I said I was going to post 3 a day, but I kind of didn't stick to that promise. Ah well.
Here are 3 more radicals for you to learn today.
足， ⻊ = foot
This character exists as a standalone character, but it has a slightly different form that appears on the left hand side of some characters, particularly those to do with feet.
足 - foot
跑 - run
踢 - kick (踢足球 - play football/soccer)
跃 - leap, jump
蹦 - leap, jump, spring
跳 - leap, jump, spring, bounce (the list of English translations keeps growing...)
跟 - with, to follow
踩 - step on, trample
刀，刂 = sword, knife
One way of remembering that the two characters are related is that the second one is really just the first one with the top bit removed and the left bit squished a bit closer towards the right bit- wait, that wasn't really all too helpful... There's also a third form that I don't know how to type and can't find one that I can copy or paste (though to be honest I'm not really looking very hard). It looks like the top of the character 色 or 龟.
刀 - sword, knife
剪 - scissors, shears
色 - colour
龟 - turtle
兔 - rabbit
划 - stroke (of a Chinese character), to scratch
切 - cut
免 - avoid, avert, escape (免费 - free of charge)
刚 - just
别 - other, don't
日 - sun, day
This character evolved from a pictograph. I'm sure you can find its origins on a quick Google search.
日 - sun, day
旧 - old
旦 - dawn
晓 - dawn, daybreak
显 - apparent, obvious, show, display, illustrious and influential
明 - bright (昆明 - Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province in China, which is where the Hanyu Qiao Chinese Proficiency Competition is going to be held this year)
时 - time
旭 - rising sun
早 - early, morning
晚 - night
量 - to measure
晴 - sunny
Showing posts with label Chinese Radicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese Radicals. Show all posts
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Radicals 木 水 手
Are you having trouble learning Chinese characters? If you are, I highly suggest that you learn some radicals.
What are radicals? you might ask. Radicals are the building blocks that make up a Chinese character. Pretty much all of them also exist as basic characters on their own (like 水 and 手). No complex Chinese character is totally unique- what looks like a complex character is really just made up of lots of basic characters. You also need to know radicals to be able to look up a Chinese character in the dictionary.
In this post I'm going to introduce just a few of the more common radicals and some of the characters in which you can find them.
木 = tree
It even looks like a tree. Yay.
Here are some characters that use this radical:
林 - woods
森 - forest (by the way, 森林 also means "forest")
杏 - apricot
松 - 松树 means "squirrel." By the way, 松 is pronounced "sōng" while the radical on the right of the character is pronounced gōng, which is kind of similar. Often what you find in Chinese characters is that one radical contributes to meaning and the other contributes to sound (though it is a rather vague clue).
树 - tree
枯 - withered
水， 氺, 氵 = water
The one on the right is the one you'll see most often. It looks like a few drops of water (to me, anyway). According to Wikipedia, this radical appears in some 1 595 characters!
Some characters:
游泳 - swimming (I put both characters together because they both contain the radical)
冰 - ice (by the way, the left hand radical means "ice" on its own. If you were to look this character up in the dictionary, you would look it up using the "ice" radical, NOT the "water" radical.)
洲 - continent
洋 - 大洋洲 means "Oceania."
渴 - thirsty. Not to be confused with 喝 which means "to drink."
浅 - shallow
深 - deep
池 - pond, pool
江 - river
河 - river (I think the difference between 江 and 河 is that one goes to the ocean while the other doesn't. Something like that anyway.)
汤 - soup
手，扌,龵 = hand
To be honest, I'd never realised that the one on the right was a variant of the "hand" radical...
捉 - catch
打 - hit
搓 - rub
扔 - throw aside
找 - look for something
指 - point out
拍 - hit, take a photo (obviously depends on context. Also with the "hit" meaning, I don't think it's really hitting as such. I'm pretty sure that 拍拍手 refers to those hand-clapping games that kids play, for example.)
I can't be bothered adding any more radicals for now. I'll endeavour to add 3 a day. We'll see if I can stick to that.
What are radicals? you might ask. Radicals are the building blocks that make up a Chinese character. Pretty much all of them also exist as basic characters on their own (like 水 and 手). No complex Chinese character is totally unique- what looks like a complex character is really just made up of lots of basic characters. You also need to know radicals to be able to look up a Chinese character in the dictionary.
In this post I'm going to introduce just a few of the more common radicals and some of the characters in which you can find them.
木 = tree
It even looks like a tree. Yay.
Here are some characters that use this radical:
林 - woods
森 - forest (by the way, 森林 also means "forest")
杏 - apricot
松 - 松树 means "squirrel." By the way, 松 is pronounced "sōng" while the radical on the right of the character is pronounced gōng, which is kind of similar. Often what you find in Chinese characters is that one radical contributes to meaning and the other contributes to sound (though it is a rather vague clue).
树 - tree
枯 - withered
水， 氺, 氵 = water
The one on the right is the one you'll see most often. It looks like a few drops of water (to me, anyway). According to Wikipedia, this radical appears in some 1 595 characters!
Some characters:
游泳 - swimming (I put both characters together because they both contain the radical)
冰 - ice (by the way, the left hand radical means "ice" on its own. If you were to look this character up in the dictionary, you would look it up using the "ice" radical, NOT the "water" radical.)
洲 - continent
洋 - 大洋洲 means "Oceania."
渴 - thirsty. Not to be confused with 喝 which means "to drink."
浅 - shallow
深 - deep
池 - pond, pool
江 - river
河 - river (I think the difference between 江 and 河 is that one goes to the ocean while the other doesn't. Something like that anyway.)
汤 - soup
手，扌,龵 = hand
To be honest, I'd never realised that the one on the right was a variant of the "hand" radical...
捉 - catch
打 - hit
搓 - rub
扔 - throw aside
找 - look for something
指 - point out
拍 - hit, take a photo (obviously depends on context. Also with the "hit" meaning, I don't think it's really hitting as such. I'm pretty sure that 拍拍手 refers to those hand-clapping games that kids play, for example.)
I can't be bothered adding any more radicals for now. I'll endeavour to add 3 a day. We'll see if I can stick to that.
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