Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [radicals]

部首. Components of kanji, which may serve as a semantic or phonetic factor in the meaning or pronunciation of the character. Along with stroke count, radicals provide a way to index and give an ordering to kanji.

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Is there any reason a lot of body parts use the Month/Moon radical?

腕、胸、お腹、肘、脇、肩 are all body parts, and their radical is 月. I wonder how that came to be?
Dylano Stewart Rodrigues
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What rules are there regarding the role a radical plays in a kanji (such as telling us about the kanji's reading or meaning)?

Are there certain rules for knowing what role a radical plays in a kanji? I've heard sometimes a radical tells us about how to read the kanji, and sometimes it tells us the meaning of the kanji. But that's all I've heard. Could you tell me more…
Vicfred
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Is there a difference in drawing between the "mouth" and "enclosure" kanji radicals?

The two kanji radicals from the image are supposed to be 2 different kanji radicals, one meaning "mouth", and the other meaning "enclosure". I'm not sure if they are supposed to look different or not. The one above seems to have some very small…
Pablo
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Why is there two different ways of writing the 衣 component?

I notice that 衣 as a kanji component is sometimes written without the third stroke. For example, in 壌, 衣 is written with strokes 13 through to 16: below the horizontal line there are 4 strokes. But in kanji like 展, below the line there are three…
Judas
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Are kanji characters made up of radicals only or could they contain strokes that are not radicals?

Inspired by this question of rounded or circular strokes in kanji, I got an idea to prove that there is no circular strokes in kanji by examining all kanji radicals, which is a lot less that examining all kanji characters. But that would work only…
Lukman
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About the kanji 鱈 where 魚's bottom is written as 大

I was looking at the picture of a newspaper during the times of the Hibiya riot (1905) and it took me a while to find the headline word 出鱈目{でたらめ}. In fact, in every dictionary I have checked so far the kanji 鱈 is written as I am typing it, with the…
Tommy
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Does the etymology of 星 suggest the japanese/chinese knew the sun was a star?

星 contains the radical 日 meaning sun/day. This makes sense from a modern understanding, as it is well known that the sun was a star. However, it appears this has only been known since the 19th century, suggesting that the connection is not so…
M Palmer
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What is the significance of a repeated radical in a Kanji character?

What is the significance (if any) of a repeated radical in a Kanji character? I have been learning Kanji for almost a year now. In the early days my assumption would have been that repeating a radical would emphasise quantity/intensity/scale in an…
Ambo100
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How often do single dots stick to the top of kanji?

In Chinese, characters with a single dot on top stay separated from the rest of the character. (Eg. Chinese 宝) In kanji, this is frequently not the case - virtually all 宀 characters I see have dots stuck to the 冖 part (宝, 字, etc.). On the other…
rhyaeris
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What is the radical which is written by two dots on the top of a Kanji?

I have seen a lot of kanjis with two dots on the top as in 前、咲く、呼ぶ、etc. What is that radical? In http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/, I see they have mentioned this two dot radical in their list, but when I look it up in any proper Kangxi radical…
Steel
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What is the story behind "peach kanji" 桃?

I wanna know why this kanji is containing the tree kanji 木 + the omen kanji 兆 ? What is the relation between tree and omen to give us a kanji for the peach ? Is it a historical story?
user32763
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Can an individual Kanji character have more than one radical?

I am learning about radicals and their use in forming an individual Kanji character, but I am wondering if more than one radical can be used in developing one. Thank you.
Jack Bosma
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Official radical names (部首{ぶしゅ}名称{めいしょう}) vs radical nicknames (部首{ぶしゅ}通称{つうしょう})

There seems to be a great many nicknames, but only one official name for each radical. I'm thus more inclined to learn the latter, but I'm left wondering about the practicality of that. All of the other radical lists that I've seen, whether English…
user16343
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The thing in the left of 印

Kanji are made of radicals, right? But that "E" looking thing in the left of 印 doesn't seem to be a radical, for I looked at many radical databases and didn't find anything like that. Is that a radical? If so, could you give me another example of a…
Elizabeth Middleford
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Why don't radicals have the same definition for all kanji?

A radical is the portion of a kanji that is used to list that kanji in a kanji dictionary. It could represent the "general" meaning (whatever that is), it could represent the sound, or it could represent other things that I don't know. I don't think…
quantum231
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