Discuss the Article : Learning Chinese Characters Through Radicals
Learning Chinese Characters Through Radicals
When facing Chinese for the first time, it's hard not to wonder why it takes thousands of characters to form a working alphabet. This article compares the building blocks of Chinese and western characters to reveal the larger concepts at play in the Chinese writing system.
@ Gary
Your suggests is really constructive.
Sorry for the images. They are indeed small. I will put them below. And next time I will definitely remind the editor.
http://note.youdao.com/noteshare?id=e03acf2fd70ed94dceb19a284da5406e&sub=51E744E4451542AC9F4127A9BB5E1ABF
http://note.youdao.com/noteshare?id=309bafd686c2128feb75f608908475b5&sub=77F8126CCDA74A0C9A77325B16B43771
http://note.youdao.com/noteshare?id=6ceaaebb6e702c01b29fb6ef930c0a29&sub=6BE4A97AE26F4F8F86CF35D7FDA26894
"when these basic characters become radicals, they have to be squeezed and transformed"
Yes, I really mean it. Because all the Chinese characters are in the same size. When a basic character become a radical. There must be something else be put into the "square". So 水 become a 氵in 液. it is transforming. 水 in 浆 is squeezing.
Oh, maybe I should say "or" instead of "and".
As for the meaning and pronunciation the radical implies, you are right, only sometimes. I have written in the comment @ Georg Lohrer
I have mentioned the meaning of 液 in the bracket. It means liquid.
Thank you so much for your patience.~
@ 熊力/Bernhard
In Tang Dynasty, Japan learned a lot from China. They borrowed the characters.
Later in 19 century, China learned a lot from Japan. We borrowed a lot of words which are the concepts coming from the western world.
E.G. 警察、建筑、哲学、政治(police/architecture/philosophy/politics)
They are all most commonly used words in modern Chinese nowadays.
As for your question, Chinese characters always link the meanings. The pronunciation, however, changes by time and space. So we can read ancient Chinese's books, but we can't understand their speaks if they could.
There is only one exception of the case which is the transliteration.
E.G. 巧克力（chocolate）、麦克风（microphone）
@ Georg Lohrer，
We can only say the meaning and pronunciation DRIVES from the radicals.
Everyone love the regular and organized way, of course including the character maker.
But the bad new is both meaning and pronunciation of some characters have changed as time goes on.
And they are commonly used characters.
Even though, more than half of the commonly used characters are regular and organized.
So after you have learned, say, 500 characters, radicals would help you a lot.
