Chinese characters have traditionally been divided into six categories. For our purposes, the most important breakdown is between simple characters (wen2) and compound characters (zi4).
Although
the character pronounced wen2 is composed of individual strokes, to a Chinese
lexicographer it is seen as a basic atomic unit. The other character, zi4,
has a "roof" component over a "child" component and
is, thus, a compound (as well as being the category name for compounds
characters).
Compound characters (zi4) can be further subdivided,
with the two most important categories being the following:
Hui4 Yi4--Logical Aggregates.
(Note: The traditional form is on the left.) The logical aggregrates combine
two or more "parts" whose meanings play a role in creating the
meaning of the compound.
Xing2
Sheng1 --Radical-Phonetic compounds.
These are much more numerous than the hui4 yi4.
Here one part gives us a clue about the sound and one part gives us a clue
about the meaning.
Here's an example of each.
The first is a logical aggregate (hui4 yi4);
the second, a radical-phonetic (xing2 sheng1):
Ming2 means bright. The sun on the left, and the moon on
the right together mean bright.
This character means chess and is pronounced qi2 (that is
with a "ch" sound in English). On the left is the radical for
wood (chess pieces are made from wood). The right half of the character
is the shape for a word that is also pronounced qi2 .
So, in dealing with Xing Sheng characters, we are dealing
with two basic constituents: a phonetic element and a determinative element,
which is sometimes called a signific, but most commonly a Radical.
The exact count of how many radicals there are varies. The traditional
number is 214, but the count of commonly used ones is probably less. The
Oxford Concise English-Chinese Dictionary, for example, has 189.
If the Xing Sheng system sounds neat, don't get too excited.
First, the relationship between the radical and the meaning of the character
can be rather opaque. This is not too surprising since there are only 214
radicals to classify everything.
Second, the pronounciation of Chinese has changed from
the time most characters were created. In our example above, the pronounciation
of the phonetic matches that of the character. But the phonetic element
many times can be quite different (e.g., a character pronounced 'hai',
shows up as a phonetic in words pronounced 'hai', 'he',
'hu', 'gai' and 'ke').
Let's take as an example the four words of our program:
Bu Shou Ce Yan.
Bu Shou (the top two characters) means "section head",
refering to sections in a dictionary. This is the Chinese word for "radical".
Ce Yan (the bottom two) means "quiz".
Each of these characters has only one radical(shown in
red). That is to say, there is only one listing in the dictionary under
which a character is classified. Which component serves as the radical
is sometimes difficult to discern. Usually, it is the component on the
left side, but as we see in the word bu this is not
always the case. Components like the "right ear" and "knife"
usually show up on the right, yet they are still often the radical.
In
addition, many of the other components can also serve as radicals in other
characters. For example, in the character Ce there is a "shell"
component. In some characters, the shell component is the radical, but
in this case, it is not. Since these radicals often show up as other components,
they are especially useful to learn.
Be clear, however, that learning the 200 or so radicals
in Chinese Radical Exam will not allow you to break down every part of
every Chinese character. After 4000 years there are plenty of exceptions.
But knowing, or rather mastering (since
mastery is the goal of the program) the radicals will help
