Chinese characters are made up of structure and components. Common structures include left-right, top-bottom, enclosing, and standalone. The structure determines how parts are arranged and also influences stroke order. Recognizing structure helps distinguish which part is the radical.

Radicals are the main components used to classify and search Chinese characters. A character typically has one radical, used for dictionary lookup. Radicals are often related to meaning, but they do not necessarily correspond to the pronunciation part.

Many radicals relate to basic meanings, such as water, wood, mouth, and person. Remembering common radicals can quickly guess a character's broad category of meaning. Radicals may vary slightly in form across different characters, but their functions are similar.

The semantic component is the part of a character that conveys meaning; it is often also the radical. For example, in '湖' the '氵' hints at water. The semantic component helps us guess which category a character belongs to.

Phonetic component is the part that indicates pronunciation. In phono-semantic characters, the phonetic component provides clues to the character's pronunciation, but does not guarantee exact pronunciation. Understanding phonetic components helps infer and memorize pronunciation.

Phono-semantic characters consist of a semantic component and a phonetic component; they are the largest category of Chinese characters. The semantic component carries meaning, the phonetic component carries the pronunciation clues; together they form a character. Learning the patterns of phono-semantic characters can speed up character recognition.

Left-Form, Right-Phonetic is a common phono-semantic structure where the left side is the phonetic component and the right side is the semantic component. Many '氵' characters and '讠' characters use this arrangement. Recognizing left-right roles helps quickly parse a new character.

Right-Form, Left-Phonetic is another form-phonetic structure, with the right side as the semantic component and the left side as the phonetic component. This structure is less common but appears in some characters. Recognizing this structure can help avoid misidentifying radicals.

The same radical or component may deform in different structures. For left-right structures, the 氵 radical is common, and for top-bottom structures, 冫 is common. This deformation is the result of standardized writing and does not change the basic meaning.

Radicals are the basic components that form Chinese characters; they can be semantic components, phonetic components, or simply parts required by the structure. Components are finer units, such as '一','丶','丨'. Understanding radicals and components helps analyze new characters.

When encountering a new character, you can first determine the overall structure, then identify possible semantic and phonetic components. For example, when you see '桥', you can relate it to the pronunciations of '木' and '乔'. This kind of analysis helps with memory and dictionary lookup.