The Kangxi radicals
When beginner students or interested people hear that the Chinese writing system isn't phonetic in the same way as most other languages, some ask a clever question. If the pronunciation of characters isn't directly linked to what the character looks like, how do you go about sorting characters and words?
In English, we sort names of people, places and objects into alphabetical lists, but the only reason we can do that is because we have an alphabet with a fixed order.
This order is easy to learn, because there are less than 30 items in it.
But what about names in Chinese, that has thousands of characters? While many modern dictionaries actually sort characters and words by pronunciation (in online dictionaries, no sorting is needed, of course), there is another way, which is less dependent on changes in pronunciation in different regions or different historical epochs.
Enter: The Kangxi dictionary
This dictionary of Chinese characters was published in 1716 and collected almost 50,000 Chinese characters. This sounds like a staggering amount (it is), but it should be noted that most of these characters are rare variants of other characters, and not really in common use even at the time of compilation. Today, about one fifth are still in use, only less than a tenth are common.
The Kangxi dictionary used a system of 214 radicals to sort the characters. In each character, one component was chosen as the radical and the character was then sorted according to this radicals.
The radicals themselves were sorted according to how many strokes they contained. Characters with the same radical were sorted based on how many strokes they contained apart from the radical itself, so a character like ? would be written as the radical ? plus three strokes, sorted before the character ?, which has the same radical, but with seven strokes.
This system was built on an older system from another famous dictionary, ???? (Shuowénjiezì), which used more than 500 radicals, which were then reduced to 214 in the ?? (Zìhùi) dictionary some 100 years before the publication of the Kangxi dictionary. It was still the publication of the latter that made this list of radicals dominant for several hundred years, up to and including today.
Please follow this link if you want a complete list of the Kangxi radicals, including variants, stroke count, pronunciations, meaning, frequency and examples.
The Kangxi radicals for learners of modern Mandarin
The problem is that this list of radicals is being touted as the holy grail of character learning, which is completely wrong for several reasons.
First, there are many character components that are extremely important, but which aren't in the the list of radicals.
Second, many of the characters on the list aren't very important. In fact, some of them are almost never used. If you want to read more about the difference between radicals and character components, as well as why it matters for you, check this article: Chinese character components and radicals.
Finally, any frequency data you get from analysing the radicals in the Kangxi dictionary isn't very useful, because the dictionary contains so many rare characters that skew the results. For example, the radical ? (insect, worm) is used more than a thousand times in the dictionary, but it only appears in a handful of characters in modern Chinese that you are likely to face as a beginner student.
The list I have compiled takes care of this by basing the frequency data on only the most frequently used 2500 characters, thus ignoring those you won't see in your first few semesters of Chinese studies.
In English, we sort names of people, places and objects into alphabetical lists, but the only reason we can do that is because we have an alphabet with a fixed order.
This order is easy to learn, because there are less than 30 items in it.
But what about names in Chinese, that has thousands of characters? While many modern dictionaries actually sort characters and words by pronunciation (in online dictionaries, no sorting is needed, of course), there is another way, which is less dependent on changes in pronunciation in different regions or different historical epochs.
Enter: The Kangxi dictionary
This dictionary of Chinese characters was published in 1716 and collected almost 50,000 Chinese characters. This sounds like a staggering amount (it is), but it should be noted that most of these characters are rare variants of other characters, and not really in common use even at the time of compilation. Today, about one fifth are still in use, only less than a tenth are common.
The Kangxi dictionary used a system of 214 radicals to sort the characters. In each character, one component was chosen as the radical and the character was then sorted according to this radicals.
The radicals themselves were sorted according to how many strokes they contained. Characters with the same radical were sorted based on how many strokes they contained apart from the radical itself, so a character like ? would be written as the radical ? plus three strokes, sorted before the character ?, which has the same radical, but with seven strokes.
This system was built on an older system from another famous dictionary, ???? (Shuowénjiezì), which used more than 500 radicals, which were then reduced to 214 in the ?? (Zìhùi) dictionary some 100 years before the publication of the Kangxi dictionary. It was still the publication of the latter that made this list of radicals dominant for several hundred years, up to and including today.
Please follow this link if you want a complete list of the Kangxi radicals, including variants, stroke count, pronunciations, meaning, frequency and examples.
The Kangxi radicals for learners of modern Mandarin
The problem is that this list of radicals is being touted as the holy grail of character learning, which is completely wrong for several reasons.
First, there are many character components that are extremely important, but which aren't in the the list of radicals.
Second, many of the characters on the list aren't very important. In fact, some of them are almost never used. If you want to read more about the difference between radicals and character components, as well as why it matters for you, check this article: Chinese character components and radicals.
Finally, any frequency data you get from analysing the radicals in the Kangxi dictionary isn't very useful, because the dictionary contains so many rare characters that skew the results. For example, the radical ? (insect, worm) is used more than a thousand times in the dictionary, but it only appears in a handful of characters in modern Chinese that you are likely to face as a beginner student.
The list I have compiled takes care of this by basing the frequency data on only the most frequently used 2500 characters, thus ignoring those you won't see in your first few semesters of Chinese studies.