If you are like me, the first time you looked at a Chinese character, you probably thought, “That looks so confusing!” I would spend so many hours trying to memorize characters and still have little to no progress. It was when I found out the radicals behind characters that I began to understand them better. Radicals are the base of every character that hint at the meaning of the character. By learning radicals, memorizing Chinese characters became a lot easier for me. Here are a few characters with their radicals.
1) 妈妈 (Mother)
This is the radical for female. When this radical is placed in front of a character, it usually means the character’s meaning involves a female.
2) 钱 (Money)
This is the radical for metal. When this radical is placed in front of a character, the character’s meaning has something to do with metal.
3) 吃 (to eat)
This radical means mouth. When this radical is placed in front of a character, the mouth is involved in the meaning of that character.
4) 林 (forest)
This radical means wood. Whenever this radical is placed in a character, the character’s meaning usually implies wood or trees.
Another way that people can find the meanings or roots of characters is by associating each radical with a picture to match its meaning.
Hopefully, you learned a little about the roots of Chinese characters and how they can help you figure out meanings. They definitely helped me out a lot! Until next time, 再见！
This is a very well-written article. I learned so much about radicals.
It is so interesting how knowing a radical can change a character that you do not know to a character that you know. Now as a Chinese II student, I will definitely use the radical system when learning more characters to increase my fluency of the Chinese language. Thank you for sharing!!
Thank you for sharing. This was very helpful. I sometimes have difficulty learning the characters, but with this advice I should learn it in no time!
This article is very helpful when you don’t know a character, it can help you know the meaning of it even if you have never seen the word before! Very interesting.
This is very interesting! As of now, it is very hard to memorize the immense amount of Chinese characters we are learning. Knowing the radical will definetly help me understand the word without having to memorize each and every character.
This is an amazing article! The Chinese language is so fascinating!
Great article, Jason! Analyzing the radical of a Chinese character is often extremely helpful in figuring out the meaning of the character. Sometimes, the radicals themselves even look like their meanings. For example, 口 means “mouth” and looks like one, too!
This article was very fascinating. I never knew how important radicals were in shaping the definition of the character. I will try to use radicals now to figure out the definitions of characters.
Very interesting! I love looking for the hidden meanings in characters!
This article will definitely help me understand some characters I didn’t know. It’s interesting to know that every part of a Chinese character can have an influence on its meaning. Thank you for sharing!
Wow, I never thought of learning and interpreting Chinese words this way. This article gave me a new way of trying to memorize Chinese characters. Thank you!
This is very interesting, and it is very interesting to know hidden meanings within characters!
It’s so cool how each radical has it’s own meaning behind it. Chinese can be difficult at times and the use of radicals definitely make it easier and more fun to decipher each word! This article did a great job of explaining everything!
It’s so cool how each radical has its own meaning behind it. Chinese can be difficult at times and the use of radicals definitely make it easier and more fun to decipher each word! This article did a great job of explaining everything!
I find this very helpful and will definitely aid me in memorizing characters in the future.