Radicals & Components
Spoken Description
学习汉字的偏旁和部首：本课程讲解常用偏旁、偏旁组合规则及部首变化，帮助识字、记忆汉字，提高写作速度。通过实例和练习巩固理解，适合汉字初学者
Learn Chinese radicals and components: this course explains common radicals, how components combine and change shape, to support character recognition, memorization, and writing speed. Boost your Chinese literacy from the ground up.
-:- / -:-
Radicals and components are the building blocks of Chinese characters; they often give clues about meaning and sound; learning them helps you remember characters and look them up in dictionaries.
Radicals
Radicals are standardized components that often indicate meaning category and serve as dictionary keys; there are about 200 common radicals, and each character has one that you can learn to identify.
Components
Components are smaller parts that make up characters; some are radicals, and others are phonetic or semantic hints; recognizing recurring components speeds up learning and shows how characters are related.
Semantic Components
Semantic components suggest the general meaning area of a character, such as water, wood, or person; they help you guess a character’s meaning when you see a familiar radical.
Phonetic Components
Phonetic components hint at a character’s pronunciation, though the match is not always exact due to sound changes over time; they guide you to candidates with similar sounds in Mandarin.
Summary
Radicals give you meaning categories and dictionary access, semantic components point to meaning, and phonetic components guide pronunciation guesses; learning the most common radicals and paying attention to components makes character learning much faster.
All content was written by our AI and may contain a few mistakes. We may earn commissions on some links. Last updated: Mon Dec 8, 2025, 6:25 AM