Have you thought Chinese characters are difficult to learn? How is it possible to remember those characters that are completely different from English? This series of articles will offer the easiest and most effective method to learn Chinese characters.
What are Chinese radicals?
In English, there are roots and affixes to help you remember words quickly. Similarly, most Chinese characters are made up of several radicals (偏旁), from which you can predict the meanings of unknown characters.
Take Extra as an example. Extra is a word, but it can combine with roots and affixes to become new words such as extracurricular and extraordinary. Likewise, in the Chinese language, some characters can be parts of other characters to indicate their meanings. For example, 口 means mouth. Meanwhile, we can see 口 in other characters like 鸣、咆、吠、啸、吼、嚎、啼、哮、喳, and so on. Many 口s, right? The main function of the mouth is speaking, so these Chinese characters are all directly related to speaking.
The most common Chinese radicals
In this series of articles, we will introduce essential radicals and related characters so that you can learn and remember the most-used Chinese characters easily and happily. This list will be continuously updated. You can learn more about different radicals and related characters by the links below.