightning', 电.

Five of the 30 variant characters found in the preface of the Imperial (Kangxi) Dictionary which are not found in the dictionary itself. They are 為 (爲) wèi "due to", 此 cǐ "this", 所 suǒ "place", 能 néng "be able to", 兼 jiān "concurrently". (Although the form of 為 is not very different, and in fact is used today in Japan, the radical 爪 has been obliterated.) Another variant from the preface, 来 for 來 lái "to come", also not listed in the dictionary, has been adopted as the standard in Mainland China and Japan.

The character 次 in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. If you have an appropriate font installed, you can see the corresponding character in Vietnamese:.

Cumulative frequency of simplified Chinese characters in Modern Chinese text

Kanji for 剣道 (Kendo), pronounced differently from the Korean term 劍道 (Kumdo), or the Chinese words 劍道 (jiàndào; it is more common to use the expressions 劍術 jiànshù or 劍法 jiànfǎ in Chinese).

Taito, "the appearance of a dragon in flight"

A Chinese radical or indexing component is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary.

- Radical (Chinese characters)

The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character/logograph dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms.

- Chinese dictionary

Although there is some variation in such lists – depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed – these canonical 214 radicals of the Kangxi Dictionary still serve as the basis for most modern Chinese dictionaries.

- Radical (Chinese characters)

The second system of dictionary organization is by recurring graphic components or radicals.

- Chinese dictionary

That is, pictograms extended from literal objects to take on symbolic or metaphoric meanings; sometimes even displacing the use of the character as a literal term, or creating ambiguity, which was resolved though character determinants, more commonly but less accurately known as "radicals" i.e. concept keys in the phono-semantic characters.

- Chinese characters

Dozens of indexing schemes have been created for arranging Chinese characters in Chinese dictionaries.

- Chinese characters

3 related topics with Alpha

Kangxi Dictionary

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The Kangxi Dictionary ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th.

They are grouped under the 214 radicals and arranged by the number of additional strokes in the character.

Kangxi radical

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Distribution of the number of entries per radical in the Kangxi Dictionary

The 214 Kangxi radicals, also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals of Chinese characters.

For example, Hanyu Da Cidian, the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary (published in 1993) has 23,000 head character entries organised by a novel system of 200 radicals.

Shuowen Jiezi

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Entry for 子 zǐ "child", showing the small seal form (top right), with the "ancient script" and Zhòuwén forms on the left

Page from a copy of a Song dynasty edition of the Shuowen, showing characters with the 言 element, including 說 shuō

Shuowen Jiezi is an ancient Chinese dictionary from the Han dynasty.

Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary (the Erya predates it), it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them, as well as the first to use the principle of organization by sections with shared components called radicals (bùshǒu 部首, lit. "section headers").