Home Forums The Japanese Language Radical question

This topic contains 8 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by  Anonymous 12 years, 7 months ago.

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  • #30309

    hey
    Member

    According to http://www.textfugu.com/kanji/%E4%B8%8A/#top

    上 is made up of two radicals ト + 一

    However, the “toe” portion of the radical looks completely horizontal on the “above” radical, instead of slanted like it is on the “toe” radical.

    Am I missing something because they don’t look the same.

    I’m guessing there are some core rules to radicals and identifying them that I’m either missing, or that weren’t covered. This may explain why I have a hard time finding some kanji using radicals on jisho.org.

    Is there a good guide for learning radicals, their rules, exceptions, etc.?

    Thanks!

    #30312

    Anonymous

    Sometimes the radicals may not look exactly the same as in the kanji, but I try to deal with it. After all, the radicals are there to help you remind what the kanji most looks like. Good luck!

    #30314

    hey
    Member

    So that means there are some radicals that are kind of like cousins of the official radical? And when you want to find a kanji you have to factor in the cousin effect?

    #30317

    zeldaskitten
    Member

    You could say that, kind of.. But it really is just one radical, written slighly different when in different kanjis. Also it depends on fonts too. And honestly if you’re learning kanji through Textfugu, keep in mind that he sometimes makes things up, radical wise, in a way that I assume he thinks makes it easier to learn the kanji. Sometimes making up radicals that don’t officially exist and ignoring ones that do. I often find that the radicals he says are in a kanji don’t match when u compare to sites like denshi jisho. But since it gets you to learn the kanji, often easier because he picks things that make more sense, I can’t say I mind too much.

    =^..^=
    #30318

    Kas
    Member

    I may be wrong, but I suspect the “toe” being straight instead of slanted is because of stroke order. The “toe” is written right before the horizontal line at the bottom. It feels more natural to write them parallel. In 下 the toe is the last stroke and comes directly after a vertical line, so it feels more natural to have it slant just like it does in the radical. A lot of the shifts in how radicals appear seem to make the kanji easier, and faster, to write. Again, this is a guess, but it has seemed to hold true as I’ve been learning the kanji.

    #30325

    Anonymous

    The kanji radicals from another Japanese resource may not be the same as the kanji radicals from Textfugu, but when searching for kanji in Jisho, some of the radicals may be the same, and those may possibly help for searching for kanji.
    Sometimes the radical in a kanji doesn’t look exactly like the actual radical – one way to deal with this may be to create a ‘mini-story’ about the part that corresponds to why the radical looks different. For example, in the kanji 図 which means ‘diagram’, it is made up of the Narwhal, Ice, and Mouth. But to me the Narwhal don’t exactly look perfect. Maybe the Narwhal is sleeping, so that’s why it looks a bit bended. And perhaps the ice is on the ceiling of the mouth-like cave.
    Maybe for 上 one could say that the the toe was straightened because of the ‘wea’ther (うえ) or something like that.

    #30337

    Joel
    Member

    Radicals can look a bit different in some characters. Mostly it’s simply because they’ve changed over the thousand years or so since they were first introduced to Japan from China, or they may have even changed before that. For example, 已 appears as 己 in most characters. The radical on the left half of 持 is the radical form of 手, while the bottom of 熱 is a modification of 火. Et cetera.

    #30497

    hey
    Member

    Oh wow. That’s all good to know. Sorry about the delay in my reply. I’ve been out sick for a week.

    Anyway, all of this leads me to believe there isn’t one official standard for radicals, correct? Radicals are just a tool teachers sometimes use to help teach kanji then?

    This also leads me to wonder. If radicals have exceptions then should those exceptions be considered a new radical? Also, are there lots of exceptions? If so then it seems like learning radicals wouldn’t have much of an advantage?

    • This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  hey.
    #30505

    Anonymous

    Correct. And it’s good that these radicals can be used to our advantage in remembering kanji with mnemonics and stories.

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